Hollywood legend Ralph Fiennes has played all kinds of roles on the big screen, but some would say his best performances came as the brutally savage villain: the concentration camp commander in Schindler’s List, the chef in The Menu, a ruthless mob boss in In Bruges, and He Who Shall Not Be Named in the Harry Potter franchise. The guy is as good as anyone when it comes to playing an evil, heartless b@stard.
Which probably makes him something of an authority when it comes to scaring and triggering audiences. Something that he now explains has become a little more awkward due to the sensitivities of ‘modern audiences’, who are too easily upset and offended for his liking.
When asked by BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg if audiences have gone too soft, Fiennes said: “I think they have. I think we didn’t used to have trigger warnings. I mean, there are very disturbing scenes in Macbeth, terrible murders and things. But I think the impact of theater should be that you’re shocked and you should be disturbed.“
Fiennes added: “I don’t think you should be prepared for these things, and when I was young, we never had trigger warnings for shows. Shakespeare’s plays are full of murders, full of horror. As a young student and lover of theater, I never experienced trigger warnings telling me: ‘By the way, in ‘King Lear,’ Gloucester’s going to have his eyes pulled out.’ It’s the shock, the unexpected, that’s what makes an actor, theater so exciting.”
Well said, Ralph Fiennes. Well said, indeed! The question is, why are audiences today so delicate and fragile that they need a warning to mentally prepare themselves for the type of content that people have been enjoying since the invention of theatre, TV and cinema? Obviously not all people, in fact not even most people, believe these warnings are necessary, but there’s got to be enough of them that the powers that be deem these sorts of warnings essential for the modern consumer.
As Ralph Fiennes says, these warnings take away from the shock, the unexpectedness and the excitement of the whole experience. Can’t we just take the warning signs and trigger warnings off everything for a few years and see how it goes? Come on, everyone. Let’s suck it up and give it try!
For the Gen Z teens who labeled American Pie ‘problematic’ after watching it for the first time, click HERE.
