Trigger warning: If you’re a white male actor this might offend you

Another week, another white man up in arms about ‘trigger warnings.’

If Harry Potter actor Ralph Fiennes, 61, had his way, trigger warnings in theatre would be banned, as he told Laura Kuenssberg earlier this year.

Just seven days later, The Crown actor Matt Smith, 41, took to the same BBC show and told the political journalist he agreed ‘utterly and completely’ with Fiennes.

According to Fiennes, theatre audiences have ‘gone too soft’ – and Smith concurs, suggesting trigger warnings risk ‘sanitising’ theatre, as he concluded that no, he was ‘not into it’.

‘Isn’t art meant to be dangerous?’ the House of the Dragon actor asked, citing Doctor Who as being brilliant at scaring children in ‘a controlled way’ without having to tell them: ‘I’m about to scare you, by the way.’

Now Smith has doubled down on his previously comments in a new interview with Sunday Times, as he blamed trigger warnings for the ‘dumbing down’ of the arts.

The actor continued: ‘Too much policing of stories and being afraid to bring them out because a climate is a certain way is a shame. I’m not sure I’m on board with trigger warnings.’

How is Smith still not understanding why trigger warnings exist?

They are both wrong – warnings about content are essential for some people, and I can’t work out quite why these two actors are so triggered themselves.

But Fiennes and Smith are not the first to have taken offence to these tools, which are used to warn audiences about potentially distressing subjects they may find upsetting in a play, film, or TV show.

Last year, Sir Ian McKellen told Sky News the use of trigger warnings is ‘ludicrous’, while Quentin Tarantino told La Liberation in response to a question about his thoughts on trigger warnings: ‘I reject the word “offended”.

‘Anyone can be offended by anything. Frankly, I think most of the time – and there are no doubt some exceptions – saying that you are “offended” by a film is the first response of a very narrow mind.’

Also in 2023, Four Weddings And A Funeral actor Simon Callow argued that trigger warnings have no place in theatre because it’s a ‘safe space’ anyway.

His comments, in a letter to The Times, came after it emerged that a theatre had cautioned audience members that the Sound of Music touches on Nazi Germany and the annexation of Austria.

Last weekend, somewhat inevitably, Piers Morgan backed Fiennes, writing: ‘Well said, Mr Fiennes. Absolutely pathetic that audiences need “trigger warnings” in case scenes upset them. If you’re that spineless, don’t go!’

It’s hard not to notice a theme here: every one of these famous faces who take issue with trigger warnings are white men, who enjoy all the privilege that brings. 

Maybe this is the case because trigger warnings have been unnecessarily politicised; it’s a ‘lefty woke idea’ out to destroy the natural order of things, which has so well benefitted people who look like Smith, Fiennes, Tarantino, Morgan, and Callow to the detriment of everyone else for so long.

These men should consider who trigger warnings are actually made for.

In an audience of 100 women seeing, for example, a scene depicting rape, one in four, or 25 of them, will be watching having experienced sexual assault as an adult themselves. 

And this is where these men are wrong: trigger warnings are not there to stop the ‘woke’ audience being offended, or to censor the arts.

I agree with Smith that theatre should be dangerous: it should make you think about all those things you’d rather not. It should challenge your perceptions to the point of discomfort and perhaps even change. In some ways, it should be distressing.

But only if the audience – real people recovering from real traumas – are made aware of this first.

Trigger warnings are there to stop people from having to sit through something they’d really rather not. At their mildest, they could save someone from having a bad day.

Without them, one of these 25 women might go to the theatre unaware that there will be a horrific rape scene. Without the trigger warning, they are forced to sit through it and ‘appreciate the art’. But with a trigger warning, they can simply walk out and avoid this hugely uncomfortable experience before the production starts.

That’s fair enough… isn’t it? So why are these men so triggered by them?

Trigger warnings are not about saving people from being offended: they’re about giving people an opt out before its too late. They’re a perfectly straight forward, useful tool, to me.

Just like age warnings tell parents to avoid letting their children watch a film because of potentially harmful content, contrary to Smith’s view, trigger warnings have the power to allow art to flourish without fear of offence.

If anything, with a trigger warning a disturbing play can go wild, be bolder and braver than ever, without the fear of distressing a vulnerable member of the audience – because everyone that’s watching it does so knowing just about what they signed up for.

Smith also argued that trigger warnings are fine ‘if there are strobes or whatever’ -presumably talking about forewarning people with epilepsy – but how is that any different than warning someone with PTSD that something in the film might trigger them to spiral?

The dismissal of trigger warnings has been taken out of context, and used as a political football by the likes of Piers Morgan, without any thought as to why we use them in the first place.

Easily dismissing audiences as ‘too soft’ – or in Morgan’s words, ‘pathetic’ – for wanting to be warned before they have to watch their trauma play out on stage reduces real mental health struggles to nothing more than fanciful temper tantrums.

And that is what’s dangerous.

This article was originally published on February 19 2024.

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