Romeo and Juliet – with a special audience warning
NewsThe Daily Mail directs us to this sensitive notice on the Globe theatre’s website:
‘This production contains depictions of suicide, moments of violence and references to drug use. It contains gunshot sound effects and the use of stage blood.
‘If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this production of Romeo and Juliet please find details below of organisations offering advice and support.’
How did Shakespeare fail to warn us first?
what? no sex abuse and underage relations ? that won’t do then 😉
If they want to sell tickets they need to put in a warning about nudity, too.
It all started with toothpicks. Or rather, with a set of instructions for using toothpicks:
“Hold stick near center of its length. Moisten pointed end in mouth. Insert in tooth space, blunt end next to gum. Use gentle in-out motion.”
“It seemed to me,” said Wonko the Sane, “that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a package of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane.”
― Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
Now we have proceeded to the point where a Shakespeare play requires trigger warnings.
Falstaff was wrong: Tutto nel mondo è pazzia, non burla.
He did:
Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents’ strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark’d love,
And the continuance of their parents’ rage,
Which, but their children’s end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.
Thank you for reminding us of the glory of the English language. Those who need protection from that and its theatrical incarnations need psychiatry, not theatre.
And sources of psychiatric assistance are given in the Globe’s notice.
Honestly – what’s the problem with that?
(To clarify, as my original message is ambiguous: I’m referring to providing warnings. I honestly don’t get why people think content warnings are bad)
Oh, for God’s sake. These are theatre-goers, not kindergarten kids. Not only that, they are Shakespeare theatre goers. Surely adults are not in need of “content warnings” for a play that has been around for 400 years.
Going to the theatre is supposed to take you somewhere outside your own limited path. That may mean the occasional jolt.
The whole “trigger warning” rubbish in universities, where snowflakes beg off specific classics because they have, or think they have, had similar experiences to a FICTIONAL CHARACTER, is just a part of the whole search for victimhood.
It betrays the whole notion of scholarship — that they are actually in a university environment to apply CRITICAL faculties to the creation of literature.
It is the absurd and increasingly dangerous (to culture) outcome of bringing children up the way they have been for the last 30 years or so: with no “winners and losers” in competition, without punishment for aberrant or even abhorrent behaviour. without respect for teachers or other people who used to warrant it, self-centred and beyond the criticism of anyone. They have not been raised to be crossed at any juncture, and certainly not in the matter of grades. They are not decrying Tess of the D’Urbervilles because their cousin raped them but because it is HARD compared to the fantasy pap they have grown up with.
This from the Globe is playing to them, not to the majority of theatre-goers — LONDON theatre-goers — who are more than able to take a classic drama, however staged, in their stride.
Adult life is for grown-ups.
I’m with Emil on this one. There may well be school kids (probably not kindergarten) in the audience. I wouldn’t be surprised if school parties were a significant income source for the Globe. If you go to the Globe website for Romeo and Juliet, rather than the Daily Mail, and click on the Visual Story button, it is clear that they are addressing people unused to going to the theatre, and perhaps particularly young people who know nothing about Shakespeare or dramatic conventions. (Pause here to lament state of the literature curriculum in schools.) The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet does have content that is deeply distressing, unless you are particularly callous. Why not prepare people?
If the warning does not apply to you, feel free to ignore it. Meanwhile, some people find them useful.
Just like I have no problem with stroboscopic lights and gunshots, but I understand why theatres provide warnings about them.
As to your broader point, there is a significant difference between creative unsettling and trauma. Confronting difficult situations can unsettle thought, lead to reflection and learning, if well done. But causing trauma is not that, and for people with suicidal thoughts, for instance, it may very well be more traumatic than productive. And again, if you’re not in that situation, feel free to ignore the warning.
A final note: the purpose of warnings is to encourage engagement, not discourage it. The warning is there to allow people to engage with difficult content on their terms, and to be able to do so on a fruitful way. It’s not a ban on Romeo and Juliet.
Are there warnings and referrals to some help group before or after all the horror films the same generation appears to soak up without difficulty? Have you done the body count of Middle Earth?
And what sort of school would take a party of kids to R&J without having it read in class first?
I find an aura of “now I don’t want you to worry your little head off” in this sort of thing.
And I wonder if these little sensitives are empathetic in the slightest to the absolute catastrophe unfolding daily on their home screens in Kabul and beyond.
I appreciate the sensitivity you and Marfisa have to those in genuine distress. But as you both know, this is part of a wider trend that is not about protecting the traumatised or suicidal but about catering to the whingeing victimology that has overrun our cultural and social lives in the past few decades.
I fail to see how it’s catering to any kind of “victimology”. It recognises, for sure, that trauma is real and is worth taking seriously which is good, surely? If your criticism is that it’s taking suicide *too* seriously, I’m not sure how that is a criticism? If your criticism is that society is now taking seriously very serious things, then…yeah?
As for your gratuitous swipe about Afghanistan, it’s as meritless as it is tasteless. And aside of being distasteful on its own, I have no intention of engaging in a comparison of suffering. Human rights abuses are worth taking seriously. Trauma and suicide are worth taking seriously, and one is not more real than the other.
Shakespeare had been turning in his grave for at least the past 10 years on the pussification of the Anglo-American culture. What’s next? Warn about his pithy insults, such as “Away, you starvelling, you elf-skin, you dried neat’s-tongue, bull’s-pizzle, you stock-fish!”? “Thou art a boil, a plague sore” So if any one has been called a blithering idiot before, go to a support group to help you recover?
Right about now many US people under 30 will be patting their comfort dogs and safe spaces.
Listen up; this is what happens when you spoil, pamper and fetishize an entire demographic of your population. They end up not being fit for purpose.
This is the excellent foppery of the world …
How pitiful society has become.
And where are the PC police? Juliet is supposed to be played by a boy, as in Bill’s day.
Yes, it is pitiful. But I think the old adage remains useful: “winners are grinners”.
I saw Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet as a horned up teenager, and those soft-porn images stayed with me for life.
I won’t even tell you the effects on me of Pasolini’s Canterbury Tales, I’m still paying off my psychoanalyst bills.
Impossible to read Chaucer and Shakespeare the same way again without the influence of Pasolini and Zeffirelli.
The English provide the text, the Italians provide the images.
And excellent Nino Rota music for the Zeffirelli!
Grrrr!!! Come the revolution and I am put in charge to run things properly, the first piece of government legislation (after banning marmite and caravanning) will be the following statement “If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in tonights program/documentary etc.then get a fucking grip”
Absolutely priceless.
BTW, I think “caravaning” was already ruined by
1. “The Big Trailer” (1953),
2. “About Schmidt” (2002).
This was addressed a couple of months ago on SD. See the amusing comment by Jan Kaznowski re: tape:
https://slippedisc.com/2021/06/ruth-leon-recommends-a-midsummers-nights-dream/
And not even a spoiler alert? Thanks for giving away all the juicy plot details, Globe Theater. Lol.
“How did Shakespeare fail to warn us first?”
Probably for the same reason Verdi didn’t realize Rigoletto took place in Las Vegas and the Duke was a casino owner/lounge singer.
Bad example. It’s not as if Verdi wanted Rigoletto to take place in Mantua and to have the tenor become a Duke of Mantua!
Trigger warnings gone mad. This is INSANE bending to snowflakery.
(To say nothing of being a MASSIVE spoiler.)
I must break the habit of a lifetime and go on the DM’s website to try to find the article. It is had for me to believe it passed without comment, and I may also find myself in the rare position of agreeing with the DM.
When I first heard of “trigger warnings” in the university in a CBC broadcast some years ago, it was a very new concept to me, and I felt sick at the notion that universities might cave into such rubbish. That must have been near the beginning of the no-platforming and cancel culture trends. As I have watched the damage these inter-related concepts have woven over the years since, I get more and more queasy.
I hope all those parents that spoiled their spawn and treated them as if the universe revolved around them are well pleased. They have bred a generation of Talibananas.
The fish rots from the head.
As Jordan Peterson once said, “if you paid university professors the same as bankers they’d be capitalists and not Marxists”. That latter belongs to an industrial strength ‘pity party’.
No need to sink as low as the Daily Mail. Go to https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/whats-on/romeo-and-juliet-2021/.
‘snowflakery’ – ‘spawn’ – ‘Talibananas’ – really? Do you know the 1943 book by Philip Wylie, Generation of Vipers? Perhaps you could write an update.
Presumably Shakespeare’s company didn’t have much of a legal staff
… or perhaps offering flights to Hamid Karzai International Airport so people can see what real trauma looks and feels like …
No triggers back then….
Ironic, though, isn’t it for a nation that’s gun-mad.
Perhaps instead they should be offering flights to Hamid Karzai International Airport so people can see what real threats and harm look like.
“A Winter’s Tale” is triggering to people who have been attacked by wild animals.
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” needs a trigger for people whose features resemble those of a Donkey. They’ll feel mocked, bewildered, betrayed…
Hard to believe audiences are so wussified, so sheltered and sensitive that some woke bureaucrat even thinks a statement like this is even necessary. But maybe ballet afficionados are more woke than opera fans who are used to sex, blood, gore and such.
From the comments, trigger warnings should accompany articles about trigger warnings, because there are some people who are completely triggered by trigger warnings.
“First thing we do, is kill all the lawyers”…..he TRIED to tell us!!