Examples Of Written Trigger Warnings

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In my 16.5 years of education, I have never received a written trigger warning for a course and only recall one instance in which a trigger warning was given verbally. It was my junior year of college and my film theory course was scheduled to watch Blood of the Beasts (Franju, 1949); a short French documentary that juxtaposes French life with images from a slaughterhouse. The professor stood before the class and warned us of the graphic imagery we were about to witness. She allowed us to leave the room and accept an alternate assignment or stay as long as we could, but still with the option of fleeing the room if necessary. Being the brave soul I thought myself to be, I planted firmly in my seat for I was a horror film fanatic and nothing could faze me. Boy, was I wrong. I squirmed and struggled through the movie and often times I glanced off facing the wall in order to overt my eyes from the screen. …show more content…
I do not think I had a necessarily sheltered education, but my professors were not ones to use trigger warnings – certainly one might find some of the content in Birth of a Nation (Griffith, 1915) offensive or distasteful, but we were not given a warning before this content. The most interaction I have had with trigger warnings is through the FCC ratings system on television, particularly when watching the horror genre, i.e. American Horror Story (FX, 2011-). When I reflect upon my experience with trigger warnings it should be of no surprise that I viewed the University of Chicago’s letter to the class of 2020, exclaiming the negation of such warnings, as unnecessary even so much so that I almost agreed with them.