Trigger warnings have become a totemic feature of our times, symptomatic of an age that is both hopelessly fragile and insufferably judgemental. They have spread like a canker as publishers and authors have sought to parade their sensitivity and flaunt their moral superiority. And they are increasingly a means of a virtue signalling and projecting one’s ego.
Evidence of this has been on show this week with the revelation that Joanne Harris has begun to add content warnings to her own books. Readers of her bestselling 1999 novel, Chocolat, will now be cautioned that the story contains ‘spousal abuse, mild violence, death of parent, cancer, hostility and outdated terms for travelling community and religious intolerance’. Furthermore, Harris’s website has been updated to add that her Loki novels include ‘depictions of eating disorders’, that The Blue Salt Road contains ‘depictions of whale hunting’ and The Little Mermaid contains ‘ableist and transphobic slurs’.
A fundamental, underlying motive for trigger warnings has always been for people to signal their moral superiority
Risible as all of this may sound, it will surprise few aficionados of literature, theatre, cinema and television.
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