Can it be they are considering putting what amounts to warning labels on literature? This comes from a piece this week by Conservative columnist, Rich Lowery, who by the way I would not consider an irresponsible “bomb-thrower: or even a reactionary. I would say he’s very much a deliberative columnist. He wrote this piece, titled, “Warning: Literature Ahead” taken here from National Review Online.
The latest politically
correct fashion on college campuses is just insipid enough to catch on.
It is the so-called
trigger warning applied to any content that students might find traumatizing,
even works of literature. The trigger warning first arose on feminist websites
as a way to alert victims of sexual violence to possibly upsetting discussions
of rape (that would “trigger” memories of their trauma) but has gained wider
currency.
I guess it arose innocuously enough, but now taken to
the academic level, it amounts to putting warning labels on every work of
literature.
The student government
of the University of California, Santa Barbara, passed a resolution calling for
professors to include trigger warnings in their syllabi. The New York Times
reports that students at schools from the University of Michigan to George
Washington University have requested the warnings. A student at Rutgers
University proposed a trigger warning for The
Great Gatsby about “a variety of scenes that reference gory, abusive, and
misogynistic violence” (not to mention binge drinking, reckless driving,
profligate spending, and gross social climbing).
I think that last parenthetical comment is Lowery
just being snarky. But whoa. Are they kidding me?
Yes, the Chinua Achebe
anti-colonial novel Things Fall Apart
is a “triumph of literature that everyone in the world should read,” according
to the guide. But there’s a downside — it could “trigger readers who have
experienced racism, colonialism, religious persecution, violence, suicide, and
more.”
I don’t know if I should laugh or cry. This is absolutely absurd. This is the Nanny State taken to the ultimate,
idiotic conclusion. College students don’t
crumble if they are exposed to real life drama.
They are adult enough to be given be given free contraception,
practically induced to go have sexual experiences, and abortions without any
parental consent if they get pregnant, but they are not old enough to read works
of literature without some inane warning label?
Lowery then goes on to imagine what warning labels
would go with Tony Morrison’s Beloved,
Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, Victor
Hugo’s Les Misérables, Virgil’s The
Aeneid, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, William Styron’s The Confessions of Nat
Turner, William Faulkner’s Absalom,
Absalom!, and Mark Twain’s The
Adventures of Huck Finn. You can go
over and read it.
What I’d like to do now is celebrate this battiness by
having a little fun and come up with my own warning labels for some classic
works. How about…
Miguel
de Cervantes, Don Quixote: Warning,
possible trigger for those suffering with mental delusions and pudgy sidekicks
who just won’t leave.
Charles
Dickens, Great Expectations: Warning,
possible trigger for orphans, children who suffered from abusive stepmothers, jilted
fiancés, and rejected lovers.
Gustave
Flaubert, Madame Bovary: Warning,
possible trigger for cuckold husbands and lonely wives who read erotic
Romance novels.
William
Shakespeare, King Lear: Warning, possible
trigger for those suffering from domestic, elderly abuse and those who have
had their eyes plucked out.
D.
H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers:
Warning, possible trigger for boys with domineering mothers and who have had girlfriends
that try to pry them from their parents.
Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: Warning,
possible trigger for those tempted by satanic wishes.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The
Brothers Karamazov: Warning, possible trigger for those who have been wrongly accused of patricide
and those who are profligate with their money.
George Orwell, 1984:
Warning, possible trigger for those who get cold sweats thinking that Big
Brother Government is trying to manipulate your minds, such as in these asinine
warning labels.
So what are your suggestions for possible warning labels for novels?
