Matt Smith is worried that “everything’s being dialed and dumbed down” in the entertainment world because of the rise of trigger warnings.
Speaking to The Times of London, the “House of the Dragon” star lamented at how trigger warnings are keeping the audience from having a visceral, unexpected reaction like “being shocked, surprised, stirred” – which he thinks is the whole point of stories.
“It’s OK to feel uncomfortable or provoked while looking at a painting or watching a play, but I worry everything’s being dialed and dumbed down,” Smith said. “We’re telling audiences they’re going to be scared before they’ve watched something.”
He continued, “[I]sn’t being shocked, surprised, stirred the point? 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.”
Smith then recalled growing up and watching movies that, while perhaps inappropriate for his age, left a lasting impact on him.
“I used to go to a local video shop and get ‘Slither,’ ‘Basic Instinct,’ ‘Disclosure’ — all these erotic thrillers. I was way too young to be watching them,” he shared. “I watched ‘Friday the 13th’ when I was nine. Actually, that scarred me. Absolutely ruined me.”
Prefacing an episode of television, a movie or a piece of theater with a trigger warning is a practice that gained popularity in recent years to warn audiences of specific content that will be a part of the piece that might be particularly disturbing. Trigger warnings tend to be more specific than the usual parental guideline warnings seen before most movies and TV, and commonly warn of domestic or sexual violence, among other things.
Smith isn’t the first actor to comment on the growing reliance of trigger warnings. Ralph Fiennes broached the subject back in February and came to a similar conclusion about the practice stopping the audience from being shocked and surprised.
“I think we didn’t used to have trigger warnings,” he said. “I mean, there are very disturbing scenes in Macbeth, terrible murders and things. But I think the impact of theater should be that you’re shocked and you should be disturbed.”
Fiennes continued, “I don’t think you should be prepared for these things, and when I was young, we never had trigger warnings for shows. Shakespeare’s plays are full of murders, full of horror. As a young student and lover of theater, I never experienced trigger warnings telling me: ‘By the way, in ‘King Lear,’ Gloucester’s going to have his eyes pulled out.’ It’s the shock, the unexpected, that’s what makes an actor, theater so exciting.”
Smith currently stars on HBO’s “House of the Dragon,” a series whose sex and violence could easily be preceded with a trigger warning of its own. The show just wrapped it’s second season.
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