Cambridge Students - Be warned, Shakespeare may distress you!

originally posted by: Krakatoa
Why force everyone to suffer when you can address the problem directly for those that seem to be affected. It is a more efficient approach to address a 20% directly than a blanket attempt that will disaffect 80%.

i just fail to see this alleged suffering that is produced by things having content warnings. disaffectation, oh no! maybe stop being a snowflake about it.

originally posted by: fiverx313

originally posted by: Krakatoa
Why force everyone to suffer when you can address the problem directly for those that seem to be affected. It is a more efficient approach to address a 20% directly than a blanket attempt that will disaffect 80%.

i just fail to see this alleged suffering that is produced by things having content warnings. disaffectation, oh no! maybe stop being a snowflake about it.

Yes Mr. Socialist. Of course, everyone needs to be responsible for that few that have a problem with literature making them feel bad. Yes, that makes so much sense.....if you are delusional.

PTSD? Shakespeare should definitely be on the reading list.

Filled with characters who mean to do good or empower themselves, but then driven mad by their actions.

More than that, sometimes an overwrought sense of self, which falls.

Like the colonies at the time - this belief in never-ending abundance.
A hubris that will fall.

originally posted by: Krakatoa
Yes Mr. Socialist. Of course, everyone needs to be responsible for that few that have a problem with literature making them feel bad. Yes, that makes so much sense.....if you are delusional.

content warnings is not, as far as i am aware, a platform of the socialist party. but not being a socialist, i'm not exactly sure.

but i'm sorry you find this so upsetting... maybe we should put a content warning on it.

a reply to: fiverx313

So you're actually going to posture in here as if the SJW horde arent out TRIGGER WARNING half the books in the libraries, and that these Millennials dont see those stickers and move on past them?

Did you even read the article before grandstanding for, a what, Ratings System For Books?

www.telegraph.co.uk...

Are these not ADULTS or are they a bunch of effing toddlers? Should they install high chairs in the libraries too??

Your stance is what is known in social science as being an "Enabler", not to mention advocating the same logic as this safe space echo chamber BS.

This spineless jellyfish society ambition is the most anti-natural societal trend in what has to be all of human history.

a reply to: halfoldman
I call your bluff on that alleged Jane Austen quotation. I was re-reading her recently.
(Jane Austen's real offensiveness lies in her mercenary approach to marriage)

It's disturbing that they push Shakespeare in school.

Some appalling characters in those plays. Nobody should have to hear about that..

This whole content warning thing is a stalking horse. Clever though.

If your are historically uninformed, it may seem like a good thing. Just helping folks out. What could go wrong?

Hey! I know this guy who had some trauma in his life. What's wrong with ensuring he has a chance to avoid exacerbating that trauma? Mountain out of a molehill man. Just good looking out.

This is extra fuzzy especially if you are an adherent of the history-of-now. The tyranny of the present. The narcissism of good will. Never mind the social ramifications. Never mind the mind set avoidance and retreat builds.

But that mind set is exactly what a pliable, docile, subservient population is built upon.

originally posted by: fiverx313

originally posted by: IgnoranceIsntBlisss
a reply to: fiverx313

Just how many of the majority pampered spoiled rotten upper class brats in that school have experienced violent trauma in your estimation?

Most of them have not even gotten mud on their pants or scraped their elbow playing outside, if anything.

if it's even just one of them, what does it hurt to have a content warning?

movies come with ratings that tell you what kinds of content are in them. do you object to that as well?

So your theory seems to be that because I severely sprained my ankle once stepping down awkwardly off some stairs and now have occasional flashbacks and discomfort on stairs as a result (PTSD), all stairs everywhere should be labeled with trigger warnings and/or simply be removed because they might trigger feelings of discomfort for me?

That's stupid.

originally posted by: DISRAELI
a reply to: halfoldman
I call your bluff on that alleged Jane Austen quotation. I was re-reading her recently.
(Jane Austen's real offensiveness lies in her mercenary approach to marriage)

She was a product of her time and class. Are you going to claim that marriage in that time wasn't just as ruthless for those in that strata?

a reply to: fiverx313

I would suspect that the English used would not bring about the same imagery that would trigger a reaction - but you could be right

www.telegraph.co.uk...

David Crilly, artistic director at The Cambridge Shakespeare Festival, added: “In Shakespeare, most of the sexual violence is implied rather than overtly stated, and whoever directs the play is responsible for how visual that is. “If a student of English Literature doesn’t know what Titus Andronicus contains scenes of violence they shouldn’t be on the course. “This degree of sensitivity will inevitably curtail academic freedom. If the academic staff are concerned they might say something students find uncomfortable they will avoid doing it.”

a reply to: ketsuko

Every public building should have a wheelchair and an assistant to help you navigate those stairs - in case you get triggered. What is this world coming to?

a reply to: ketsuko
I didn't mean that she was offending me personally. Only that this was the most obvious cause of offence to anyone who wanted to look for it. All very tongue-in-cheek. I like Jane Austen, and hate modern adaptations.

a reply to: DISRAELI

Sorry I misunderstood your intent. It's still early and I am sans caffeine.

since several of you are arguing along the same lines, i'm just going to reply in a general fashion.

no one is calling for content warnings everything, everywhere, for every kind of situation. the fact that you are all creating a strawman argument i'm not even making so you can dismiss THAT instead, tends to show the weakness of your position.

yes, i did read the article, the article says this is something that professors have a choice to note and are not required to do so, and it is not policy to offer content warnings. it's hardly an institutional malaise preventing people from learning, despite your paranoid fantasies (which sound remarkably like 'obama's gonna get your guns if we make even one new law about background checks), a content warning is not going to end with book burnings.

i do not see anything wrong with saying 'hey this material is full of violent rape so just be ready for that' instead of SURPRISE RAPE SCENE. it's not stopping anyone from reading anything, it's just removing the surprise element so that people can mentally prepare themselves. if they don't need it then they can ignore it.

i'm very glad that those of you who have presumably been subject to the kinds of violent actions that one person does to another are able to put that behind you and sail on with no issues. good for you, definitely. others are not so lucky, and to characterize this as a moral failing or weakness on the part of a trauma victim is just abhorrent, morally. you should be ashamed, and i mean that seriously.

i can see i'm very much talking to a crowd who has been thoroughly triggered by the phrase 'trigger warning' and is caught in the throes of a paranoid, anti-anything-liberal meltdown, so i'll leave it at that.

a reply to: fiverx313

Basically, you are saying that if a professor chooses to use Gone With the Wind, it should contain a trigger warning because at one point, Scarlett falls down the stairs and miscarries as a result! That could trigger my fears of falling down the stairs and spraining my ankle again.

That's still stupid.

Its not quite what they are doing.. but I wouldn't have minded a bit of a warning before venturing into Romeo & Juliet.

I was just entering my teens, around 12 or so, and hadn't really encountered "tragedy" before. It hit me so hard, I was pretty out of sorts for a while.

Now, I'm not sure a "trigger warning" would have done a damn thing, but I do think I would have appreciated a couple of pages of commentary before and after the text dealing specifically with the "difficult" nature of such a story.

Of course, that's not really what is being talked about here, I suppose.. but it is the story of my experience with it. And.. really.. someone in college should have begun to exposed to the harsh nature of reality. But, they aren't the only ones picking up such books.

a reply to: fiverx313

it's not stopping anyone from reading anything, it's just removing the surprise element so that people can mentally prepare themselves. if they don't need it then they can ignore it.

Not to wade into the political turn this has taken but... wouldn't you find that this would kind of... ruin some books/movies?

I realize things have changed over time... people prefer to relentlessly pursue "spoilers" and "leaks" these days but isn't there still some value, some excitement to being surprised and shocked by a good book?

originally posted by: SR1TX
I have never read Shakespear. I avoided most literature that was anything like that anyway. Like that story of the dude boinking his mom or some s..or stories like the Odyssey. Honestly what a waste of time and way to turn a mind into mush than reading about some narcissistic dude going off and because he told the water he was cool the water god decides to punish him.

I would rather die in a fire than read that.

This is some of the funniest # I have ever seen here. This is awesome.

a reply to: tigertatzen

I honestly couldn't figure out if he knew he had the myth of Echo and Narcissus mixed up with the epic poem The Odyessy which is about something completely different or not.