Jeremy Clarkson has hit out at content warnings being placed on different forms of entertainment in the UK.
The ex-Top Gear host said that the recent influx of trigger warnings before shows is worlds away from the Britain he grew up in, where nudity and potentially controversial content was displayed without a care.
Writing in The Times, he said: “Today, we have warnings before every show about all of the horrors that lie ahead. We’re told that we are going to see nudity and smoking, and that there may be drug ‘misuse’.”
Upon hearing these forewarnings, Clarkson expects the content to follow to be contentious but is often left disappointed by its restraint.
Jeremy Clarkson launches savage attack on woke Britain – ‘There are warnings before every show’
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Clarkson said that “today we are told on an hourly basis that our children are subjected to far too much online titillation,” however he doubts that the type of content children are exposed now to is worse than what he grew up with “back in the day”.
His comments come amid a rise of content warnings being slapped on shows across the UK.
Shakespeare’s Globe in London has recently issued “content guidance” for its productions of Antony and Cleopatra, Romeo and Juliet, and Julius Caesar.
Ahead of Antony and Cleopatra, the theatre warned audiences of “depictions of suicide, scenes of violence and war and misogyny references”.
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Shakespeare’s Globe in London has recently issued ‘content guidance’ for some of its productions
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Last month, both actor, Ralph Fiennes, and Culture Secretary, Lucy Frazer, joined the previously outspoken, Ian McKellen, in calling for the end of the increasing number of trigger warnings on the bard’s plays.
Fiennes says people should be “shocked” and “disturbed” by the theatre, and in Shakespeare’s birthplace of Stratford, the recent trend has not been well received.
One woman told GB News: “It’s absolutely ridiculous, you just have to understand how the world was when those plays were written.
“There was no offence meant and you can’t rewrite history; history is there for us all to learn from.
“I think it’s the woke brigade spoiling everything.”
Books have also been subjected to added forewarnings to caution about potentially offensive content. In March, children’s novels including Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland were given trigger warnings by a university for possibly containing “racist” and “white supremacist” material.
York St John University’s Rees-Williams Collection of children’s books – which date from the late 18th to the early 20th Century – now comes with a hefty disclaimer which dwarfs the actual blurb about the collection itself.
The “content warning and position statement” contains a litany of potential pitfalls of which readers should be aware, and warns people – who must specifically make appointments to see the collection – of the potential for upset and offence.
The university devotes a good chunk of the disclaimer to distancing itself from some of the content in the children’s literature collection and signals its commitment to highlighting “the racist marginalisation” in books at the time.
