And the labels are a way of enabling them to do so. Kind of like labels that tell you when a product contains allergens.
As I’ve said before, it’s good to be the joker in your group of friends, as long as it’s not capitalized.
Like I said, label or no label you have to do your own best judgement. If the movie is Texas Weed eater murder and you had a bad weed eater accident, I wouldn’t recommend you see it.
I don’t like to watch car accidents because I had a bad one. If I think it’s gonna show one I back off.
It’s not so hard to figure these things out.
Labels are fine. But let’s not start disapproval of every teeny tiny little thing just… because…it might just happen to be a trigger to two people somewhere.
Again,
Labels are fine.
The OP is asking are we so sensitive we can’t be trusted to know our own limits, I think
What I have been hearing a lot in media is along the lines of at the start of the show or after every break announcing “this is a story that includes mentions and depictions of [sexual acts/sexual assault/racial violence/self-harm/hate speech/etc.]” which is fair play for those who may just be tuning in.
I do get though the concern about then becoming circumlocutory about the mentioning of whatever’s “the uncomfortable thing” in the text/content itself. Sensitive language can too easily drift into euphemism. I tend to take the line that if fair warning has been given, then if X thing happened, go ahead and say it, “X thing happened”; if it is important to directly quote that someone else wrote or said “Y thing” then go ahead and directly quote with attribution "this person said “Y thing”." We can then discuss how does that make us feel and what do we think about it being brought up.
I think that’s a reasonable position.
I also think it may be beneficial to define the totality of the universe that might be affected by some of the things we’re talking about:
Mental illnesses are common in the United States. It is estimated that more than one in five U.S. adults live with a mental illness (57.8 million in 2021). Mental illnesses include many different conditions that vary in degree of severity, ranging from mild to moderate to severe. Two broad categories can be used to describe these conditions: Any Mental Illness (AMI) and Serious Mental Illness (SMI). AMI encompasses all recognized mental illnesses. SMI is a smaller and more severe subset of AMI.
Some subset of those people – it’s reasonable to speculate – might be susceptible to the kinds of harms that these labels may very well ameliorate.
1 in 5 Americans.
When I sought out the above number, I had no idea it would be that high.
I don’t think this is a solution in search of a problem. I also think it has absolutely no impact whatsoever on agency. Pringles sport a nutrition label, but – as I said above – I can eat myself to death on Pringles if I choose to. The label doesn’t stop me.
We should be wary of the Slippery Slope Argument here.
Perhaps we should place a content warning before making a slippery slope argument?
I do find myself amused by the content labels at times. One episode of Sandman on Netflix included contant warning that it contained smoking as well as self-harm and violence. A warning for self-harm and violence made sense to me, but that they felt the need to warn me about smoking, something I’m likely to see at any given time when I leave the house, struck me as humorous and a bit of an overkill. The idea that anyone would be okay watching an episode featuring self-harm and violence but drew the line at smoking strikes me as both unlikely and stupid.
In this case, I don’t think it’s substantively different from the Motion Picture Association Film Rating System.
While the ratings system does play a part in a rule about who can see what film in a cinema, it (also/primarily) serves as a guide to parents about what sort of content they might expect to see.
If a family is adamant that limiting their kids’ exposure to smoking as a normal, pedestrian, benign event is important to them, then I see the “smoking label” as another can’t hurt, might help.
My tolerance for “silly” on this stuff is pretty high.
I remember this debate going on during the 1980s, regarding the labeling of rock records regarding potentially offensive content. So what did many artists do? Put out content that would guarantee a warning label, because it would improve sales.
And as a side note, Al Gore’s wife had a leading role in that one:
Do these families not go out into the real world? You’re telling me little ten-year-old Timmy won’t ever see someone smoking as his parents drive him to school? It just makes me think of the old joke where a clerk reads the charges against a suspect in court and they start out with murder, assaults, and a myriad of other serious crimes before ending with jaywalking.
By itself it’s harmless, I guess. I do wonder if we’ll ever get to the point where we’re so saturated by warning labels that most people will just not notice them. It’s like billboards on the highway. I see them, but they just don’t register on a conscious level.
During this time, I heard an interview with Frank Zappa on Larry King’s radio show, and he (Frank) said he had placed a phone call to the PMRC headquarters, and the phone was answered, “Gore for President.” I believe it, too.
A later Zappa album, which consisted entirely of instrumentals, got a warning sticker because one tune was titled “G Spot Tornado.”
I was thinking about that. You’re in AR, right?
I used to do a fair amount of travel to Memphis for work. I stopped in a convenience store and asked if they had any fresh bottled juices.
The clerk replied, “Honey, this is the South. In the South, ‘health food’ means you smoke Marlboro Lights.”
I rarely see anybody smoke in my daily life. As you get near the college campus, you see a fair number of people vaping, but combustible, old-school cigarettes? It’s noticeably rare.
Yeah, I’m not sure I do either—it’s a lot less common than it used to be.
That said, I find the “smoking” warning a bit odd, too. Could it possibly be for the benefit of people who are quitting but are afraid that they’d be tempted to relapse if they saw someone else smoking?
That truly amazes me. I was at the hospital Friday. Clearly marked no smoking within 50 ft of the entrance. There was a line way down the parking lot with pictures of a 
painted on the cement. A wall of people were standing there puffing away. Some vapes, mostly cigarettes.
At least they went to right spot. Drive any road and many many people are smoking it their cars. Go to a restaurant a million are standing outside smoking on the sidewalk.
It’s not yet possible to keep children from seeing it in the wild unless you live in Antarctica or something.
I am shocked you rarely see it.
I don’t think so. They put tobacco and alcohol warnings on video games as well. They’re there so the producers don’t have to listen to parents complain that their precious angel observed people smoking or drinking.
Interesting question. A quick Google says …
I’m going to guess that there’s a large intersection in the Venn Diagram between:
- People who don’t smoke, and
- People who go to greater lengths than the median to reduce the likelihood that their children will smoke, probably valuing, supporting, and advocating for this kind of label
I would also expect the converse to be rather true.
Isn’t completely restricting your kids seeing smoking and drinking gonna add to the mystique and romance of it, like the old argument?
You gotta know they’re gonna hear about it. See it sold. There’s no way to stop talk from other kids who have seen it. You can’t lock them in the house, insulated from the world.
Many things I wish my kids hadn’t seen. I would have loved to save them from the world. They have to live it in. Such as it is
Supposedly, back in the day many kids took up smoking partly because of how cool and attractive the people in the movies looked doing it.
I don’t know how much danger there is for kids to see smoking in movies/TV shows, but I’ll bet it’s more than if they don’t see it.
People may want to reduce the exposure of their children to things that they think are inherently harmful.
That lightens the load that the parents have to lift.
It doesn’t require that the world bend to your parental will. It just helps to shift the odds incrementally in your preferred direction.
The “forbidden fruit” thing IS risky, but I doubt warning labels on TV shows are pushing things that far. I think there’s a lot of yardage between “reducing the likelihood of ‘normalizing’ a ‘bad behavior’” and creating a Potemkin world in which the vice simply doesn’t exist.