A Content Warning-Centric Foreword, Featuring the Grim Reaper
Suck it up, snowflakes. Trigger warnings don't work.
—Jane Ridley, for The New York Post, March 21, 2019
The idea that we live in the age of content and trigger warnings appears to be gaining in popularity. A creeping sense that a dangerous horde of politically correct and yet simultaneously delicate citizens remain on standby, waiting for a chance to condemn those who talk out of turn, grows. These invisible masses, awakened in some abstract way by the need to correct, to muzzle, to regulate, lurk; I believe, to some extent, that some people genuinely fear the threat of censorship and the abolition of explicit, graphic, experimental, or controversial media. However, regardless of intention and the exact cause of anxiety for those working against the acceptance of content warnings, the whole purpose of trigger and content warnings often gets lost by those diligent vanguards of warning-less media. It really begs the question, What the fuck even are content warnings and why would I choose to use them with my project?
What we read on the package should be what we expect to digest, right? One might presume that when the tidy, clear-cut chart tells us that this product contains a clean fifty-seven percent of our daily sodium intake, we shouldn’t be completely caught off guard by our poor blood pressure. Concerning media and the degree to which content warnings should preface the work they report on, some might take up the position that genre alone should provide enough of a hint about what’s to come. It’s that same notion of “especially horror.” Doesn’t the label of “horror” exist as its own sort of content warning, both promising and threatening the audience with a specific emotional response the piece seeks to evoke? Shouldn’t an audience member expect some level of discomfort and brace themselves for content that aims to provoke, antagonize, and challenge them? To a certain extent, yes. I tend to fall into the camp that believes horror fans will instinctively understand the dangers posed by their enjoyment of horror; we know what we sign up for, we’re getting what we pay for, etc, etc, etc. In some ways, by providing you, the reader, with a description of my piece and by pasting a big, garish “HORROR” genre label on its side, I’ve done my job enough.
But, I’ve decided to devote much of this introduction to content warnings because, beyond genre, Psycho at Large also deals with some culturally significant and sensitive topics. Though it’s debatable if I’m obligated to provide the following words of caution, I still want to and still feel like I should.
First and foremost, Psycho at Large exists to challenge and comment on the “Death by Sex” trope in horror, specifically as it appears in slashers. The trope fascinates me and I wrote this graphic novel primarily as a means of furthering my own exploration of it. I had researched DbS for a month in writing a different piece about the theory behind why the trope exists, from the way it uses death punitively for characters having sex to the way it problematizes an often concurrent trope, the Final Girl. There’s plenty of excellent, albeit dense, theory behind how expressions of gender, sexuality, and moralistic punishments all intersect in this one subgenre that I adored getting to use as references for writing both projects. Many of these delightfully weird and intolerably academic pieces simply didn’t fit directly into this project given its narrative format and evolution beyond a pure research-centric piece. (I’ll include a collection of links in a bibliography after the project, which can be found here if you choose to skip ahead).
Essentially, in addressing DbS and building on a foundation of intense academic theory, Psycho at Large is a serious work. At its core, it is a piece about sex and all the complicated subtopics that spawn from any attempt at considering how our culture views sex, gender, and sexuality. Add into that a haphazardly loving and healthy amount of scares, gore, violence, profanity, nudity, and explicit situations, and you get the dire need for some level of forewarning. Hence, a content warning-centric foreword.
Critically, “Death by Sex” often deals with young characters, specifically those in their late teens and early twenties. In the 90s and 2000s, with the advent of films like Scream (1996) and Final Destination (2000), the American horror genre became saturated with movies geared towards and featuring the youth. The golden age of slashers had mostly died out by the end of the 90s-- likely somewhere between the ninth Friday the 13th film (1993) and the sixth Halloween film (1995)-- and was promptly replaced by a wave of meta, wry, teen-centric horror. This alone would be a fine transition, were it not for the way the 2000s horror genre became aggressively horny and even more fixated on sex than the admittedly-still-very-horny slashers of the 80s had been. Films like Scream comment on this, but films like House of Wax (2005), Ghost Ship (2002), Cry_Wolf (2005), and Thir13en Ghosts (2001) confirm it with majority young adult casts and a keen interest in selling tickets to younger audiences. (This is around the same time we see an increase in PG-13 horror, less barriers to entry tends to mean more bodies in theater seats.)
In analyzing DbS as a trope, it felt almost like I was contractually obligated to include young characters; how can one really address the way horror finds itself continually interested in the sex young people are having right before getting murdered if one doesn’t feature sexy young people themselves? It was a decision I really needed to be thoughtful about. Of course, all of the characters shown in explicit situations in Psycho at Large are of legal age and I also fully acknowledge that it’s not abnormal at all for teens to be sexually active. The main concern for me lies in the fact that centering characters new to adulthood and exploring themselves in sexual situations should be treated with care, regardless of the legality of it. For me, one of the worst things to result from this project would be that just another sleazy or even exploitative piece of horror media would enter the world, one that focuses on sexy young characters without considering the implications of such a choice. Above all, I want content warnings to preface my work because I want my readers to fully understand the way this work conceptualizes and treats sex, death, and young characters before they begin to read.
Of course, I also completely respect readers who would rather skip over the content warnings and experience the work as it exists in order, without any idea of what lies ahead-- but who, perhaps, would still like to continue reading the rest of this preface. (Which, thank you, I worked on hard on this thing.) If that applies to you, feel free to scroll past the box below to move beyond the content warning that lies behind it. Are you ready? Have you made your choice?
Okay, I’ll consider you now either properly warned about the content or properly decided in your choice to continue unaware of what happens in Psycho at Large. A final note regarding how I approached character ages and sex: a fair amount of the attitudes characters in this graphic novel have towards sex and the ways in which they discuss it are lifted from real life. I intend on including a “behind the scenes” process explanation after the graphic novel, but for now, I’ll say that several characters were based on real people close to me: my best friends. After obtaining express permission to include both likenesses and quotes as dialogue, Psycho at Large’s main cast got significantly more realistic and lively.
Besides the obvious perks of having easy access to hilarious lines and models for figure drawing, having a consistent cast of muses around me benefitted the novel through increasing its groundedness. This part of the process gave me a way to anchor its themes and main messages to characters and events with substance; Psycho at Large addresses sex in an authentic way because it results from honest conversations I’ve had or heard firsthand about sex. Any use of explicit language results from an earnest place, even if it feels at times crass or tasteless. In this, it’s almost a fictionalized archive of how young adults talk and joke and think about sex. It’s not comprehensive, and never claims to be, but it is genuine.
