Content Warnings in Horror: Censorship or Accessibility

Content warnings in horror fiction

From the front cover of a book to the back cover blurb, there is quite a bit available to judge. Should each book be given a set of preemptive warnings, content labels, and informative tags beyond that? There is no neat answer to this. Since I am of two minds on the topic, I set out to lay the visible cards on the table. 

This post is the print version of my audio essay “Content Warnings in Horror: Censorship or Accessibility” from the July episode of the Typical Books Monthly Magazine. 

Is the horror genre a warning in itself?

This is the crux of the debate as it relates to horror fiction. As a genre, horror contains elements that can be upsetting, untoward, or unnatural. There are similar conversations happening within the romance genre as well. Should romance have warnings about sexuality or, on the other end of that spectrum, should they have warnings for what may be read as questionable consent? The same sort of question is raised in horror. What counts as horrific imagery to one may not count as horrific imagery to another. This is true in both degrees of the haunted house, for example, that turns out to be explained by scientific means. To some may not be a horror story if there are no supernatural elements even if the build-up is terrifying. On the other hand, those reading horror may not count explicit gore or dark drama to be parts of the genre. Others may find that those elements go beyond horror if they were scared of the build-up to those scenes, and the story went too far beyond their comfort zone and subsequently fell off the spectrum of horror into somewhere darker. The genre of horror itself is hard to define. Horror is a feeling or state of being masquerading as a genre. So, semantically, yes; horror itself is a content warning. It will, in any guise, contain imagery that is designed to horrify the reader. Many readers turn to horror to have the objective front-row white-knuckle experience; the hair standing up on the back of their neck perhaps, or from a subjective view to have these horrific things play out to watch other people enjoy the roller coaster ride and keep your lunch in your stomach. 

How far is too far

This is a question that completely depends on each reader, and writer as well. It is impossible, without watering down certain elements of what horrifies people, to have a horror story that appeases all need for accessibility, intersectionality, fit within commonly accepted good-taste, and avoid being overly morbid or visceral. Avoidance of these angles in a story will not elicit the horror response in seasoned readers of the genre. Where some may find a book too bleak without a deeply rooted moral tug-of-war, others may find another book too unrealistic if all is settled without some sort of bloodshed, loss, or transformation. Quiet and inoffensive horror may be seen as too locked into the supernatural and therefore unbelievable. On the other hand, another book maybe two gritty, rash and terrifying because of its realism.  Unfortunately, under the large net of horror when seen as a supra-genre book like Header by Edward Lee are pit against books like The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. The need to break horror down into its respective subgenres, which not everybody agrees on, is part of steering the reader toward content or having readers flock to particular content under the umbrella of haunted house horror, extreme horror, or zombie fiction as the case may be. Even within those, you can find things that are too far out of the very elastic boundaries of each subgenre. For example, the remake of Thirteen Ghosts was not much different than The Haunting of Hill House but one definitely has more of an element of terror and grotesquery than the other. Horror media has proliferated over the past couple of decades and awareness of the genre definitely has also spread, and perhaps spread thin. Where we do have great splatter and extreme offerings each year for those that seek them out, when defined by the masses horror is leaning very heavily on the gothic and supernatural. When partitioning horror and examining the extreme or darker fare, we see it bleeding very heavily into the exploitative. At that point, the two are seen as coming from the same fount when transgressive and exploitative fiction is another genre entirely.

Spoilers and surprises

One of the fears of writers who believe that content warnings should not be on their books is that a hint to the content may spoil the story. This is specifically true when content warnings are drilled down to plot level. If publishers keep a content warning to strictly the story level and if there are one or two scenes that revolve around a particular set-piece so to speak that involves elements that a majority of society can believe is for mature audiences only or is something that is largely avoided by a large swath of society it may not spoil the story. Drilling down to a plot level and also adding more specific content warnings to the back-cover copy may indeed take away the apprehension and terror that a horror tale relies upon. Knowing what is going to drive particular characters ahead of time may take away from that relationship that the writer is working hard to achieve by rendering one or more character point-of-views already explored; and even worse, with prejudice. Having some unspoiled and perhaps shocking experiences or bearing witness to shocking experiences is critical in forging that relationship.

It would be fair to guess that the reactions of readers are split down the middle; those who don’t want to be spoiled and those who don’t want to be surprised. There has been a huge cultural shift of “no spoilers” once summary and review information became accessible in bite-sized chunks that were almost impossible to ignore, and headlines contained so much information due to the honing of writing as a craft over centuries that it’s nearly impossible to avoid spoilers with even a casual glance at entertainment news. If a reader is looking to have a surprising experience they may avoid entertainment media in all forms and bypass content warnings until the book is in hand. There are also those that rely on spoilers as a form of content warning, which can grant additional control over the ingested media in the positive form, and in the negative, lead to prejudice against a book, its author, or publisher without having read beyond the promotional summary. 

Some, in contrast, are against content warnings for this reason and adhere to strict “no-spoiler” states of being by trusting a promotional summary is not going to spoil key plot points. The back jacket of a book is a very good guide as far as what a publisher and author have agreed upon is the content in the summary that the public should be aware of to entice them to read the book. It does the dual duty of informing the reader what they are about to consent to reading. What consent of course can be revoked at any time because readers are consenting to is reading one phrase or page after another. With the slow pace of reading; compared to film or reality, the next word leads only eventually to the last. Readers are not bound yet chains to read the entire book. Before entering the agreement, the conversation, or the act of reading page after page, the back jacket copy often gives you a fine indication of what the story should contain. It may not be as effective as this sharply honed headline, a start-to-finish review, or what content warnings are aiming to do. Minimal and story-level content guides would ensure that nothing is lost within jargon; especially when writing for neurodiversity or with a goal of clean, precise, and simple language. When written with a sensationalistic ‘sell the sizzle’ tone, the back jacket copy may prove confusing or misleading if that copy is intentionally vague.

Censorship or accessibility

Content warnings on book jackets have been compared to the MPAA or similar rating systems for films and television. It’s a double-edged sword when you listen to both sides of that original argument, which was intrinsically lost for movies and television. While most of these systems are straightforward and minimalist, many publishers opt for a far more complex rating system in-house and will warn viewers of specific content other than the letter system where we are left with the rating guidelines, if we are versed in them, decide what level of acceptable content is actually within that film. There are hard lines that cannot be crossed and there are also penalties in that you may not reach the audience that you intend if your film crosses these inflexible content guidelines. Audiences may be sheltered from certain content and content may be systematically suppressed because of ratings, or the lack of rating, and then the ability for a film or show or live broadcast of any sort to be rated. There’s also the fear that ratings often lead to undue scrutiny. This is not only the case in horror but within the drama, crime stories, documentaries, LGBT, and indigenous stories of marginalized, suppressed, or victimized populations. Ratings, warnings, or content guides, when used against the filmmaker, can unfortunately be presented for a negative influence turning a coming-of-age story or reportage into supposed exploitation or hate speech. As many authors and publishers adhering to or desiring visible content warnings are mirrored by the number of authors and publishers that don’t want to adhere to something that can be taken as censorship or compartmentalization for these reasons. Because the genre is so very broad and the readers of the genre are so very diverse to be categorizing the sub-genres with hard lines, then dividing them further by story-level or plot-point content warnings can be seen as very detrimental, nothing but damaging, silencing, and plainly oppressive.

Accessibility is the strongest argument for content warnings. In light of cover art that may be impressionistic, unrelated to the story or abstract; and back cover copy that may be vague or simply omit controversial plot points; a system could be put in place with ease of use in mind. That is the ease of use for all, similar to physical accessibility measures adopted by businesses and new buildings or web accessibility. Rendering media accessible should not alter its form or function, and improve the use and enjoyment for all and in essence be otherwise invisible. Accepting that the goal is not spoiling or censoring an author’s work, and working to warn a reader against sensitive topics before the book is in hand, publishers could adopt a code system or a set of topics printed alongside the summary of a book. Online bookstores, review sites, brick-and-mortar or used book shops; it should not matter where a book is purchased for a reader to be informed to a degree satisfactory to them. Since a coded system, like those in use for laundry or recycling, could be taken as or perverted into a form of censorship, it must also be understood that those who don’t need it simply would not use it. This would ease the use of lengthy content warning laden forwards or the compulsion authors can feel to include these warnings alongside or preceding book summaries online where it may counterintuitively impede the enjoyment of a book for some readers. 

Third-party agencies, websites, and guides have their use but are inaccessible for the most part at the point of purchase. Indeed, they have problems too in the form of errors, misleading information, or books simply not being listed on them. 

Order from chaos

There is no simple answer to whether horror fiction should have added content warnings for readers. Many take a hard stance on one side or the other, plainly yes or no. Opinions can shift and the reasoning behind those seemingly in agreement can vary. Powerlessness shorts as well; there is no answer yet as to who is responsible to place a content warning on a book. Should this be solely the author, publisher, reviewer, or the reading public’s job? It is not apparent, quickly contested from one side or the other, and shared responsibilities here are murky at best. Standardization of a content warning system, no matter how bureaucratic it sounds, would be a good start to quelling some of the arguments that arise. In any event, exploring both sides enables writers and readers to better recognize the publishing landscape when it does shift one way or the other into order through this apparent chaos.