Absurd reason people are fuming over Wicked

People online including Piers Morgan are fuming over a “woke trigger warning” in the new Wicked film – but all is not as it seems.

Tabloid reports that the newly-released Wicked film is screening with a trigger warning about discrimination against “green-skinned” people have raised the ire of some on social media, among them Piers Morgan.

“Can the woke brigade just please f*ck off. I can’t deal with any more of this crap,” Morgan tweeted, linking to a report in the Daily Mail declaring that the British film board has “slapped” the movie musical with a “a trigger warning over discrimination against ‘green-skinned’ people and persecuted ‘talking animals’.

Many shared his frustration. “Can we just go back to entertaining movies? Remove the woke!” demanded one account, an on-brand tweet considering their handle @EndWokeDisney.

“This has to be a joke article, right? It can’t be real, right?” another asked.

Reports of woke Wicked trigger warnings have been greatly exaggerated.

Well, sort of.

In fact, the “warnings” are buried within a detailed post about Wicked on the British Board of Film Classification website. The BBFC posts about all new release films, as part of its remit of advising the public of their ratings and of any adult themes that may be present. It has done so since it was founded in 1912, originally established as the British Board of Film Censors.

It ain’t easy being green.

The BBFC has rated Wicked PG, meaning parental guidance recommended, in the UK, citing “mild threat, discrimination” as the reasons for the rating.

In a more detailed summary of the film’s content – one which can only be accessed by clicking the “more info” tab on the BBFC’s Wicked listing – it rates the film as a two out of five for the presence of discrimination.

Explaining that rating, the BBFC details that “a green-skinned woman is mocked, bullied and humiliated because of her skin colour. A disabled woman in a wheelchair is treated in a condescending manner by able-bodied people. Talking animals are persecuted in a fantastical society.”

As those who’ve seen the film will know, that’s hardly a trigger warning or an example of wokeness gone mad – it’s just the literal plot of the film.

Elsewhere in the BBFC’s detailed summary, the film gets a low score for sexual references (“people flirt with each other, and it is implied during a dance that a married woman becomes pregnant by another man”), violence (“Guards are struck as they try to apprehend two women.”) and even “injury detail” (“A man is briefly seen with a small scratch on his face.”)

So, can we all forget about this confected controversy and focus on the real problem with Wicked: The film’s terrible lighting?

Originally published as Absurd reason people are fuming over Wicked