The BBC was roundly mocked after iPlayer users discovered it had put a trigger warning on classic children’s television show Brum.
Brum, which starred a miniature classic car which would sneak out of its workshop to have largely dialogue-free and entirely non-controversial adventures in the city of Birmingham, aired from 1991 until 2002 — hardly a bygone era, but apparently remote enough for someone at the BBC to decide it warranted a trigger warning.
Perplexed parents trying to bring up the show on the iPlayer on-demand service were greeted by a pop-up warning: “This series was originally aired in the 90s and 00s and may reflect the language and attitude of the time.”
“Watching Brum on iPlayer with my 1 y/o and there’s basically warning before every episode that it ‘originally aired during the 90s and early 00s and some of the language used in it may reflect the era’,” remarked one social media user. “Who’s out here trying to cancel Brum?”
“If [Gizmodo UK] still existed and I was still in charge of it, I would be 100 per cent all over this story, investigating it from every angle, exposing all of Brum’s problematic views,” added freelance journalist James O’Malley.
O’Malley pressed the issue with the “poor, beleaguered, BBC press office” as word of the bizarre trigger warning gained traction, which eventually led to the broadcaster telling him that “the message was added in error and that they’re going to remove it”.
The BBC is not the only British broadcaster to go overboard in its efforts to appease viewers with woke sensitivities, however, with Comcast-owned Sky having slapped trigger warnings on a number of classic films including Aliens, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Flash Gordon, The Jungle Book, and Lawrence of Arabia for “outdated attitudes”.
The most baffling victim of this woke-scolding was Disney’s Aladdin, with a warning that “This film has outdated attitudes, language and cultural depictions which may cause offence today” added not only to the classic ’90s version of the film but to the 2019 remake starring Will Smith as well.
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