Thor: Love and Thunder – Trigger Warnings For Cancer?

The phrase is more readily associated with university campuses; signs warning students that the content of lectures contains upsetting content which they might wish to avoid. Trigger warnings have come to be associated with debates about political correctness in the culture wars, but the recent online backlash about the portrayal of cancer in Taikka Wahiti’s latest Marvel entry bring new issues into the discussion.

Thor: Love and Thunder introduces a storyline from the 2015 Mighty Thor comics, in which Jane Foster is diagnosed with breast cancer (although the specific cancer is not mentioned in the film). By wielding the sacred hammer Mjolnir, she gains superpowers that allow her to defeat evil and defend others. However, as soon as she stops using the hammer, she returns to her dying, human self, with the effects of her chemotherapy treatment neutralised. Numerous fans have gone on Twitter to warn others about the potentially traumatising effects the film may have on others, with one user stating:

‘No spoilers, but Thor: Love and Thunder SHOULD have had a trigger warning for graphic depiction of cancer and the fact that we didn’t know that going in was atrocious’ (Xavier @xavmoir, Jul 6)

First off, there’s no such thing as trigger warnings in film. If you want a rough guide of the content you’re about to see, look at the age rating (in this case, as with most Marvel films, it’s a 12A). As the BBFC details inform you at the start of the screening, the film contains ‘moderate fantasy violence, injury detail, threat, horror, sex references’. There has been a long and intriguing history of age ratings and censorship in the world of film. Nosferatu, an expressionist film that reached its centenary earlier this year, was banned in Sweden for 50 years due, according to IMDB, to ‘excessive horror’. Today, this PG-rated film might seem comparatively tame to contemporary audiences. Cultural norms frequently impact the way in which we view content, and how those views change over time.

However, BBFC ratings aren’t obliged to provide specific details about the content within a film. The cancer plotline in this description presumably refers to ‘injury detail’, or perhaps ‘threat’. Either way, adding extra, specific details about the inclusion of cancer is going to ruin the plot. If you really need to know about specific details that might impact you, there’s plenty of websites you can look at beforehand. But again, doing so lessens the experience of going to see a film, because you know major elements of the narrative before you’ve even watched them.

As a cancer survivor, I can say that the depiction of Jane’s cancer in the film isn’t ‘graphic’. We first see her experiencing a CT scan, then undergoing chemotherapy treatment as she sits on a chair with other patients. At no point are we ever shown what might be called ‘graphic’ side effects of her treatment, such as vomiting (the only film concerning cancer I’ve seen that actually shows this is 50/50, which has a few flaws of its own, but that’s not a film I’m going to go into detail in this post), or hair loss. We see Jane looking ill and weak at various points, (we even get to see some ‘ill’ make-up on Jane’s face near the end when she is near death), but the larger side effects of cancer treatment are never fully shown. The term ‘graphic’ doesn’t seem appropriate for a depiction of cancer that is anything but.

I’m not saying you need to go all out if you’re depicting the side-effects of cancer treatment, and perhaps it’s not necessary to analyse a Twitter quote so deeply. But this comment and similar comments feel redundant and misinformed. Having had steroids and various cancer drugs that made my face puffy, put on large amounts of weight, lose large amounts of weight, and generally made me feel terrible, describing this film’s treatment of cancer as ‘graphic’ is insulting.

Jane’s cancer story in the overall film is fine. The superhero metaphor works well enough for an audience who largely won’t have experienced cancer, and many of whom may not have seen the effects of cancer treatment on a loved one (if you want a more nuanced depiction of cancer in the superhero sphere, however, both the Guardians of the Galaxy films come highly recommended). It’s an issue which is important to address due to cancer’s universal effect, both on the cancer patient and the family and friends who are affected by it. With great power comes great responsibility, and a trigger warning isn’t going to help take away the reality of the disease.

(Also, I’d highly recommend checking out the linked article below by Brittany Knupper, a woman who has been dealing with cancer for 6 years; she provides more details about how the film’s depictions of cancer don’t ring true, and how the film industry at large still falls into cancer tropes)