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Christopher Porter

Professor Conrad

English Composition II

9/21/2021

Are media ratings/warnings really beneficial? Do they really provide a viewing safety

net? Since their beginning in 1996, those warnings alert viewers about the level of

appropriateness of television shows, guiding them to decide what they may and may not want to

watch. Roxane Gay’s essay, “The Illusion of Safety/ The Safety of Illusion,” is well-written

argument exploring society’s reliance on “illusions of safety.” Gay builds her credibility with

relatable descriptions and emotional appeals. These factors help her connect with her readers to

accept her belief that the “trigger warnings” provide a false sense of security to the people they

are supposed to help.

Gay starts off by speaking directly to her audience. She immediately draws them in by

painting a picture of experiences that people can relate to - the smell of cologne, a harsh laugh,

an attack in a movie and airport security screening. She continues with comparisons and

descriptions to appeal to reader’s thoughts and emotions and pushes them to consider whether

television guidance ratings and trigger warnings that have emerged over time are useful in

providing safety and control over what media people allow in their lives.

Throughout the essay, Gay continues to appeal to ethos. This includes personal

descriptions and comparisons. By doing so, she details her stand on “trigger warnings.” Her first

comparison shows the similarity between television ratings and airport security. She likens them

to “an act of theater, an illusion designed to reassure us, to make us feel like we control the

influences we allow into our lives.” She puts some focus on parents, a source very familiar with
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the warnings. Children are often influenced by who they watch and what they watch. Parents

have become more aware of this and the provisions in the Telecommunications Act, passed in

1996, allows parents to better monitor the suitability of what their children watch. Guideline

ratings and the ability to block inappropriate channels and shows have offered a sense of control.

The author feels that due to the need for parents to be safe and especially for their children to be

safe, they trust the ratings to provide that net. To strengthen her argument, she speaks to her

audience with the idea that children want a taste of forbidden fruit, even Gay is tempted to taste

the forbidden fruit, but the ratings can only do so much. It is an act that people are willing to

believe in for the feeling of safety. She even shares that she knows what it’s like to have triggers

and that even if someone tries to forget their past, it remains. “I was steel. I was broken beneath

the surface but my skin was forged, impenetrable. Then I realized I had all kinds of triggers.”.

This shows why Gay belives the warnings serve no purpose and this helps to make her argument

more believable. Connecting to the audience with emotion may make them more likely to agree

with her point and it helps her credibility as the author.

Also, she appeals to logos by walking the reader through her ideas. She opens with

examples of triggers people may be familiar with, the reactions she has to them and when the

warnings began. Most people are familiar with the warnings and relate to watching

television/movies and seeing a G, PG, PG-13 or R rating on the screen. Then, she asks different

questions that make the reader stop and think. These questions do not require an answer, but do

require the reader to think through her ideas. For example, she asks, “How effective, then, are

these ratings and guidelines?” and “Once you start, where do you stop? Does the mention of the

word rape require a trigger warning or is the threshold an account of a rape? How graphic does

an account of abuse need to be before meriting a warning? Are trigger warnings required
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anytime matters of difference are broached? What is graphic? Who makes these

determinations?” Her appeal to logos leaves the reader thinking about who really makes these

decisions and how necessary they really are.

In the essay, Gay ties ethos, and logos with pathos. The opening starts off with triggers

and she reacts to them. She talks about the rating and how parents do want to use them to protect

their children. Perhaps her best appeal to pathos is throughout the essay, she shares her own

triggers at different points - “When a man enters my office, I am alone, and he closes the door

behind him, When someone comes up behind me unexpectedly, When I hear the word slut in a

certain tone, When I visit the gynecologist.” She speaks openly to her own triggers and how she

deals with them when she says, I simply buried them deep until there was no more room inside

me. When the dam burst, I had to learn how to stare those triggers down. I had a lot of help,

years and years of help. Her focus is on the people who may also be dealing with triggers, giving

them some positivity for moving beyond them without avoiding them.

Throughout the writing, Gay attempts to bring out strong emotions. In turn, the audience

will more likely agree with her argument. She uses the right amount of appeals, the right amount

of description and comparison to drive her argument through to the end.

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Works Cited

Gay, Roxane. "The Illusion of Safety/The Safety of Illusion. HarperCollins,

clayton.view.usg.edu/d2l/le/content/2320125/viewContent/45605572/View.