Aliens, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Flash Gordon, and More Get Trigger Warnings on Sky

Sixteen films including Aliens, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Flash Gordon, The Jungle Book, and Lawrence of Arabia have been given trigger warnings for their “outdated attitudes” by Comcast-owned Sky in the UK.

Viewers of the films on Sky Cinema — a pay-per-view film service — were greeted with a message that informed them that the films may contain “outdated attitudes, languages and cultural depictions which may cause offence today.”

The sixteen films that received the treatment are Breakfast at Tiffany’s, The Goonies, Aladdin, Dumbo, Gone With The Wind, Lawrence of Arabia, Tropic Thunder, The Jazz Singer, The Littlest Rebel, The Lone Ranger, Balls of Fury, The Jungle Book, Flash Gordon, andThe Last Samurai.

A Sky spokesman defended the censorious action, saying: “Sky is committed to supporting anti-racism and improving diversity and inclusion both on and off-screen.”

“We constantly review all content on Sky’s owned channels and will take action where necessary including adding additional information for our customer to allow them to make an informed decision when deciding what films and TV shows to watch,” the Sky spokesman added.

Warnings on “outdated attitudes” were also added to recent films such as the 2016 remake of The Jungle Book and the 2019 remakes of Aladdin and Dumbo. Some were later removed, with the broadcaster claiming error.

Sky’s move follows other British broadcasters and media entities scrubbing supposedly insensitive television programmes.

Last week, for example, the BBC Studios-owned network UKTV temporarily removed an episode of the classic comedy Fawlty Towers episode entitled ‘Don’t Mention the War’ because it contained “racial slurs”.