A screening of 'The Snapper' over the Easter weekend included a warning to viewers about its content.
An audio warning ahead of the film on Saturday said it was "set in a different time and highlights attitudes that some people might find upsetting."
Trigger warning for The Snapper on RTE One tonight. Would the media ever f@ck off and stop treating us like children! 🤦‍♀️ pic.twitter.com/HvMFKa0xE5
— Carolina Rua (@carolinarua_ie) April 8, 2023
The 1993 film - based on the book by Roddy Doyle - follows Sharon Curley in a fictional Dublin village, who becomes pregnant by her older neighbour after a drunken night out, and is then berated by locals.
Suzanne told Lunchtime Live people need to take responsibility for what they watch.
"Movies come with ratings; so if you're triggered by everything, don't turn the TV on," she said.
"It feels like when you raise your children with the electronic babysitter, you just let them watch whatever they want, you get grown-ups that are not quite adjusted.
"I fondly remember living in a time when people weren't triggered by pretty much everything.
"Where does it stop?
"Being a survivor of a sexual assault I can certainly understand that - but if you're going to be watching something on television and those sort of things will trigger you, one would think you would actually look at the description of what you're watching before you turn it on.
"There has to be some level of personal responsibility for turning on the television, in my opinion, without turning on the television for five minutes with trigger warnings before the movie even starts," she added.
Marie watched the film years ago and said she always found it disturbing.
"I found it extremely uncomfortable even then as a young person," she said.
"I thought, 'Oh my God that's a rape - this is a much older man taking advantage of a very young girl'.
"It was considered funny... people laughed and was like, 'In the end it sort of had a happy ending' - there was nothing happy about it, it was awful.
"I just feel that in 'The Snapper' it was kind of trivialised or something it was just, to me, deeply uncomfortable.
"Mr Burges was kind of a joke figure - what was funny about it?"
Alan said smartphones will give children access to much worse content.
"The film already comes with a PG rating, so parents should really look at the PG rating," he said.
"How many 14, 15 or 16-year-olds do we really think were sitting down to watch RTÉ on a Friday or Saturday night?
"Very, very few I would think.
"My issue with parents calling for this trigger warning on films [is that] they're the same parents that hand their kids a smartphone and say, 'Off you go.'
"[This] has access to things 50-times worse than you'll ever hear or see in a film like 'The Snapper'".
Colm Meaney as Dessie in 1993's 'The Snapper'. Picture by: Cinematic Collection / Alamy Stock PhotoAlan said such warnings are likely to be ignored anyway.
"They've done the exact same thing to 'The Simpsons', they've done the exact same thing to 'The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air' - all these older type programmes and movies, they've put trigger warnings on them.
"Everyone has a history, every country has a history - that's what it's there for, you learn from it - but we seem to want to put a trigger warning on everything," he added.
Listen back to the full segment below:
