This program contains material that
may be disturbing to some viewers.
Viewer discretion is advised.
Is that 100% correct English? This is the text shown before some TV programs. When I first saw it I thought it was weird (if you translate it to my language it sounds fake and very weird, plus it makes no sense).
Viewer discretion is advised.
makes no sense to me. Should I not talk about it with my friends, because it might be offensive to them? Should I first ask them if they are ok with … the topic on the program?
It sounds like USA's political correctness pushed to the limit.
P.S. There is nothing bad about program I'm watching, but some people might find some images disgusting. In plus, it showed only the beginning, so if I start to watch a few seconds after that I might be disturbed.
Best Answer
While it is very common, I find this sentence a bit ugly, and slightly incorrect. The noun adjective "viewer"—which I presume it must be—is ugly here, probably because it suggests that the entire noun phrase is a common term ("viewer discretion"), which I believe it wasn't until this formula was invented.
We could rephrase it as "we advise the viewer to use his discretion". We need "his" because the use of a noun adjective suggests possession. But "his / her / the King's discretion" is mostly said of people with some discretionary power, like a judge who has the right to make a decision based on his own judgement as opposed to on some external rule or power. Now, that is not what it is supposed to mean here; the phrase is somewhat misleading on that account.
What might have been intended was that the viewer should "use his own discretion" to decide whether he wanted to keep watching, which means his own ability to discern what the right course of action is in a given situation. But then we'd get "we advise the viewer to make a sensible decision": that is nearly a tautology. If this is the advice we get, then it is an out-of-control euphemism that hardly means anything. Moreover, the formula should then be "viewer's own discretion advised".
Alternatively, what is intended might be that the viewer should "use discretion": this means that he should be careful when considering his options, presumably because he will regret it if he doesn't give this decision the attention it deserves. This is the most reasonable explanation of the formula—but then it should have said "viewer is advised discretion": otherwise the viewer would be taken as the possessor of the discretion, which would take us back to "his discretion" as above. Moreover, "caution" would have been better then, because "discretion" usually means that you need to be careful in your behaviour with regard to its effect on others. In short, "viewer discretion", while not absurd or entirely impossible, is slightly off.
Using the passive voice in a notice like this—it may be a bit stiff, but it looks quite all right to me this way. It is clear that whoever is responsible for broadcasting the programme is advising the viewer.