Spoiler Discussion - (spoiler free)

[andrewducker]

In the last couple of days I've been in discussion with a couple of different people about spoilers. One of them about BSG season 2 (now two years old) and the other about HP:Half Blood Prince (now four years old), with them considering that as they'd experienced them years ago, they couldn't possibly be considered spoilers.

Which is the exact opposite of how I feel about it. Because there are movies I still haven't seen fronm the 1950s, where discussion of the twist in the tale would spoil the movie for me. And I'm very aware that the majority of people who go to see the new HP movie won't have read the book.

To me, spoilers are all about politeness. If you tell someone the end/twist of something they didn't know, and will possibly experience in the future, when they didn't want to know, then you've spoiled that experience for them. I remember the feeling of watching Empire Strikes Back and discovering that Han and Chewied were lovers. The shock and surprise at the moment of reveal was an integral part of the experience for me, and taking it away from people that haven't seen the movie yet is just plain rude.

Now, you can argue that it being years old, the chances that people on your friends list haven't seen Empire Strikes Back is low. Which is true if you're posting friends-only and have nobody under the age of 20 on your friends list. But it's not like the olden days, when a movie would appear, and then vanish again, when TV that had made the rounds was lost. Nowadays I can go out and buy box sets for TV made before I was born, and watch it entirely fresh. There are more hours of TV and movies out there than I have time to watch in my whole life, and the chances are that some will be watched years out of synch with their original release. And I'd really appreciate you not telling me the details before I do!

Obviously I consider all of the following to be spoilers. I'm curious whether you do too. If you don't then I'd love to know why...

[Poll #1430090]

Also: NO SPOILERS IN THE COMMENTS!

Comments

[andrewducker]

Why don't you think people's enjoyment would be spoiled by knowing the ending in advance of these things?

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

You'd have to have a pretty mechanistic way of consuming art if the only thing that held your interest was wanting to know what happened next. Equally if that it is all there is to it then it would be a pretty lousy work of art (for example, the work M Night Shamalyan). Don't you ever re-read/re-watch things?

Sure surprises are nice but there is lots of other stuff. I mean, I know the ending of BSG and I've only seen the first season but I don't consider the programme "spoiled". There is more to a journey than a destination.

Fear of spoilers seems to have gotten a bit out of control on the internet. Where any mention of plot - where even casting news - is considered spoilery, I think people need to take a step back.

[andrewducker]

I agree that some people can be over the top (and casting news is beyond my line), but a strong part of any narrative work _is_ the plot. I've seen things with little-to-no plot and I don't enjoy them nearly as much.

And, for instance, with films with a massive twist part of the joy of watching them again is seeing how it was constructed so that you got suckered in the first time.

Nobody is saying plot is the only important thing - but it's definitely a major component of the enjoyment most people get.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

I agree to an extent. There are a class of spoilers that radically reconfigure everything that have preceded them. I wouldn't want to be spoiled for, say, Use Of Weapons or Fight Club or The Prestige. However, I don't think BSG or Empire or Harry Potter fall into that category and neither do the majority of works that people cry spoiler over.

[andrewducker]

I disagree about BSG. A strong reason for me to watch it was the "What on earth is happening next?" factor, along with the "Who is a cylon?" factor. Tuning in to see what thing is happening to your beloved characters strikes me as one of the most common reasons people watch TV. Knowing that this week Baltar turns out to be an alien is taking that away from people.

[matgb]

I mostly agree with this--Andy has a point about the surprise factor, but if the movie is reliant on one or two key points, then it's not very good in the first place, for the most part.

There are exceptions (the ones you list below would be in my list), but they're a lot more rare than people make out.

Then again, I've read a complete plot summary of the last series of BSG despite not having seen it yet and being a fan overall--I'm generally the opposite of spoiler averse.

[nmg.livejournal.com]

Well put - I'm similarly of the opinion that the journey is often more interesting than the destination, at least as far as the narrative arts go.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

I agree with this to an extent but it's still nice to be nice.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

Sure. At the same time there are a lot of irrational prejudices in the world. I am not going to go round Andy's house and shout spoilers through his letter box but his beliefs are not going to influence what I write in my own space even if I know there is a chance he will read.

To take another example, I know a few people on my Flist strongly object to the c-word. This means I don't use it on their LJs but it doesn't effect what I do on mine.

[andrewducker]

Aren't all prejudices irrational? That's what emotions are there for!

And absolutely - its your space, you do what you like in it. If you kept posting spoilers in it (which you don't) it'd be my decision whether to stop reading you. That's how the system works.

I mean, dougs defriended me for 24 hours until an animated gif I had moved off his front page of friends. If I kept posting them he'd have to choose whether to defriend me entirely, or put up with behaviour he doesn't like - and I'd have to choose whether having him read me was worth more than posting animated GIFs.