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

[nmg.livejournal.com]

I'm never going to watch them because I've been spoilered all over the place

I find that quite an odd attitude; isn't that a bit like saying that you're not interested in travelling to Gizeh because you've already seen a picture of the pyramids?

The notion that a entire play/film/book can be effectively summarised by some subset of its parts seems overly reductive. For example, Waiting for Godot is not about whether or not Godot finally turns up, but what Vladimir and Estragon talk about while they're waiting. Similarly, the meaning of Kane's dying words in Citizen Kane is quite clearly not the sole key to understanding the life of a complex and conflicted character.

[andrewducker]

I think it depends on what you watch them for, and what kind of movie/TV series they are. If they're all about the character development then knowing the plot isn't a major problem. If they're plot-heavy, with a lotof the impact coming from the reveals then obviously it plays a bigger part. I'd say that Star Wars was both, and that there was plenty to enjoy even if you do know what's coming up.

[redshira.livejournal.com]

Well, to be fair, I hadn't watched them because I wasn't that interested in the first place; however, James had almost persuaded me into it when somehow, in the space of a couple of weeks, various different people told me enough about the films - and I saw a particularly gruesome clip - that I lost the little interest I had.

The notion that a entire play/film/book can be effectively summarised by some subset of its parts seems overly reductive.

It does indeed, but that's not what I'm saying. I don't often watch films and don't have a telly because I'm generally not interested, and something has to really pull me in and make me want to find out what happens next/what such-and-such meant by x thing, and if I've already heard stuff then it's just not going to hold my interest because I'm not curious. There are exceptions such as Harry Potter, where I'm invested enough in the (for want of a better word) Potterverse to want to watch the films, but if someone had spoiled me for any of the books, that would have ruined the entire series for me. Then again, I am very all-or-nothing by nature, which has its downsides, this being one of them, I suppose.

[nmg.livejournal.com]

Okay, I get where you're coming from.