The Last Potato Salad at the Outdoor BBQ- Thoughts on Spoilers


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My issue, which has removed me from every series discussion here, is spoiling things not in the show.... Like, I know we're discussing the show. I expect spoilers.... But don't come in and post what happens later in the story, from the comics or books or what people know about the content. /Rant
the curse of multimedia properties, btw I feel the same way about Lord of the Rings/ The Hobbit.
 

Kobold Stew

Last Guy in the Airlock
Supporter
This is interesting. I didn't know about the National Lampoon essay. The few benchmarks that I hold in my head for spoilers (leading me to the conclusion that they are too often weaponized or, as I'll discuss, capitailized, and so should be avoided) are these (and some of them have been hit on in the OP):

1. 1952. Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap. The longest running play in the West End of London is a murder mystery, and opened in 1952. During the Curtain call, since the beginning, the audience is invited to keep whodunnit a secret. It's a direct audience appeal, and both a memorable theatrical device (flattering the audience both as co-conspiritors and at the same time increasing the value of their ticket). Someone gives the ending away (assuming they even remember it 2 weeks later), they're just a jerk. I saw the show in 1984, and they were still doing it then. I've long forgotten who the killer was, but no way was I going to tell anyone.

2. 1980. Empire. I am of the firm belief that it is never okay to give away the surprise reveal. As a parent of boys, I want them to watch and enjoy the movies, and to marvel at the surprise and feel it the way I did. They never would, of course, but it's a family moment. With my fist son, we would have the conversation as to when is the right time to watch Empire with your child (3? 5? lock them in a box until they are 12?), and consensus emerged that there was indeed a perfect time to show the film, and it is this: exactly one day before the movie gets spoiled at daycare or kindergarten. Some kid with an older brother will have ruined it for their sibling, and that sibling will ruin it for your kid, and you don't do that to children, because the joy of a great literary moment like that (even if it is telegraphed slightly for German speakers and perhaps others), is what any privileged childhood can be built around. So with my older son, we succeeded: it was clear which kid had the older sibling, and who would be the spoiler, so at daycare pickup I assessed when the family would be watching the films, and made sure that my sonsw it the weekend before. With my second son, it seems SW is less of a deal, and so he's only seen the first one. I'm prepared to show him any he wants, but if he's not excited, I'm holding off. Parenting in modern North America.

3. 1991. I married Marge. It was a big deal in 1991 when a Simpsons episode spoiled Empire. Simpsons was a primetime cartoon and centre of the Zeitgeist (at least in my circles), but 11 years on, it could be played for laughs. Even still, in a pre-widespread internet world, the joke still felt transgressive: this was something you weren't supposed to say (if you were not a jerk). But it was funny, and (this is what becomes important to me later), it's not trying to appropriate the cleverness of someone else in order to boost oneself. The Simpsons had just begun its golden period (separate conversation; footnotes available), and there was no sense that it was reaching and trying to pull itself up with a Star Wars joke. Game met game, and it was fair.

But it did make me think that some people were using spoilers as a way of pulling themselves up, as anyone who was repeating the star wars joke (without warning) was doing, riding on the cleveness and confidence of the Simpsons.

4. 1999. Sixth Sense. I'd had a lot of thoughts about spoilers through the 90s, but this serves as a good benchmark. I was there on opening night of Sixth Sense, and unlike the person next to me I had perceived the reveal long before it was made explicit in the story (and consequently found it a remarkably underwhelming film). Even still, even today, I can talk about it comfortably without feeling a need to say what it is. I can tell a story that no doubt reads differently if you see and remember the film or if you don't, but I can be confident I am understood without needing to appropriate the narrative power of the moment (which clearly was significant for some viewers, even if I wasn't one of them) for myself, to try to claim the zing! of the reveal for myself as a storyteller.

And with things like that, I have my thoughts on what was wrong with spoilers. The person who gives spoilers is appropriating someone else's cleverness for themselves. It's taking something from the audience that you haven't earned, with something you haven't created. And to do that deliberately makes you a jerk. Nothing made this clearer to me than

5. 2007. The end of Sopranos. Sopranos was available on HBO originally, which was not easiy available in Canada (where I was), and so though I watched episodes as they came out, it was not possible to view them the same day as in the US, and the next morning, on the cover of the newspaper (at least as I remember it) -- the National paper (we still had papers then) -- spoils the ending withthe accompanying visual (which certainly revealed more than I as someone who had invested in watching the show for 6 years at that poit) had wanted to know. They knew that, almost literally, no one in Canada had yet seen the episode (the writer indeed says as much in the accompanying article, which I read soe time later), but because it had been available on a pay channel in the US this was somehow fair game.

And there it was: small stakes in the big view of the world, sure, but a completely needless spoiler in order for the Globe and Mail to partake of and capitalize from the emotional investment of people who had been watching the show. I have several friends who think it's one of the finest hours of tv ever broadcast; it left me cold, as it did many Canadians, because the suddenness of the closural gesture, in all its brilliance, had been soured.

6. 2014. I meet someone who has never seen Planet of the Apes, and I want to help him. Despite the fact he grew up in the states and was a tthis point working on his doctorate, he knew nothing about it. I don't ask too much. I go buy him a dvd, except the dvd has the reveal on the promotional image. So I unwrap the disk, and flip the label, and write the movie name on the back, but conceal the image. I check the disk and it doesn't have the image eiither -- good. I give it to him, and he comes back the next day with a smile on his face and saying thank you.

People can have different views on spoilers -- I get that. But when the purpose of revealing a spoiler is to appropriate some of someone else's cleverness, then it's wrong. Scholarship on pop culture needs to tread this line carefully, and the best stuff does. But I read some in which the author is repeating spoiler-y plot points in order to elevate their own essay, not because it is relevant to their argument.

My best friends can watch something and recommend it, and because trust has been built over time, that's enough. I don't need a plot summary, and often don't want one -- if they think I'll enjoy it, I trust them and watch it (or I don't, in which case, they can nudge again). If I'm not going to watch it, they can talk freely; nothing is spoiled, because it's like the ending of Mozart's opera, Clemenzia di Tito -- something I don't care about, and so talk away.

Long musings, to a provocative piece. Thanks, as always, Snarf.
 

Kobold Stew

Last Guy in the Airlock
Supporter
Even in the ancient world, everyone who listed to a poet recite The Iliad or the Odyssey already knew Troy was going down. Spoiler alert for 3,000 or so year old poem.
I'll end with a nitpick, because Troy falling isn't a spoiler in either of these poems. Troy doesn't fall in the Iliad (though its fall is inevitable given what the poem presents), and it's already fallen and become the subject of heroic poetry by the time of the Odyssey (Demodocus is signing about it in front of Odysseus in book 8). Neither of these poems is about the fall of Troy, and so that isn't a spoiler in the same sense as those in Snarf's essay.
 

TiQuinn

Registered User
This is interesting. I didn't know about the National Lampoon essay. The few benchmarks that I hold in my head for spoilers (leading me to the conclusion that they are too often weaponized or, as I'll discuss, capitailized, and so should be avoided) are these (and some of them have been hit on in the OP):

1. 1952. Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap. The longest running play in the West End of London is a murder mystery, and opened in 1952. During the Curtain call, since the beginning, the audience is invited to keep whodunnit a secret. It's a direct audience appeal, and both a memorable theatrical device (flattering the audience both as co-conspiritors and at the same time increasing the value of their ticket). Someone gives the ending away (assuming they even remember it 2 weeks later), they're just a jerk. I saw the show in 1984, and they were still doing it then. I've long forgotten who the killer was, but no way was I going to tell anyone.

2. 1980. Empire. I am of the firm belief that it is never okay to give away the surprise reveal. As a parent of boys, I want them to watch and enjoy the movies, and to marvel at the surprise and feel it the way I did. They never would, of course, but it's a family moment. With my fist son, we would have the conversation as to when is the right time to watch Empire with your child (3? 5? lock them in a box until they are 12?), and consensus emerged that there was indeed a perfect time to show the film, and it is this: exactly one day before the movie gets spoiled at daycare or kindergarten. Some kid with an older brother will have ruined it for their sibling, and that sibling will ruin it for your kid, and you don't do that to children, because the joy of a great literary moment like that (even if it is telegraphed slightly for German speakers and perhaps others), is what any privileged childhood can be built around. So with my older son, we succeeded: it was clear which kid had the older sibling, and who would be the spoiler, so at daycare pickup I assessed when the family would be watching the films, and made sure that my sonsw it the weekend before. With my second son, it seems SW is less of a deal, and so he's only seen the first one. I'm prepared to show him any he wants, but if he's not excited, I'm holding off. Parenting in modern North America.

3. 1991. I married Marge. It was a big deal in 1991 when a Simpsons episode spoiled Empire. Simpsons was a primetime cartoon and centre of the Zeitgeist (at least in my circles), but 11 years on, it could be played for laughs. Even still, in a pre-widespread internet world, the joke still felt transgressive: this was something you weren't supposed to say (if you were not a jerk). But it was funny, and (this is what becomes important to me later), it's not trying to appropriate the cleverness of someone else in order to boost oneself. The Simpsons had just begun its golden period (separate conversation; footnotes available), and there was no sense that it was reaching and trying to pull itself up with a Star Wars joke. Game met game, and it was fair.

But it did make me think that some people were using spoilers as a way of pulling themselves up, as anyone who was repeating the star wars joke (without warning) was doing, riding on the cleveness and confidence of the Simpsons.

4. 1999. Sixth Sense. I'd had a lot of thoughts about spoilers through the 90s, but this serves as a good benchmark. I was there on opening night of Sixth Sense, and unlike the person next to me I had perceived the reveal long before it was made explicit in the story (and consequently found it a remarkably underwhelming film). Even still, even today, I can talk about it comfortably without feeling a need to say what it is. I can tell a story that no doubt reads differently if you see and remember the film or if you don't, but I can be confident I am understood without needing to appropriate the narrative power of the moment (which clearly was significant for some viewers, even if I wasn't one of them) for myself, to try to claim the zing! of the reveal for myself as a storyteller.

And with things like that, I have my thoughts on what was wrong with spoilers. The person who gives spoilers is appropriating someone else's cleverness for themselves. It's taking something from the audience that you haven't earned, with something you haven't created. And to do that deliberately makes you a jerk. Nothing made this clearer to me than

5. 2007. The end of Sopranos. Sopranos was available on HBO originally, which was not easiy available in Canada (where I was), and so though I watched episodes as they came out, it was not possible to view them the same day as in the US, and the next morning, on the cover of the newspaper (at least as I remember it) -- the National paper (we still had papers then) -- spoils the ending withthe accompanying visual (which certainly revealed more than I as someone who had invested in watching the show for 6 years at that poit) had wanted to know. They knew that, almost literally, no one in Canada had yet seen the episode (the writer indeed says as much in the accompanying article, which I read soe time later), but because it had been available on a pay channel in the US this was somehow fair game.

And there it was: small stakes in the big view of the world, sure, but a completely needless spoiler in order for the Globe and Mail to partake of and capitalize from the emotional investment of people who had been watching the show. I have several friends who think it's one of the finest hours of tv ever broadcast; it left me cold, as it did many Canadians, because the suddenness of the closural gesture, in all its brilliance, had been soured.

6. 2014. I meet someone who has never seen Planet of the Apes, and I want to help him. Despite the fact he grew up in the states and was a tthis point working on his doctorate, he knew nothing about it. I don't ask too much. I go buy him a dvd, except the dvd has the reveal on the promotional image. So I unwrap the disk, and flip the label, and write the movie name on the back, but conceal the image. I check the disk and it doesn't have the image eiither -- good. I give it to him, and he comes back the next day with a smile on his face and saying thank you.

People can have different views on spoilers -- I get that. But when the purpose of revealing a spoiler is to appropriate some of someone else's cleverness, then it's wrong. Scholarship on pop culture needs to tread this line carefully, and the best stuff does. But I read some in which the author is repeating spoiler-y plot points in order to elevate their own essay, not because it is relevant to their argument.

My best friends can watch something and recommend it, and because trust has been built over time, that's enough. I don't need a plot summary, and often don't want one -- if they think I'll enjoy it, I trust them and watch it (or I don't, in which case, they can nudge again). If I'm not going to watch it, they can talk freely; nothing is spoiled, because it's like the ending of Mozart's opera, Clemenzia di Tito -- something I don't care about, and so talk away.

Long musings, to a provocative piece. Thanks, as always, Snarf.
I was also thinking about the end of the Sopranos after reading this but in a very different light.

In a way, the last episode of The Sopranos acted as a kind of anti-spoiler. People were wondering exactly how the final episode would end up. Who would die? Would Tony get killed? Would he go to jail? What nobody predicted was an ending that would seem to build to something momentous and then suddenly cut to black.

People were literally outraged. Like ready to hunt down David Chase and flog him until he told them what happened in the ending. People literally needed that conclusion - the point to talk about the next day, the thing to SPOIL, but didn’t get it. The idea of an ambiguous ending was simply too much for a country hooked on pat endings and something to talk about on social media immediately the next day. It didn’t stop them from talking but it also hardly felt like it was a spoiler either.
 

MGibster

Legend
People were literally outraged. Like ready to hunt down David Chase and flog him until he told them what happened in the ending. People literally needed that conclusion - the point to talk about the next day, the thing to SPOIL, but didn’t get it. The idea of an ambiguous ending was simply too much for a country hooked on pat endings and something to talk about on social media immediately the next day. It didn’t stop them from talking but it also hardly felt like it was a spoiler either.
We saw a similar reaction when Stephen King ended his Dark Tower series. It left a lot of people with a bad taste in their mouth. The ending had already been spoiled for me, so it didn't bother me in the least. I just enjoyed the story for what it was.
 

Zaukrie

New Publisher
This is interesting. I didn't know about the National Lampoon essay. The few benchmarks that I hold in my head for spoilers (leading me to the conclusion that they are too often weaponized or, as I'll discuss, capitailized, and so should be avoided) are these (and some of them have been hit on in the OP):

1. 1952. Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap. The longest running play in the West End of London is a murder mystery, and opened in 1952. During the Curtain call, since the beginning, the audience is invited to keep whodunnit a secret. It's a direct audience appeal, and both a memorable theatrical device (flattering the audience both as co-conspiritors and at the same time increasing the value of their ticket). Someone gives the ending away (assuming they even remember it 2 weeks later), they're just a jerk. I saw the show in 1984, and they were still doing it then. I've long forgotten who the killer was, but no way was I going to tell anyone.

2. 1980. Empire. I am of the firm belief that it is never okay to give away the surprise reveal. As a parent of boys, I want them to watch and enjoy the movies, and to marvel at the surprise and feel it the way I did. They never would, of course, but it's a family moment. With my fist son, we would have the conversation as to when is the right time to watch Empire with your child (3? 5? lock them in a box until they are 12?), and consensus emerged that there was indeed a perfect time to show the film, and it is this: exactly one day before the movie gets spoiled at daycare or kindergarten. Some kid with an older brother will have ruined it for their sibling, and that sibling will ruin it for your kid, and you don't do that to children, because the joy of a great literary moment like that (even if it is telegraphed slightly for German speakers and perhaps others), is what any privileged childhood can be built around. So with my older son, we succeeded: it was clear which kid had the older sibling, and who would be the spoiler, so at daycare pickup I assessed when the family would be watching the films, and made sure that my sonsw it the weekend before. With my second son, it seems SW is less of a deal, and so he's only seen the first one. I'm prepared to show him any he wants, but if he's not excited, I'm holding off. Parenting in modern North America.

3. 1991. I married Marge. It was a big deal in 1991 when a Simpsons episode spoiled Empire. Simpsons was a primetime cartoon and centre of the Zeitgeist (at least in my circles), but 11 years on, it could be played for laughs. Even still, in a pre-widespread internet world, the joke still felt transgressive: this was something you weren't supposed to say (if you were not a jerk). But it was funny, and (this is what becomes important to me later), it's not trying to appropriate the cleverness of someone else in order to boost oneself. The Simpsons had just begun its golden period (separate conversation; footnotes available), and there was no sense that it was reaching and trying to pull itself up with a Star Wars joke. Game met game, and it was fair.

But it did make me think that some people were using spoilers as a way of pulling themselves up, as anyone who was repeating the star wars joke (without warning) was doing, riding on the cleveness and confidence of the Simpsons.

4. 1999. Sixth Sense. I'd had a lot of thoughts about spoilers through the 90s, but this serves as a good benchmark. I was there on opening night of Sixth Sense, and unlike the person next to me I had perceived the reveal long before it was made explicit in the story (and consequently found it a remarkably underwhelming film). Even still, even today, I can talk about it comfortably without feeling a need to say what it is. I can tell a story that no doubt reads differently if you see and remember the film or if you don't, but I can be confident I am understood without needing to appropriate the narrative power of the moment (which clearly was significant for some viewers, even if I wasn't one of them) for myself, to try to claim the zing! of the reveal for myself as a storyteller.

And with things like that, I have my thoughts on what was wrong with spoilers. The person who gives spoilers is appropriating someone else's cleverness for themselves. It's taking something from the audience that you haven't earned, with something you haven't created. And to do that deliberately makes you a jerk. Nothing made this clearer to me than

5. 2007. The end of Sopranos. Sopranos was available on HBO originally, which was not easiy available in Canada (where I was), and so though I watched episodes as they came out, it was not possible to view them the same day as in the US, and the next morning, on the cover of the newspaper (at least as I remember it) -- the National paper (we still had papers then) -- spoils the ending withthe accompanying visual (which certainly revealed more than I as someone who had invested in watching the show for 6 years at that poit) had wanted to know. They knew that, almost literally, no one in Canada had yet seen the episode (the writer indeed says as much in the accompanying article, which I read soe time later), but because it had been available on a pay channel in the US this was somehow fair game.

And there it was: small stakes in the big view of the world, sure, but a completely needless spoiler in order for the Globe and Mail to partake of and capitalize from the emotional investment of people who had been watching the show. I have several friends who think it's one of the finest hours of tv ever broadcast; it left me cold, as it did many Canadians, because the suddenness of the closural gesture, in all its brilliance, had been soured.

6. 2014. I meet someone who has never seen Planet of the Apes, and I want to help him. Despite the fact he grew up in the states and was a tthis point working on his doctorate, he knew nothing about it. I don't ask too much. I go buy him a dvd, except the dvd has the reveal on the promotional image. So I unwrap the disk, and flip the label, and write the movie name on the back, but conceal the image. I check the disk and it doesn't have the image eiither -- good. I give it to him, and he comes back the next day with a smile on his face and saying thank you.

People can have different views on spoilers -- I get that. But when the purpose of revealing a spoiler is to appropriate some of someone else's cleverness, then it's wrong. Scholarship on pop culture needs to tread this line carefully, and the best stuff does. But I read some in which the author is repeating spoiler-y plot points in order to elevate their own essay, not because it is relevant to their argument.

My best friends can watch something and recommend it, and because trust has been built over time, that's enough. I don't need a plot summary, and often don't want one -- if they think I'll enjoy it, I trust them and watch it (or I don't, in which case, they can nudge again). If I'm not going to watch it, they can talk freely; nothing is spoiled, because it's like the ending of Mozart's opera, Clemenzia di Tito -- something I don't care about, and so talk away.

Long musings, to a provocative piece. Thanks, as always, Snarf.
I hate that tv shows show me what's coming next week, or even after the break. Surprise is important to my enjoyment...
 

Kobold Stew

Last Guy in the Airlock
Supporter
I hate that tv shows show me what's coming next week, or even after the break. Surprise is important to my enjoyment...
I get that. But in those cases, they ("they" -- the complicated amalgam of creators, network folks and the arbitrary whims of advertisers, functioning as an amoral chimaera) are making choices about their own product. That, to me, seems honest.

And it can be cool: the Battlestar Galactica series reboot (2003-) would have a rapid-fire series of images unique in every episode showing millisecond images of the episode to come. Nothing that could be decoded, but I am sure that it gave a subconscious neural endorphin rush when the payoff happened during the episode.
 

Kobold Stew

Last Guy in the Airlock
Supporter
I was also thinking about the end of the Sopranos after reading this but in a very different light.

In a way, the last episode of The Sopranos acted as a kind of anti-spoiler. People were wondering exactly how the final episode would end up. Who would die? Would Tony get killed? Would he go to jail? What nobody predicted was an ending that would seem to build to something momentous and then suddenly cut to black.

People were literally outraged. Like ready to hunt down David Chase and flog him until he told them what happened in the ending. People literally needed that conclusion - the point to talk about the next day, the thing to SPOIL, but didn’t get it. The idea of an ambiguous ending was simply too much for a country hooked on pat endings and something to talk about on social media immediately the next day. It didn’t stop them from talking but it also hardly felt like it was a spoiler either.
I imagine the response would have been different if I felt I had even had a chance to see it before it was revealed. -- Whatever response I had wasn't what the series creators had wanted (or so I believe, confident that the Canadian market had a different experience than the US one, with the latter being preferred [though of course it was divided between the night-of reward and the anticlimax for someone catching it a week or month later).
 

Dannyalcatraz

Schmoderator
Staff member
Supporter
Because someone had to…

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