To know from the very beginning the ending of a film or a book – does it mean depriving yourself of any pleasure from them in advance?
There is a classic English joke about how a gentleman is late for a detective film in the cinema. The ticket clerk, as is customary in such cases, escorts him with a flashlight to a place in the already dark hall. After that, frozen in a half-bow, he expects a well-deserved tip. But the gentleman plunges headlong into the intrigue of the film and does not react to the usher in any way. Then he, leaning towards the ear of the ungrateful spectator, whispers: “The hairdresser will be the killer!” and proudly walks off.
This is the purest example of a spoiler. Until relatively recently, this word itself was known only to motorists and denoted a body part that changes aerodynamics, pressing the car more strongly to the ground at high speeds. But since then, everything has changed. Spoilers (from the English spoil – “spoil”) began to be called any pieces of information that reveal the content of a film or book. And in an era when it is almost impossible to hide from information, they seem to be starting to pose a serious problem.
Various bad people love to get into the forum of moviegoers or bookworms – and post the content of the novelty, which the venerable participants are still only looking forward to. Critics-reviewers, who, on duty, are supposed to tell at least something about what they saw or read, apologise, write “ATTENTION, SPOILER” in yard-long letters, and urge those who do not want to spoil their impression to skip the next two paragraphs. They even try to make money on spoilers: last year, a well-known hacker nicknamed Guccifer managed to steal the script for the last episode of the next season of Downton Abbey. And there was talk that the theft could be used for blackmail: if the creators of the series did not pay him, he would, they say, inform in advance how the case would end. And therefore, it will reduce the rating, the number of viewers and the commercial success of the project.
But do spoilers really ruin everything? University of San Diego psychologists Jonathan D. Leavitt and Nicholas JS Christenfeld decided to look into this issue and undertook a study * – 819 of its student participants were asked to read several short stories by authors ranging from Agatha Christie to Anton Pavlovich Chekhov. Some of the stories were kept in their original form, and some were “supplemented” with spoilers. Moreover, in some cases, before the beginning of the text, there was simply a short paragraph describing what would happen in the final, like in textbooks or anthologies. In others, the spoiler was stylized as the first paragraph of the work itself. Well, something like: “On that January day, throwing the body of the victim into a frozen hole, killer N could not even imagine that soon his terrible crime would be revealed by the brilliant detective M,” relatively speaking.
Naturally, the authors of the study made sure that all students got the same number of stories of different genres – lyrical, humorous and detective. The students were then asked to rate the stories they read. The result was extremely unexpected. Participants liked stories with spoilers in all genres more. Moreover, the leaders of popularity turned out to be just those stories to which absolutely obvious and not disguised spoilers were given at the beginning. Spoilers, stylized as the beginning of the author’s text, do not seem to have any effect on the pleasure of reading.
Read more:
- 3 Reasons to Watch Anna Karenina by Joe Wright
Leavitt and Christenfeld surmise that the reader simply does not believe “author’s spoilers” – believing that the cunning writer will certainly not write in the first paragraph what will happen in the last, and there is a trick. As for the special pleasure of stories with “official spoilers”, it can partly be explained by the fact that the reader always identifies himself with the hero of the work. But knowing the ending gives the reader a clear advantage over the hero, who remains in the dark about his fate until the last page. And this advantage may well serve as an additional source of pleasure.
In general, spoilers helped readers “better navigate events, anticipate plot twists and understand context,” Leavitt and Christenfeld stated. The same thought, albeit in different words, was expressed more recently by writer, publicist, and culture editor of the New York Times Magazine, Adam Sternberg (Adam Sternbergh). He erupted in an angry article calling for a war on the general fear of spoilers**. According to Sternberg, “spoiler phobia” is simply ridiculous. “The anticipation of an unexpected denouement is certainly one of the pleasures that a good movie or TV show gives us,” he writes. “But let’s be honest, it’s probably the easiest and cheapest of all pleasures.”
Of course, there are films that can really be destroyed by a spoiler. A great example is The Sixth Sense by M. Night Shyamalan. It can hardly be attributed to the masterpieces that are worth reviewing many times. And the first and only viewing will be hopelessly spoiled if – ATTENTION, SPOILER! – to know from the very beginning that the hero of Bruce Willis is dead. But this is rather an exception, as always, confirming the rule. “In my experience, the second viewing is always more enjoyable than the first. Because you’re paying attention to details that slipped through your eyes the first time around while you waited for the dramatic turnaround,” Adam Sternberg concludes the article.
And it’s true: expecting that something out of the ordinary is about to happen, we do not have time to appreciate the acting in the film or the beauty of the author’s style in the book. Understand the philosophical constructions and aesthetic moves of the writer and director. And the most important thing, it seems, is still in this. Otherwise, the pernicious influence of spoilers would have destroyed classical literature as a phenomenon long ago. After all, mankind has known for ten thousand years how the Trojan War and the wanderings of Odysseus in Homer’s poems ended. For almost five centuries it has been no secret to anyone that Shakespeare’s Hamlet is ATTENTION, SPOILER! – was killed. And soon one hundred and fifty years, as we know that Anna Karenina – AND AGAIN SPOILER! – threw herself under the train. Tell me honestly: does it greatly prevent you from reading and re-reading these books or watching their film adaptations in the cinema?
* pages.ucsd.edu/~nchristenfeld/Publications_files/Spoilers.pdf
**vulture.com/2014/09/free-yourselves-from-the-shackles-of-spoilers.html