He that would live in peace & at ease, must not speak all he knows or judge all he sees.
- Benjamin Franklyn, Poor Richard’s Almanac
I should warn everyone here that there will be spoilers in the article.
Well, not specific spoilers; more spoilers in the aggregate as a general concept…
If you follow any fandoms, there will be times when you’re anticipating what comes next in a franchise. Who’s going to be the next Doctor when the show starts a new series; who is going to appear in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness; there are likely examples beyond these that follow through the following steps:
- A project is announced, generally a continuation of a favorite story and/or using beloved characters from the audience’s past
- The promotion of the project begins, with all kinds of hints as to what to expect to build up anticipation and desire to see the project
- The potential audience starts exchanging rumors and speculations as to what’s going to be in the project
- The project premiers and there are indeed surprises
- There’s a split in the potential audience between those who want to be surprised and those who need to know what the surprise is before going to see it themselves
- Finger-pointing and name-calling ensue between the two groups in 5, above
- The surprises become general knowledge in time for the cycle to begin again for the next project in the series, as described in 1, above
The whole “Spoilers” argument is almost as old as the first examples of our modern means of storytelling. There were people who would haunt the wharfs of New York, asking sailors from England if Dora had died yet. Years later, the film The Bat in 1926 asked patrons not to spoil the end of the film:
And these are just the ones we remember today; there were probably plenty of twists in stories forgotten long ago where revealing them had led to hurt feelings, arguments, fist-fights, divorce, manslaughter, international incidents, what-have-you…
And to be frank, there are times when a little foreknowledge can be a good thing.
Now, before I go on: Yes, there are good reasons to live by a version of omerta when it comes to what’s in a work. Mysteries where you know who did it can be hard to enjoy, unless Peter Falk is handling the case. Having something pop up you didn’t expect can be thrilling, if it’s something that doesn’t take you entirely out of it (i.e., the big surprise in Rise of the Planet of the Apes versus the sudden turn in Rat Pfink a Boo Boo).
Playing advocatus diaboli here is a much easier task than you’d assume. There’s of course the traditional argument in favor of keeping your mouth shut, that such works that depend on the surprise need to be funded somehow, which can easily be dispensed with: If it’s such a good piece, it should be able to withstand being revealed ahead of time. Anything that can’t stand on its own without the big surprise is like a jump scare video: If that’s all ya got, don’t bother me with this, because annoying me ain’t the way to win me over to be your audience.
Beyond that, there’s the whole access ecosystem issue: You like something enough to follow it, but you can’t see it for yourself. There’s the expectation that if you want to know what everyone is (refusing to) talk about (without chastisement), you just have to go see it yourself. There’s a whole cliquish division that spreads between fans as an “us” versus “them” delineation gets imposed on the group at large, which at a time when we’re trying to stop such behavior seems at best counter-productive.
Is paying the piper really worth it if in the process the paying audience turns on the rest of the crowd?
Beyond that, there’s also the issue of ability to join. Many of the arguments in favor of going to see the piece for yourself came about during times when whether you could do so was a simple, binary “yes-or-no” option. Does Dora die? Buy a copy at the bookstore, the 19th Century version of Kindle Vella. So what happens in The Bat? It only costs a nickel to see what takes place.
Since then, though, not everything is as accessible as that. The costs of going to a film or buying a first edition book have skyrocketed, comparable to then. With a nickel in 1923 worth eighty-two cents as I write this, compared to the average price of a movie ticket in the US being $9.16 (as of 2019), it’s easy to see how he division between the “seen its” and “want to knows” came about thanks to factors beyond the audience’s control.
The above doesn’t take into account some unexpected additional costs. This observation got prompted by more than a few folk talking about how they wish they didn’t have spoilers revealed ahead of time when they went to see Spider-Man: No Way Home. The spoiler situation was especially divisive between the folks who wanted to know everything without going versus the ones who went to the theaters to see it for themselves.
Right in the middle of the Omicron Variant flare-up.
Is it fair to blame the movie for a spike in infections that threw off efforts to return to (what passes for) normal? Can we blame it for contributing to 100,000 deaths in the US? At the very least, the optics ain’t good here.
Maybe it’s past time we stop using our having gotten to see it before others, as an excuse to claim being better than others. Maybe the person who wants to know without going to see it isn’t trying to ruin it for anyone, but is unable to enjoy it themselves otherwise. Claiming that your enjoyment of something depends on keeping information out of circulation needs to be re-thought, until such a time when we’re all healthier, both physically and economically.
With that in mind, I have a few revelations to share:
- He was home the whole time.
- They don’t prevent the mountain from blowing up and killing everyone.
- He was talking about something from his childhood.
- He was just pretending to be crippled.
- He slept with the villain responsible for the diabolical plot.
- Everyone thought it was the butler, but he proved them all wrong.
- The second of the three likely solutions works the best.
As for what these spoilers are for…
Well, okay, I’m holding a few cards close to my chest. Maybe you’re reading this and still haven’t been convinced that you can freely talk about what takes place in a work. Maybe you want these answers, but only for something you specifically want to know about, and don’t need the rest of them right off.
Otherwise, if you read the above revelations and have questions, which as I promised are not specific spoilers…
Well, to an extent, at least, somewhat…
In any event, I encourage you to get out there and look for where these came from. Which is one way to use spoilers for everyone’s benefit: Not as a conversation ender, but a starting point to discuss something that someone may not have seen yet, or maybe hadn’t thought about in while.
So, yes there are spoilers, but from where? Do you know…?
James Ryan 