andrewducker.dreamwidth.org
Critics, the general audience, and spoilers
I always find the discussion of "spoilers" a bit frustrating. With people on the one hand with their fingers in their ears asking not to be spoiled and people on the other side saying "But it's been nearly 3,000 years since The Odyssey was written, surely it's beyond the statute of spoiler-dom by now!"
And what gets me about it is the complete lack of empathy that the latter people have for the former. That they don't seem to believe that knowing the chunks of the plot ahead of time could in any way spoil things for someone.
And this video makes it clear where the issue arises. It splits movie-watchers into two groups - the general audience and critics. The general audience is there to be taken on an emotional journey, where they can suspend their disbelief and enjoy an experience. The critics are there to analyse, understand how it's done, and when they feel excitement it's at the mastery of a story well told/designed/visualised/constructed. To the latter you can't spoil a movie by knowing how it's constructed, because the joy comes from seeing how it went together so masterfully.
And obviously those are two extremes, and most people probably enjoy some of both. But I've literally had people from the critic side talk to me patronisingly as if I was being childish because I wanted to be entertained by the story, experience it in the order that it was written, and experience it on a visceral level. Because, apparently, adults aren't interested in experiencing stories, they just want to appreciate how they're constructed.
(I can appreciate construction, it's just very much a secondary mode, and far less important to me than experiencing something.)
So, yes, when I talk about spoilers it's not some term that's plucked out of nowhere. If I know what the plot is going to be then it spoils the experience of the book/comic/movie/TV show. I enjoy it less. And that effect doesn't go away because the movie is 130 years old, and everyone knows that the train doesn't come through the screen and kill the audience.
(Can you tell that I've been carrying this around in my head for a couple of decades?)
Of course, that doesn't mean you can't discuss how awesome Arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat is - you just give people a moment's notice, and let them excuse themselves if they're planning to watch it themselves at some point - or decide that actually they're fine to hear about it, because they value the conversation more than the experience. Both approaches, of course, being valid.
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