My brother and I recently half-jokingly/half-seriously talked with our sister-in-law about her tendency to share major movie and book plot points in her Facebook status updates. She was honestly shocked that we were bothered by the reveals, asking, “What am I supposed to write? ‘That movie was really awesome'?!” “YES” was our vehement response.
This got me thinking, though: my brother and I hate spoilers. We have a friend who will threaten to cut you if you dare hint at a character's death. Yet my sister-in-law has never minded hearing a story before she reads it, or before she sees the movie; in fact, she gets annoyed with us if we're reluctant to reveal plot points to something she hasn't seen or read yet.
So, what's our deal with spoilers, anyway? TIME TV critic James Poniewozik suggests that many of us experience television shows and movies like puzzles, or “problems to solve”, but points out that if spoilers truly ruined an experience, why do so many of us rewatch movies? Is it because by rewatching, we are somehow reliving that initial “a-ha!” moment? Or are spoilers just not that big a deal?
Poniewozik mentions a 2011 University of California San Diego study which concluded that readers for whom a short story's ending had been ‘spoiled' enjoyed the story more than those who were left in the dark. Researchers suggested that knowing the surprise ending may help readers focus less on ‘what will happen next', and more on ‘how did the writer craft/create this effectively'.
This research doesn't entirely surprise me. I have several friends and coworkers who have somewhat ashamedly admitted to reading the last chapter of a book before starting it. For some, this is just how they read books. Others prefer knowing a book will end in a way they like before investing the time in it. And for one – a fellow librarian – it's simply to avoid reading about animal deaths. She even went so far as to create a bibliography of books in which the dog/cat survive, to help other animal lovers avoid those tearful plot points. It was a very popular book list.
I, however, absolutely DO NOT want to know about a TV shows'/movies' surprise twists, or a book's ending. I am sure of this, as last month a friend let slip that a major character in the book we were reading for book club would die. Having just started reading, I spent the rest of the story anxiously wondering if this, or this, or maybe this was the moment it would happen. It was a lot more unpleasant waiting for the death than it would've been to have been surprised (though no less devastating). And as a librarian, with a huge part of my job being reader's advisory (“I loved ___, what should I read next?”), I can only imagine the reactions if I started including spoilers in my booktalks:
“People LOVE this one, even though you find out at the end that the narrator made the whole thing up!”
“Don't get too attached to the dog in this one!”
“The bad guy gets away with it. And everybody else dies.”
Granted, spoilers are getting harder to avoid, thanks to the Internet, and social media like Facebook and Twitter (hello, Olympic spoilers!). I'm happy for now, though. My sister-in-law's last movie-related status update was a simple, spoiler-free “Got to see The Bourne Legacy and it was AWESOME!”