I am probably going to wait for the season to complete so I can binge watch. Am I the only one?
My big concern is all of the media and spoilers that surround these popular shows. Why do I know who died in Orange is the New Black? Why does Google think I need this as part of my news feed that I check only once or twice a day because I just need the most important news items.
It appears I'm pretty unusual in that I actually like reading spoilers and they don't really spoil anything for me. The few times that people have had spoilers but still read or watch the story in question, I've asked them, "did you enjoy it less because you knew what would happen?" and they said "no". I don't know of someone who actually had their enjoyment of the story modified by knowing the story, but many people who loudly proclaim that spoilers make them upset.
A good story should work even if you know what will happen. The components of the story (such as the easter eggs in the present discussion) should be more interesting than some gimmick of a big reveal. The whole concept of spoilers is extremely modern, probably invented by Hitchcock as marketing to sell more tickets to his movies. When you go see the ballet or an opera, you're given the whole plot upfront as part of the programme.
When a story is well done, I can immerse myself in it and see it from a character's point of view. So I can still enjoy a movie with a big reveal at the end even if I already know the reveal.
On the other hand, some movies are simply too intense to be enjoyable for me. So I often pull up Wikipedia first to make sure that the payoff is going to be worth it.
An example that falls into both categories is "The Fugitive" (Harrison Ford movie based on the TV show). I already know who the villain is and who dies at the end, but I can still enjoy Harrison Ford piecing it together and Tommy Lee Jones trying to stop him. And the last part of the movie is more intense and action-heavy than I really like, but I can take it because I know how it turns out.
I sometimes joke that I'm a member of the "Wikipedia Film Club" because I read about more movies than I actually end up watching.
I sometimes joke that I'm a member of the "Wikipedia Film Club" because I read about more movies than I actually end up watching.
That's so funny. I definitely do that too. However, a lot of the times I don't end up watching the movie unless it's really good. That's probably my favorite use of Wikipedia.
You've seen it and know you enjoy it. Surely you experienced the twists of The Fugitive unspoiled by the media. Additionally, I don't think anyone could have pictured Harrison Ford as the actual killer in the movie. And you always have to suspect the overly slick friend/business partner.
I'll admit, for a while, I spent a lot of time on themoviespoiler, a website dedicated to, well, movie spoilers. Like you, I sometimes can't take an emotionally exhausting ride. I like to watch movies for a little escapism, not to come out of the other side drained.
The ferishizstion of spoilers is very modern. The very term dates from usenset I believe. However, the first movie that the had a mainstream "don't spoil" movement I can remember was The Crying Game. The meme at the time was "Don't tell the secret!" and "What is the secret of The Crying Game?" (Note the lack of the term "spoil.") The secret is that the girlfriend is trans. (There. I "spoiled" a 25 year old movie you probably had never had any intention of watching, that is really only notable for "the secret" and the socialization around it for a few months in 1992.)
I think it's a great film, and it would still be a great film without the twist.
It's also a case where knowing the twist in advance really would profoundly affect a lot of people's experiences of the film, probably even more so in 1992.
> A good story should work even if you know what will happen.
Agreed. My first play-through of Dark Souls was thoroughly spoilerified, because I was consulting a walkthrough and reading a little bit ahead of my current progress, from start to finish. And you know what? It was still a phenomenal experience.
In fact, the experience was enhanced somewhat by knowing what was coming ahead. I could look forward to facing a boss like the Four Kings, having already read some of the lore and knowing it would be a brutal encounter.
Later in the series, my first play-throughs of Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3 were blind and unspoiled, but I don't think the experience was gigantically better for it. Some reveals were pretty cool [1], but I don't think I would have suffered to have known about them in advance. In fact, I still thoroughly enjoy all of those games, despite knowing them inside out and back-to-front.
[1] I'm thinking specifically of the transition from The Consumed Kings Garden to Untended Graves in DS3. Probably better unspoiled.
They're both very expressive. Opera used to be in common languages instead of "foreign" languages like Italian or German, so people could actually understand the words. Nowadays, each time I've been to the opera it has had supertitles. It's not difficult to know what is going on if you don't read the programme.
Ballet is a bit more like miming, but overall, the plots are still obvious, and frankly, very thin. We don't watch the Romeo and Juliet ballet wondering if they will survive or not, but rather wondering how they will express their anguish and suffering through dance.
> I don't know of someone who actually had their enjoyment of the story modified by knowing the story, but many people who loudly proclaim that spoilers make them upset.
You don't know anyone? At all? Isn't that a bit... arrogant to presume?
I really do think the same. Actually the crime sera drama "Columbo" worked that way as we knew beforehand who the culprit was. The point of the whole episode was to discover why the victim was killed and not how or who by.
'Law & Order: Criminal Intent' explicitly based its plots on discovering the motivations behind the crime, while the perpetrator was known to the audience from the start.
'Criminal Minds' similarly examines profiles the state of mind of the perpetrator to identify a suspect, with the person's identity known to the audience in advance more often than not.
I think the risk of being exposed to spoilers is something you have to accept if you want to binge watch and not keep up with the populace.
I enjoy binge watching, so I always wait for the season to complete; sometime for multiple seasons. However, I don't find the occasional spoiler detrimental to my viewing pleasure. I can only speak for myself, but I have watched many classic movies with prior knowledge of the plot; and I believe they have not significantly affected how I perceived them. Of course, it is impossible to tell if I would have enjoyed them more had I not known anything about them
I watch live for that reason. There aren't many shows that I do that for, but this is one, and Game of Thrones is the big other one. But I agree that the media spoils too much, though it's not unexpected - spoilers and discussions get big clicks these days.
I feel like I can one-up you on this. Here in Switzerland, the day after some popular shows in the US have ended (for example Breaking Bad, or a GoT season finale), some daily newspapers print two page spreads with all the spoilers from "last night's" episode - despite the fact that 100% of their readers are legally unable to watch that episode for probably another couple of months.
And even those that do follow the show through non-legal channels probably haven't downloaded the episode yet, since it has aired in the middle of the night for us.
Fortunately it's far less popular in the UK - indeed I watched it before any of the hype started, but I get what you mean. I have the same issue with watching F1 - I usually don't watch it until afterwards as my girlfriend and family have no interest, so I watch it when I get a chance rather than annoy everyone with it. But blurting out the result (even when it's not been on live on terrestrial TV) seems to be the thing that news readers do; if it's football they warn you - anything else, TOUGH!
Agreed. I have the same problem with Google news and now and sports scores... I don't see why they're treated as general news... why can't it be more like books where time shifting has always existed and conversations have always been deferred. And yes I understand the legacy with sports news but we've evolved damnit!
My Google news feed also spoiled my TV watching. There was a news story about the final episode of Game of Thrones, and the title of the story was enough to spoil something that happened in the episode.
My big concern is all of the media and spoilers that surround these popular shows. Why do I know who died in Orange is the New Black? Why does Google think I need this as part of my news feed that I check only once or twice a day because I just need the most important news items.