Saturday Waffling (April 5th, 2014)
Hello all. A lovely, if busy week, spent mostly writing Last War in Albion. The next chapter’s at 6,000 words and shaping up on the whole well. Still lots to fill in – it looks set to be a long one – but I like where I am on it for the amount of time I have to write it in.
The next Eruditorum book has fallen into a slight limbo – the copyeditor I gave it to has been busy and is behind. I need to do some shifting around and probably give her Davison/Baker to work on instead and give Baker part 2 to someone else, but I’ve not gotten my act together to send those e-mails. Hopefully this week and I can get everything back on track, but realistically, it’s looking like late summer as a best case scenario for Baker 2, and probably more early autumn. I’ll try to have Davison/Baker sooner after that, however. Very sorry for that.
I recently found myself looking up Season Eight spoilers for an utterly idiosyncratic reason that I am absolutely confident nobody has ever looked up spoilers for before. But that got me thinking about the general question of spoilers and people’s views on them.
So, to what extent do you seek out spoilers, avoid spoilers, let yourself be spoiled, or go to great lengths to not be spoiled? Do you think spoilers actually diminish your enjoyment of a text? Are they a big deal at all? Should productions put effort into keeping a tight lid on things, or should people who like spoilers be allowed to enjoy them in peace?
Anton B
April 5, 2014 @ 12:56 am
Generally my rule on 'spoiling' is – after general broadcast or, in the case of a book, publication, all comment is fair play. If one wants to discuss rumours or inside info on upcoming plot points that's what fan forums are for. I wouldn't use social media to 'spoil' information where I know friends might be behind me in their viewing. If I am belatedly catching up on completed series I know others have finished (for example for me at the moment that would be Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad) I avoid all articles, blogs, reviews etc that might give away surprises.
The concept of 'Spoilers' itself is an interesting one. Would one for instance consider discussing the ending of Hamlet a spoiler? Does it actually matter if one knows the details of a work's denoument? The concept clearly has its roots in pulp serialized fiction and the 'Whodunnit' genre and rather like with a conjuring trick, the revelation of 'how it was done' often ruins the illusion.
On the other hand, an obsession with not knowing 'how it turns out' reveals a rather narrowly linear way of reading a text. I like the way Moffat has internalized the dilemma diegetically in Doctor Who. For the Doctor or River to discover details of their own futures would have epic consequences, yet they by their very natures are continually threatening to do just that. Thus our own worries regarding narrative are reflected back at us by the protagonists.
Oh and by the way. The butler did it, he's an alien she's a ghost and it was all a dream.
Bob Dillon
April 5, 2014 @ 1:37 am
As I came to Dr Who in 1987, almost all of the stories from the classic series were know to me before I watched them, this means that I take great joy in not knowing what is going to happen.
Thus, we always switch off as the opening credits start, as Next Time is not something I want to know about to early, and was the reason I stopped frequenting Gallifrey Base when the new series started.
This is also in play in things like Galactica, when, on first pass through, we closed our eyes during the spoiler bit.
It also means that I can talk to my husband during the episode about what we think is going to happen, rather than be constarined by foreknowledge (although we rarely do this, it's nice to know it's there)
Bob
Kit
April 5, 2014 @ 2:39 am
I don't watch "Next Time On"s, I close my eyes and la-la-la if a cinema shows a trailer for a film I know I want to see, and I can't think of a third thing.
Jack Graham
April 5, 2014 @ 2:56 am
I can honestly say, being 'spoiled' has no effect on my enjoyment of narrative media. Partly because I can often guess what's going to happen; partly because I just don't think stories work because of surprises, at least not of the "oh so it was him all the time variety" (I quite like the "I thought this was an x type of story but it turns out to be a y type of story" variety). There are exceptions to this rule, but generally revelations and reveals just have no effect on me. Who the murderer is matters far less to me than what the search for him or her means.
What Happened To Robbie?
April 5, 2014 @ 3:26 am
It really depends what mood I'm in whether I want to see spoilers or not. I think as long as pre-broadcast people warn those who don't want them then it works for everyone. I don't find spoilers problematic generally because you might know, for example, a character is appearing but not what they're going to do in the episode or how.
Daibhid C
April 5, 2014 @ 3:28 am
The concept of 'Spoilers' itself is an interesting one. Would one for instance consider discussing the ending of Hamlet a spoiler? Does it actually matter if one knows the details of a work's denoument? The concept clearly has its roots in pulp serialized fiction and the 'Whodunnit' genre and rather like with a conjuring trick, the revelation of 'how it was done' often ruins the illusion.
There are some works where I'd say the ending is a spoiler and some where it isn't. "The main characters die" isn't a spoiler for a Shakespeare tragedy, any more than "the Doctor defeats the baddies and the Earth isn't destroyed" is a spoiler for a Doctor Who episode. How it happens might be. The question is "is this (meant to be) a shocking twist?"
And then there are works where there was a shocking twist but isn't any more. Most of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is characters wondering what hold the sinister Hyde has on the good doctor, and the revelation (spoilers: they're the same guy!) was clearly meant as a surprise, but now it's so much a part of pop-culture, it's hard to imagine anyone reading the book unspoiled. In Doctor Who terms, it could be similarly argued that The Daleks is "spoilered", not just by having read the Episode Guides and so on, but simply by knowing what Daleks are.
David Anderson
April 5, 2014 @ 3:37 am
As an aside, for those of us who are rewatching the series along with the blog, what stories might we want to watch before Monday's blog entry? (I'm supposing it will be either Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead or Angels take Manhattan.)
Daru
April 5, 2014 @ 3:58 am
I generally like to be surprised by a story and get taken along, absorbed by it. So with current Doctor Who I generally don't watch the 'next time' sections. I'd watch the pre season trailer but then also generally avoid websites covering site photos and massive speculation. I just enjoy going in a fresh as possible.
brownstudy
April 5, 2014 @ 4:13 am
The classic cartoon related to spoilers: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-70KCSv75Dmg/UITOrikb1_I/AAAAAAAAAEY/bc47KXp_vYg/s1600/Peanuts_Kane-thumb-500×346-18059.jpg
Chris
April 5, 2014 @ 4:18 am
As comments above mention, I agree that the nature of the spoiled information is what makes a spoiler bad or not. With The Day Of The Doctor, most any of the plot details could be revealed early without it being ruined, but should the Tom Baker appearance be confirmed ahead of time, it turns the entire episode into "waiting for Tom," which is terrible mostly because that appearance has nothing to do with the story itself, yet it overshadows.
jane
April 5, 2014 @ 4:21 am
I always did that too with Battlestar Galactica! But, in defense of that production choice, it does rather contribute to the ethos of "All of this has happened before and will happen again."
Bennett
April 5, 2014 @ 4:22 am
I wish I was as strong-willed as you.
Every year I have this idyllic dream of watching a series of Doctor Who and having literally no idea where the TARDIS will land next. And every year I reach a point where I'm so desperate for new Doctor Who content that I lunge on every trailer and press release going.
Perhaps this is the year I'll finally manage it. The …of the Doctor pi-logy has left me more satiated than ever, and watching Hartnell episodes on their 50th anniversaries should be enough to tide me over. All I have to do is erase two press releases and one Blue Peter competition from my memory and I can approach Capaldi's first season with a blank slate.
…who am I kidding? If a trailer came out tomorrow I'd be clicking over to YouTube faster than you can say "kidneys".
jane
April 5, 2014 @ 4:23 am
I'm guessing Hitler — just for the juxtaposition with Churchill. Though I guess The Wedding would work just as well in that respect.
David Anderson
April 5, 2014 @ 4:24 am
It's impossible to reread or rewatch something without being spoilered. And if something's not worth rereading or rewatching then it's not worth reading or watching in the first place.
Still, if a writer is any good they'll have taken some care about the order in which they give out information. All narrative has both synchronic and diachronic aspects; books more so than films. (Synchronic means you can look at any part of the story at any time – you can flip back or flip to the ending; diachronic means you are aware of events strictly in the order in which the book or film releases it.) At an unsophisticated level, the diachronic aspect is just what happens next. But in more sophisticated ways, a diachronic aspect allows the writer to alter the import of what has already been seen. Films based around reveals such as The Usual Suspects or The Sixth Sense for instance, or books like The Man who was Thursday are the clearest case, but perhaps not the best case. (They're not the best case because the single twist reveal is just a singular event, rather than being a gradual effect.)
I think that amounts to saying that I don't mind spoilers, but I'd rather not seek them out.
C.
April 5, 2014 @ 4:24 am
i don't devote too much time to avoiding spoilers, nor do I care that much about stumbling upon them, but I do find it rather irritating that some people will, within minutes of some Big Thing Happening, bombard all social media sites with screengrabs and quotes of the event in question. If I really care about something I try to stay off the internet until I see the show.
i'm very glad i read all the Game of Thrones books a while ago, so I'm fortified against spoilers there. I can't imagine what a pain in the arse it must be to try to just watch that show as a TV show without people constantly mentioning upcoming shockers.
jane
April 5, 2014 @ 4:28 am
"(I quite like the "I thought this was an x type of story but it turns out to be a y type of story" variety)"
Yeah, I really don't like to be spoiled when it comes to a frame of reference. But then, so much of modern Who really incorporates that narrative device into the stories themselves that I generally stay away from spoilers altogether, just so I can enjoy the narration with fresh eyes.
jane
April 5, 2014 @ 4:35 am
I have a hard time buying into "spoilers" when we're talking about texts that were produced a hundred years ago. To me, spoilers really only apply to works that haven't even been published yet — works that are immediate, and therefore a reflection of the present.
(It's much the same with presents. Opening up a present, I don't want to do it before the appointed time of the ritual, even if I know exactly what's going to be inside — though obviously, as a child, I didn't know everything that would be inside.)
So a spoiler is an attempt to hijack a cultural moment, to take control of the dialogue between artists and readers. The people who dole out spoilers are trying to exercise power, as if by telling the story before the storyteller does they can become defacto storytellers themselves. In this respect, I think "spoilers" (the people who spoil) are the worst sort of pirates, because they can't even bother to produce their own work.
David Anderson
April 5, 2014 @ 4:37 am
I'd say 'it's got Tom Baker in it' would be more of a problem in that sense than 'Tom Baker has a cameo appearance after the main plot is resolved'.
On the other hand, I think the Night of the Doctor short is a rather different experience depending on whether you do or don't know which of Smith, Tennant or Hurt features in it.
Tom Dickinson
April 5, 2014 @ 4:59 am
Not everyone agrees with what exactly a spoiler is, but my inclination is to go with the rather controversially simplistic definition of: "that which spoils." Since different people want different things from a narrative, what "spoils" their enjoyment will vary from person to person.
Some might say that anything the production team chooses to announce is, by definition, not a spoiler, wheres I would argue that the DWM cover that preceded "The Impossible Astronaut" was a major spoiler in that it sucked all the surprise out of what could have been a shocking and tense moment of television. Since then I've been rather annoyed at Moffat's anti-spoiler rhetoric, although I have to applaud the clever misdirection around "Asylum of the Daleks".
I usually don't seek out plot details of future Doctor Who, because I think it's more fun not to, but I've been doing the past couple years because of our long, frustrating droughts between seasons. It keeps my interest up.
For franchises I'm not invested in, I don't care a bit about "spoilers." I fact, they're sometimes what ends up getting me in the door. I wasn't interested in Lost until I stumbled across the season three finale plot twist and thought "ooh, this show actually sounds a lot more interesting than I'd always assumed."
Ross
April 5, 2014 @ 5:33 am
I had a long and thoughtful reply typed out here, but then my son decided that Mike the Knight would like to tapdance on my keyboard.
The gist of it was that I do not like the whole cultural-avoidance-of-spoilers thing. It feels to me like it's led to a shift in narrative modes where nowadays, the only value in many narratives is in the "surprise" of the reveal. If knowing the ending actually spoils the story (rather than being just a minor loss), then I think it's overwhelmingly likely that the story wasn't actually any good — it relied on the cheap shock of the unexpected twist rather than having the joy derive from the experience of watching it.
Josh Marsfelder
April 5, 2014 @ 5:35 am
I've never once cared about spoilers. Like Jack above, they don't affect my enjoyment of a work of media in the slightest (the one exception would be Pokémon games, as the majority of my enjoyment of them comes from discovering the new Pokémon species on my own).
Actually, spoilers play a major role in my history with Star Trek. For a number of convoluted and boring reasons not worth going into here, I was unable to watch any kind of Star Trek between 1995 and 2001. Most of my experiences with and opinions of this era of the franchise came from me reading tie-in magazines and behind-the-scenes material (like the various reference and companion books) instead of watching the actual shows.
I eventually did get to see everything I missed once the Internet came around (I got it later than a lot of other people again for very boring reasons) and the DVD sets started to come out, but my opinions didn't change much in seeing the actual finished products.
Actually, in terms of video games, aside from Pokémon I tend to make a point to spoil the stories for myself ahead of time, especially for RPGs, as I like to use that information to plan how I'm going to play my character.
Ross
April 5, 2014 @ 5:40 am
I can honestly say, being 'spoiled' has no effect on my enjoyment of narrative media. Partly because I can often guess what's going to happen;
This. If I legitimately haven't worked out the Clever Spoiler Twist by the time it happens, it almost always means that the twist was rendered unguessable by having it come out of nowhere or defy the narrative so far. And shows which rely on the Clever Spoiler Twist almost always leave me feeling like what actually happened was that at the last minute the writer just spun a Wheel-O-Twists and randomly picked something that the story was in no way building up to just to be surprising.
Ross
April 5, 2014 @ 5:42 am
I think I'd have liked Day of the Doctor a lot better if I'd spent it Waiting For Tom.
xen trilus
April 5, 2014 @ 5:43 am
[SPOILERS FOR 6×01 THE IMPOSSIBLE ASTRONAUT!]
The thing is, it didn't stop at the DWM cover. The night before the airing of the episode – in fact, I think it was at the stroke of midnight! – the British DW website released some 'shocking' new pictures from the first episode. In public for all to see.
One of them depicted a Silent firing a lightning bolt into someone.
The second one depicted the Doctor and the Astronaut by the lake, and – I shit you not – it showed the Doctor erupting with regeneration energy.
So let's review. We've had the DWM cover going "MARKED FOR DEATH? One of our four heroes will DIE in this episode!!!!", and anyone who knows their stuff has already eliminated River from the lineup as we know about the Library. Which leaves us with the Ponds, and probably the most likely option: the Doctor (he's the one with the time machine so you could easily bump into him in the wrong order).
And now, less than a day before the episode airs, we have confirmation that the Doctor will walk up to that astronaut and, for whatever reason, start regenerating. All of this having gone out officially under the BBC. They have essentially spoiled the twist opening of the new season for anyone naive enough to think that they, er, wouldn't be so insane as to spoil the twist opening of the new season (and thus look at the DWM cover or the released images).
Utter madness.
Ross
April 5, 2014 @ 5:51 am
I dunno. Even at this point, wouldn't "Tonight, one of our four heroes will die!" prompt a "Oh, they're killing Rory again?"
Marionette
April 5, 2014 @ 6:47 am
I avoid spoilers. I'm all about seeing the work as the creator intended, and my enjoyment in attempting to solve the puzzle of the story as it is unfolding trumps any interest I might have in what's coming next.
And personally, I wouldn't even reveal spoilers for Citizen Kane without giving plenty of warning. There's always someone who hasn't seen it yet.
Daru
April 5, 2014 @ 6:54 am
Yeah it is hard having all of the information we might want at our fingertips. I guess that I find there is always enough new (or old content I have not touched) for me to explore.
When I did my mammoth classic Who re-watch with my partner, a lot of the stories I had not seen, but I was not bothered about spoiling. As I agree with Jane above that I am more sensitive to being involved that is unfolding in the present. Though I did watch all of the trailers for The Day of The Doctor, as for that event I made the conscious choice to throw myself into hype (whilst avoiding leaked story details).
I had an interesting and maybe rare experience when watching the end of Eccleston's series – I had NO IDEA he was leaving or the Doctor was going to regenerate. None at all! I had not really gotten myself into Doctor Who digital fandom and also had no TV and bought no newspapers. I was totally in the dark and I tell you, it was an astonishing moment! (though down to luck more than anything else)
prandeamus
April 5, 2014 @ 8:44 am
The Butler did it, he's an alien and she's a ghost.
Is this the director's cut of Name of the Doctor?
Jack Graham
April 5, 2014 @ 10:42 am
I grew up during the explosion of fan culture/literature (official and unofficial), and also during the period when BBC Video was releasing old stories at a grindingly slow rate. So I read accounts or novelisations of most pre-80s classic Who stories before I ever saw them. So I would approach the video release of, say, 'The Pirate Planet', knowing full well that the whole planet was jumping through space and the nurse was actually a projection of Queen Xanxia and the Captain was really trying to kill her, etc. I imagine a great many Doctor Who fans of my generation had a similar experience with the great back-catalogue of Who stories. Strangely, this experience was mirrored in my experience of seeing TV adaptations galore (of Dickens, etc) long before reading the books. I was accidentally trained to see stories as aesthetic and semiotic experiences, rather than 'gossip about imaginary people'.
Iain Coleman
April 5, 2014 @ 12:16 pm
Being surprised by the events in a story is one of the particular pleasures that one can have when watching or reading it. It's not the only possible pleasure, and the pleasures that come from experiencing and considering the story with full understanding of how it goes may well be deeper or more important, but the special thing about this particular pleasure is that you can only have it once (unless you have a very poor memory). So I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to preserve the possibility of that pleasure for oneself, or any reason to dismiss that pleasure as not worth seeking.
Iain Coleman
April 5, 2014 @ 12:22 pm
"The main characters die" isn't a spoiler for a Shakespeare tragedy
That said, if you go by the convention that the person named in the title of a Shakespeare tragedy dies in Act Five, then [SPOILERS!] you're going to get a bit of a shock in Act 3 of Julius Caesar. I wonder what the contemporary audience made of that.
Josh Marsfelder
April 5, 2014 @ 12:31 pm
" I was accidentally trained to see stories as aesthetic and semiotic experiences, rather than 'gossip about imaginary people'."
That definitely explains my experiences too. I can't remember a time, except maybe when I was extremely young, when that hasn't been the case for me as well. That's probably a big part of why I have such a dull, materialistic conception of storytelling: I've never seen it as anything other than a collaborative process subject to the whims of a million variables.
encyclops
April 5, 2014 @ 1:07 pm
I'm a little on the fence about spoilers for Season 8. On the one hand, I'm still very much in wait-and-see mode about whether Capaldi will be awesome or not, so it's kind of a Schrödinger's season for me. I really can see it going either way. So since I'm not expecting big things, spoilers are more likely to whet my appetite than quell it.
And on the other hand, there's something that happens for me that's peculiar to Doctor Who, where if I know too much about the writers and the gist of the stories they're doing, by process of elimination I end up knowing how many possibilities there are left for something magical and unpredictable. All the presents have been opened and I know this one's socks (Daleks), this one's a savings bond (the Doctor meets Nijinsky), this one's the CD I've already bought for myself but forgot to take off my Christmas list (the Doctor visits future Earth), and so on. It's nice knowing there's at least one potential "Hide" in there, some big weirdly-shaped box that doesn't give any clue as to its contents.
Eric Gimlin
April 5, 2014 @ 1:09 pm
Spoilers almost never bother me. I'm more concerned with how the story is told, not the bare elements of the plot. I also have an ability to disconnect "I know this will happen" from my actual experience of the story; for some reason I almost always react to the spoiled element as if I didn't know it was coming.
With that said, I understand why they bug others and I try to avoid sharing them accidentally.
On another note: If I recall the end of the latest Last War chapbook, the next chapter will be Captain Britain. While I assume you are in general well-fixed for source material, I just within the past few weeks completed my run of the Alan Davis issues in the original Marvel UK editions. So if there's anything you're missing or need scans of, let me know and I can get you them.
John
April 5, 2014 @ 2:50 pm
I would imagine that a huge percentage of people who've not seen Citizen Kane already know that "spoiler." Are we not allowed to talk about how Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father, either? At a certain point, things have been around long enough that we should be able to talk about them, and people who don't want to get spoiled should be careful and realize that the world isn't going to cater to them – that maintaining their unspoiled status is their responsibility, not everyone else's.
Jesse
April 5, 2014 @ 8:20 pm
This comment has been removed by the author.
Jesse
April 5, 2014 @ 8:22 pm
I try to avoid spoilers for any plot-driven story that I expect to consume for pleasure. I don't really care, for example, if you tell me what happens on Mad Men, because I'm pretty sure I wouldn't like Mad Men very much; but I've been engaged in a multi-year struggle to keep from knowing any substantial plot twists in Breaking Bad, because I know sooner or later I'm likely to marathon that thing from beginning to end.
I avoid pretty much all news stories about Doctor Who for this reason. I don't want to know anything about upcoming stories, down to "What famous monster will be in this one?" It's not just that I enjoy the pleasure of being surprised by such things when they manage to surprise me; I also enjoy the pleasure of figuring them out for myself.
There are exceptions to all of the above. But it expresses my basic attitude well enough.
Wm Keith
April 5, 2014 @ 9:16 pm
In the Book of Genesis, existence is prioritised in this order: 1. Creation of the elements 2. Creation of living things. 3. Spoilers. 4. Agriculture and murder. By chapter 5 the book has moved on to the sort of over detailed chronology that is only of interest to diehard fans. Chapter 6 begins a re-boot of the whole creation series but it isn't until Chapter 9 that the author discovers booze and things settle down. Here ends the lesson.
Anton B
April 5, 2014 @ 11:35 pm
Me too! (Re the BSG pre credits eye closing). Damn! Now I want to watch them all again with open eyes.
Some movie trailers are so full of spoilers they render watching the film redundant. Which is often a good thing. I avoided both Avatar and Millenium based solely on the trailers telling me everything I needed to know. I do wonder if there are any good films I've missed due to badly made trailers though.
mengu
April 6, 2014 @ 12:31 am
I have found that I enjoy stories best if I go in with no expectations whatsoever. I also love finding out spoilers, but not as much as the enjoyment I gain from going in unspoiled. It's a struggle.
People who deliberately spoil others in areas that should be reasonably expected to be spoiler-free are awful.
mengu
April 6, 2014 @ 12:33 am
I believe most people discounted him for that very reason, and the top pick at the time was Amy.
ferret
April 6, 2014 @ 1:43 am
There is an issue that a published work – i.e. a just-aired-on-BBC1 episode of Doctor Who – is not necessarily published at all yet in many countries… but will very shortly be.
For instance in Australia Doctor Who currently airs bout 6 days after the BBC transmission. When nuWho first transmitted the gap was about 9 or 10 months.
Personally I have some small degree of trouble in not giving into temptation and spoiling myself post-BBC pre-ABC transmission, although even if the cause is weakness it is still a choice.
However, I am an adult. How many 12 year old Australians are out on the net, devastated because their joy in frequenting Doctor Who websites and forums accidentally lead them to discover in those 6 days that Hide ends with "but the ghost was a trapped-in-time-human and the monster was motivated by love"?
ferret
April 6, 2014 @ 1:49 am
If you avoided the Internet entirely, however, you'd not have been aware to watch Paul McGann's turn in "Night of the Doctor" until some point after Christmas… and even then you'd be opening yourself up to revelations about the next season. There is no period of grace to be online.
storiteller
April 6, 2014 @ 2:44 am
I think if you are going to make your movie so based around one plot point that's a twist then you better make the twist so good that even spoilers can't ruin it. That actually happened with The Usual Suspects with me. I went in knowing who did it, but the movie was so well done that I was really questioning whether I had the plot correct or not and yet was still somehow surprised when it was the person I knew did it all along!
On the other hand, murder mysteries where there is absolutely no way to guess who did it annoy me. Those are truly spoiled if you know the ending. (I'm looking at you, Broadchurch.)
xen trilus
April 6, 2014 @ 3:35 am
It sounds like Marionette was just stating a personal choice, actually. A personal choice to provide ample warning before talking about Citizen Kane's ending in the potential presence of people who haven't seen it. Why you interpreted this as an assault on your freedom of speech, I couldn't say.
jane
April 6, 2014 @ 4:58 am
Apparently consideration for others is seen on an impingement of freedom — in particular, the freedom not to consider others. Hmm, the heart of reactionary politics?
Anton B
April 6, 2014 @ 8:40 am
By 'general broadcast' I meant of course 'shown on all networks that carry the show officially'. Australia and the US are not that far behind the UK for broadcast times of Doctor Who these days but I can see where some avoidance of e.media might be necessary if spoilers are a concern. As other people here have suggested- if it is a concern avoidance of potential spoilers is your responsibility alone. You can't expect the internetz to care.
Anton B
April 6, 2014 @ 8:53 am
I didn't take Broadchurch to be a 'Whodunnit' in the classic sense inasmuch as I'm not sure Chibnall was playing the 'guess which of the cast had motive and opportunity' game. It was more of a meditation on the psychology of a murder scene. Landscape and mood playing as big a role as character. I enjoyed it as a kind of English Twin Peaks. It's telling in this respect that the identity of the murderer was revealed at the end of the penultimate episode rather than in the finale and I don't actually think if anyone had 'spoiled' that reveal it would have ruined my enjoyment of the show. I'm interested to see what the US adaptation does.
David Anderson
April 6, 2014 @ 9:21 am
Three Kings (the Clooney film) is a case of a good film with awful trailers. Although there the trailers didn't so much spoil the film as misrepresent it.
David Anderson
April 6, 2014 @ 9:28 am
Indeed. I came into Broadchurch half way through with the episode focussed on David Bradley's character. Whether Bradley is the guilty party is pretty peripheral to the point of the episode.
Adam Riggio
April 6, 2014 @ 10:51 am
I think I grew out of the "gossip about imaginary people" way of viewing media sometime in my teens, from similar experiences researching the history of Doctor Who. The show was well into the Wilderness Years at that point (with no conceivable way out either), and I was just exploring the stories. The internet at the time was rudimentary at best, and my family simply didn't have the budget to import or buy the back catalogue of the Virgin series, follow the EDAs regularly, or hunt down the videotape releases of the show proper. Mortgage payments were apparently more important.
It actually helped me become a better reader and writer of literature, because when I viewed or read a work whose ending I already knew, I could put all the various pieces together, see which narrative elements were misdirections, or otherwise analyze their functions as a whole. That way, I became highly literate in the actual construction of media. I haven't really given a fuck about spoilers since then. I'm most interested in the journey, the world, and the structure of my media products, not simply watching in ignorance. That seems, to me, such a simple way of thinking.
jane
April 6, 2014 @ 3:37 pm
Well there's no point in reading it now. Thanks a lot for spoiling it, buddy.
storiteller
April 6, 2014 @ 5:11 pm
I agree that it was more about the psychology of a murder scene, but making it someone so out of nowhere that had little evidence otherwise took me out of the enjoyment of that element. (Plus, I had personal reasons to be really frustrated and even angry that it was that particular character considering his job and how it reflected cultural stereotypes. But we'll get to that when Phil covers it on here.)