Spoiler: Logan Roy is dead. The gray-haired father of the famous HBO drama Legacy met with his creator in the UK episode on Monday, and journalists went to great lengths to keep this important plot point under wraps. Except for the Los Angeles Times, which decided to run Logan's obituary after the episode aired. Outrage ensued, to the point where one would think the media had falsely predicted the apocalypse.
The LA Times clearly didn't deserve this level of scolding, but it brought attention back to the issue of spoilers and how important it is for people to know what's going on in a show, movie, or book. This is an age old problem. In 1960, Alfred Hitchcock urged viewers not to reveal the denouement of «Psycho» to those who had not yet seen it. «Please don't give away the ending,» he said. “It's the only thing we have.
Since then, moviegoers and film critics in particular have been asked to be careful when it comes to such things. Movies like The Sixth Sense, which reveals that Bruce Willis' character Malcolm has been dead all along, or Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which offers a counter-historical version of the 1969 Manson Murders, in which actress Sharon Tate missing and thus surviving — relied on the fact that viewers must watch the film unprepared; that knowing what will happen in advance will ruin their fun.
I think people are too sensitive. A spoiler is just a plot point, and if we get hung up on such things, we lose some of the meaning of watching or reading something — that is, immersing ourselves in the world, engaging and empathizing with the hero. . I have seen «Romeo and Juliet» dozens of times, and such is the richness of the characters, the scale of the tragedy of the fate of young lovers, I never cease to be touched by the devastation at the end of the play. (Actually, I once saw a creepy production in which I wished them both to hurry up and die, but still.)
I knew of Logan Roy's death a few weeks ago, and while I respect the reluctance to draw the ire of The Daily Telegraph readers — as we did when we announced the death of the Dowager Countess Maggie Smith at Downton Abbey after the embargo was lifted — I was happy to have known it sooner. . In fact, my prior knowledge meant that I was able to zoom in on Logan in the previous two episodes; subtle little moments that I would have missed if I hadn't known about the result, gained weight.
Janet Leigh's famous shower scene in Hitchcock's Psycho. Photo: ScreenProd/Photononstop/Alamy Stock PhotoSimilarly, 30 years ago, a friend of mine told me about the «shock» twist in Neil Jordan's «Game of Crying» — the fact that hard-nosed IRA Time Trooper Stephen Rea falls in love with a woman played by Jay Davidson who opens up, apparently to being transgender, and found that the first scenes between the two actors had a special emotional power because I knew what was going to happen.
I know I'm not the only one who thinks so. Not only my friends feel the same way, but also academic polls. A study conducted at the University of California, San Diego found that people who were told «spoiled» stories liked them more than those who weren't given them. Sometimes a revelation in advance can even be beneficial to the creator of a program or film. America has the Jeopardy show, a quiz show that has been running for over half a century. When James Holzhauer's winning streak was revealed early on, the ratings skyrocketed. If we know something important is going to happen, we want to watch.
We live in the age of spoilers. The Internet makes it very difficult to avoid knowing the results, while you could argue that the trend of binge-watching on streaming services like Netflix has made the case for not wanting to know what's going on redundant. I tried to go back to my childhood, where everything was a surprise, to remember the shock when I saw Darth Vader tell Luke Skywalker that he was his father, or Zammo McGuire lying in a drug stupor behind his back. entertaining arcade. These were great revelations, but I can't honestly say that their lightning-fast nature made me enjoy them even more.
Twists and turns: Sixth sense. Photo: Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo
We live not only in the era of spoilers, but also in the era of the plot, and I suspect that this is why we get so angry when we find out something in advance. If people were more interested in ideas, nuances, and characters, then TV and movies would probably cater to such tastes rather than just feed the beast. Production companies have become especially nervous about things like this: Actors trying out for roles have to sign all sorts of insane non-disclosure agreements before they even get close to their dream role, which they probably won't even get. Paranoid movie franchises will even have multiple endings.
The spoiler problem makes life particularly difficult for critics. Sometimes directors are asked not to give anything away; The Russo brothers, for example, did this for 2019's Avengers: Endgame. Given the increasingly depressing beauty of film and television, in which franchises rely on story and little else, reviewers will find it increasingly difficult not to feel humbled. The point is that good criticism often relies on opening a story up for discussion, and for that you may have to go into detail.
I hope the LA Times isn't too upset about the reaction to her obituary. Reports of Logan Roy's death were not greatly exaggerated: it was a fact. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go and see The Godfather. Obviously there will be blood.
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