The Spoilerphobic Era

Have we reached peak spoiler aversion?

A while back, I listened to a podcast with Jennette McCurdy where she discussed her book, I’m Glad My Mom Died. At one point, she talked about learning her dad wasn’t her biological dad, and caught herself asking if she shouldn’t have said anything because it was a “spoiler” for the book.

This stood out to me because the entire interview was about the complicated ecosystem of promotional circuits and entertainment reporting (or is it just ‘content’ these days?) and how it requires you to commodify and objectify your personal experiences, over and over. In this context, the question of whether McCurdy discussing something from her life “spoiled” the book felt even more jarring. Somehow, if you write about your life, just talking about your experiences afterward can be considered “spoilers.” In this context, even the title of her book is a spoiler, isn’t it? Her mother died, and she was glad. Does that really say it all? Or is there more to the book? (There is.)

Doug Kenney, The National Lampoon, March 1971 — frequently cited as the first modern use of “spoiler.”

Following my spiral into the reaction video ecosystem on YouTube, I started noticing how intense spoiler aversion was in those spheres. You might think that’s natural: if the point is to watch a first time reaction, you don’t want them knowing any plot twists in advance.

But it’s gone far beyond essential plot points revealed ahead of time. Spoilers, these days, include opening credits, episode titles,¹ character names, knowledge of spin-offs, flash-forward footage or in-episode teasers (such as those used in Battlestar Galactica) previously on-montages, even “expectation spoilers” are a thing.

This invention of “expectation spoilers” sticks out. In any other context, this would simply be called hype. Because that’s what it is, and hyping up a movie or an episode or an album can, indeed, decrease your appreciation of it. But calling it a spoiler?

Not wanting audiences to be spoiled isn’t new. One of the earlier modern examples being Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1955 film, Les Diaboliques, which had an end slate urging viewers not to reveal the twist to their friends. Allegedly, this inspired Alfred Hitchcock, who has been cited as the ‘inventor’ of spoiler warnings.

End-slate of Les Diabolique, translated: “Don't be DIABOLICAL! Don't ruin the interest your friends could take in this film. Don't tell them what you saw. Thank you for them.”

There’s also the case of Agatha Christie’s play, The Mousetrap. Since its inaugural run in 1952, the play ends with the revealed killer urging the audience to, “keep the secret of whodunit locked in your heart.” If you go on Wikipedia, however, you can easily discover the answer to the mystery. Christie’s grandson, who was gifted the rights to the play when he was a child, has railed against Wikipedia for this. Even among Wikipedia contributors there was disagreement on whether spoilers should be included, with some claiming that audiences had entered into an “oral contract” when they were asked not to divulge the ending.

When I was doing research I found Richard Greene’s book Spoiler Alert!, a book on the philosophy of spoilers. Naturally, I was curious as to what someone who thought about this topic so deeply might have to say. There were some interesting parts, such as breaking down the difficulty of addressing what even counts as a spoiler, considering the vast array of types of narratives that exist and their context. But, ultimately, Greene determines that spoiling “leads to badness” which makes it fundamentally unethical. It violates autonomy, and it goes against the intended structure the creator has constructed. But what about when the creator wants the audience to know something, and it’s branded as spoilery?

In general, it’s fair to be critical of trailers giving away twists because most of the time we can’t guarantee that the filmmakers wanted that. But there are multiple cases wherein something considered a spoiler has intentionally been revealed as part of marketing.

This year, I saw a large amount of complaints about M. Night Shyamalan’s film Trap being spoiled by the trailer. Not only was this intentional, even the news of Josh Hartnett’s casting was itself a spoiler, with many headlines outright stating that he would be portraying a serial killer at a concert.

Another case where the trailer reveal was intended by the director is James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day. This is a movie with a twist many believe should be protected, but the twist was intentionally revealed in promotions. James Cameron told Empire Online, “I believed our potential audience would be more attracted to seeing how the most badass killing machine could become a hero than they would be to just another kill-fest in the same vein as the first film.”

This means the film is not necessarily structured so that you’re caught off guard by this reveal. It’s not a twist; it’s a premise. But premises are also considered spoilers, these days. It’s not just flash forwards that are criticized, I’ve even seen foreshadowing bemoaned as an unnecessary spoiler, as if it wasn’t an essential part of the storytelling.

Heck, we’ve even got the filmmakers themselves trying to shield participants from “spoilers” in a way that it affects the storytelling. Treating surprise as superior to narrative.

In some entertainment circles, even the participants can be “spoiled” for the story they will be portraying. It’s all about shock value, rather than narrative development.

That this type of spoiler aversion is so widespread in the age of content and trigger warnings is contradictory. The same people who would say not to watch BSG’s “teaser clips” would also make sure that viewers are sufficiently prepared for episodes dealing with sexual assault.

Coming from fandom spaces, this duality is very present in fan content. Historically, fan zines would reliably warn about slash (same sex pairings, because fandom was not as progressive as you might think), with the depiction of major/minor character deaths being another frequent warning, so readers wouldn’t be caught off-guard thinking the story they started would have a happy ending.

Since the move online, a proliferation of content warnings and tags have flourished, which seems to be a standard online approach. Tumblr infrastructure has normalized the use content warning tags because of the flat structure; you need to actively “blacklist” content you don’t want to be plastered on your feed unexpectedly, but this also requires communal adherence to the norms. This might include spoilers, but also epilepsy triggering content such as flashing imagery. I don’t have a problem with this. One of the earliest content warning tags I saw used was NSFW, recognizing that many users might use the site in public, at school or at work, and might not want their screen to be covered in unexpected explicit content.

But we can’t blame fandom or Tumblr for the prevalence of content warnings, the infamous Does The Dog Die² site is nearly 15 years old, and started making rounds in the mainstream world long before Tumblr even peaked.

I had never encountered a trigger warning actually attached to a piece of media³ until this year, when I watched Zoe Kravitz’ Blink Twice.

The existence of this trigger warning has been defended as something that wouldn’t spoil the story, but I disagree. Its advertising as a thriller made me expect some unsavoury topics, but the trigger warning made sure to specify the viewer would be shown “abuse of power,” which to me gave away the entire thing.

Allegedly, this warning was added because of the backlash surrounding the Blake Lively vehicle, It Ends With Us but the two films are nothing alike. It Ends With Us was marketed as a romance;⁴ Blink Twice was labelled as a thriller, which means what they warned about felt entirely expected, but the specifics neutered the story. If we already know who the bad guy is going in, surely that’s a spoiler? But like with Trap and T2, this could be intentional and hinge on a belief that the product itself is bigger than the plot twists, and I’m the spoilerphobe in this situation.

“Blind viewing” is more possible now than it was in the past.

We might see more hard-coded trigger warnings in shows and movies in the future. Heck, a Slate piece from 2013 speculated that it was time then to include trigger warnings. It was still the DVR era, and the writer hoped that, “some day in the future, DVRs will feature some kind of trigger-tagging mechanism.” DVRs have fallen out of favour, but instead perhaps streamers will incorporate warnings more frequently.

Whether this is a positive for storytelling and the consuming thereof remains to be seen. What concerns me mostly is the ahistoricism that seems to be tied to the intense modern spoiler aversion, which seems to hinge on the idea that we are more spoiled today than we used to be. Especially now that plot devices and narrative structures are considered spoilers, it’s almost like context in general is a spoiler.

1. To be fair, I found forum posts from 2004 where fans discussed considering episode titles to be spoilery.

2. It covers a lot more than just canine deaths these days.

3. Unless we want to consider ratings and genres warnings? Some people certainly do.

4. The discourse around the film reminded me of Derek Cianfrance’s 2010 film, Blue Valentine, which I remember being advertised as a romance, but I don’t recall any uproar at the false advertising there. Perhaps this is due to the target audience being different? Which might itself explain why spoiler aversion has gotten so bad: target audiences are all audiences. If you remember this differently, do let me know.