Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about plots, and spoilers thereof… Be warned: This post may contain mild/vague spoilers of things that have been around for many years. Nothing huge. Anyway, continuing…
So I’m taking this unfortunate film class that is regrettably made up mostly of film MA students. I’m sorry to offend you if you happen to be a film MA students, but this class has pretty much prejudiced me against anyone academically interested in film forever, even though it’s the fourth film class I’ve taken in college. Obviously, I’ve been dutifully chronicling my feelings on the subject…
But I digress.
A couple weeks ago, in that wonderful ( 
) class, we were talking about whether we preferred to do the readings before or after watching the movies. I was saying how I prefer reading after the movie, because that way I don’t accidentally read any spoilers. And this grad student ( 
) replied that she didn’t think that plot details were important to the experience of viewing a film.
The second event that got me thinking about plot and spoilers thereof was my first reading of Ender’s Game, which I finished on Wednesday. Never having heard anything at all about the book’s storyline, the twist ending was like an awesome slap in the face–I was totally shocked, and it took the book from good to great. The same thing happened when I watched Dr. Horrible–I was mildly pleased by it until the end, which hit me like a ton of bricks because I wasn’t expecting it. 
As you must know if you’ve ever even so much as glanced at this blog before, I’m kind of obsessed with Harry Potter, and I love Buffy. But my enjoyment of both of those fantastic, amazing series were slightly dampened by spoilers.
Of course, just hearing that “someone was going to die” in any given HP book didn’t ruin it in the slightest, but when those “leaks” did come out before books were released, I would end up reading the books with a little nagging feeling in the back of my mind, just waiting for someone to die. With Buffy it was a little more extreme, because I kept accidentally (because of my own stupidity, of course) seeing small spoilers online.
And that’s not even starting on the huge Final Fantasy VII spoiler that screwed with my youthful gaming experience.
Anyway, every time (something happens that I already knew/suspected), I feel like something was missing: the SLAP that I talked about before.
Reading/watching/consuming a lot of plot-heavy things has reintroduced me to the importance of consuming something the way it would have originally been consumed–without knowing anything about it beforehand. And having a really GREAT experience of reading something like some sort of culture-virgin (a la my reading of Ender’s Game), it just reinforces my regret about knowing things about other books/movies/games/etc.
So basically, I totally disagree with the obnoxious film student in my obnoxious class. Plot is important. And knowledge of the plot in advance can, if extreme enough, ruin the experience altogether. I guess that’s why they call them “spoilers”…
Check it out:
I’m only going to have class two days per week, which is awesome, so I’ll be able to work at Book Culture the other days. I anticipate that it will be a lot of fun.
