Spoiler (media)
A spoiler is a summary or description of a narrative (or part of a narrative) that relates plot elements not revealed early in the narrative itself. Moreover, because enjoyment of the plot sometimes depends solely on dramatic tension and suspense, this early revelation of plot elements can "spoil" the enjoyment that some consumers of the narrative would otherwise have experienced.
In recent years, spoilers have mostly appeared on specialist Internet sites and in newsgroup postings. In these cases, the spoilers are mostly directed at film endings. Usually the spoiling information is preceded by a warning, or the spoiler has to be highlighted before it can be visibly read on the Web page. But in recent years these warnings have been omitted, and some unwitting readers have had movies they were looking forward to watching spoiled. People who consciously look for spoilers of their favourite franchise are sometimes called spoiler-sluts, a term which suprinsingly enough is not derogatory.
People who reveal spoilers argue that:
- readers don't need to read the spoilers (even though most of them are obviously accidental)
- people should have seen the movie already (e.g. Citizen Kane, a movie that was released decades ago with a twist ending that has since become embedded in pop culture.)
- if a movie is not enjoyable anymore because of a spoiler, then it is not a good movie
And some still reveal spoilers just for sadistic pleasure of ruining a movie experience to someone.
On Usenet the common method for obscuring spoiler information is to precede it with many blank lines known as "spoiler space", traditionally enough to push the information on to the next screen of a 25-line terminal. A simple encipherment using ROT13 is also used in newsgroups to obscure spoilers, but is rarely used for this purpose elsewhere. But the widely accepted time period when spoilers can be left unmarked is two to four months.
Wikipedia encourages media articles to place a Wikipedia Spoiler Warning in an article before it reveals important plot details or endings. The Warning looks like this:
Examples of spoilers
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
Darth Vader's "secret" revealed to Luke is one of the most famous movie plot twists of all time. An IMDb poll on 10 November 2003[1] asked users to choose which one of a set of movie spoilers was too infamous to be considered a spoiler anymore; Vader's true identity was a clear winner, by a forty-percent margin.
After the three prequels have come out (clearly showing the origins and identity of Vader), this secret has been nullified.
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
A classic spoiler example occurred in 1999. Someone calling himself Mr. Spoilsport posted a message to the newsgroup alt.fan.starwars and spoiled the long awaited Star Wars film, The Phantom Menace. The post caused some subscribers to the Star Wars newsgroup to read the spoiler without having to open the article, since the spoiler was put in the subject field of the message.
This angered many alt.fan.starwars subscribers, since although they were fans of Star Wars, many had been waiting 20 years for the prequel, and running up to premiere of the film, they had been making a conscious effort not to read any spoilers. Although the original posts by Mr. Spoilsport have been deleted and wiped from the Internet by angry alt.fan.starwars moderators, many of the replies are still available here: [2].
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
The plot detail "Snape kills Dumbledore" along with a list of chapter titles were leaked on the Usenet group alt.fan.harrypotter as early as July 14, 2005 -- two days before the official release date. By July 15, the spoiler had traveled far and wide across the internet: so many YTMNDs were made about Dumbledore's death that the site's webmaster received a direct cease and desist letter from Scholastic's attorneys. A number of direct scans from the book were also leaked, with the spoiler highlighted to attract viewers' attention. This leakage enabled a number of depraved troublemakers to run around midnight release parties shouting the spoilers, as seen in http://pottercrash.ytmnd.com/ Tom Hanks Finds New Harry Potter Book is a popular example of these spoilers. It is a parody of Cast Away where Tom Hanks finds the 6th book in the series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and right afterward a plane flies by revealing said spoiler. In the month since the book's release, the spoiler has grown to become one of the most popular and widespread ever.
Final Fantasy VII
In the world of video games, the spoiler that Sephiroth kills Aeris is a popular spoiler, especially among online gaming communities such as GameFAQs and IGN. It is so widespread that even people who have never played the Final Fantasy series have heard of the spoiler.
Jeopardy!
In 2004, Ken Jennings was amassing record winnings on the TV game show "Jeopardy!" Immediately after the show where he lost was taped, several media reports and Internet newsgroups posted information about Jennings' loss (the information presumably by audience members who attended the taping). Production officials with "Jeopardy!" and Jennings himself repeatedly refused to divulge or verify information and rumors surrounding the loss until the actual show aired, but viewers had already been tipped.
Million Dollar Baby
In 2005 the spoiler controversy hit mainstream media when Million Dollar Baby was nominated for the Academy Award's Best Picture. In discussing the film, which was released in late 2004, newspapers, magazines, and television news routinely revealed that Hilary Swank's character becomes fully paralyzed and later dies when Clint Eastwood's character takes her off life support.
Psycho
The secret identity and name of the killer has become a classic in every sense of the word.
The Crying Game
That the leading female character is actually a cross-dressing man has often been cited in depictions of transvestism in media.
- In the movie Shallow Hal, Hal discusses with a friend how he is going to cope with Rosemary when he has discovered she is obese after being broken from his hypnotic state. They then cite the transvestite of The Crying Game as an example of a deceived love still ending happily.
The Usual Suspects
The movie is infamous for often being subjected to spoilers (mostly on the Internet), especially by telling the secret identity of "Keyser Sose".
Citizen Kane
The movie being claimed as the "best movie ever made" with a suspense story, the identity of "Rosebud" (which is a sled and not a person) has been a long-time favourite of spoiling.
- In a Peanuts strip, Lucy is watching the movie on TV, telling Linus she's never seen it before. Linus says he has seen it several times, then tells her that "Rosebud" is Kane's childhood sled. She sits there for a panel, staring at the TV, and then emits the time-honored Peanuts anguished cry: "ARRGH!"
- The Tiny Toons made a spoof of Citizen Kane, though they did not disguise the secret of Rosebud. It infuriated many viewers.
Monkey Island
At the end of The Curse of Monkey Island adventure game, Guybrush Threepwood asks LeChuck what is the secret of Monkey Island, and he tries to guess by suggesting the "secrets" of classic movies (although they are unnamed): Citizen Kane, Soylent Green, The Crying Game, Old Yeller and Chinatown.
Planet of the Apes (1963 film)
The final scene of the broken Statue of Liberty lying on a beach on the ape planet, therefore showing it is planet Earth, has been endlessly spoofed and referred. On some video and DVD editions, the box cover even shows this same image, which could be considered as spoiling by the very editors.
Fight Club
The fact that Tyler Durden and the narrator are one and the same is hinted here and there in the movie but only revealed at the end, thus making it a typical spoiler.
Soylent Green
The sentence "Soylent Green is people!" has become a classic and has been ranked in the top movie quotes in the century.
Generally speaking
In most detective movies, telling the identity of the culprit before the climax is a spoiler.
See also
External links
- http://www.amuseyourself.com/moviespoilers/index.html
- http://www.spoilsport.info
- http://moviepooper.com
- http://www.spoileverything.com/ - A wiki collection of spoilers for movies, television shows, books, and video games.
- http://www.moviecheat.com
- What now-infamous spoiler shouldn´t be considered a spoiler anymore? (IMDb Poll)
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