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I remember once on another board a long time ago, way back in the day, I had mentioned something along the lines of "if you love gratuitous Santa-on-Santa violence, then you'll love Reindeer Games!" People were really pissed. For some reason I haven't forgotten that.
Concerning the link to the study that Schwartz linked last month...
To my friend and mentor, this is nothing new for a good storyteller:
http://invisibleinkblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/tell-em-what-youre-gonna-tell-em.html
But still, I think this really only solidifies my desire to have the storyteller be the one the 'spoil' the story for me, rather than someone else beating them to the punch.
I think I'm the opposite - I try to avoid movie spoilers, where possible, but having plot points for tv series revealed doesn't really bother me. Maybe I'm just more used to it, I don't know.
Case in point - I saw One Day with a friend last week, and knowing how it was going to pan out made it quite difficult to get invovled in the story.
Concerning the link to the study that Schwartz linked last month...
To my friend and mentor, this is nothing new for a good storyteller:
http://invisibleinkblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/tell-em-what-youre-gonna-tell-em.html
But still, I think this really only solidifies my desire to have the storyteller be the one the 'spoil' the story for me, rather than someone else beating them to the punch.
Somehow I missed this when I posted, but yeah, my reaction to that is "of course, but what does that have to do with spoilers?" It's not a spoiler if the story tells you what's going to happen in advance.
Well, my friend's point is that storytellers have known the value of 'spoiling' the story to the audience for a loooong time. So while we may take some issue with the findings of that study you found, he's just saying that it makes sense. If anything, what we're talking about isn't really related to what the study found.
And maybe I'm off-base, but just how comparable are the experiences of having a film spoiled and having a short story (which the study used) spoiled? I'd be interested in seeing this study done with films instead of literature. The link you shared does suggest that the reason some of the subjects in the study liked having the short stories spoiled was because it made the text more engaging. You could read that as the readers finding the journey more enriching... OR it suggests that some people don't like all that 'pointless' reading without already knowing where it's all going.
This also reminds me of the thread in which we talked about films that open with a scene from a pivotal moment in the movie and then start from the beginning again (Mission Impossible 3). Good storytelling? Or cheap trick?
This also reminds me of the thread in which we talked about films that open with a scene from a pivotal moment in the movie and then start from the beginning again (Mission Impossible 3). Good storytelling? Or cheap trick?
I would say 99 percent of the time, cheap trick. It almost never serves the narrative or replay value to structure a story like this. This is part of the reason that I can't ever really fully embrace Damages (although I do really enjoy the series). It's just so gimmicky. There's got to be a better way. Some narratives do it incredibly well. Pulp Fiction, for instance. But MI:3 and other films of that nature use it as a device and it's lame IMO.
Was not surprised in Contagion when someone died, since it was in all the trailers. Was, however, surprised when someone else bit it.
Soderbergh himself went around spoiling the first death in interviews, so maybe it was meant as a decoy. You know this person's going to die; what you don't know is who else might.
Well, my friend's point is that storytellers have known the value of 'spoiling' the story to the audience for a loooong time. So while we may take some issue with the findings of that study you found, he's just saying that it makes sense. If anything, what we're talking about isn't really related to what the study found.
And maybe I'm off-base, but just how comparable are the experiences of having a film spoiled and having a short story (which the study used) spoiled? I'd be interested in seeing this study done with films instead of literature. The link you shared does suggest that the reason some of the subjects in the study liked having the short stories spoiled was because it made the text more engaging. You could read that as the readers finding the journey more enriching... OR it suggests that some people don't like all that 'pointless' reading without already knowing where it's all going.
The first explanation for the study that occurred to me was that 1) the people only have a chance to read it once, and 2) they know they're being evaluated. That could very easily breed a self-consciousness about looking like you are stupid and didn't "get" the story to those doing the testing, which knowing more going in would alleviate. Whereas if you are worried about that (even on a subconscious level) and the material takes you by surprise near the end, it could make you feel a bit flustered and perhaps lead to a more antagonistic relation with the text. Looking at the article about the study, it looks like the researchers considered this too:
“So it could be,” said Leavitt, a psychology doctoral student at UC San Diego, “that once you know how it turns out, it’s cognitively easier – you’re more comfortable processing the information – and can focus on a deeper understanding of the story.”
The choice of short stories or novellas for this study is an interesting and potentially significant one. I wonder what would change if they did other versions of this study. If given more than one sitting to read a longer work, or a week to process it before answering the survey, would the decrease in pressure (passive though it may be) change the results? Is there a certain length at which people stop wanting to know the end in advance and start thinking "I already know what happens, what's the point of reading 700 pages to get there?" Would we see a difference if it were movies being spoiled? If so, would that mean that people value surprise to a greater degree in cinema, or that people are more easily intimidated by the written word than moving pictures? Am I simply just reaching to justify having an opinion the study repudiates? I have my suspicion s about all of these things.
I would say 99 percent of the time, cheap trick. It almost never serves the narrative or replay value to structure a story like this. This is part of the reason that I can't ever really fully embrace Damages (although I do really enjoy the series). It's just so gimmicky. There's got to be a better way. Some narratives do it incredibly well. Pulp Fiction, for instance. But MI:3 and other films of that nature use it as a device and it's lame IMO.
Pulp Fiction is a bad example, however, because while it jumps around in time, the opening doesn't give away anything about the later sequence. The opening is entirely Honeybunny and Ringo, who do not appear at all throughout the movie until their scene overlaps with Jules and Vincent's, and the movie doesn't tip its hand about that overlap until maybe a minute before they start interacting, at which point we're seeing a portion of the scene we didn't before. Similarly with
Vincent's death
, the movie loops back in time afterward, but the plot of the Mr. Wolf and diner interludes are unaffected by what we know comes later.
These days I do everything in my power to avoid spoilers. I wasn't always this way, but at this point in my life I prefer to just go into everything with as clean a slate as possible. Not always an easy task, but if I stay away from trailers*, spoiler heavy reviews and POST RELEASE discussions, it seems like it shouldn't be a Herculean task to rent a movie without being entirely spoiled. Unfortunately my new greatest enemy, as I've discovered, is DVD BOX ART and DVD MOTION MENUS
With nose dive in quality that DVDs have taken over the past few years, I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise that simple elegant menus (Like GLADIATOR ETC) are for the most part a thing of the past. The attitude now seems to be that the footage held back for the trailers by the marketing people, the stuff the studio didn't want getting out because it would spoil the 'money shots' and give away key imagery, is fair game for motion menus. The menus play like a highlight reel of all the best shots in a film.. which is great if you've already seen the movie, but not so much if you'd skipped the theatrical release in order to wait for the rental. Films like TRUE GRIT have recently had elements of their climax spoiled for me because of motion menus, in that film's case it was Rooster's horse charge. By watching the menu (which almost can't be avoided), I knew that there would be a moment where Bridges had a valiant charge against enemies on horseback across a sunny field. When the movie got around to setting up those events, the ultimate outcome (what Bridges would do in that situation) had been given away before I'd even had the chance to press play
On to the BOX ART...
This can be less of an issue, but it's still aggravating. Here is an example: I rented X-MEN FIRST CLASS, and right on the back was a postage stamp sized image of a submarine being lifted out of the water on a sunny day. This spoiled one of the central character moments in the film, whether or not Fassbender would be able to lift that submarine and save the day when the time came for it. When the movie got to Cuba, the sunny setting and presence of the sub told me that Fassbender was about to lift it, and so much of the entire third act of the film was robbed of some of the tension it was entitled to
*I don't watch TV so TV spots are thankfully not an issue
Pulp Fiction is a bad example, however, because while it jumps around in time, the opening doesn't give away anything about the later sequence. The opening is entirely Honeybunny and Ringo, who do not appear at all throughout the movie until their scene overlaps with Jules and Vincent's, and the movie doesn't tip its hand about that overlap until maybe a minute before they start interacting, at which point we're seeing a portion of the scene we didn't before. Similarly with
Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show)Vincent's death
, the movie loops back in time afterward, but the plot of the Mr. Wolf and diner interludes are unaffected by what we know comes later.
Maybe I shouldn't have said "bad example", as the reasons I cite could easily be exactly why Blacky says Pulp Fiction works where others don't. It's an impressive bit of structural fuckery when you think about it; the scene is the beginning (in that it's the first thing we see) and the end (in that the final sequence loops back around to it), although it actually falls about a third of the way in, chronologically.
I haven't seen Damages, but Breaking Bad is excellent at constructing flash-forward openings that tease violent outcomes that the episode will then build towards. They succeed in doing the job Nooj's link talks about, which is to tell the audience that even if there are some slow moments, this story is going somewhere ominous and eventful, but they are so impressionistic and vague that you don't give away much of anything.
Yeah, Pulp Fiction is simply a very different example from that of something like MI3. MI3, even by the admission of its makers, uses the 'spoiler' intro as an afterthought. It wasn't originally part of the screenplay. Just an intense way to get the movie going before the dull material at Cruise/Monaghan's engagement party.
Once you're actually watching a film, exposition of events from later in the narrative isn't technically a 'spoiler', is it? This discussion of structure may be a derail, but it's an interesting one.
So yeah. A lot of the time, "but before we continue, I need to go back and show you this part of the story" is just a way of starting a film with a 'grabber', and it's usually done in the editing room. Out of Sight wasn't scripted non-sequentially, and I doubt that Iron Man was either.
Interesting that you bring that up, because that study with the short stories sometimes incorporated the 'spoiler' into its opening text. SHORT STORY: Special Edition!!!
So what was the method here? I assume to keep this all scientific, the readers weren't made aware of the fact that the spoilers were added to what they were reading. Who did they get to write these additions?!
Once you're actually watching a film, exposition of events from later in the narrative isn't technically a 'spoiler', is it? This discussion of structure may be a derail, but it's an interesting one.
It isn't a spoiler, but it touches on the issue that recurs in spoiler discussions that knowing the end doesn't ruin the story (to which I reiterate that it doesn't have to ruin things entirely to be a bad thing). Opening with a flash-forward can be an effective technique, but it also, as Nooj was getting at, be a crutch to prop up a first act that is weak or boring. None of that applies to Pulp Fiction, though, which is its own weird little beast and only vaguely a flash-forward anyway.
