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simifilm's review
2.0
While the beginning where Greene reconstructs how the modern spoiler – or rather the fear of spoilers – came into being is quite ok, there are several things fundamentally wrong with everything that comes afterwards.
Ultimately, it boils down to Greene's belief that the ideal situation for reading a novel or watching a movie is, when you know nothing about its content. But this is simply wrong. Not the least because it very obviously completely contradicts how we actually consume fiction. In most cases, we choose carefully what we read or watch because we are looking for something which fits our taste. Our media consumption does not happen in a vacuum, if it did we simply would be unable to understand it. We always rely on all kinds of preexisting knowledge.
Greene's implicit assumption that a so to speak virginal mind is the best condition for enjoying fiction contradicts most accepted models how we actually process media. When it comes to popular entertainment you could even argue that it is all about providing people with stuff they already know to some degree.
There is, quite typically for this debate, an overemphasis of plot and little understanding that movies (and, of course, also literature) are much more than plot. Suspense and excitement do very often not depend on plot twists but much more on staging, timing, music, and, of course, acting. As Greene himself says: PSYCHO remains a great movie even if you know the twist at the end, and Greene also still enjoys MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS although he has already seen it countless times. It's telling that although Greene mentions this explicitly, he does not seem to realise that the enjoyment of fiction only partly relies on discovering an unknown plot.
It's also interesting that Greene himself gives the example of his philosophy class where less than half of the students were not upset about spoilers as an illustration that spoilers are universally disapproved of (there's some strange math going on here. Greene first states that about 25-35 out of 70 students report that they have already been extremely upset by spoilers. This then later magically turns into "more than half").
Ultimately, it boils down to Greene's belief that the ideal situation for reading a novel or watching a movie is, when you know nothing about its content. But this is simply wrong. Not the least because it very obviously completely contradicts how we actually consume fiction. In most cases, we choose carefully what we read or watch because we are looking for something which fits our taste. Our media consumption does not happen in a vacuum, if it did we simply would be unable to understand it. We always rely on all kinds of preexisting knowledge.
Greene's implicit assumption that a so to speak virginal mind is the best condition for enjoying fiction contradicts most accepted models how we actually process media. When it comes to popular entertainment you could even argue that it is all about providing people with stuff they already know to some degree.
There is, quite typically for this debate, an overemphasis of plot and little understanding that movies (and, of course, also literature) are much more than plot. Suspense and excitement do very often not depend on plot twists but much more on staging, timing, music, and, of course, acting. As Greene himself says: PSYCHO remains a great movie even if you know the twist at the end, and Greene also still enjoys MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS although he has already seen it countless times. It's telling that although Greene mentions this explicitly, he does not seem to realise that the enjoyment of fiction only partly relies on discovering an unknown plot.
It's also interesting that Greene himself gives the example of his philosophy class where less than half of the students were not upset about spoilers as an illustration that spoilers are universally disapproved of (there's some strange math going on here. Greene first states that about 25-35 out of 70 students report that they have already been extremely upset by spoilers. This then later magically turns into "more than half").
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