But Enough About Me!

Two things recently have caused me to contemplate yet again the vexed question of spoilers.

One was an online discussion that took place long enough ago that I’m not going to link to it. The other was watching the Taye Diggs’ produced-and-starred-in miniseries DAY BREAK.

I don't like spoilers.

I say that not to take a belligerent stance. I know there are people who don’t mind spoilers and that seems to me as valid a stance as mine; it’s just a different stance. So when I say I don’t like spoilers, I don’t mean that I have a moral objection to spoilers or that I think no review or critical essay should include spoilers out of respect for delicate sensibilities like my own or that people who put spoilers in their reviews are horrible thoughtless wankers, I just mean that I PERSONALLY don’t like spoilers and I avoid them.


Here’s why I personally don’t like spoilers. It matters for ME ONLY, and is not meant to reflect badly on sensibilities different from my own.

When I experience a work for the first time, I want to experience it with as few preconceived notions as possible. I say that because I do bring in preconceived notions to every fictional work I read or view. I can’t help myself. I just do.

The more preconceptions I haul in, the less likely I can interact with the work in the way I best like: that is, in which I am discovering what the work is about and how I am reacting to what I am discovering the work is about. Much of the pleasure for me is not “surprise,” but rather “getting to know” the piece. I prefer to do that unmediated by outside opinion and influence beyond what I already bring because of the cultural baggage, and knowledge, I drag along as part of my daily existence. I’m also an emotional reader and viewer; the experience of my emotional interaction with the story is a great part of the enjoyment for me. I should note here that I can have an emotional interaction with intellectual content as well as characterization and plot and landscape.

I have discovered that I can increase my reading and viewing enjoyment by deliberately going in with as little knowledge of a specific work as possible. Oddly, this enhances the experience. It’s as if the less I know about the work, the more I can enjoy it for what it is to me because I am less likely to walk into it tainted by expectations.

Alas, I am obliged to add here, lest someone believe otherwise, that by this I do not mean I value ignorance and think ignorance makes books and films better. I value being well read and well educated and make myself as well read and educated as possible, so when I say that I go into a work “knowing as little as possible” I don’t mean in the larger sense of my general attempts to be knowledgable about the world and current events.

I will also tack on a brief paragraph to note that I am not an uncritical, I-just-go-in-with-low-expectations viewer and reader. Just ask my children how much they like to go see a film with me. When the lights come up, they look at me and say, “Well, Mom?” and brace themselves for the usual torrential criticism of the writing, characterization (or lack thereof), and stupid plot idiocies. I shall always fondly recall their befuddled expressions after the second X-Men film, in which they asked, and I said, “Gosh! I enjoyed that!” Please do not ask me what I thought of the third X-Men film as to even think of that abomination still makes my blood to boil.

DAY BREAK is a series starring Taye Diggs and an unusually diverse cast (for mainstream Hollywood) including three major female characters. He plays a cop in LA, but the story has a spec-fic element. I didn’t even know that much when Spouse and I watched the first episode. What I knew was that it starred Taye Diggs, and I’m sorry to have to tell you that the reason I stumbled across it at all was that I was wasting time online one day “fantasy casting” Cold Magic by checking out handsome black male actors to see if any of them had the kind of look I have in my head for Andevai.

As we watched the show (13 episodes that tell a complete story), I reflected how much I was enjoying my dearth of expectations. Nothing got in the way between me and my idiosyncratic experience of the show. Each night as we watched another episode or two via Netflix, Spouse and I speculated over possible directions that the story might take characters and plots, a pleasant diversion we could not have enjoyed had we known the story in advance. Indeed, I think the shows I’ve most enjoyed in the last few years have been the ones I’ve known the least about when I started watching them, including the iconic and superb The Wire (HBO, 5 seasons). I’m thrilled I knew as little as I did about the The Wire when we watched it--all via Netflix--and that I avoided reading about seasons we hadn’t yet seen because I didn’t want to read spoilers.

Let me be blunt. In some conversations about spoilers I sometimes sense a kind of condescension from people who are sure that anyone who objects to spoilers is a lesser sort of reader compared to, oh, them.

I just don’t see the utility of making a hierarchy out of ways in which people read.

Because not only is creating such a hierarchy a suspect exercise, it also closes off the possibility that people may have more than one facet, more than one set of tools, more than one strategy and approach. In other words, I don’t want to be told that I OUGHT NOT be the kind of reader/viewer who prefers no spoilers before reading or viewing a work.

Likewise, at times I sense an implied or stated idea that if “you” don’t like spoilers, then you must also by definition not ever want to engage critically with anything you read or view. Is it really so difficult to imagine that someone might dislike spoilers but like critical essays? My personal dislike of spoilers does not mean I ALSO do not like critical essays. I like them just fine (and I believe that critical essays by definition will and indeed must contain spoilers, in contrast to reviews which may or may not contain spoilers depending on how much the reviewer described the plot)

However, I don’t want to read critical essays until I’ve also read/viewed the work in question (or in those cases where I am pretty sure I am never going to read the work in question). Indeed, I get a great deal of enjoyment out of seeking out critical engagement with works I’ve particularly liked because it’s not only interesting and occasionally enlightening but it also creates a re-engagement with the work through analyzing and examining it, akin to re-watching or re-reading. In fact, I wish there was more critical engagement in the sff field and that it ranged farther afield: that is, I wish what critical essays there are would not roll over the same set of works and authors that get considered multiple times while rafts of other works and authors remain ignored.

At the same time, I understand that people who don’t mind spoilers can get frustrated by militant anti-spoiler readers and comments. Spoilerphilics don’t want to get scolded or accused of being snobs or killjoys. Why should they want that? They’re reading and viewing in a way that works for them. As far as I can tell, some people really want to know more about a work before they invest time and/or money in reading or viewing it, or they want to make sure the work will not contain triggering plot elements that they have good reason to prefer to avoid, or they just don’t care, or some other of many possible reasons and ways of reading and viewing.

As for DAY BREAK, both Spouse and I really enjoyed it, so that would constitute a two thumbs up. With no spoilers.

A few days ago I posted a query to You All asking for suggestions for a reader, turning 12, who would like something to read as she finishes the Twilight series. I noted that I had some specific requests, such as no graphic sex or strong violence and no deeply Fraught issues that I personally would consider more appropriate for an older teen reader.

cristalia commented: N.B., my inherent bias in this situation is a concern that anything the reader considers too young for her or an effort to "tone down" her reading will be seen as talking down and interference, and it'll never get read.

I think this is a useful point.

What do we consider age appropriate, and how do we reach those conclusions?

I was a parent who did not take my young children to PG-13 films until they were, well, 12 or so. I monitored reading content when they were in elementary school. Once they were in middle school (grades 6 - 8, ages 11- 14 or thereabouts), I stayed aware of what they were reading. I bought a lot of books for my children (they are all college age now, and all remain readers) and at that tween age I stayed away from what I will call deeply fraught content. It was rare for them to bring home something I didn't care for--I'm not sure I can even think of an example--and if they ever did I likely would have said much what my father said to me when I was 14 and asked if I should read "The Godfather." He said, "you can certainly read it if you want; I don't think it's a very good book." (I never read it.) If I really disapproved of the content of a book, I felt free to explain what I objected to. By the time they were 16, I figured they (like me in my own time) would be completely independent in what they chose to read and view--that was my goal as a prent, and I think I can safely say that it's one I achieved.

I was not a particularly precocious reader (I was not one of those children who read through the entire library by age 8; I was still reading animal stories in 7th grade), nor were my children in that particular sense, but we are all readers. And we think about what we read.

Ultimately, when I consider age appropriateness, I take into consideration two things:

1) there are some subjects and/or levels of graphic-ness, some content, that I do think is not appropriate for younger children or tweens (although I think precocious tween readers may well read things and miss entirely certain kinds of content because they don't know how to process it yet)

2) my goal as a parent, in this case, was to instill a love for reading in my children as well as the idea that you, as the reader, could think about what you were reading in terms of whether you liked it or didn't, and why.

But I think there are people who, as children, felt their reading was interfered with, and not in a positive way.

So, how do you approach the issue of age appropriate reading (and viewing, if you will)?