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The 'plot important' stuff talked about in hushed tones is usually the interesting parts of a work. Which is why spoiler-free show/movie discussion is usually so totally boring that it's never worth reading. Like, try describing anything without describing its most interesting properties. Does that work? I think being non-spoiled is for people who specifically enjoy stories as plot-boxes designed to surprise you in the most straightforward way possible, which isn't an approach I've ever seen to be productive or fulfilling. It is for people who want to 'turn their brains off', and think in very simple terms, about how surprising it was when Jimmy got killed suddenly, or how scary dying would be. Talking about spoilers also engenders a cultish, in-groupy mentality. It makes you feel like you have some unvarnished piece of truth, because you've seen all of a thing and know what happens, and not everyone does. Inevitably, the actual conversations the 'spoiled' have about the show are boring as poo poo, even more than the spoiler-free stuff. The work's artistic merit or the ideas it communicates are rendered totally vestigial to the act of knowing who dies in what episode, or whatever. People love to talk about the part in Game of Thrones where you see? You see how special it makes you feel to highlight the spoilered text and feel like you're in-the-know? It's almost visceral satisfaction. From selecting blacked-out text. The spoilers have you. For example we could describe a painting and what it communicates, but there's a certain enjoyment to be had in talking around it, trying to drum up interest in looking at it and what it might contain. It's like an ad-campaign. Suddenly, you're not really appreciating art or performing reading, but part of the experience of having seen an image. No literacy required.
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Jul 28, 2015 03:19
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Terrorist Fistbump posted:Spoilers as a concept died for me last year when I watched The Sopranos with dozens of scenes, including the final scene, "spoiled" by YouTube. Not a single one ruined my enjoyment of the show. In a couple of cases, I even appreciated knowing what happened so I could pay more attention to how the scene played out.
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Jul 28, 2015 03:33
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:You're seriously undervaluing the experiential / participatory side of fiction because, by your own admission, you don't get it. I'm sympathetic to a degree because it's not really my preferred mode either, but it's not a barrier to narrative literacy and it's not any more "cultish" than the set of shared assumptions you need to talk about stories in terms of ideology or technique. You may wish to think critically about what you've written here, and how it proves my point. It's a rant about how I've failed to 'fully understand' the 'experience' of being uncertain about the future...as part of a group with others. If someone talks about the problems with Scientology do you tell them they're undervaluing the participatory side of religion? I said I don't get it because I don't see the point in it, and you haven't done anything to demonstrate what the point may be beyond vague fantasies of being 'immersed' in a made-up story and a group that feels like they're in on something. Which was exactly what I described. By the way, 'my immersion' is a joke because immersion shouldn't be the priority at all, since you cannot immerse yourself in a film or show. There is nothing beneath the screen. It's the same as the 'muh x' joke: The hypothetical person you're paraphrasing is complaining about something unimportant in the face of a larger issue. When people talk about immersion they're talking about how 'natural' or 'real' the story feels to them. Things that 'break immersion' are things that 'cannot', or 'should not', happen, as they see it. They are things the person's ideology views as 'unnatural', or don't make sense in their little mind-world. People like to feel 'immersed' not because they want to feel uncertainty in a story's path, but because they want a fictional world that behaves exactly as they expect it to because the show has a complementary ideology. Hence the 'immersiveness' of certain video games - people don't talk games in terms of how realistic they are but in terms of how much the world 'makes sense' to the player. Immersion is broken specifically when the rules change or have exceptions - even though it is still part of the game when skyrim characters bug out and stare at you or the NPCs ragdoll to death in the elevators in Chaos Theory, the illusion of a continuous world where you understand what is happening breaks down. So immersiveness is the specific fantasy of a box with transparent parameters - things can happen, and even be surprising, but only a certain way. The instant this box and the assumptions that make it up are challenged, then you can no longer be comfortable. In real life, since so many things are uncertain, no-one (sane) ever talks about how immersed they are in the real world. Because, frankly, we aren't.
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Jul 28, 2015 11:59
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:No, but if someone uses Scientology as an example of what's wrong with all religion, then I might be concerned with how facile that is... even though I'm an atheist. That's where I'm coming from. Immersion is impossible, but a sense of immersion is achieved and violated regardless. This really isn't hard. We are not immersed in reality.
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Jul 28, 2015 17:14
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There's a massive difference between feeling a certain way and actually being it. One isn't real. If it tastes like butter, it might not be butter.
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Jul 28, 2015 17:50
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:What's the difference between feeling sad and being sad? They are both describing the same thing - there is a difference between emotions and 'immersion', a wholly abstract sense that is never actually achieved. With drugs, you can be made to feel 'like' your skin is made of clay.
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Jul 28, 2015 19:54
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Being immersed and feeling immersed aren't the same thing. One of them is impossible.
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Jul 28, 2015 20:38
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:"Experiencing something as if it were real, to a limited or partial degree" Exactly. It feels real but is not. Being immersed and feeling immersed aren't the same thing. One of them is impossible.
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Jul 28, 2015 21:01
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:I have been using "immersion," from the start, to describe the feeling. But feeling immersed and being immersed are different things, and one of them is impossible. There is nothing beneath the screen.
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Jul 28, 2015 23:29
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Fictional Films aren't documentaries about events that happened in a fictional Universe, because the telling is indistinguishable from the thing being told. Even documentaries are partially fictional, in that they are a product of a specific perspective. A cut happens; time is distorted. Information is given to you by the execution of the plot, shaping it and your reaction. The sense of immersion is illusory, because there is nothing to be immersed in. It is a dream of the story, but without the part where it is told a specific way. There's a fairly large correlation between people who don't like certain films (prometheus, man of steel, the SW PT) while only rigidly talking about them in terms of plot, and an unwillingness (or inability) to read the images in the films. In much the same way, books are more fun when you can read the words.
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Jul 28, 2015 23:57
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Hat Thoughts posted:I don't know about this one bud If that's all you can talk about in the visuals of a film, of course you're not going to enjoy it. I remember not liking lots of films and shows back when I couldn't see these things either. I expected to be immersed by the work, instead of making the conscious choice to engage with it.
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Jul 29, 2015 00:13
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I don't think it's possible to innately understand a film - cinema is more of a language of its own that requires a specific, and learnable, approach to appreciate. Much like books. Reading is apparently a chore for some people, and spoilers, well, spoil the experience. Which implies a person will spend hours reading something and only take it from it things like 'shrek died'. I enjoy things more knowing 'what happens' in advance, since that's the least important part. Heart of Darkness is the best book ever not because of its plot but because even the descriptions of the lighting in the boat at the beginning make a point about human nature. On a basic level, a piece of art is paradigm and syntagm at once.
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Jul 29, 2015 07:28
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A Wizard of Goatse posted:what the forum post took from you was actually nothing at all. Even better - what the lovely forum post took from you was the very fantasy that the experience you desired was worth having. Spoilerposting is christlike. Speaking of which, Jesus dies.
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Jul 29, 2015 19:17
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Pascallion posted:-Watching Sorcerer only knowing that it was the director's movie after Excorcist (not even knowing the premise) Have I got a spoiler for you! 
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Aug 23, 2015 17:58
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Knowing that something exists in a show that could be considered spoilers is a huge selling point. People talking in hushed tones about 'that part' and seeing blacked out text all secretive-like is probably what made me see Breaking Bad. Which was rad. It's also why I saw Hannibal though. So you win some, you lose some
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Sep 10, 2015 01:08
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I didn't like it. It seemed really heavy-handed and the plot threads never came together in a satisfying way. I feel like I somehow missed half of the show while watching it.
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Sep 11, 2015 11:55
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Based on the otherwise great reaction to the show the problem is probably Me. I spoiled myself on season 3 but even the stuff in that doesn't really make me want to watch another 13 hours of it.
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Sep 12, 2015 13:41
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In the real world, people are entitled to their opinions, but some opinions are wrong. Just because spoilers matter to you doesn't meant they actually matter. You can get really caremad about a lot of stupid poo poo on planet Earth. Sometimes it is limiting to do so. The idea that foreknowledge of any piece of (or even all of) a plot can ruin a film, is wrong - and if it ruins a film 'for you', that's actually an admission of failure.
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Jan 10, 2016 19:06
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zandert33 posted:I think it's a bit rude to try to push it upon others. I simply think it is wrong to worry about attaining some fantastical 'ideal viewing experience'. I have no intention of stopping you from worrying about this. You are welcome to continue doing so.
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Jan 10, 2016 20:44
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zandert33 posted:And this is why I think you're rude. Who cares? What is The Truth? Now here's a spoiler: The truth cannot be attained by ballbagging about the ideal viewing conditions, ideal knowledge/lack of it, etc - knowing what happens in advance does not alter a film's themes, or storytelling ability.
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Jan 10, 2016 22:53
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If the brief moment of a surprised 'oh, something unexpected happened' is the only thing keeping you going, you have lovely taste. If the film is more engrossing than that, it doesn't really need the moments of surprise. I was spoiled on what happens in Force Awakens, but that actually made it easier to look at the emotional turmoil the characters were going through as they made those choices. I didn't get to have a 'first time' experience where the plot is all new and everything surprises me, but as a human that consumes media I wasn't really going to be surprised anyway. To paraphrase Dan Harmon, humans have become like little render farms who can guess your twist many episodes before they even get set up in the story. The onus is now to make something that's good even if you know what's going to happen. This also means that, inherently, nothing is unspoiled any more. We're too well-equipped for that to really be possible. The study's basic point is that there's more to storytelling than the literal plot, and knowing it in advance can actually be a boon to further grasping the themes or understanding the narrative of a piece of art. If you looked at the study and your response was 'hur dur, it was short stories and not movies so everything it shows us about how humans react to storytelling is completely meaningless!' you are wrong and will pay for your crimes
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Jan 11, 2016 15:52
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Kajeesus posted:Again, have you literally never been surprised by any piece of media? Have you never had a reaction stronger than "oh, I guess that happened? It's not called 'I hereby claim I have never been surprised.' Of course I've enjoyed being surprised by things, but this experience is not so utterly important that I expect all discussion to curb itself around me. This is how adults function. Darko posted:The argument is: "spoiling key moments in films can take away an entire viewing experience from that person that can never be attained again because foreknowledge can alter the emotional impact of the narrative." I haven't changed it to 'it ruins the entire movie'. While we're throwing logical fallacies around for the sake of sounding smart, nice strawman bro. I made the statement that, if it does, you're an idiot, but if it doesn't, then why do you give such a massive poo poo about it? Hbomberguy fucked around with this message at 17:24 on Jan 11, 2016 |
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Jan 11, 2016 17:15
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Bear in mind, I don't go out of my way to spoil people. I just don't go out of my way to avoid spoilers, and actually read them most of the time because I don't think they matter. A person can think something is dumb (ie, caring about spoilers) and let them do it regardless. I'm not going to go yell 'snape kills dumbledore' at people, but I knew this happened before I read the book, and all it did was give me the space to appreciate the story and the characters in a way I can normally only do properly when I read things a second time. In a sense, I think spoilers are good. I forget the study but people who read the synopsis of a book before actually reading it tend to enjoy it better because they can put the base plot aside and see the other stuff. Heart of Darkness, the best book ever written and I will kill you if you think otherwise, was spoiled for me simply by nature of being the basis for so many other cool things, long before I actually read it, and it remains wonderful. The reason people appreciate things like Shakespeare and other early literature is because we already know the conclusion, and can therefore explore the point of the text in greater detail without worrying if everyone's up to speed on what happens in Romeo and Juliet. The only way to really reach this level with modern texts is to have specific spoiler-accepted areas (but these places run the risk of devolving into 'oh boy a thing happened and I am reacting to it in real time!' and not being all that interesting imo), or wait a hundred years until everyone knows what happens in GoT naturally due to popcultural osmosis. Darko posted:In response to a discussion about it by default changing an experience for some people. You're arguing against a point nobody is talking about. Q:Is it a terrible, very bad thing that someone's experience is changed by knowing what is happening in advance? Is it important to preserve this 'original experience'? If yes, I don't think I agree. I literally can't, because my experience is improved, even when I do lose that split second of 'oh!' when something I didn't expect happens. If no, then spoilers aren't a big deal, are they?
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Jan 11, 2016 18:55
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