As you've probably noticed (and some of you may have complained about) I tend to be rather blase about spoilers when I'm discussing things on this site. This not because I am a kitten-kicking fun-wrecker who wants you to draw less pleasure from the books you read and the films you watch, it's simply because I don't subscribe to the seemingly widely held and generally unquestioned view that spoilers are the ultimate evil. Just to add a proviso to this before the rotten tomatoes start flying over the footlights, this is not to say that I don't think spoilers can be bad in certain circumstances. However, I am increasingly coming to resent the knee-jerk assumption that spoilers are, essentially, "any information about plot happenings not immediately apparent at the beginning of the text" and so utterly catastrophic that people must be protected from them at all costs.

Just to get this out of the way early, yes, there are some genres and some texts that are dependent on a sense of mystery, bewilderment and slowly developing understanding. Memento is better if you don't have a clue what's going on. Films by M. Night Shyamalan are generally only worth two viewings: the first to go "aaaaah" when the twist comes and the second to spot all the clues and hints you didn't spot the first time round. The pleasure of detective stories, murder mysteries and the rest of their ilk lies for a large part in not knowing and, perhaps working out, whodunit. Cases such as these, I would argue, benefit from spoiler warnings in that too much information about the plot genuinely spoils the experience.

But for most things, there is very little actual plot information that, once given away, completely compromises pleasure in the text (otherwise you'd never read a book a second time) but this is what the term "spoiler" suggests and that's how people tend to react to it. On the internet, at least, spoilering someone seems to carry an equivalent moral weight to killing and then eating their dog. However, I would argue that, while there are some plot elements that might be marginally more striking had they come as a complete surprise, for the most part there are no such things as fairies spoilers. The reason I have taken such an extreme stance is essentially an extreme response to an extreme response. The healthiest and most sensible position, as ever, probably lies somewhere between the two.

I think the exaggerated horror that has come to be attached to spoilering has its root in two fallacies that, although they might seem obvious, nevertheless are worthy of articulation. The first is the current prevalence of the primacy of plot. I suppose you can blame shows like Lost and Heroes for this but, these days, plot is all. The only reason to watch Heroes week by week, I would argue, is to find out what happens next. When I was first introduced to it, I absolutely devoured it, watching episode after episode in an orgy of curiosity. Now that the series is done with, I can't really imagine ever wanting to watch it again. Perhaps in a few years time when I've forgotten the intricacies of what happens when and why. Although it's a competent piece of television, all it really has going for it is the plot. This isn't necessarily a criticism because it does what it does excellently but it's essentially a shallow creation that depends almost completely on its twists, turns and cliff-hangers. The other interesting thing about my experience with Heroes is that I watched it in a discussion blackout. A palpable air of secrecy hung over my friendship group - nobody wanted to talk about it until everybody had seen it, lest they inadvertently say too much and ruin a surprise. Personally I'd rather have the pleasure of shared engagement but that's me, I can also see why we all went to such lengths to protect each other from knowledge.

Now this is all well and good as far as Heroes as concerned except it seems to have spread. My evidence for this, to be fair, is what people say on the internet but by placing such emphasis on spoilers you essentially prioritise plot above everything else. I know plot is something that feels tangible, hence it's easier to concentrate on and make a fuss about, but by saying "if you tell me stuff that happens in this you will ruin it for me" you're essentially saying "I'm only watching/reading this to find out what happens next." And there is far more to a text than that. I might be slightly biased in my irritation for this due to an ex-boyfriend who always used to make a big deal out of not being spoilered insisting it would completely utterly ruin his enjoyment because he had such an excellent and pronounced sense of "narrative causality" (thank you Mr Pratchett, giving arseholes words since 1983) that it was rare he had the pleasure of not knowing what would happen next. But unless you're reading a Murakami novel, in which case all bets are off, we nearly always have some vague idea of what's going to happen next anyway (they'll get together or they won't, the war will be won or lost) - ultimately we're reading (or watching) for the wholesale experience, the unfolding events, certainly, but also character, style, themes, ideas and general emotional and aesthetic involvement with the text as a composite of many elements.

The second fallacy (I just love the word fallacy, I don't get enough opportunity to use it) seems to be a fundamental misconception about the nature of fiction itself. Yes, we talk a lot about the willing suspension of disbelief but, ultimately, a piece of fiction is an artificial creation. The worlds it depicts are not real worlds, the people are not real people - even if they are recognisably similar. Star Wars is not a detailed presentation of an imagined world that can be understood in the same terms we use to understand our own - if this was the case we'd have to assume the laws of time and physics are so profoundly different to our own that they allow Emperor Palpatine to leg it from his fight with Yoda on Coruscant to Mustafar in time to stop Anakin dying a limbless death. This, of course, a basic continuity error but whinging about it misses the point: it's dramatically appropriate (if anything is dramatically appropriate in that festering turd of a movie) that Palpatine is able to rescue Anakin in person, instead of sending a bunch of faceless minions to scoop him up and stick in him a Vadar costume. Fiction is not governed by the same forces that control our world: it's governed by meta-textural considerations like narrative, drama and style. Nor do we respond to characters in the same way we respond to real people and the emotions we experience - although not to be discounted - are in no way an accurate representation the emotions we might feel if something similar happened to us in our every day lives.

I remember when the final Harry Potter book came out there was an awful lot of hoo and hah because people were spoilering other people for the deaths, marching around the midnight openings with placards listening them all. Yes, this was puerile and irritating behaviour but people's outrage was disproportionate to the offence. I believe even JK herself - bastion of sanity and common sense that she is - issued a statement rebuking the spoilerers for their selfishness in ruining the devoted fans' enjoyment of her work ¹. You see, as we have noted in previous articles, death is a big thing for Rowling and, therefore, for her admirers. And one of her standard insights (sorry "insights") into death is the shock and irrevocability of it - how can we forget that immortal line "the suddenness and completeness of death was with them like a presence" (it's right up there with "From my point of view, the Jedi are evil.") To follow this to its logical conclusion, the reason, we must assume, that Rowling (and her fans) consider information about who dies to be such a profound and major spoiler is because the surprise is an integral part of the experience i.e. that we, the reader, experience a similar level of shock to the characters at having lost a friend or loved one.

This is arrant nonsense and it's offensive arrant nonsense. Fiction can certainly give you intellectual and emotional insights into death and grief, and perhaps give words you might otherwise have lacked to help you understand the way you feel, but it can't even begin to recreate how it actually feels to be bereaved. In Memoriam, perhaps, comes close. Harry Potter just, well, doesn't. By making a big deal out of JK Rowling, and fanbase, are essentially pretending that it does. Death functions differently within narrative - it's not personal. When somebody close to your dies, the emotions you experience are, for the most part, shameful. You feel numb and then feel bad for feeling numb. You feel resentful because you feel abandoned by someone you cared about, even though it's not their fault they died. You feel frightened because you suddenly realise that you, too, will die someday. You feel whatever the hell you feel and you can bet it isn't something that you'll be proud of. You certainly don't find yourself drawing profound universal lessons about the futility of the war or the inevitably of death.

As I said when I first began this article there are occasions when certain in-text information is deliberately designed to be a revelation in which case it's just good manners not to destroy that. But most plot happenings, including character deaths, are just stuff that happens and should be treated as such.

1. I've since looked this up and it turns to have been directed less at trouble-makers on the street than at the New York Times, irresponsible scandal rag that it is and so widely read by many of our nation's children.