The Evening Standard in London asked me to write a small piece with my reactions to The New York Times' publication of a review, this morning, of the 7th and final Harry Potter novel. That piece, which will be a shorter version of what follows, is being published in the Evening Standard even as we speak (actually, as I'm now writing).
For anyone who hasn't been living on Alpha Centauri (since I'm a science fiction writer, I usually use that as an example, rather than "under a rock"), J. K. Rowling and the Potter publishers have been taking great pains to prevent leakage of any story details. Now, I usually do not get all that upset about spoilers - see my other pieces on spoilers listed below - especially when the spoilers are little more than what any reasonably creative person could predict.
But this Harry Potter business in The New York Times is something else, and much worse, and I think ... well, here's what I wrote about an hour ago for the Evening Standard...
We live in a spoiler-crazed culture – whether for a television show, movie, or novel, everyone wants to know the ending as soon as possible, before anyone else. The problem with this, however, is that once I know something of interest about a story beforehand, you may end up knowing it, too – whether you want that or not.
The New York Times’ publication of Michiko Kakutani’s review today of the final Harry Potter novel has taken this media abuse to a new level. It is one thing when some private citizen publishes a spoiler on the Web, and it goes viral. It is quite another when the American "newspaper of record" publishes a review with spoilers two days before the public release of the work.
True, The New York Times’ review did not include any major spoilers – I guess we can be grateful for that. But the publication of any review of a novel as significant as the final Harry Potter – a review which contains even the slightest giveaways of plot, which this one does – is ethically unacceptable, and only feeds the taste for more.
Because a spoiler published anywhere is inherently viral. People read it, talk about it, write about it, in an escalating cycle which has the inevitable effect of getting spoiler information to people who do not want it – readers who, in the case of this final Harry Potter novel, were looking forward to finding out each detail, in the order J. K. Rowling intended, on a sofa or hammock this weekend.
John Stuart Mill is famous for saying that people should have absolute freedom to swing their arms, as long as they don’t hit anyone’s nose. Publication of spoilers endangers everyone’s nose – it threatens the narrative satisfaction of every reader and viewer.
In the end, I don’t know what can be done about this. Certainly publication of spoilers is not a criminal offense, and the last thing we want is any government involvement in matters of the press and the media.
But in the case of The New York Times and Harry Potter we have a major insult to public taste and trust. I'd be happy to see the New York Times and every purveyor of spoiler unhappiness publicly condemned. The scoop on this story is that they owe the world an apology.
PS - I'll be posting a review of the Deathly Hallows as soon as I finish the novel - which I expect will be at some wee hour of this weekend...
More on spoilers and the enjoyment of narrative:
Harry Potter and Spoilers: Am Occasion for Basking
Spoilers for 24: Did They Lead the Producers to Change the Ending?
Lost Spoilers vs. Passions of Curiosity
More on Harry Potter:
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: A Review, for Starters (Mild Spoilers)
Harry Potter and iPhone
The Elite Attack on Harry Potter
Harry Potter and the 3-D Phoenix movie review
Harry Potter and the Refutation of Illiteracy
Showing posts with label spoilers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spoilers. Show all posts
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Harry Potter and Spoilers: An Occasion for Basking
The huge world of Harry Potter fans has been understandably ruffled by the likely fraudulent claims of "Gabriel" to have hacked the final novel...
I agree completely with the denunciations of this attention-seeking loser - see, for example, Dan Flanagan's fine piece in blogcritics.org - but I also see this as a left-handed compliment to the extraordinary impact of Harry Potter in our culture.
Not that J. K. Rowling needs any further validation - hundreds of millions of books sold, worldwide, soundly refuting the notion that movies and television have sapped us our our literacy, our taste for captivating reading - but I do find it significant, and even a good thing, that spoilers are afflicting novels in this day and age.
The spectre of spoilers, after all, has haunted television and movies for quite some time. Hit series such as 24 have even been rumored to change their story lines to defeat the deflating impact of spoilers.
It's oddly nice to see spoilers yapping at the heels of novels now, too.
It's no doubt way too late for Rowling to change anything in the final Harry novel, so I propose (a) continuing to keep the goods as secret as possible, (b) vigorously checking out any claims to spoilers that may appear (as has been done with Gabriel), and (c) - most of all - basking in the sunlight that being targeted for spoilers bestows upon the magnificent series...
Useful links:
Harry Potter and the Refutation of Illiteracy
Harry Potter and iPhone
Harry Potter and the 3-D Phoenix movie review
Did Spoilers for 24 Lead Producers to Change the Finale?
Friday, June 1, 2007
Spoilers for 24: Did They Lead the Producers to Change the Finale?
Further to my post yesterday about spoilers for Lost - and, for any show, in general - being inevitable, and no big deal, there is another aspect of this to consider....
It concerns another show I love, and have reviewed every episode of here since January - 24. In April, some major spoilers were revealed. Judging by their accuracy, they came straight from the working script. By far the most explosive nugget was Josh Bauer is not Jack's nephew, or Jack's son (as I and many others were thinking might be the case), but Jack's half-brother! (Phillip, Jack's father, is Josh's father, too.)
Now, as we know, this extraordinary development did not come to be in the season finale. And there are only two possible explanations:
1. The spoilers were not accurate in the first place.
2. The producers deliberately changed the ending (i) because the spoilers were leaked, and/or (ii) for other reasons.
Everything else in that spoiler - which, remember, was leaked nearly two months before the finale was broadcast - is accurate. (Here's an example from the part of the script that appeared on BuddyTV, April 13, 2007 - Phillip is trying to lower a boat into the water and asks for help. With his back turned, Josh grabs a pipe and hits Phillip with it and takes his gun. - a scene detail from the finale that turned out to be 100% accurate.) This leaves no doubt that that spoiler was accurate.
The only remaining question, then, is why the producers decided to go in different directions with Jack's father.
We the public may never know the answer - because, as I pointed out in my post about reliable evidence the other day, we can never be sure if even an official statement made by a producer is 100% accurate or some species of spin.
Certainly making Phillip Josh's father raises some difficult plot possibilities. Fans with and without real connections to the show suggested, also back in April, that Phillip raped Marylin, who might have been unconscious at the time. Even without such a brutal scenario, the producers might well have decided, not because of the spoilers, that such a direction would do more damage than good to the series. (Michael Ausiello reported last week on tvguide.com that the producers of 24 considered bringing back Tony Almeida in the finale, but eventually rejected that as being inconsistent with the "premises" of the show.)
But if the producers of 24 did change the ending of Season 6 in any part because of the spoilers - on the understandable logic of wanting to invalidate the spoilers and keep the viewers surprised - I would just say that I don't think spoilers should ever lead producers to change the course of a televised narrative. (I in fact did find Phillip's stated motivation for wanting to take Josh with him to China - "that's where the future is!" - not very convincing.)
My advice to the producers would be: stick to your game plan. Most viewers in fact are not privy to the spoilers.
Or, to add on to what I said yesterday: spoilers are no big deal, unless the producers make them so.
Useful links:
Lost Spoilers vs. the Passions of Curiosity: No Big Deal
What Constitutes Reliable Evidence?
It concerns another show I love, and have reviewed every episode of here since January - 24. In April, some major spoilers were revealed. Judging by their accuracy, they came straight from the working script. By far the most explosive nugget was Josh Bauer is not Jack's nephew, or Jack's son (as I and many others were thinking might be the case), but Jack's half-brother! (Phillip, Jack's father, is Josh's father, too.)
Now, as we know, this extraordinary development did not come to be in the season finale. And there are only two possible explanations:
1. The spoilers were not accurate in the first place.
2. The producers deliberately changed the ending (i) because the spoilers were leaked, and/or (ii) for other reasons.
Everything else in that spoiler - which, remember, was leaked nearly two months before the finale was broadcast - is accurate. (Here's an example from the part of the script that appeared on BuddyTV, April 13, 2007 - Phillip is trying to lower a boat into the water and asks for help. With his back turned, Josh grabs a pipe and hits Phillip with it and takes his gun. - a scene detail from the finale that turned out to be 100% accurate.) This leaves no doubt that that spoiler was accurate.
The only remaining question, then, is why the producers decided to go in different directions with Jack's father.
We the public may never know the answer - because, as I pointed out in my post about reliable evidence the other day, we can never be sure if even an official statement made by a producer is 100% accurate or some species of spin.
Certainly making Phillip Josh's father raises some difficult plot possibilities. Fans with and without real connections to the show suggested, also back in April, that Phillip raped Marylin, who might have been unconscious at the time. Even without such a brutal scenario, the producers might well have decided, not because of the spoilers, that such a direction would do more damage than good to the series. (Michael Ausiello reported last week on tvguide.com that the producers of 24 considered bringing back Tony Almeida in the finale, but eventually rejected that as being inconsistent with the "premises" of the show.)
But if the producers of 24 did change the ending of Season 6 in any part because of the spoilers - on the understandable logic of wanting to invalidate the spoilers and keep the viewers surprised - I would just say that I don't think spoilers should ever lead producers to change the course of a televised narrative. (I in fact did find Phillip's stated motivation for wanting to take Josh with him to China - "that's where the future is!" - not very convincing.)
My advice to the producers would be: stick to your game plan. Most viewers in fact are not privy to the spoilers.
Or, to add on to what I said yesterday: spoilers are no big deal, unless the producers make them so.
Useful links:
Lost Spoilers vs. the Passions of Curiosity: No Big Deal
What Constitutes Reliable Evidence?
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Lost Spoilers vs. the Passions of Curiosity: No Big Deal
Lost producers Lindelof and Cuse have been lamenting the spoilers that were released about the superb Season 3 finale, and according to some reports, Disney is vowing to track down the source and exact some form of punishment.
Maybe because I came up with predictions that were pretty accurate for the finale in my review of Charlie's Greatest Hits episode - including the flip from flashbacks to flashforwards - but I don't see the spoilers as that big a deal. And I'm not the only one who foresaw that wrenching twist - which was still breathtaking even though we saw it coming. Ron Chusid at SciFi Friday saw it, too.
In fact, the greatest damage done by the spoilers is they undermine the fun of predictions, and the clout of their being right. If a spoiler is out there, and says the same as your prediction, why should anyone believe that you came up with this all in your demented mind? Anyone who knows me knows that I never partake of spoilers - life is too short - but most people who read my posts don't really know me beyond my posts.
But this kind of price has to do with the joy and benefits of predicting, not the world's enjoyment of the show. And if anyone's enjoyment of the show is spoiled by spoilers, which I can well understand, then the simple expedient of steering clear of them seems the best response.
Given the very passions of curiosity that a great series such as Lost unleashes, we'll always have spoilers, however much Disney may try to prevent them.
Useful links:
Lost New Questions: 1. How Far in the Future? ... 2. Who's In the Coffin? ... 3. Who's Waiting for Kate? ... 4. Who Is Naomi's Boss? ... 5. Is Mikhail Immortal? ... 6. What Constitutes Reliable Evidence? ... 7. Are the Flashforwards Desmond's Flashes?
Lost Season 3 Finale ... Flashforwards
Lost: Keys to What's Really Going On
Spoilers for 24: Did They Lead the Producers to Change the Finale?
And see also Lost's Back Full Paradoxical Blast: Season 4 Episode 1
Maybe because I came up with predictions that were pretty accurate for the finale in my review of Charlie's Greatest Hits episode - including the flip from flashbacks to flashforwards - but I don't see the spoilers as that big a deal. And I'm not the only one who foresaw that wrenching twist - which was still breathtaking even though we saw it coming. Ron Chusid at SciFi Friday saw it, too.
In fact, the greatest damage done by the spoilers is they undermine the fun of predictions, and the clout of their being right. If a spoiler is out there, and says the same as your prediction, why should anyone believe that you came up with this all in your demented mind? Anyone who knows me knows that I never partake of spoilers - life is too short - but most people who read my posts don't really know me beyond my posts.
But this kind of price has to do with the joy and benefits of predicting, not the world's enjoyment of the show. And if anyone's enjoyment of the show is spoiled by spoilers, which I can well understand, then the simple expedient of steering clear of them seems the best response.
Given the very passions of curiosity that a great series such as Lost unleashes, we'll always have spoilers, however much Disney may try to prevent them.
Useful links:
Lost New Questions: 1. How Far in the Future? ... 2. Who's In the Coffin? ... 3. Who's Waiting for Kate? ... 4. Who Is Naomi's Boss? ... 5. Is Mikhail Immortal? ... 6. What Constitutes Reliable Evidence? ... 7. Are the Flashforwards Desmond's Flashes?
Lost Season 3 Finale ... Flashforwards
Lost: Keys to What's Really Going On
Spoilers for 24: Did They Lead the Producers to Change the Finale?
And see also Lost's Back Full Paradoxical Blast: Season 4 Episode 1
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