{"id":203,"date":"2012-05-25T14:09:15","date_gmt":"2012-05-25T18:09:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/?p=203"},"modified":"2012-05-25T14:09:15","modified_gmt":"2012-05-25T18:09:15","slug":"do-spoilers-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/2012\/05\/25\/do-spoilers-matter\/","title":{"rendered":"Do Spoilers Matter?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"40420_125402310839336_2607371_n\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mediabistro.com\/galleycat\/files\/2012\/05\/40420_125402310839336_2607371_n.jpg?resize=136%2C136\" alt=\"\" width=\"136\" height=\"136\">Literary critic <strong>Stanley Fish<\/strong> stirred up the publishing world this week, dismissing the need for spoiler alerts when writing about fiction or film. He used <a href=\"http:\/\/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com\/2012\/05\/21\/what-do-spoilers-spoil\/\">a specific example<\/a>: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153If <em>The Hunger Games<\/em> is so shallow that it can be spoiled by a plot  revelation, the alert doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t save much. If <em>The Hunger Games<\/em> is a  serious accomplishment, no plot revelation can spoil it.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Over Mulholland Books, great writers like <strong>Lawrence Block<\/strong> and <strong>Joe R. Lansdale<\/strong> have pondered the essay all day\u00e2\u20ac\u201cwe\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve collected some of their commentary below. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mulhollandbooks.com\/\">Follow this link<\/a> to read more essays from <strong>Megan Abbott<\/strong>, <strong>Nick Santora<\/strong>, <strong>Mischa Hiller<\/strong> and <strong>Marcia Clark <\/strong>as they are released.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mulhollandbooks.com\/2012\/05\/25\/bad-dog\/\">Lansdale wrote<\/a>: This is the silliest defense for spoiling stories for those of us who  don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want them spoiled that I have ever heard. I have spoiled,  accidently, a film and I was almost lynched. They were right. If it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s  done to me, I feel the same \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 There  may be those who read the last page of a book, or like the previews for  films to be so precise it lets them know how it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s going to turn out,  but surprise has a great place, and most of us prefer it, and if we  prefer not to have things spoiled for us, a spoiler alert is a nice  warning to us who would prefer not to know.\u00c2\u00a0 Bad journalist. Bad, dog.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mediabistro.com\/galleycat\/do-spoilers-matter_b52107#more-52107\">continued\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/a><\/p>\n<p>New Career Opportunities Daily: The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mediabistro.com\/joblistings\/?c=rss\">best jobs in media<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>via GalleyCat <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mediabistro.com\/galleycat\/do-spoilers-matter_b52107\">http:\/\/www.mediabistro.com\/galleycat\/do-spoilers-matter_b52107<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Literary critic Stanley Fish stirred up the publishing world this week, dismissing the need for spoiler alerts when writing about fiction or film. He used a specific example: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153If The Hunger Games is so shallow that it can be spoiled by a plot revelation, the alert doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t save much. If The Hunger Games is a &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/2012\/05\/25\/do-spoilers-matter\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Do Spoilers Matter?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[1037,6],"class_list":["post-203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-google-reader","tag-ifttt"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2skW4-3h","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}