Doug Kenney published “Spoilers” in the April 1971 edition of National Lampoon. National Lampoon, if you have a compound sentence for an age, was a humor magazine with, gosh, just the horniest covers ever writ upon a page. Whatever. I’m not here to try and unsnarl ’70s humor.
“Spoilers” gave away the ending to Citizen Kane, The Godfather, Psycho, and as Doug Kenney put it, “every mystery novel and movie you’re ever liable to see.”
This has been desribed as the first use of the world “spoilers” — but obviously, if it’s being referenced as the title of a National Lampoon article then it probably existed as a spoken phrase. Unless it was really invented by the article. I’m at least comfortable suggesting that this cultural artifact of the article indicates a sea change in the popularity of spoilers as a concept.
Something really interesting to me about the timeline of media is that, while art feels very subjective, its progression often looks more like technological advancement — the progression of art is preceded by technological advancement, even — than it looks like, say, human nature. You can compare current events to historical events and see clear parallels where people haven’t changed at all. Compare modern art to historical art, and there are stark, objective differences. I’m not even talking about Ancient Greek novels versus Agatha Christie novels, although I’m sure those differences exist and can be plotted. I mean the play versus movie versus the reality TV show.
Attitudes about art change with art. You can’t really spoil a painting (can you?), so let’s say “narrative” instead. At some point in the middle of the 20th century, people became preoccupied with spoilers in a way that we don’t have record of before National Lampoon, apparently. I’ll take a stab and say mass media, and later the internet, made the availability of spoilers enough of a concern that we started paying attention. (Although, ironically, I can’t actually find Doug Kenney’s article anywhere online.)
Narratives are basically about change. I find it really interesting to read through these six-word stories and see what they have in common. I think some are basically poems, and some are just little jokes. But Margaret Atwood’s, “Longed for him. Got him. Shit.” is unquestionably a narrative. It has a status quo (Longed for him) that’s disrupted by change (Got him) with a result (Shit). The result isn’t even necessary. Lots of writers on this list cheat by leaving the ending to implicature — like Rockne S. O’Bannon’s, “It’s behind you! Hurry before it”
One of the famous early novels, The Tale of Genji, cuts away at the end to (spoiler) imply the death of the protagonist. Its final chapter is completely blank.
AI used “sentiment analysis” (eep) to describe six possible story arcs. Each one is identified by the number and direction of changes its subject takes: rise (“rags to riches”), rise then fall (“Icarus”), rise then fall then rise (“Cinderella”). This provides probably the best way of describing why spoilers can be so painful. Les Miserables follows the rise of Jean Valjean, and throughout the whole story you’re wondering, “Is this an Icarus, rise then fall? Is it a Rags to Riches? If Valjean falls, will he rise again?”
There’s another spoiler, which I think is specific to whodunnits, where the mystery has an answer and that answer is given away. Corrolary, but the reveal that Darth Vader is Luke’s father doesn’t materially affect the rising and falling of the hero. It just ups the stakes, and answers a question that the story asks several times.
Interestingly, psychologists found that a person enjoys a story more when they know the ending going in. One of the reasons posited in this particular study is that the reader can appreciate aesthetic elements when they aren’t preoccupied with a story’s ending. I hear that. But maybe the overwhelming perceptual distaste for spoilers indicates something important about how we enjoy stories. Namely, that we don’t always watch stories to enjoy them. Sometimes we want to suffer a little.