Last week, when I published “Show, Don’t Tell” is Terribl(y Misunderstood) Advice, some people got upset that I spoiled three Morgan Freeman movies in quick succession.1
The most recent of these, Seven, was released 28 years ago.
Now, some people would argue that that’s well past any reasonable statute of limitations on spoiler warnings. I think it’s more complicated than that.
It is more complicated than that
Let’s assume, for the sake of this argument, that spoilers are bad.2
It’s common courtesy, within the first few weeks of a film’s (or show’s or book’s) release to preface an article with [SPOILER ALERT]. When you’re talking with friends, you check that they’ve seen the movie before openly discussing it.
That practice starts to fade away with time. (And reasonably so—we woudn’t want to begin every film discussion with a spoiler warning.) The line definitely varies from person to person, but I’d say most people would accept unmarked spoilers after six months or thereabouts.3
So, is anything older than a half a year fair game? We just assume everyone has seen everything in the history of cinema?
A lot to catch up on
I don’t think anyone actually believes that. And yet, they often act like they believe it.
Back in film school, my boomer professors and Gen X T.A.’s would always be surprised and even annoyed if I hadn’t yet seen this or that movie.
From the time they were born in 1946, the oldest boomers had about 40 years of cinema to catch up on. That is, if you want to go all the way back to the The Lumière brothers.
But if we limit ourselves to movies that are recognizable as movies, and not “moving pictures,” it’s probably more like 15 years of movie movies. When I was born, it was closer to 50 years—over three times as much film history. By the time my students were born, movies-movies had been around 70 years, nearly five times as long.
And that’s not taking into account the sheer number of movies available to us. Boomer cinephiles were at the mercy of revival theaters and festival programmers to see classic films, and that’s if they were even available at all. Several of Hitchcock’s best movies were unavailable from the late 60 through the early 80s. Metropolis had only been seen in partial form until a complete version was discovered in Argentina in 2008!4 Because of this, there were certain movies you could expect “everyone” had seen. The Canon of Great Films was fairly limited and manageable.
But that’s not true anymore. Due to the advent of home video, and later streaming,5 almost any movie worth watching—whether it’s silent, independent, foreign, or something else altogether—it’s probably available online somewhere. So, now the answer to the question, “Why haven’t you seen [classic movie]?” is always going to be the same—“Because I saw something else.” ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It’s unreasonable to expect everyone to have seen every “classic” or “important” film you think they “ought” to have seen. It’s also less fun.
What to do about spoilers
We reasonably expect anyone plugged into film culture to know what’s been happening in theaters for the last few years.
But my suggestion is that this should be seen as more of a window than a hard limit. After, say, five years, I think spoiler warning etiquette should be reinstated, with an exception for hugely popular films that have seeped into everyone’s mind via pop cultural osmosis.
Past twenty years, I’ve learned the hard way (in both my TMFS video and irl teaching), you really can’t assume anything. People may know “WHAT’S IN THE BOOOOOOOOOOX?” but not what is in the box, you know?
That’s my new theory on spoilers—anything older than six months but newer than five years is fair game. A soft moratorium on spoilers older than five years (excepting for big cultural events), and a complete return to spoiler warnings after two decades. Unless you have a better suggestion.
What do you think about the Spoiler Window™?
More to come…
Originally, I wrote this as an article rather than a video essay, because I didn’t think I had too much to say. Then it wound up being too long and I had to cut it in half! So please subscribe, and you’ll get part two next week!
In fact, people got upset about a number of things with that video, but this particular unpleasantness seemed to merit it’s own column.
More on this debate in a future article (if you even consider it debatable).
In the case of movies in particular, I think the clock has a kind of soft reset once the film becomes available (legally) online. It’s well known that many people don’t go to movie theaters frequently, but catch up once a given movie is streaming.
Gee, why would a Weimer-era German film be hidden in Argentina?
And, let’s be honest, torrenting.