The simplistic dichotomy between ‘paternalistic’ producers and ‘powerless’ fans masks unequal power relations *within* fandom.

I’ve only ever blocked one person on my email because he insisted on sending me BSG spoilers after I had asked him to stop. Those with the resources to download programmes from overseas are generally wealthier and more technologically more savvy than those who do not: to claim that they are ‘challenging’ the dominance of the author without recognising their own power over poorer, or less IT literate viewers, is to mask another power game as ‘resistance’.

You can argue that its ‘free speech’ but the result is that those who are presenting an argument – and Moffat’s stories are more erotetic than RTD, who had other priorities, in that they follow a a premise through to a logical conclusion – are ultimately silenced by being prevented from doing so in the manner his ‘argument’ requires.

Jason suggests that it’s the moment of broadcast that is crucial — once a show’s been shown then it’s open season on fan speculation, whereas narrative information circulated in advance of TX is a spoiling spoiler. But obviously this begs the question as to where different national transmissions fit in, meaning that transnational online fan cultures either recompose themselves at a national level, or that fan etiquette and communal norms have to be developed to avoid upsetting fellow travellers (though even there, I suspect there are limits to whether and how that can work — if one country is months or even years behind another, then it seems unlikely that ‘spoiler’ fan discussions will not reach the ‘lagging’ group).

I also like your mention of casting spoilers — seemingly another mode of spoiler, since this level of information reveals character involvements/appearances without necessarily giving away any other narrative detail. Cast lists are certainly readable (and are read) by some fans as spoilers, even when they are official programme information.

The more I think about it, the more I feel that a large-scale empirical research project — or at the very least a new edited collection — is called for on fans’ attitudes to ‘spoilers’ (what spoilers are; extents and degrees thereof; differences and similarities across different fan cultures; divisions within specific fandoms etc). Spoilers aren’t just an incitement to fan productivity — they should be inciting more academic debate too, following the sort of work already done by Jason and Jon Gray.

I wonder if it’s about time to analytically rename ‘spoilers’, as the term obviously carries a sense of ‘spoiling’ narrative pleasure, implying that that pleasure is (or otherwise should be) a given, somehow ‘natural’ and self-evident. But what if so-called ‘spoilers’ are felt to be ‘enhancers’, provoking cognitive productivity (how will that story development play out? what could that mean? is that convincing?) and enabling further audience speculation? For at least some fans, spoilers don’t so much ‘spoil’ a “proper’ reading as offer a short-cut to enjoyable and valued activities of speculation. Perhaps what so upsets showrunners is the sense that audiences are almost skipping the main course (the core text) to get straight to dessert (audience speculation and discussion). ‘Spoilers’ — or enablers, or enhancers — thus seem to make fan collectivities and debates more affectively vital than the audience-text relation that showrunners aim to commodify, create and cultivate.

Showrunners want an ontology (of the beloved text); what they’re sometimes unhappily confronted by are fan epistemologies — what can be known, and how, and when, and what does it mean?

Also, how much am I loving that this seems the first time the subscribe to comments feature’s actually working on Antenna!

The place where I’m torn is the issue Matt brings up in his comment, namely where the control and where the text begins and ends. I have actually heard as many hardcore nonspoiler fans complain about nonfannish spoilers (opening TV Guide or an accidental twitter) than they do about fannish ones (usually involving debates about cut tags and whether an emotional response constitutes a spoiler and…)

Because as much as we want to think of auteurs as single independent geniuses, they are not. Not only are there actors and production personal, there are networks and…in short, the authorial domination may indeed be corrupted on any number of levels, and whose spoilers are authorially condoned and whose aren’t?

Or said differently, why is TV Guide OK to spoil and doesn’t get yelled at but random fanboy is? Like Matt, I’m not quite comfortable with establishing these clear lines, and that’s only in part because I don’t like “being manipulated, tricked, surprised, and taken for an emotional ride” 🙂

While I don’t believe there is a “pure text” and everything else is extraneous, I also think there is a core text that’s designed to be consumed in a particular way. It doesn’t have to be, and folks like Kristina are free to develop their own reading strategy, but the producers should feel free to assert their intentions that there is a way to read it “properly” (i.e. following their intent). Again, for me the line is when the text is released in its intended form (episode airing, in this case) – before that, posting information summarizing the plot angers creators in a way that I’m sympathetic to. But after that, it becomes part of the larger dialog.

As for the issues you & Kristina raise about the power relations involved here, I agree but willingly submit to the domination – the process of being told a story is in part about submission to another person’s creative vision. There’s always resistance & interplay (it’s Foucauldian power), but it’s not a level playing field – and I don’t think that most fans want it to be. The joys in being manipulated, tricked, surprised, and taken for an emotional ride are crucial to the act of narrative consumption. I think authorial lamentations about this issue are less because they want total control, but because they see this joy being thwarted & don’t understand why people would give up that pleasure (that such fanboy auteurs embrace).

(Ducking for inevitable pushback from Kristina…)