Spoiler warnings throughout history
July 26, 2017 6:11 AM   Subscribe

What pre-Internet, pre-Usenet precedents are there, I wonder, for spoiler warnings? I was wondering because in an old edition of "The Odyssey," the guy in the foreword said he didn't want to divulge plot details so as to not to "spoil" reader enjoyment. Were there any equivalent of spoiler warnings for old serialized books and stuff?

The earliest thing I could find on the term had to do with a National Lampoon story, but I wonder if there is any historical record of people going, for example, "i have tickets to see this new King Lear play on Friday, I can't believe you just ruined the ending."
posted by johngoren to Society & Culture (8 answers total) 6 users marked this as a favorite
 
Best answer: I am really sorry I can't find this right now, but I know I've seen spoiler warnings about The Pickwick Papers, probably from newspaper articles or something when it was originally published.

It was also pretty common for movies to have 'spoiler warnings' hinted at in reviews and sometimes in marketing material. Alfred Hitchcock did a whole thing reminding people not to give away the ending to Psycho.

This wasn't pre-internet, but it was mostly internet oblivious: If you read any contemporary reviews of The Crying Game, they all had spoiler warnings.
posted by ernielundquist at 7:41 AM on July 26, 2017 [4 favorites]


Best answer: IIRC these are not uncommon in Victorian apologia/prefaces - the narrator will provide a little foreshadowing and then abjure for reasons of not wanting to spoil the tale.

Not exactly the same thing, but Ellery Queen would generally inform the reader at some point that they already had all the same facts the detective would use to solve the case, and could figure it out themselves if they were smart enough and so inclined.
posted by aspersioncast at 8:09 AM on July 26, 2017


Not books but spoilers...

If you don't want to know the scores, look away now... ... football (soccer) results on the TV just before (BBC) Match of the Day. I remember this well from my 1970s childhood.
posted by plep at 8:48 AM on July 26, 2017 [2 favorites]


I don't know exactly when the phrase "spoiler alert" was coined, but spoilers have always been a concern. For instance, almost any movie review will reveal something about the plot (at least the basic premise of the movie), but typically won't give away the ending. For instance, near the beginning of Siskel & Ebert's review of Back to the Future, you can see Gene Siskel saying he wasn't looking forward to a movie about time-traveling to the past because he assumed the present would need to remain unchanged, but the movie "fooled" him — "and I won't dare say how" (0:29-49).
posted by John Cohen at 9:50 AM on July 26, 2017


Best answer: Witness for the Prosecution came out in 1957 and was famous for its surprise (double surprise, triple surprise?) ending, and the public was asked not to spoil it for those who hadn't seen it. In this preview, Charles Laughton at 2:10 gives the caution, and then at 2:52 there is a placard advising people not to enter the theater during the last few minutes (because people basically came in at any old time, which I know seems strange now), because they would ruin the surprise for themselves.

Similarly, the trailer for Psycho (1960) warns at 6:13 that no one will be seated once it starts, although I can't find anything specific about not spoiling it for people. However, I do remember a Happy Days episode from the 70s where the Cunninghams are leaving the house to go see it and run into, I think it was Ralph Malph, who promptly tells them the ending, so they turn and go back inside the house.

Here is a hilarious Peanuts comic from 1973, where Lucy spoils Citizen Kane for Linus. (Okay, if you haven't seen Citizen Kane, maaaayyybe you shouldn't look . . . . )
posted by JanetLand at 10:04 AM on July 26, 2017


Best answer: At the end of the murder myster play "The Mousetrap" the cast requests that the audience not reveal the play's ending.
posted by zombiedance at 11:36 AM on July 26, 2017 [1 favorite]


I was about to post the Peanuts comic. I believe a bunch of people were upset about it -- IIRC, at the time, the major way to watch old movies was at art house cinemas, so some people might have still been waiting to see the film.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 7:21 PM on July 26, 2017


Response by poster: Thanks! Would especially love to hear more about these Pickwick Papers spoiler warnings if anyone can find them.
posted by johngoren at 11:06 AM on July 27, 2017


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