sleepcities:no but the same way that phones and laptops are guilty of scheduled obsolescence,...

[dragonlady7]

via https://ift.tt/3v4mKCn

sleepcities https://sleepcities.tumblr.com/post/647598006261186560/no-but-the-same-way-that-phones-and-laptops-are :

no but the same way that phones and laptops are guilty of scheduled obsolescence, entertainment conglomerates, and to some extent even regular writers just trying to ‘make it big’, are treating stories as though they’re meant to have a built-in expiration date. it’s the obsession with plot twists that ultimately mean nothing, it’s shock for shock’s sake, it’s the way spoilers are treated as inherently experience-ruining. stories are written for the first viewing and the first viewing only, because after you’ve seen something once, why would you want to see it again? so it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t hold up on a second viewing or if the entire plot is ruined if you go into it knowing a single detail. you’re only going to care once, aren’t you?

but like. is that really true? is it really true that an experience with a piece of art is only worth having once? is it really not worth it to create something that will be loved enough that its lovers come back to it? that’s so much (Your picture was not posted)

Comments

[rmc28]

The counterexample would be the musical Hamilton which I listened to on repeat for most of a year, have seen three times and will happily see as many times as I can afford when live theatre is a thing I'm comfortable with again.

[dragonlady7]

well i think that was the point of the OP, that that's genuinely not how most people consume most art and it's not particularly good for society to think of it that way; most of us have comfort reads and bits of media we periodically revisit, and that's normal, and this push to generate art as if it were food to be consumed once and never again is weird and contrary to the nature of the actual thing.

[rmc28]

I think Hamilton is an example of something which is both hugely commercially successful and the opposite of spoiler-averse / watch-once in structure. (The first song tells you that Burr is going to shoot him by the end; the music and the choreography both reward repeat experiences, and so on.)

So I'm very much in agreement with both you and OP that this weird "we can't let spoilers escape/let's change the plot the fans guessed what we're doing" mentality is weird and wrong in principle for art, and I wish the people who push it would notice that it's clearly not actually necessary for commercial success either.