The Fear of Knowing. Spoilers in Film, TV, Litterature and Gaming Culture
Simon Spiegel (ed)
Rombach Wissenschaft, “Pop”
2025
Abstract
The fear of spoilers is now a global phenomenon, but it had been barely researched until recently. For the first time, this volume brings together scholars and practitioners from a variety of fields to explore the concept. Do spoilers really diminish our enjoyment of films, books or games? How do different fan communities deal with the issue? Has spoiling always been frowned upon, or were there times when it was handled differently? And how has the fear of spoilers affected the way media content is produced and marketed? The contributors to The Fear of Knowing come from the fields of film, literature, game and fan studies, as well as empirical psychology, and their findings are – spoiler alert! – not always what you might expect.
Summary
Simon Spiegel – “Introduction”
Simon Spiegel – “On the Origins of Spoilers”
Milan Hain – “To Tell or Not to Tell? Promoting Films with a Surprise Twist”
Matthias Brütsch – “Plot Points, Twists and Spoilers: On the Dramatic Impact of Withholding and Revealing Narrative Information”
Tiffany Hong – “Love Persevering: Televisual Homage, Americana, and Interstitial Grief in WANDAVISION”
Marcus Stiglegger – “Is Performative Cinema Spoiler-Resistant?”
Albrecht Koschorke – “Some Notes on Suspense”
Dana Steglich – “Spoil the Classics: Considering the Differences between Reading and Rereading Literature”
James Aaron Green – “‘Telling the Story Second-Hand’: Victorian Sensation Fiction and the Pre-History of the Spoile”
Tobias Unterhuber – “Spoil the Game, Shatter the World: Spoilers in Games and Play”
Andreas Rauscher – “Playing with the Plot Twist: Perspectives on Spoilers in Games”
Judith E. Rosenbaum – “Spoilers and the Narrative Experience: Lessons From Over a Decade of Empirical Research”
Kristina Busse – “Spoiler Warnings: Negotiating Originality, Genre Expectation, and the Enjoyments of Repetition”
Andrew Bumstead – “‘I don’t need to be carried, bro.’ SURVIVOR Edgic, Knowledge Communities, and Narrative Pleasure”
Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock – “Tender Gestures”
Simon Spiegel – “‘It’s like an allergic reaction.’ A Conversation with Joshua Astrachan”
Simon Spiegel – “‘Film Has Turned from a Cultural Asset into a Commodity.’ A Conversation with Noemi Ferrer Schwenk”
Simon Spiegel – “‘Death Is the Real Spoiler.’ A Conversation with Adam Roberts”
OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
Olivier Stucky (12 novembre 2025). Parution – The Fear of Knowing (Simon Spiegel ed.). LPCM. Consulté le 9 décembre 2025 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/154wu