Yesterday's New York Times piece "Spoiler Alert: Whodunit? Wikipedia Will Tell You" discusses the practice in some Wikipedia articles of revealing secrets: whether it's in the whodunit of a mystery, the howdunit of magic, or, presumably the secrets of the military and national security (although the article doesn't really get into this issue). Notes Rupert Holmes,
“The rules of ‘full disclosure’ don’t apply to fictional creations,” he wrote in an e-mail. “If you give away the secret of a masterful magic trick, it is not as if you are protecting naïve consumers from wasting their money on a con artist. We want, even hope to be tricked, surprised, stunned. An illusionist is not selling us swamp land, miracle cures, junk bonds or Ponzi schemes. He is selling us the childlike thrill of believing, for one moment, that there really could be magic in the world.”
He also questioned the motives of someone eager to report the surprise in a creative work, whether on a personal blog or a collaborative project like Wikipedia — calling the achievement, at best, “a momentary sense of superiority.”
“It’s the self-aggrandizing vandalism of another person’s potential pleasure. It’s spray-painting your name across the face of the Mona Lisa and thinking you’re one up on Da Vinci.”
That's true. But as reporter Noam Cohen says, those who reveal secrets have a number of motives, some of them lofty (academic, informational) and some of them not.
I remember watching the (first) filmed version of Agatha Christie's Witness for the Prosecution with its admonition not to reveal the ending, and I took it very seriously. The idea that I was seeing something secret, and carrying away a surprise that I shared only with others who had sat through the film was exciting, even though I knew intellectually that it wasn't true. Everyone who saw the film knew the ending. But knowing the ending, I think, doesn't alter the shock of that last scene in the courtroom. Just about everyone today knows the ending, even though she hasn't seen the film. The writer and makers of Presumed Innocent aimed for the same effect. Remember how mad some people got when critics yelled in print, "The wife did it"? But knowing the guilty party for me doesn't change the meaning of the film or the book. I still think Presumed Innocent raises important questions about how we treat the accused in our legal system.
To expose or not to expose? Do we have recourse against those who would tell us secrets in spite of ourselves? Educate us when we would rather be blissfully ignorant? Spoil our fun when we are out to be mystified? Is there a constitutional right not to hear or know? I'm working on an answer (not, of course, THE answer)....
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