Whenever a new Doctor Who episode is broadcast, a stream of carefully judged comments flow past on my Facebook feed, all posted by the usual suspects… Most make no sense out of context, and they act better than the official trailers…as a kind of appetiser that prompt me to set aside whatever I am doing and watch the programme.

But from other friends I see the odd post pleading, “No spoilers, I haven’t watched it yet!”

New research, discussed over at Wired, in Spoilers Don’t Spoil Anything, seems to show that there is a split – and that some people find stories are spoiled by advance knowledge, and others find they aren’t.

On reflection, I think there are two kinds of reading (or viewing) experience being discussed here. And there are times when I enjoy both of them, for different reasons. It’s not a simple distinction, either. My initial idea was that knowing what was coming is perhaps an easier read, more reassuring, a kind of escapist reading. And that not knowing is more challenging, and asks more of us.

So for instance, mass market genre novels don’t upset our expectations. We could read a straight forward romance or a simple whodunit. We know exactly how it’s going to turn out, the girl will get her guy, the detective will catch the crook. We are free to enjoy the ride, and take pleasure in the specific individual details that make it a unique story.

Some people like to read complicated whodunits, and pride themselves on being able to navigate their way between red herrings and genuine clues, and guess the villain before they are unmasked in the story.

The crime fiction I prefer though, is often a whydunit, rather than who. So I am interested more in the stories that unravel character and human motivation. Even so I do like to have twists and turns that surprise me and I don’t read the ending first.

There are some stories though, where to know the ending would in some ways spoil the whole experience. Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is a case in point. When it was written, it was considered quite shocking because it broke all the rules. I read it as a youngster, and was properly surprised and shocked by the ending. Re-reading it with knowledge now, is enjoyable in a completely different way, as I can enjoy the skill with which the writer misled me the first time through. The same is true of the Bruce Willis film, The Sixth Sense. If you were fooled the first time through, watching it a second time is also a pleasure – but in a different way.

I suggest that stories which are described as subverting the genre work in a similar kind of way. They set you up for one kind of reading experience, and you think you know where the story is going….and then they pull the rug from under you.  One of my favourite examples is Georgette Heyer’s Regency romance novel, Cotillion. I would say more, but I wouldn’t want to spoil it for anyone.

In crime fiction, some people love stories with prologues, and some hate them – and I think it’s possible that it is because of this kind of preference in way of reading. A prologue often signals something of where the novel is going – it is the author’s way of getting you to read the end, or more often a portion of the middle of the story first.  Sometimes a prologue is straightforward – telling you whodunit and therefore signalling that the main interest of the story is in other issues. Sometimes the prologue is misleading, and is a structural red herring. Often it can be both.

I enjoy both ways of reading. I often re-read books that I’ve loved, and find that they provide a different experience the second time. But on the whole I do prefer to trust the writer, and I never check the end of the book before reading it. And I do like to avoid spoilers. Even when watching Doctor Who I switch off before the trailer for next week’s episode starts.

Which kind of reading, or viewing do you prefer? Do you welcome spoilers – or hate them?

Ann

Actually, I guess, in the long term reality will do the job for me.  Objective reality has a way of catching up with people who think it’s all just a matter of positive thinking.

A couple of days ago I clicked on a link to this website…

The Magic Button – Make Everything Okay.

Click on the button and it uses the old clichéd  Progress Bar, and one sits watching as it claims “Making Everything Okay is in progress”

After a short wait it produces the trite message “Everything is OK now. If everything is still not OK, try changing your settings of perception of objective reality.”

Anyone who could be helped by that little piece of advice really isn’t in need of a magic button, are they?

I know plenty of people who do need a magic button. People who are ill, and perhaps in pain, people who have lost their jobs. There are lots of people for whom everyday reality is overwhelmingly difficult.

Then there are the vast numbers of people I don’t know who need a magic button. Off the top of my head, let’s see – women in Saudi Arabia, or Iran, children in Gaza and the West Bank who have grown up knowing only poverty and violence, people in war zones whose lives are in danger every day. I don’t need to go into detail here.  I think we all know that objective reality hasn’t been kind to many millions of people. And we all know it’s not their attitude that’s the problem.

I might make an exception for Rebekah Brooks, the Murdochs and everyone caught up in our current media, police and politician sponsored sideshow. Granted, they could certainly improve matters by changing their attitude.

So yes, this little cheap trick of a website made me angry. Not because it’s as pernicious as The Secret – you know that one everyone knows about because millions of people handed over their money to be told that like attracts like. It’s not likely to suck someone in and make them feel like a failure when concentrating on good and happy thoughts doesn’t make them well, park a  Ferrari in their drive or get George Clooney to pop the question.

If you’d like a really good critique of the cult of positive thinking, then I suggest you watch this RSA video from Barbara Ehrenreich.

My critique of this particular exhibition of stupidity is much simpler. At best it is childish wishful thinking. And in this incarnation, it is just cheap, silly and not very creative.

And that makes the little Donate button in the bottom corner of the screen a bit irritating. My gift for those hungry programmers is a small piece of advice. Use your skill to do something useful, please and not to piss people off with trite and meaningless platitudes.

If you want my money, which I’ve worked for, then provide something that is of value – not just a boring techie begging bowl – a waste of pixels.

If we want a magic button, if we really want to do something to make everything better – well, there is something we can do. Doesn’t have to be an enormous thing.  We could just get some shopping for the old lady across the road. We could make a small donation to a charity – perhaps to our fund to educate our girls in Uganda, but any charity that matters to us will do the trick. Or  just reach out to someone who’s having a hard time. Talk on the phone, send a letter. Sometimes the only thing that can make a difference is knowing there’s someone who cares – I know it works for me.

We can change reality, not just the perception of it.

To paraphrase Philip Dick, reality doesn’t go away when we stop believing in it. So please don’t insult us all by saying we just need to change our perception.

Ann

Of all the people who watched the Terry Pratchett documentary on Monday on assisted dying, I wonder if anyone actually changed their minds?

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

It’s a very emotional issue for everyone, and I suspect we all have very strong beliefs about it, and those beliefs are based on our own personal experiences and perhaps on our own fears.

My mother in law, who had MS for over forty years, died two years ago. For the last eight years of her life, she was bedbound at her home, with a succession of carers. She lived in constant fear of being forced to go into hospital or a home. At different times in her illness she had extensive stays in both, and found the loss of freedom and privacy impossible to bear.

Over the last two years of her life, she was ready to die. She was in constant pain, and she had difficulty breathing. She asked for more pain relief and her doctor explained she couldn’t prescribe anything more, because it would make her breathing problems worse and could hasten her end. My mother in law clearly explained that was exactly what she wanted, but the doctor turned away.

For the last six months of her life, she talked about nothing but wanting to die. She would talk about going to Switzerland, but there was no way she could have made the journey. She could not have lifted the cup to her lips and she could not have swallowed the drug in one go.

After she died, partly from dehydration because she refused to drink, we found a stash of pills she had kept back, that she had never used. Just like the young man with MS in the film, she had attempted suicide in the past, but had failed. She had not been able to keep the pills down, and had been taken to hospital for a week, and, she said, lectured by the hospital psychiatrist as if she was a naughty girl, and put on antidepressants.

For myself, I am very much in agreement with Terry Pratchett. “I’d like to live life as long as I can squeeze the juice out of it,” he said. Also, like him, I would like the option to be helped to die in reasonable comfort, at a time of my own choosing, should life become insupportable.

I can understand some of the fears of those who oppose any change in the law.

Some people do view the lives of those who are disabled or sick as having less value. Decisions are made now, all the time, about the value of a life, and about the cost of care and treatment. We should all care about the vulnerable, and that the disabled and the sick have support so that they can squeeze the juice out of their lives. I think we can all agree that there should be good access to palliative care for the dying.

So, no one is arguing that those issues are not important, and there should be clear safeguards in place.  Sadly the Newsnight debate never got around to discussing those in place in Switzerland, although they were referred to a couple of times. Many people have reservations about changing the law to allow assisted dying, based on age, or whether a person has an incurable or a terminal illness. And clearly no one should be pressured into making that decision for anyone else’s convenience.

For people with progressive illnesses, the current law reduces their freedom to squeeze the last drop of juice. Both Andrew and Peter had made that decision perhaps sooner than they would have, if they had not had to travel to Switzerland. And for those who cannot afford the trip to Switzerland, or who are beyond the journey or the ability to themselves lift a glass to their lips – that choice is currently nonexistent.

Still, there are huge areas of misunderstanding that will stay with me from watching the debate.

The Bishop of Exeter was clearly determined to find fault with the film, and in my view misinterpreted Peter’s practical question about whether it was time to take the drug, as hesitation. It was explained earlier in the programme that the process requires two drugs, with a gap in between, so that the second drug was not rejected. He also expressed worries about his daughter, who has Downs Syndrome, and is used to other people making decisions for her, but Dr Preisig pointed out that she would be protected by the Swiss legal safeguards.

The disability rights campaigner, Liz Carr, said that the young man with MS “didn’t look so ill to her.”  MS is a neurological condition and you can’t see from the outside how much someone is suffering. A similar comment was made in the Guardian – that Andrew seemed “disturbingly okay” – in spite of the fact that Andrew described how painful his life was. Oddly it is considered reasonable to assume on someone else’s behalf that their life is worth living.

For me, it is relatively simple. It is a matter of individual autonomy.

So my opinion didn’t change.  I would like to have the reassurance of knowing that option was there for me, although I don’t know if I would ever choose to take it.  I live with a chronic illness myself, and I have my own fears – both of my life not being deemed important enough to warrant expensive treatment, and of dying in pain.

The film was very upsetting, and I cried for them all. Not only the two men who chose their own time to die, but for the people who loved them, and who were with them at the end. I was deeply saddened because a change in the law could have given them more time together.

Peter Smedley said his wife would have preferred to look after him, but she loved him enough to respect his own wishes and to be there with him, stroking his hand as he went into that final sleep. Andrew’s mother was clear, too, that although it was not something she believed herself, she absolutely believed in her son’s right to self determination.

Who has the right to pass judgement on any of these people?

And who has the right to make that decision on anyone else’s behalf?

Did anyone change their mind?