Lanterne Rouge

Spoiler?

I have a pet hate that’s quite hard to explain, and covers quite a wide range of situations. Basically, I love anticipation. I love NOT knowing something, but knowing that I’ll discover it. This isn’t an unusual thing - very few people buy a book, skip to the final pages, read them, and then happily start the book already knowing how it ends. Admittedly one of those few is my better half, but she knows by now NEVER to give the secret away, whether it’s a football match, The Usual Suspects, or The X Factor results.

What inspired this post was this Yahoo article about the greatest sportsmen of the 00s. The bit where it says “user feedback update”. Thanks, Yahoo. You’ve ruined it for me now.

These days this sense of anticipation is attacked from all sides. Film trailers give away such a massive about of info about a movie that unless it’s fiendishly and expertly twisted, you may as well not bother watching it (yes, I know that with a bit of thought and extrapolation you could work out pretty much the exact storyline to most Hollywood movies, but I make a big deal if intentionally avoiding doing so - ignoring reviews, interviews, articles etc.).

And have you ever watched those Channel 4 list-type programmes - 50 Most Frequently Monogrammed Gift Ideas and the like - or, even worse, Sky, whose trailers are often longer than the actual programme? The meat of the show is invariably bookended by clips of whatever movies/songs/type of pies that make up the rest of the list. No! Stop! I want to wait, I want the joy of discovery of what’s the 37th most popular emo ballad of the 1990s! They don’t so much give you a clue, they tell you in shouty virtual capital letters exactly who you’re going to be seeing and when.

I have seen The Mousetrap twice. I successfully managed to forget whodunnit and enjoyed the second viewing as much as the first. But if Sky were producing the play, the interval would be all “see you in 15 minutes when you discover the [edit] ****** was the murderer all along!”

Postscript: it occurs to me that there’s an irony in my enjoyment of history and historical novels. It’s precisely the fact that I DO have some knowledge of the background, of the context in which I’m reading/viewing, that helps me to get so much out of it. I just read a novelised version of Elizabeth I’s early life. I know what happens in the end!! But it’s a different kind of satisfaction, a warmer, cosier place that forms a nice counterpoint to the tension and excitement of, uh, I’m a Celebrity or Wigan vs Aston Villa.