From Inverse:
When author Daniel Handler spoke to Inverse about the inherent difficulty in adapting his Lemony Snicket novels to television, he said “a commitment to literature is always a challenge.” Is the culture of binging streaming TV philosophically opposed to reading books? Because if so, Netflix’s A Series of Unfortunate Events is the first highly bingeable streaming TV show with a very vocal and guilty conscience.
At the beginning of every single episode, Neil Patrick Harris sings directly to the audience and tells them to “look away.” This joke is a direct tribute to the way meta-author Lemony Snicket advised readers to stop reading each of the original novels. In the books, with false earnestness, Snicket would recommend you read a different book, which now has been modified for the medium of streaming television. In the seventh episode of the Netflix series, Lemony Snicket (Patrick Warburton) gets probably his best warning: “If you like stories about children who enjoy pleasant rides in truck beds on their way to colorful destinations where they finally solve the curious mysteries plaguing their lives, that story is streaming elsewhere.”
. . . .
Still, streaming subscription services like Netflix generally want people to consume more of their product. And that ussually relies on keeping certain plot details a secret. In the third episode, Neil Patrick Harris’s opening song tells the viewer, “Spoiler alert, a villain comes to plot and steal and murder, so if I were you, I wouldn’t even watch one minute further.” The medium of streaming TV is being mocked for sure, but the true target here is the way people talk about shows. Because the entire plot of a show’s season is available more quickly in the streaming model, worries about spoilers have become almost fanatical to the point of absurdity. But, in a move worthy of Kurt Vonnegut, A Series of Unfortunate Events just “ruins” the plot for you, and then dares you to keep on watching.
Link to the rest at Inverse
I binge-watched it and enjoyed the heck out of it. Neil P.H. is wonderful.
The whole POINT of Lemony Snickets is the ongoing drama and series of events. Genre fiction to the core, where the important thing is the individual events, its going along on the whole ride. Like in a romance, where the HEA is going to be there, so you read to see how it works out.
What an idea!
Identify the new problem (spoilers getting around too soon) and, instead of demanding security, realize it’s probably here to stay – and get fun and creative with it.
Something the big publishers didn’t think to do with ebooks.
What a different world we’d write in.
I’m glad they didn’t – I have no guilt about going around them.