Do you want to know a secret? For Potter fans, answer is NO

By Vivi Hoang, staff writer
The Tennessean (Nashville, Tenn.)
July 22, 2007

Hear that? The crickets chirping?

It’s the vast abyss left behind by Harry Potter fans on voluntary lockdown. No TV, no radio, no Internet. They scored a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows soon after its release Saturday, and they’ve wisely hunkered down in an effort to outrace and outwit the spoiler mill.

“I plan on closing myself in a room and finishing it with hardly any sleep,” said Michelle Villeret, 15, of Sparta, Tenn., who feared she would learn the ending before she got to the ending. “If I take a long time, it will be all over the place and I can only keep myself in a room for so long.”

Spoilers multiply

Movies like 1992’s “The Crying Game” and 1999’s “The Sixth Sense” managed to keep their table-turning endings under wraps long after they were released. Back then, it seems, the public could keep a secret. But spoilers to the last and most anticipated novel in J.K. Rowling’s seven-book series began menacing fans as early as April and only multiplied with time.

Now that the book is out, does that mean its super-secret plot and conclusion will be, too?

Deathly Hallows went on sale at 12:01 a.m. Saturday, and Harry Potter fans came by the hordes to its late-night release parties around the Midstate and country.

At Borders on West End Avenue, people staked out nooks among the bookshelves as they counted down the minutes. Many came in costume, flourishing magic wands and Hogwarts attire. They debated such questions as “Do you believe Snape will be the hero in the last book?”

Mean people spoil

To ensure that the revelry continued after the big “reveal,” the store requested in a flier handed to attendees: “Please don’t be a party pooper. … If you are a reader who wants to skip to the end of the book, please refrain from spoiling the ending for others.”

It was a gesture appreciated by fans passionate about learning Harry’s finale at their own pace.

“I’m not going to look at papers, I’m not going to watch the news, I’m not going to look at Web sites that I think might have something about the ending,” said 20-year-old Morgan Webb, a Vanderbilt University student who came dressed as Hermione, one of Harry’s best friends. “I’m going to avoid it all until I finish the book.”

Why the near-fanatical resolve to read the Deathly Hallows without even a hint?

Though he thinks it may be a lost cause in this information-driven age, English professor Ted Sherman of Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro says it comes from “our innate desire to hear stories unfold as we experience them.”

“The reason we want to find out what happens in a book, or how a series ends, is because we have invested time and energy (intellectual, emotional, spiritual, imaginative) into the development of a character and story,” said Sherman, e-mailing from London, where he’s teaching a four-week summer course on Harry Potter’s appeal.

As for the minority who don’t respect those expectations and relish ruining a good story for the rest of us, they’re simply on a power trip or are just plain mean, he said.

“Very Voldemortian, if you think about it,” added Sherman, referring to Lord Voldemort, the evil wizard Harry battles throughout the series. “Voldemort and his followers in the books get their pleasure from torturing others, and this kind of pleasure is, in my opinion, very similar to the pleasure some must get in revealing spoilers.”

Things have changed

When Book 6, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, came out two summers ago, Potterheads weren’t the only ones rejoicing.

So were pranksters.

They ambushed book-release parties with yelled-out, drive-by spoilers. One scoundrel even taped his verbal assault, the video of which can be found on YouTube. Harry Potter sites found themselves besieged by killjoys eager to ruin the story for unsuspecting readers with tell-all posts.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that you could even buy T-shirts off the Internet that trumped the book’s big shock in big letters, followed by “I Just Saved You 4 Hours and $30.”

“They get so much joy out of it. It’s so sad,” said Lizzie Keiper of Brentwood, an editorial assistant for the popular Potter site The-Leaky-Cauldron.org. “From what I’ve gotten from people who’ve been around (Harry Potter) book releases for a few times, it’s worse this time because it’s so big.”

Leaky Cauldron fought back by posting its no-spoiler policy, and promised that any pages with info on Deathly Hallows’ plot would be clearly labeled and not easy to accidentally stumble upon.

Overton High senior Darius Colliers planned to read his copy while wearing noise-canceling headphones. He’d heard about past drive-by spoilers and wasn’t about to let that happen to him.

“I want to read it for myself,” he said, “and be surprised for myself.”

It didn’t always use to be this way.

In “The Crying Game”’s case, producers and distributors asked for, and got, viewers’ cooperation in keeping the movie’s big twist quiet, said John Sloop, a Vanderbilt communications studies professor. The plea was partly economical you’re more likely to see a film like that a second time to catch clues you missed and partly to preserve the magic.

People simply wanted others to get that same feeling of being turned on their head, a principle they’ve followed from “Citizen Kane” to “Sixth Sense” and, more recently, “Million Dollar Baby.”

“I think it’s a nice thing about human beings,” Sloop said. “We want all others to experience surprise and shock and fun.”

But these days, the blogosphere is too big a beast to ignore, he said.

That ability to instantly post online to a worldwide audience, coupled with the desire to be the first to know and the first to gossip about it, means secrets can’t and don’t stay secret for long.