On Wed, Sep 1, 2010 at 6:50 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonavaro@gmail.com wrote:
A likely edge case would be "'Rosebud' is the name of the childhood sled of Kane."
I'd disagree. The whole Rosebud thing is rather a MacGuffin [1]. The mystery of Kane's final word is just a hook that motivates the journalist to review Kane's life story. The revelation at the end is marvellous but if you knew what was coming the journey would arguably not be greatly spoiled.
Contrast that with the twist at the end of The Sixth Sense (albeit an inferior film to Kane) where the twist causes you to review everything you have seen before and allows you to view the film again, with the new knowledge of what you're witnessing, in a totally different light. A spoiler for Sixth Sense effectively wipes out one distinct viewing experience. That's not nearly so true with Kane.
But perhaps we should not discuss individual spoilers; we'll end up upsetting people inadvertently.