Those who've been watching the TV adaptation of Jane Eyre were treated to constant trailers for Jean Rhys's "prequel", Wide Sargasso Sea, which - as each trailer informed us - tells the story of the first Mrs Rochester and how she seduced Mr Rochester in the Caribbean. For anyone who didn't know the story of Jane Eyre, these trailers gave away its crucial secret, namely that poor Jane shouldn't fall in love with Mr Rochester because he already has a wife, a demented creature hidden in the attic. Charlotte Bronte conceals the mad Bertha from us until late in the book, and the TV scriptwriters followed suit. But Mrs Rochester's existence, carefully kept from us until the end of episode three, was a secret blown casually apart by every trailer of the prequel. Yes, Bronte's plot is a classic of literature, but these TV adaptations are aimed at least partly at those of us who haven't read the book.
Spilling the beans beforehand has become a disappointing cliche. Cinema trailers used to hint tantalisingly at what forthcoming feature films might contain. Now the trailers often show the films' climactic moments, relayed to us at deafening decibel levels. Trailers for the Archers have famously given away what is going to happen before the episode in question is broadcast. Comedies have their best punchlines broadcast in trailers so that when we tune in to the actual show, the joke itself has a second-hand quality. Television soaps often extract a pivotal scene before the episode in question has been shown. The pleasure of these scenes is vastly diluted by having sampled them over and over again beforehand.
We increasingly hear on the news that such and such a politician "will say" a certain thing in a speech he or she hasn't made yet. This seems to be a device more and more beloved of spin doctors, who take the juicy part of the speech and feed it to broadcasters ahead of time, with the result that the speech itself becomes almost redundant, its crunch softened because its soundbite is removed. Why do we need to know beforehand? Wouldn't it be enough to report what he said once he's said it?
The whole thing is topsy-turvy, as indeed is the habit of calling these bean-spilling devices "trailers". When I last looked, a trailer was dragged along behind something, not in front of it. Talk about putting the cart before the horse.
