Unpredictability and the art of suspense (November 15, 2025)

Unpredictability and the art of suspense (November 15, 2025)

 Many congratulations to LA Dodgers who won the World Series 2025 by marginally edging out Toronto Blue Jays in the final game 7. I believe that in the night the Dodgers won the championship, many baseball fans in LA area had a nightmare in which the Dodgers lost the final game, and woke up screaming with horror. The outcome indeed was that close. I wish whole-heartedly that the baseball fans in Canada woke up strong with hopes for the next season.

 We love sports and exercises. I’m not athletic, but enjoy watching sports events. There are many reasons why we enjoy watching sports events.

(1) Each individual may have his/her favorite athlete. He/she roots for the athlete and feels elated when the athlete wins games. Maybe, it is an animal in the individual which survived the wars from pre-historic to modern days. Maybe, sports events are proxy wars which give the individual triumphant sense of defeating opponents.

(2) We enjoy watching sports events videos recorded years and decades ago even though the scores and outcomes are determined already. Athletes are artists. We enjoy watching the performances of superstars as if watching and listening to music concerts by maestros.

(3) According to the researchers who study sports as science, one of the reasons why we enjoy watching sports events is the unpredictability of outcomes. In other words, sports events lose the fun if the outcomes are known in advance. This year’s World Series games may have attracted many viewers world-wide. Even if a viewer is not a supporter of Dodgers or Blue Jays, he/she may have been attracted to the events because of their unpredictability of outcomes.

 Sports events are like well-written mystery and crime novels which attract readers to the end where who-done-it is revealed. Readers cannot stop reading till they find the true culprits. Alfred Hitchcock expounds the art of suspense in an interview conducted by François Truffaut in 1962. Parasite (2019) is a good adoption of Hitchcock-style suspense technic by director Bong Joon Ho who I believe is an avid Hitchcock fan. I enjoyed the movie for its unpredictable storylines.

References;

Parasite (2019), produced by Kwak Sin-ae, et. al., distributed by C J Entertainment, directed by Bong Joon Ho.

François Truffaut, (1966), Hitchcock/Truffaut (Le Cinéma selon Alfred Hitchcock).