The film trailer is approximately 100 years old, and has been described as everything from a ‘mini-epic’ (The Guardian) and a ‘pumped up bully’ (Andy Medhurst) to the more recent, and familiar, claims of ‘spoiler’ text. The academic study of the trailer is harder to date, but has seen a more concerted focus over the last 10-12 years. Across that work – which has featured textual and industrial studies from a variety of perspectives, including approaches around the ephemeral or paratextual nature of the trailer – there has been little consideration of the discourses surrounding the trailer, despite the apparently dominant view that the trailer is simply too loud, too misleading, and reveals too much.

 In this presentation, I will present some initial findings from two related projects – one on my current trailer audience research project, the second on a broader survey of historical discourses surrounding trailer reception – to consider the range of discursive patterns that are revealed when people ‘talk’ about trailers. From there, I want to suggest a possible future for trailer studies that embraces those results and posit how we might place the trailer within a wider analytical framework that is alert to recent industrial and discursive shifts.

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