(That's why I put 'Allegorical'. I am not the trekkie type who seems to start each scentence with 'well.. technically'
)
I shall rephrase what I was saying..
On the night I was watching Derren's show I came on here believing that what I had just seen was a piece of Art and that the fact mentalism was its medium was completley unimportant. For various reasons, I was able to watch the show as a lay-man, not once throughout the show was I speculating about method nor did it even cross my mind (
) as I was so enthralled by the subtle cinemagraphic artistly at play in the show. Contrary to feeling restricted or blinded, having that experiece of watching something through the average Derren-fan's eyes, I felt liberated as though a veil had been lifted which revealed to me a perspective often clouded by method and things which magician's place high value on but which, in reality, have little significance to the eyes of the real audience.
Instead, I saw lots of insipid comments about method and how it had failed spectacularly... according to the things which magician's value, it is imporant to add. Having watched the show with 'lay people' who connected with the vaugley philosophical issues in the show, I had seen how meaningless these values were in actuality.
I am not saying the show was perfect or without issue. Nor am I saying it completley enlightened me to a new mystical world; but enlightenment is merley becoming concious of something which had previously remained peripheral or perhaps innocuous, but always latent beneath the incumbent sophistry and delusions we convince ourselves are important.
Perhaps this was an opportunity for Mentalists to realise that create Magic is not about having your side steal nailed perfectly or about making everyone laugh every two seconds and to realise that we have beneath the facade of what we think is important an opportunity to produce Art.
I shall not essay about how and why Art is significant, but there is no doubting that it is. To call magic an Art, as it often is, is meaningless if you never stop and look indifferently at what it is you actually do and ask yourself if it is Art? Will it provide people with enough emotional discord to force them into reckoning with a different world view? There are many more questions about Art that could be asked and there is no comittee which decides these things or no thread which will provide an answer. You have to think.
But... 'It was a stooge!! Where was the mentalism!! There was no side steal!!'
And that was my point. Bob Marley held no degree or 'expertise' and yet he propagated important life messages. The fact is that no degree or amount of 'expertise' allows you to decide the important questions of how to live life. If there was an answer which someone which only took a degree in psychology to learn, then we would have resolved one of- if not the- greatest philosophical question which has plauged human thinking from Aristotle and much further beyond, right until the present day Goatee donning Mentalists. Unfortunatley, the question is still unanswered.
Derren was not specifically 'psychiatrising' this one man, he was quite explicitly talking to his audience about their own lives. I just don't understand which part of the message of 'Live life. Take opportunites. Have confidence e.t.c.' you object to. If he was attempting to regress someone with latent schizophrenia to resolve their several complexes and fixations then I would understand why it would be quite silly of Derren to go meddling there for the sake of entertainment. Until then, it was and is Art.
