IAIN wrote:to be pedantic, you were sarcastic first - i just pointed out that you had missed my point...
"it DOES do people some good, whether by enlightening them to the beauty of illusion or showing them them the limits of their observatory/intellectual abilities. Both do the audience some good."
completely disagree - doing the first (beauty of illusion) i feel is at odds with itself, the beauty of illusion is the illusion itself, not the mechanics of it...that spoils the illusion...
and making people aware of their own limits in both observatory/intellectual capacities is nothing more than smugness and rudeness on the part of the entertainer doing the exposure...
"oh? you didnt stop to think that the truck might be weighted on the other side?"
if an effect is "too old", or "over used", just means that YOU should retire it from your act...and not have some kind of say-so over others and how they choose to work...
i found derren's exposure of pepper's ghost pretty damn poor on his science of scams show, absolutely no need, and i very much doubt anyone who wanted to get people to believe that a house was haunted - would have to go to so much trouble...just turn the lights out and let the house creak away and the people's minds twist it out of all proportion...
exposure is pointless...
Perhaps my choice of using PnT was unfair; I had assumed you were familiar with some of their lesser known works. I'll describe a few of their exposure bits that come to mind. Their stage show at the Rio incorporated at least 2 routines that exposed the technical methods behind them to the audience, but fooled the assistant on stage. The knife throwing bit demonstrated the limits of perception in a fascinating way. They recently added a bit that uses the change blindness concept to fool the on stage helper while exposing the concept to the audience. It's a fun bit and people walk away appreciating that their own perception is probably as susceptible to such deceptions as the person on stage.
Teller has, on multiple occasions, exposed spoon bending/breaking, sponge ball sleights, and even Miser's Dream to illustrate the psychological techniques used by psychics. I don't see how this is pointless.
The trunk escape I described perfectly illustrates the beauty of illusion. They do an escape that usually requires a cover without the cover and ask the audience to close their eyes momentarily. They also let them know that they may keep their eyes open if they wish to, though the illusion may be broken if they do so. This creates an internal conflict that leads some people to keep their eyes open and possibly be disappointed by the method. To those who appreciate the illusion, the escape is miraculous. The exposure has a point.
Their clear cups and balls routine also technically exposes the cups and balls routine, but they do it in such a way that people forget the technical details after a very short amount of time but retain the feeling of having been let behind the scenes. It's what they were going for, and I think the routine is done very well. And no magicians lose gigs because of it.
On the (off)topic of our respective first lines: your comment that I missed your point implied that it was my fault when, as far as I was concerned, I answered your question reasonably. No hard feelings.