talkmagic.co.uk

I was thinking to myself "Is it moraly right to be a (paid) magician?"
It crossed my mind that basically what we are doing are fooling people with our skills. There is always the flip side of the entertainment purposes, but I think this may be directed more towards mentalism.
I can handle what I do as I believe the people I am performing for gets MORE out of it than myself, which is what my aim is.

Basically will we burn in hell for what we do, or be praised in heaven for giving people the pleasure of what we do???!!!

Does anyone else have any views here?

It's not a heaven/hell issue.

However I have no issues being paid to entertain others, it's a valid and appreciated service and the world would be a poorer place without entertainers.

If you do what you do for honest purposes then no worries - go ahead and get paid as much as you can, you're providing a service in entertaining people and live entertainment at that. Most professional magicians don't make a fortune anyway, or so they tell the Inland Revenue. If you're doing it for unscrupulous purposes then you're not likely to worry too much about the ethics of being paid!

And as for the hereafter….. A Vicar and Taxi driver died on the same day and arrived at the Pearly Gates together. St.Peter looked at them both and directed the Taxi driver to his new heavenly home, a magnificent mansion in the best part of Heaven packed with everything his heart could desire. St.Peter then directed the Vicar to a run down wooden shed near to the rubbish tip and sewage farm. 'Hang on a mo', said the Vic (who was, to say the least, a bit peeved), how come a Taxi driver gets all the good stuff and I, a man of the cloth, get this hovel?'

Ah, well' said St.P, it's all based on how you affected people in your earthly life. When you gave your sermons, people slept. When he drove, people prayed'.

OK, I know it's an old one but what the heck!

I think that the point here is that nobody is being fooled or conned. They actually know that we do not have magical powers. Its no different in my mind to an actor playing a part in a soap. Everyone knows it isn't real, although as with magic if it is done well people can get really wrapped up in the performance.

I fear that having to own up to performing magic is going to be very small beer for me when I get to them gates!!

(And the old ones are often the best Mandrake!!...............
A guy just died and he's at the pearly gates, waiting to be admitted, while St. Peter is leafin' through this Big Book to see if the guy is worthy. St. Peter goes through the Book several times and furrows his brow
"You know, I can't see that you ever did anything really bad in your life, but you never did anything really good either. If you can point to even one REALLY GOOD DEED -- you're in." The guy thinks for a moment.
"Yeah, there was this one time when I was driving down the highway and saw a giant group of Biker Gang Rapists assaulting this poor girl. I slowed down my car to see what was going on and sure enough, there they were, about 50 of 'em ripping the clothes off this terrified young woman. Infuriated, I got out of my car, grabbed a tire iron out of my trunk, and walked up to the leader of the gang, a huge guy with a studded leather jacket and a chain running from his nose to his ear. As I walked up to the leader, the Biker Gang Rapists formed a circle around me. So, I ripped the leader's chain off his face and smashed him over the head with the tire iron. Layed him out. Then I turned and yelled at the rest of them, 'Leave this poor innocent girl alone! You're all a bunch of sick, deranged animals! Go home before I teach you all a lesson in pain!'" St. Peter, impressed, says, "Really? When did this happen?"
"Oh, about two minutes ago." )

I look at it this ay, would you expect a plumber to come and fix a pipe for free? well, would you expect an entertainer to entertain you for free?

In my opinion, magic is a service, like a plumber, or builder. People hire builders to do what they are good at, and they expect to pay for it, which is the same with magicians, they get hired because they are good at what they do.

There is no moral thing to it IMHO

I don't mean to have a go, but if you have a moral issue with decieving people via magic then you shouldn't be a magician! Performance magic is an entertainment form andnothing else. True many skills used by the magician could be used in more malicious ways in other scenarios but in the context of a paid performance, there should be no issue with fooling people; it's what we are there to do. I'm constantly having this debate in my head whether a magician's primary function is to entertain or to fool people. At the moment, I would say that personally, I feel it is a joint priority. However, I'm now debating in which order we should see these two priorities. Do we:

a) Fool people in an entertaining way?

or

b) Entertain people by fooling them?

However, that debate is off topic for this particular thread (I may start a new one). Like I say, if you have moral issues with decieving people for the purposes of entertainment, you shouldn't be a magician. It is a fundamental part of being a magician that you decieve your audience. Why do we not give away our secrets? Is it to protect ourselves? No, and if you think that you are wrong. We do not divulge our secrets in order to protect our audiences. When an audience witnesses something that seems impossible they are struck wth wonder, but once they know how it is done that wonder is lost forever. That is why as magicians, we are bound to decieve our audiences all the time, because that is what makes us entertaining, and if we are entertaining enough to be paid for our skills then so be it.

I do NOT agree with this statement:

fooling people with our skills

That's not what we do. We impress people with our skills. Any person knows that magic is "impossible", meaning, there is no way you can make a person fly, cut him in 4 pieces, make a dollar bill fly, or shuffle a deck 100 times, and still it's in the same order. All of my friends, find magic very interesting, in the way that they are impressed "how the F*** is that possible", and "Wow, I know it's impossible, but you have a awesome technique that's impossible to catch the secret behind".

So, why shouldn't you be paid? You have skills like any other actor or sport idiot. Some magicians spend just as much time practicing their magic, as other persons do with their work/job. You invest hours, days, months and years or practicing and having frustrating times, so why shouldn't you be payed off?

So, yes, I want to be payed ! Show me the money !

rcarlsen wrote:I do NOT agree with this statement:

fooling people with our skills

That's not what we do. We impress people with our skills.

That is true but this must not be our focus. If we are trying to impress people rather than fool them our magic will loose all credibility and it will no longer be magic anymore. It is all well and good being a "mechanic" and perfecting all new ways to control a card to the top of a pack unseen, but if you do not have a presentation which captures the audience's imagination you are simply "good with your hands".

Our goal must be to fool people into believeing (even if only for the breifest of moments) that they have witnessed real magic. Impressing people is only a nice biproduct of what magic is really about.

Ooooh good, I have the forum talking!!!
The main reason I ask this is that one of my colleagues from work had found access to a site that discuss Derren Browns techniques, he then claims that he is deceptive EVEN THOUGH he claims to have no psychic powers!!!
I then asked him... "But you were intrigued when you watch him, am I right?" And he had to agree!
Everyone has made some excellent points, just to clarify the opening post was NOT my opinion, but merely a thinking point of starting a discussion.
I enjoy what I do and hope the people I perform for enjoy this too, I do mentalism and have learned that i must believe what I am doing to make other people believe it.
I think the main point most people are saying is that most spectators are expecting to be fooled, but this is not always the case... for example some forms of mentalism.

You are getting in to really dodgy realms now. There are people who believe that psychic powers exist. I don't. I don't think most normal people do (bound to have offended somebody here so - Sorry!)

There is nothing in magic that could offend anybody. We never pretend it is real. Now reading the tarrot is different. People believe that the way a pack of cards is dealt can decide their future (again its not for me especially since I started to read RRTCM!!!) so I think you might want to search your conscience if you do readings.

It's funny this thread has appeared,a s I read a little bit on this earlier on at work whilst checking some websites - this is from Wikipedia:

Wikipedia wrote:The sense of bafflement is part of the entertainment. In turn, the audience play a role in which they agree to be entertained by something they know to be a deception.

This is one of the few situations in which people willingly allow themselves to be lied to, and the audience trusts the performer not to exploit this, for example by cheating them out of money.

Houdini strengthened this trust by using his knowledge of illusions to debunk charlatans, a tradition continued by magicians such as James Randi, P.C. Sorcar, and Penn and Teller.

So that's how an encyclopaedia sums it up - audiences put trust in us to lie to them or deceive them, and not exploit it.

Have a good look around Wikipedia if you've got some time - it's so interesting and I got lost in web pages of information within about ten minutes! I started here: Magic (Illusion) - Wikipedia.

I warn you though, it's addictive, compelling and you'll spend AGES hunting around for stuff on the site![/quote]

If you work very hard, build up a good reputation through word of mouth and start charging to recoup some of your outlay then that's your own personal choice and very good luck to you.

I'm delighted at the number of times that work colleages come up to me and ask if I'm free on a particular date and then utter the words 'I'll pay you of course'.

Why shouldn't you charge something, if not at least to cover your expenses and outlay on props? We're not charity cases and have our own lives to pay for. Why should you put yourself out to make someone else's party go with a bang?

I used to find that people would sometimes invite you to a party just so you could entertain their friends and you wonder if it hadn't been for your magic, would you have been invited at all? I would then be approached by total strangers who would ask if you were free in a fortnight to come to their BBQ etc. as good old 'meine host' said that you don't charge.

It's up to you! Personally I charge for all but the very odd occasion but I do give a good discount to people from the office. They can then take it or leave it but I do find that most want to take it.

I don't have any conscience in doing this as I know that they and their guests will be entertained and I've not let anyone down yet.

I would urge you all to resist underselling yourself and magic in general, as well as letting people take advantage of you.

I would like to remind a lot of you that magic was created to fool people.

Derren Brown did an excellent job of this with his messiah programme.

There is nothing wrong with doing magic to fool people, but that attitude is highly unlikely to get you much work.

It is best if magic is entertaining otherwise it is scary or looks like an ego thing!

Magicians should charge what they are worth. I practise 7 hours a day and do nothing else so if I didn't get paid i would have a problem.

Steve Dela