talkmagic.co.uk

Is the golden age of magic over?

Was there a golden age?

If so when was it?

It seems that that time was around the vaudeville era.

Does it seem this way to anyone else? Or is it just the beginning of a new era which could potentially be a new magical golden age (potentially). I was just reading through old Genii magazines and it seemed that we just left an era.

Maybe I'm crazy but it seems that the internet has, and I think it could be for the better, to rethink our tricks and how we do them.

Maybe I"m barking up a tree that doesn't exist, or, as I said, I"m insane. But that's just how it seemed, and this isn't just in the sense of what the tricks are, but the way people performed. It seems we've become to focused on the tricks and not how we make the audience believe those tricks.

Anyways I just thought I'd get that thought in my head out.

The golden age for me was the Victorian era (both for magic, spiritualism and the horror/fantasy/gothic novel, not to mention TB, cholera, child labour, the workhouse, and Jack the Ripper). The silver age would be the 1920's.

But that's just me. In a hundred years people will be saying "Ah yes, the late 20th century and early 21st century was the golden age of magic. What must it have been to see the likes of Derren Brown, David Blaine, and the Sooty & Sweep Show live on those televisual things?!"

The human brain is very good at looking at the past through rose tinted glasses. Don't let them fool you. This is the golden age. I'm certainly very aware that I couldn't do what I do for a living in an era that didn't contain the internet. It's how I get all my work and advertise myself. 100 years ago I would have been selling "Herbal Elixers" on street corners and telling fortunes in the back of public houses. Thanks to the internet I almost get to be respectable.

themagicwand wrote:The golden age for me was the Victorian era (both for magic, spiritualism and the horror/fantasy/gothic novel, not to mention TB, cholera, child labour, the workhouse, and Jack the Ripper). The silver age would be the 1920's.

But that's just me. In a hundred years people will be saying "Ah yes, the late 20th century and early 21st century was the golden age of magic. What must it have been to see the likes of Derren Brown, David Blaine, and the Sooty & Sweep Show live on those televisual things?!"

The human brain is very good at looking at the past through rose tinted glasses. Don't let them fool you. This is the golden age. I'm certainly very aware that I couldn't do what I do for a living in an era that didn't contain the internet. It's how I get all my work and advertise myself. 100 years ago I would have been selling "Herbal Elixers" on street corners and telling fortunes in the back of public houses. Thanks to the internet I almost get to be respectable.

correct

Historians tend to agree, the Victorian era... starting with Houdin (technically) through the days of Howard Thurston you find the "Golden Era" but then came the horror of all horrors that ended it all -- Motion Pictures and then the death blows of Sound (talkies) and Color... live theater as a whole, took a major blow and the "stars" of said venues... if they couldn't keep up with the evolution of things and meld into the Hollywood way... well, the quicker they seemed to fade into oblivion.

Starting in the late 1970s however Magic (in particular) got a huge infusion as the Casino industry seemed to slowly fall in love with it, hosting shows in which actual magicians were doing full evening features vs. Hollywood stars (like Donald O'Connor or Orsen Wells) doing "bits".

For roughly 35 years now Magic has seen some exceptionally good times but on many levels, especially when it comes to grand illusion, we've kind of created a sense of burn out... "we" are no long a novelty and the market is overly saturated e.g. it's time to allow the fields to go fallow for a generation, as the good book would suggest, before we will be able to see another abundant season.