talkmagic.co.uk

Something Gary Grace said in a thread about landlords not allowing magic in their bars reminded me of something that I was meaning to post about a few months ago - so here it is, better late than never.

I offered to show someone a magic trick in the shop I work at and he flatly said "No thanks; I hate magic" and walked off.

Has this ever happened to anyone else (I'm sure it has) and what did it make you think? I was speechless! How can you "hate" magic?! Sure, maybe you don't care one way or the other, or you would never choose to go see a magic show or watch a special on the TV, but hate??!!

I just stood there looking at the fella and pitying him on the inside. The git. What makes him tick?

nah, I know plenty of people who don't like magic. They hate the fact someone's tricking them and they don't know how it's done. They simply just don't like that feeling. There's no magical mystery to them. To them, it's a trick 'they could learn if they wanted to' so just get annoyed.

i feel sorry for those who feel that magicians are "against them" and trying to humiliate them in any way possible. it's sad.

I hate magic too. I like performing it but in most cases I hate watching it.
However I do believe there are benefits from a more subtle approach. If you ask people if they want to see some magic they could say no so it is better psychology to get them to ask you instead.

There are various ways this can be done. Sometimes a mere mention that you are a magician will do it. Sometimes doing a coin roll or casually doing a quick flourish will do it.

However there are indeed times when you can ask the person if they want to see something. However you should do so if they appear to be in a good mood or you are getting on well with them. In other words use good judgement.

In fact summing up people when performing and making good judgements about them is terribly important when doing close up magic. It could even be the most important thing of the lot. Yet for some reason it isn't covered in books and you see very little, if any mention of the subject.

I have always said that it is more important to manipulate the people than manipulate the props. And figuring people out is a large part of this.

The responce that you got ("No thanks, I hate magic") I can fully understand. Am I saying that against you as a magician? No way. His respoce came purely because how magic has been presented to him before and if we look at it, I think that it's reasonable for some people to be adverse to it.
There are many different approaches to magic. One of the things that I wrote in my introduction here on TM was that I didn't like big laquared boxes, scantily clad assistants, dancing and waving hands in front of your face. I'm not right and I'm not wrong but that is my opinion as to what attracts me or removes me from magic. I can't remember where I read this but I'm sure it's from 'Absolute Magic' by Derren Brown. Some magicians present their effects as a puzzle to be solved and if a solution isn't offered, then people feel cheated in the same way that if you had a stranger come up to you and say "you're in a room with two doors, each door has a guard, one tells the truth and the other doesn't, after each question the truth and lie switch etc etc". You'd sit there for several minutes trying to work out the solution only for that person to say "oh well, you didn't get it, bye!" and leave. You would naturally feel resentment towards that person. Again, am I saying that you as a magician set your performances up as a puzzle to be solved? Absolutely not, but the response from the guy you were asking might well have been based on the fact that most people he'd seen performing magic had. It wasn't a reflection on you, only a learned responce from what had gone previously.
To put it another way, I love jazz and find it a truely interesting, artistic and inspiring genre of music, but if I mention jazz to most people they presume that I mean Cleo Laine going "doobe doobe do" or saxaphones tearing off wildly. There is a massive variety to jazz music but because people are only familiar with how jazz has been presented to them generally (what they've heard or in the case of magic, what they've seen) they tend to presume that ALL jazz is like that in the same way that this guy presumed all magic was naff and unengaging based on how it had been presented to him before, and so he said he wasn't interested and that he hated it. He might have seen what you were prepared to show him and been blown away, but his responce was based on previous experience which shut doors to him.
I agree that it is unfortunate that some people do seem to have a natural shut down to something that can be so unique and fulfilling, unlike anything else they will probably experience, but the reason I don't perform much is because there are so many bad magicians out there they really don't need me to add to their number! I think the key to it is getting away from approaching what we do as a puzzle to be solved and start to see it as a journey that we can take people on so that when the journey finishes, there's a sense of completion rather than the 'puzzle' approach where there is a sense of unrest and resentment at the end. I think that until people get to experience that and take it on board, unfortunately there are going to be quite a few people who have made their minds up that they don't like magic and will sit refusing to budge.
Ian

Wise man once said: "There's nowt as queer as folk."

I think when offered it is far more polite to decline rather than say "I hate it!" before running off sobbing wildly but I can completely understand the point that people may not like or hate magic.

Some will always see magic as themselves being fooled or conned by someone or will see it as a puzzle that needs to be figured out. This can be an annoyance to the more control-freaky personality.

It could also be a matter of a personal dislike to this genre of entertainment. Try asking me what I think about performance dance in any of its guises; Ballet, ballroom, contemporary, jazz, tap etc.?
I would probably rather have my eyes torn out and my ocular cavities filled with salt.
say this to a dance student and they just wouldn't understand as it is a view point completely foreign to them

OrderD29 wrote:I agree that it is unfortunate that some people do seem to have a natural shut down to something that can be so unique and fulfilling, unlike anything else they will probably experience, but the reason I don't perform much is because there are so many bad magicians out there they really don't need me to add to their number! I think the key to it is getting away from approaching what we do as a puzzle to be solved and start to see it as a journey that we can take people on so that when the journey finishes, there's a sense of completion rather than the 'puzzle' approach where there is a sense of unrest and resentment at the end. I think that until people get to experience that and take it on board, unfortunately there are going to be quite a few people who have made their minds up that they don't like magic and will sit refusing to budge.
Ian

My only addition to this would be that given a variety of people you perform to, complete strangers for instance, then it is much more likely for them to experience it as 'the real deal' than when you perfom magic in front of those who look at it as if it's just a hobby that you, and thus anyone, could pick up and learn a few tricks that they will take as 'puzzles'. It takes a good trick to make them think otherwise!

My $0.02

In our experience - any magician that fans a deck of cards and then says pick a card - the public usually start to glaze over and look disinterested.

Magic has to be more entertaining these days for an audience to be interested in watching.

At the end of the day it is more to do with showmanship that the actual art itself.
Look at Jeff Hobson with the humble TT - hilarious

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=YZ0jHJaiD1I

but how many magicians have you seen go through a TT routine parrot fashion with no thought to entertainment.

but how many magicians have you seen go through a TT routine parrot fashion with no thought to entertainment.

Loads - any you can say the same for cards, coins and almost everything else in magic.

Magic has to be more entertaining these days for an audience to be interested in watching.

Totally agree - anything these days has to grab the attention of an audience and then hold onto it.

There are too many people out there who are performing far too early and who haven't fully developed their skills and thereby performing 'parrot fashion' with little or no originality.

These are the people who turn lay people off magic!

Performing tricks isn't the same thing as performing magic. The former is a mechnical process, the latter is an art to be learned and can be done with the bare minimum of the former! Card tricks suffer terribly as everybiody and his dog seem to be urging others to 'pick a card' so IMHO the smart money is on ropes, rubber bands, coins, small props and (apprently) non card tricks.

Can't argue with Mandrake

Variety is the spice of life and the same applies to magic in my opinion.

I've banned "pick a card" from my vocabulary

Last night I went to a friends house party. I wasn't planning to do magic there but I always bring a deck of cards and some rubber bands are constantly on my wrist.

When I arrived I was recognized by a few people who asked me to do some magic.

I did only two card tricks that night to different people, and each time except once when the free alcohol had done its work on me and I screwed up the trick, the reaction was always the same, people where blown away.

I had around three or four people ask me for my number in just a few hours.

I had people grabbing me going up to there friends and saying, show him that card trick.


The fact is there are good card tricks and bad ones. A bad card trick is any that finish with the magician taking out a card and saying, is this your card.
A very bad card trick are the mathematical ones, too long too boring.

That's what people find boring these days, everyone knows the magician will find the card. You have to surprise them for them to be affected.

The card tricks I did where as follows

Had someone pick a card, lost it in the pack had them hold the pack slap the cards away and there card is left in there hand.

The other (my favorite)
Have someone pick a card, completely free choice (true), it gets lost in the deck I look through, and low and behold the only red card in a blue deck was their card.
I then tell them that I can show them this trick again and we don't even need the red card, I put the red card in there pocket.
Have them go through it again they pick a card and lose it in the pack I look through... there is no red card. I look worried and act like the tricks gone wrong, I say I just realized that the red card I gave them was the only red one I had left, ask for it back, they take it out of their pocket and BAM it's transformed into the second selected card.

I promise you, these two effects (and there are a few more I'm learning right now) will astound anyone of any age. The key element is surprise, you have to take the card trick somewhere they're not expecting.

Sorry for arguing with mandrake please don't hurt me

Would'nt say all card tricks are bad but many card magicians can be.

We used to perform close up card magic all the time but ALWAYS with a twist.

Even on our website, although we primarilly sell children's entertainer's magic props we have some card tricks which are a little different to the noem and suitable for close up restaurant work and kids at the same time. Why ? Because they are not playing cards but still card tricks. They have a rabbit in a hat and empty hats type designs etc.

But because the designs are very modern we use them for adults who appreciate something different. So a magician can have them in his wallet and in a restaurant situation can perform them - if there are children at the table then also something to capture their attention.

We would also say as previously mentioned, a mixture of tricks is best to ad some variety to an act, not just all of one type like cards.