by byron0512 » May 24th, '06, 23:30
Do you remember the masked magician series from a couple of years back? ( I can't remember who he turned out to be in the end)
He suggested that the magic was going out of magic, and that what he wanted to do was to get people interested again. This much to the anger of magicians around the world who felt he was losing them their lively hood - apologies to anyone who reads this who did feel that. He wasn't exposing some of the really big stuff, but reintroducing magic to a technological society. He was also challenging magicians to stretch the performance envelope because he felt that magicians were all doing the same thing and needed to be challenged in how they thought about magic. In short, magic was becoming trapped in children's parties.
This really was before mssrs Blaine, Angel and Brown started messing with people's minds and being far more creative with their effects. IMO it heralded a different way of performing magic that created a renewed interest - even though the aforementioned were already on the scene I don't think that they had yet hit the world. I might be wrong here though so feel free to correct me folks if you know diferent. During the time between Paul Daniels and B:A:B name one magician who regularly worked the stage of planet earth in such a way as to inspire people to believe magic was there. - not including David Copperfield who seems to have his own timelessness -
I love the likes of Ali Bongo etc and whenever they were on TV I watched awed by what was going on, but it was always on children's shows (a glorified media version of a kids party in a way) - the adult love afair with magic for a time I think was lost. I think that the magical envelope HAS now been pushed in respect of wider popular culture, and now people are exploring it in whole new way, bringing it out of the children's party and producing adult magic to a new audience.
Jay Sankey suggests in one of his books that we as magicians spend an unequal time practicing our sleights compared to our performance. We know chop cups and cups and balls but even when you are aware that you are being misdirected, how hard is it to resist the misdirection of a true master. I watched Penn and Teller a while ago perform cups and balls using see through cups and it was incredible to watch. Performance is as much, if not more, a part of magic as any sleight or gimmick so to reveal a move, or method, is only a small part of the story perhaps.
Again in my opinion if a few tricks are given away it only goes to encourage people to want to know more and recognise the skills that are required in magic. I personally discourage people to find out, saying that if they did it would lose the magic, like losing some of those mysteries of childhood we grew up with; and that if they do find out to be willing to be disappointed. If on the other hand they really must know, not to reveal them to others.
The other thing to bare in mind is a huge change in attitude towards knowlege in only a tiny time-frame: 10 years. We have the internet which will deliver to your home information on virtually anything in the world, most of it for free. Its the culture we live in. Knowlege is shared. The internet phenominum is starting to bend the rules on what is becoming 'public domain'. Though some internet future-ologists believe that we are comng to the end of 'free' knowlege, and that there is so much out in the ether that people are now willing to pay for information that has been pre-processed to save that 'surfing' time.
A little knowlege perhaps will continue to pique - if that is the word - the interest of Joe public sufficiently that when they encounter a modern day magician they will recognise his or her skill and be willing to, in the words of Sankey, be co-creators in a magical moment. The biggest threat as far as I can see is that poorly rehearsed/bad perfoming amateurs (of which there will be none of course on this forum!) will do one of the tricks for his mates, do it badly or even worse, reveal how it is done - and therefore lose the magic for someone else. the result being that when that 'mate' encounters a real magician they dismiss it as the same weak stuff before giving it half a chance.
So there are good points and bad points to this arguement. I come down on the side of revealing some of the simpler things that could be described as 'public domain' and keeping the stronger stuff that requires real skill, penache, performance etc a secret.
And how do we know, perhaps there is even now a broke 12 year old who loves magic, who can get hold of strong effects they could not otherwise afford; and who are another Derren Brown or Blaine waiting in the wings?
