This thread made 22 years disappear.
All mentalism acts are trivial. They either use stooges, confederates, spying, or a communication system. Even when elaborate language code systems are used it’s still trivial. Some mentalists are entertaining, but not because they can identify some object or word.
Absolutely! Though I get the feeling that they aren’t actually showing exactly how they are doing things, not that that would matter, but that kind of meta “There are 37 ways to do this and what I showed you is the way it’s done in ‘Magic for Beginners’ published in 1903” seems like something Teller would love.
(I’m certain that the regulars at the Magic Castle adore a brand new way to do a classic trick that they can’t figure out.)
This brings to mind Zach King, who styles himself as an illusionist but works almost exclusively in clever editing and camera tricks. It’s completely obvious for anyone other than the very young that his illusions aren’t “real” in the sense of stage magicians, instead the fun is seeing how cleverly and realistically he can depict impossible events.
The name reminded me of Mac King. In his most famous trick he makes small things appear out of nowhere. Here’s the great Mac King Fishing.
Just think of how much better his act would be if he used camera tricks and CGI.
An episode of Penn&Teller’s Fool Us featured the magician Jandro who had fooled P&T several times previously. In his latest magic trick he had a group of people stand on a small elevated stage in the middle of an airport runway. No possible holes underneath, full view all around, over and under the stage. He had observers watching the stage from different positions who all promised to speak up if they saw how the people were vanished from the stage. He dropped a curtain around the entire stage and then in seconds pulled the curtain completely away revealing all the people gone. The observers had not seen a thing. The observers could not be stooges under Penn&Teller’s rules so they were not lying. It took literally no extra skill beyond what any ordinary person has to disappear those people, yet Penn&Teller were fooled. There were elaborate guessed made that were easily dispelled, certainly no helicopter whisked the away somehow. And yet the way the trick worked was quite simple.
The people simply ran out from from the back of the stage while the camera stayed focused on the curtain in the front. Why didn’t the observers see them? They were blind.
What difference does it make how it is done if it fools you. Everybody should realize that you can’t trust what you see on video. If it’s important to you that a magician doesn’t use camera tricks then you have see the act live.
See, here is where I disagree though - this isn’t magic / illusion, it’s a riddle. There isn’t a trick, it’s a lawyer using a ‘technically correct’ version of events to mislead everyone on the premise of the event.
I mean, it’s fun and all, but I’d appreciate a book of riddles more at a lower cost.
To me, an event where I spend time thinking of ways it could be done is at least somewhat fun. Finding someone tricked me with legal trickery AND fundamentally the assistance of the ‘referee’ with technicalities feels mean-spirited.
This is the attitude I head so often when people find out how a trick was done. You were entertained and enjoyed what you saw until you found out how it worked. Would you feel better if the trick were done in some more complicated way? This is why magicians shouldn’t reveal how their tricks are done.
I think there is a slight difference. For a visual illusion, there is a chance that an eagle eyed observer can figure it out, where the illusionists skill in misdirection and showmanship are put to the test to prevent just that.
Having the entire premise falsified because your confederates used a Obi-wan level cheesy cheat, nope, that’s just short of bait-and-switch.
Sure, it’s better than the earlier examples where everyone is in on it, or visual effects are used to create an illusion that would be obvious if you were one of the live observers, but as you yourself pointed out, it “took no skill beyond what any ordinary person has.” The guy isn’t quite a fraud, but he’s telling us a visual riddle that only he has the information to interpret.
He’s more conman than illusionist to try to clear up my feeling about the difference.
And that isn’t to say a conman can’t be entertaining, but it isn’t what I would want to go see.
I’ll take @ParallelLines’s side in this.
Stationing blind people as observers is simply a figleaf on stooges. Those people knew they’d be useless as witnesses. They are knowing stooges in every sense of the word.
Which makes the “magic trick” nothing but a con. That takes so little skill I could do it. And I’m much better at inadvertent 52-card pickup than I care to admit.
I can greatly admire mental and physical dexterity. I can greatly admire showmanship & skill at misdirection. But simple blatant lying? Screw that.
To perform the trick took no special skills, but designing a trick that fools Penn&Teller is a skill. It’s not at all typical magic. Without P&T setting up the situation a lot of people would just say the observers were stooges. But he figured out how to fool people with a lot knowledge of magic, and it was done by taken advantage of our assumptions. Some of the very best magic tricks do nothing at all except convince us that we were fooled.
As I noted above they would be considered to be stooges if not for the magician taking advantage of the situation Jandro set up.
All magic tricks are a con in that sense.
Okay, in that case, we are basically arguing semantics. Are you okay with all of us ditching the name “magician” or “illusionist” and replacing it with “conman.”?
Because a lot of the illusionists I’ve seen (few live, mostly specials and shows) would beg to disagree. They claim (and often show) a great deal of physical skill, creative crafting (their own and that of the staff) and practice.
To use a closer example, a similar field that I have never found interesting is various mentalists who use leading questions, stooges, the rainbow ruse and other techniques to wow the audience (live and at home) with their abilities to magically determine information about the target. They all firmly fall in the con man category IMHO, but they have a lot of the same trappings of the more traditional illusionist.
But I find them boring at best, and irritating at worse, especially since the shows and specials are often cut to make them look even more accurate than merited.
Look, I’m not saying you can’t enjoy it, or that other people can’t enjoy it, but I won’t. Again, another poor analogy is that a traditional illusionist is a street performer, using skills I don’t have, and would have to work hard to acquire. The example we’ve been debating, or a mentalist, are people who are running a three card monte game while palming the cards. Some skill, but the premise they’re selling you is false from the get go.
One is entertaining, the other is a con.
I honestly don’t understand why you have so much hate for people who love magic.
People know that magic is not real. They want to be tricked. But all modern magic is an unspoken compact between the illusionist and the audience. The illusionist uses skill to deceive. Not lies, skills. That’s why stooges are frowned upon. That’s why magic is best performed live rather than on camera. That’s Penn & Teller insist on certain guidelines. That’s why you yourself keep going on about mentalists. Magicians have to deceive within boundaries, within a set of rules that have been worked out over decades and centuries.
Liars and cheats and crooks may be very skillful, but they’re also considered scum. Magicians are supposed to be above that. Anyone who knows magic history understands that the profession has low roots that the greats worked hard to erase so as to be make magic a part of legitimate entertainment and not three-card monte cheats scaled up for an auditorium.
If enough magicians violate the unspoken code, the whole profession will go back down the drain. Everyone will be tainted. I can’t imagine why you seem to be encouraging that. You’re talking to an audience who knows and understands magic as it should be and should want to be, and telling them they are being fools and at the same time not being fools enough. The audience should never be thought of as fools. They are willing participants in a game, and games have rules. You have one set of standards for mentalists and another for magicians. The audience doesn’t. Equal standards for all is the only way.
You have to understand that this is not some ordinary magician pulling a stupid trick to get away with it.
This is Jandro, one of the funniest most brilliant magicians in the world and a close personal friend of Penn. He’d already legitimately fooled the duo three times, which put him in an elite class. I believe only one other magician has fooled them four times.
Not only that, Jandro’s Spanish with a strong Spanish accent but just funny as hell which is difficult in a foreign language. He’s so brilliant that P&T would just give up and not even attempt to figure things out. No public guess, no questions, they just give him the trophy. It’s said that he has the record for the fastest time before P&T gave up and just handed him the win.
So the fourth appearance was a riddle, but a well deserved riddle that’s an inside joke by elite magicians playing around.
Actually, back when I was on the magic circuit, I used that as a joke. I’d remind people that they had paid money to see me and I was lying to them. In other words, I lied to them to take their money. Which is something conmen do.
Which is too bad, because you would miss one of the genuinely funniest magicians in the world.
Did you look at the video online? Are you seriously claiming that you have that much showmanship? I did amateur magic for a dozen years, then part time semipro (and got paid for that), and never, ever was anywhere near that league. Stars are stars.
Watch the video, linked below and say how you could write something that funny. People think that performing is easy, but comic timing is difficult, let alone while doing magic.
My bolding
Did you look at the video? Did you see Penn and Teller laughing and thoroughly enjoying the trick?
Jandro is not only funny. He’s not only a brilliant inventor of the most creative magic, but he is a showman. It’s not right when people trash him without bothering to understand the context. As it was said in the initial post, he had already fooled Penn and Teller multiple times. That alone should tell you there is much more than some wannabe betting suckers for drinks in a sleazy dive.
People trashing Jandro in this thread just aren’t looking good. Watch all four videos I’ve linked to then come back and call him a conman.
You’re getting a bit personal, and definitely judgemental. So I’ll rephrase this once more, because you’re obviously emotionally invested in this to the point of not paying attention.
First, let me quote myself -
I don’t like it. That isn’t to say you can’t, but I don’t. I didn’t even demand you cease liking it for my reasons, but you seem to demand I do for yours. And if Penn and Teller liked it, GREAT, they were the target audience after all, and it was their show. Success, your idol did a great job at reading that audience.
But it’s based on a lie. The no-stooges cop out was a cop out. Yes, they didn’t lie, but they also did not act in any way like an impartial observer, who would have said something like “Sure, I’ll tell you everything I see, but I’m blind.”
A freaking 8 year old grabbing their friend’s hand and using that hand to poke their sister while shouting “I’m not touching you, I’m not touching you!” is equally true, and just as false by any reasonable standard.
So yes, I am utterly comfortable calling that particular trick a con. It wasn’t directed at me, and it was in all likely hood good natured wack at a fellow professional and by all appearances something of a personal friend.
But me seeing it? I feel like it’s a cheat, a con, and the only response it deserves is a groan.
As we are already far afield from the OP and in FQ, I’ll gracefully step out of the sidetrack.
Much of entertainment is lying. Lawrence Block wrote a how to called Telling Lies for Fun & Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers Every frame of a movie is a carefully orchestrated lie, built up from offscreen manipulation of sounds and images. The Beatles and Pink Floyd and producers like Joe Meek used studio technology to create soundscapes that couldn’t be produced by instruments.
We accept lies as part of the process - up to a point. When Milli Vanilli proved to be lipsyncing their songs, they were dumped. When the first cheapo movie of the Fantastic Four had the crudest special effects, nobody watched. When A Million Little Pieces appeared as a memoir, Oprah lauded James Frey on her show and kept defending him until he admitted he made up the “facts” of his book, having written it as a novel, and he was disgraced.
In every art there are lines crossed at one’s peril. Lines are always fuzzy and punishment is not certain. Who ultimately decides? The audience, not the entertainer.
I prefer to use a Somebody Else’s Problem field*; it is much simpler and more effective, and what’s more can be run for over a hundred years on a single AAA battery. This is because it relies on people’s natural disposition not to see anything they don’t want to, weren’t expecting, or can’t explain.
Stranger
* Apologies to the late Douglas Adams
You’ve already said you are out of this thread, so I’m not going to make a long discussion out of this, but I need to clarify my point, for others if nothing else.
I’ve never said you had to enjoy it or appreciate it. Like music, reading, dance, cooking or another other field, there are many genres and performers/authors/chiefs/etc. and people like or dislike things. I have absolutely no problem with you hating his act or even himself.
What is objectionable were the apparently uninformed attacks on the nature of the trick, equating it with genuine scammers, sight unseen. I would be equally dismissive of those who attacked a particular song, for example, having never listened to it nor bothering to understand the background.
I don’t think the initial reference to it in this thread did it justice, but the circumstances were highly specific to one particular contest. You are certainly welcome to hate the trick and the performer based on a joke without considering the context, but when you characterize him as criminal, expect to get pushback.
Because as soon as it’s allowed, the mystery goes away. Not just for them, but for any magician, because now you just think “oh, it’s a special effect.” You can do anything you want with camera tricks, which makes it not special. None of us watch a person “vanish” on camera and wonder how they did it. Or wonder how there were two of the same person. It makes it easy too easy and thus boring.
And it’s something magicians need to come together and say, because using camera tricks will make it where no one wants to watch any of them. Special effects are not novel. They are not mysterious.
Magic is. Magic is the idea that someone can be right in front of you and yet trick you into believing something impossible happened.
It’s hard enough to do it on TV in the first place, anduch harder if everyone thinks you’re using camera tricks instead. Heck, it could even be someone else who actually does the trick, making the magician nothing but a pretty face.
It’s also why magic in movies is unimpressive–unless you can believe the performer actually did the tricks are real, then you’re just seeing the easiest of special effects.