Actually he’s not, he’s asking ianzin not to come in and offer (what Exapno Mapcase regards as) potential disinformation. I see no reason why we shouldn’t be able to discuss how a trick might have been done, and we’ve done so many times before. I hope samclem isn’t suggesting we can’t anymore.
What we can’t do is insist that ianzin spills the beans about stuff. I don’t really see what’s so infuriating about his posts in this thread, he did seem to be trying to help. If you don’t trust or value his advice then just skip his posts in magic threads, it seems pretty stupid to try and chase one of the qualified people out of these threads.
Regarding Blaine, I just don’t get it, I’m not really impressed by the endurance thing, regardless of what ianzin says I do think there’re various tricks involved – if there’s really not then he’s kinda undone much of the impact because people will always think there’s trickery involved. His entire personality just comes across as annoying. I don’t care if it’s all an act, he comes across as a complete dick a lot of the time, I might care a lot more about the water stunt if someone actually likable was doing it.
That’s one of the reasons I don’t care for Blaine. He tries to blur the line between what’s real and what’s illusion and never breaks character, always taking himself too serioulsy. Making outrageous claims of prep and study.
On the reverse end of the spectrum is David Copperfield. While I’ve never seen one of his shows or want to, I have complete respect for the guy because he acknowledges that what he does is a performance. Pure showmanship.
Even in interviews he admidts openly that there is no such thing as magic, it’s all tricks. He doesn’t claim to have mystical powers or to have studied the ways of the secret magic gods. He even says half the fun of seeing one of his shows is trying to figure out how he does it.
What bugs me about Blaine is this: Is he creating an illusion or an act of endurance? As part of the audience, it’s important to know what i’m being entertained by…
If it’s an illusion, then great, I want to know that going in, so i can shut off my skepticism and enjoy the show.
If it’s a feat of endurance… awesome! real danger, no tricks, let’s find the edges of human strength. Still quite entertaining if it’s REAL and no punches being pulled.
But in this case, we have a KNOWN illusionist giving us a feat of endurance. How am I supposed to reconcile the two? Am I being had? Which is it… because if I’m to be genuinely impressed, then the two are mutually exclusive.
1) It’s an illusion and we all know it: Good fun to see, and in trying to figure out how it was done.
2) It’s a genuine feat of endurance: Impressed and entertained. Especially if real danger is always a risk.
3) It’s an illusion under the guise of a feat of endurance: I feel like I’m being had. I’m annoyed and unimpressed. I’ve lost respect for the illusionist, because I feel I was being deceived and manipulated. An insult to my intelligence.
How can we not put Blaine in the 3rd category? The man’s profession is an illusionist/magician, so when he comes out with an over-hyped show about some feat that sounds humanly impossible without aid of some sort, I have to put up my skept-o-shield. Which is it Blaine? A Trick or a Feat? I want to know how to place my appreciation.
Your point seems to be ‘Someone can be a magician and be a cheat / liar / decevier in real life’. I agree with you. This is indeed possible. I never said it wasn’t. My point was that ‘Someone can be a magician and be a very honest, trustworthy person in real life’. Your point and mine are entirely compatible.
The only reason my point needed making was that some people take the line that, ‘All magicians are untrustworthy because they lie and deceive’, and I just wanted to point out that this isn’t secure reasoning because it ignores the context of performance. All magicians lie and deceive when performing. Not all of them do so in real life.
Revtim’s reply has a lot of merit. You mentioned two people who have never, as far as I know, advertised or promoted themselves as magicians.
It’s best if I don’t comment at any length on Uri Geller because I have received a letter from his solicitors warning me not to (and also because there’s a small chance it could suck our hosts into legal letters they’d rather not have to deal with). Suffice it to say that even if one hypothetically chooses to view his performances as ‘tricks’, it would be rather a gross exaggeration to describe him as using ‘all the standard magician’s tricks’. His working repertoire, if one choses to think of it as such, seems to consist of only four or five different effects. The one he is most famous for (spoon-bending / breaking) was not in any magician’s repertoire that I know of prior to Geller’s first flush of fame circa. 1973, and cannot therefore be considered as a ‘standard’.
I can comment on John Edward, and I have done, publicly, and at length on my website. (Mods: notwithstanding SamClem’s earlier permission re link to my site, this particular link is to a free / fun / non-commercial section of my site).
Again, I think it’s a stretch to say that John Edward uses ‘all the magicians tricks’. I’m not aware of him using any, unless you want to cite ‘cold reading’ as a magic trick, which is a debate in itself.
I agree. This is not something I have said or suggested.
…And that’s the beauty of Blaine. David Blaine is such an expert showman and magician he has inspired this kind of baseless speculation. A suspense and twitter unrivaled since Houdini. I am impressed and awed.
It was no surprise to me that he failed to make the mark, still impressive. I had no doubt of the feat as authentic and a show of endurance. It is his hallmark, all of his feats of endurance are genuine, nothing up the sleeves (except for the handcuff key.)
That’s why this thread is so silly and ironic to me. Never underestimate the cynical and skeptical imagination. In fact, magicians mostly rely on it. The linear imagination is quite predictable. Most people are convinced of a trick and then let their minds lead them to fantastical conclusions. All usually overwrought and assumptive- The fog of mind and chains of logic, the binding of vanity and self-righteousness.
He appeared to pull out two bicuspids from a young woman in the audience (probably a plant) and put the bloody teeth into his mouth. During this time, there were closeups of the woman tonguing her tooth gaps. Then, in a quick motion, he spat the teeth out into her face and they suddenly reappeared in her mouth.