the ethics of magic

Cafe Society
1

First off, let me start by saying I didn’t really know where to place this thread. I don’t really have a topic to debate, more a question for discussion. Since this topic is about magic, as in stage magic or close up magic, (as opposed to any time of ceremonial wish fulfillment or supposed “real” magic), I figure that is entertainment and an artistic discipline - so Cafe Society.

Now for the topic. In a previous thread about a Penn & Teller TV show and magicians, the discussion turned to the methods one magician used to try to fool P&T. In looking up topics for that discussion and another P&T TV show, I came across some commentary about the ethics of particular magic techniques.

In particular, the method in question was what is termed “instant stooges”, which is taking an audience member and then coopting them into the act and having them do something specific to aid the presentation. What I mean is something like asking them to “pick a card” but suggesting to them surreptitiously that you want them to pick the 4 of Diamonds. If they comply, everyone else in the audience is massively surprised when you reveal your prediction that they would pick the 4 of Diamonds.

A more general question could be extended to the use of stooges in general, i.e. instead of picking random, authentic guests, pick a planted person with a planted answer.

A separate technique involves the use of “hidden assistants”, i.e. somebody who is never seen that changes or sets up things to work out, such as someone behind a screen writing the audience’s pick on a blackboard so when the “prediction” is revealed it is correct, but was actually written down after it was stated by the selector.

To many people, especially lay audience members, the idea of using a stooge is particularly offensive. I think from an audience member’s perspective, that kind of trick is unacceptable because the intent of using an audience member is supposed to be to allow anyone to participate and observe up close. That person is the stand in for the audience in general, and so to replace the stand in with a fake/stooge is unfair.

From a magician’s perspective, there is still room for discussion of the merits. One argument against using stooges is that there is no skill involved, no training. It is like asking an audience member to pick a card, any card, and offering them 1 card. Or pick a number between 7 and 7.

A flipside argument in support of using stooges is that all magic is deception, fooling the audience, so the use of stooges is one tool that if used sparingly can aid a presentation to make it more amazing. I say used sparingly, because if it is your only tool, then you aren’t doing magic, you’re doing theater. Which is an entertaining art form, but not the one people thought they were getting.

When someone put it in that perspective, it at least made me think a bit. Why do we want to chastise a magician if he uses a stooge but applaud him for any of the other techniques to fool us, like trapdoors and things up sleeves and smoke and mirrors, etc?

I suppose any discussion of ethics of magicians should also discuss a different topic, that of performers who claim to have mystical powers but are using fakery and the same performance techniques of the trade to carry it off. The obvious example is Uri Geller, famous for being a supposed psychic.

An example of this actually came up this season on America’s Got Talent. Interspersed with the usual mix of acts, there were several magicians this season. In fact, 4 groups made it into the live shows, and three into the final 12 acts (Semifinal round). Within the magic acts this season, there were two that violated this boundary.

The first was some guy who claimed he had actual supernatural powers, who did a collapsing water bottle and a “restore a soda can” act. This one got eliminated in the post-audition screenings before the live acts. It was particularly offensive to me, especially since I not only knew how he did the restore a can trick, I duplicated it in my kitchen with 5 minutes of prep.

The second guy actually made it into the live shows, and was Howie Mandel’s save to the Finals, a guy named Mike Super. Mike Super was doing a mix of mentalism and old-school spiritualist acts using his “spirit guide”, “Desmond”. One of his acts that impressed the judges was spirit writing using two slate chalkboards and a prediction routine with numbers guessed from the judges that tied to their birthdates. (I don’t know how he got the number guesses right, but the spirit writing is easily accomplished by using a fake slate that shows blank, then slides from one plate to the other during handling to reveal the writing prestaged and hidden until the reveal.) Another of his tricks was putting Mel B (judge) in a chair, and doing a Voodoo doll trick on her with the help of Desmond.

Howard Stern eventually convinced him to drop Desmond, and his act improved.

Another mention of something similar was from Fool Us, where a lady did an old school spirit cabinet act, but instead of making it about ghosts she switched up and made the whole routine about sex and bondage for sexual purposes. As Penn put it, taking something used for evil and using it for good.

Penn and Teller are definitely skeptics in the sense of not believing magic powers are real, and they are vocal (well, Penn is vocal, Teller is usually silent, but still a strong) anti-mystical crap. I’m definitely in that camp, and find the idea of using trickery to support the notion of magical powers as being particularly offensive.

I suppose if someone were to actually have mystical powers, that would be interesting. There are some mystical powers I wouldn’t mind having myself. But the notion of trying to foster the idea they might be real and then resorting to trickery is offensive and definitely immoral in my mind.

It’s one thing to set up a performance and say “I’m going to amaze and astound and befuddle you”, but it’s another to say there is something mystical going on. Sure, I may not know the trick (and those are the ones that are more amazing, if personally more frustrating), but it’s still a trick.

And since this post isn’t long enough, I think there’s a third topic I can mention related to ethics, once again exemplified by Penn & Teller. In two separate TV events they mention this topic, the idea of safety and risk of real harm.

On one episode of Fool Us, a magician did a “smash your hand on bags that might have a spike” trick, and he used an audience member’s hand for one of the rounds. (A group on AGT did a similar repetition of this version of the trick, though IMO an inferior staging that I discuss in the AGT thread.) Penn made a specific point of stating that they feel that any magician who does a trick that has a real risk of harm is evil and unethical. He also said he didn’t think that was the case in this trick, and he didn’t think the show producers would allow that. And then he told how the trick worked and was not a real risk of harm.

A second mention of this was on Fool Us this past week, where Penn & Teller were staging a “memorization” trick that used an industrial pneumatic nail gun shooting nails into a wooden board to make it exciting, with the idea of memorizing a pattern of some 40+ nails and spaces in the gun in order to create drama. He would pump one into the board, then shoot against his hand, in a non-simple pattern, with nails in the board every time and non-nails into his hand. And for grins he shot once at Teller’s groin, and for the finale and to make this very point, he put the final shot into Teller’s neck at the jugular. His commentary at the end of the trick was that these memorization tricks were lies that did not rely on memorization, just as the trick with the nailgun was a lie. Then he commented that he feels any act that has actual risk of harm is unethical, and so to prove his point that this trick was a deception, that is when he finished with the nailgun to Teller’s throat. If the trick really were a nailgun with actual nails in it, that would be too risky because one miscount or misfire in the sequence, and Teller gets almost certainly dead.

One might also tie this topic back to Mike Super and Desmond because during the voodoo doll act, he Tazered Mel B. I’m not sure how much charge he used or if he used an actual Tazer or some smaller shock charge, but it was painful to Mel, not merely surprising.

Anyway, does anyone have thoughts on these topics, or other aspects of ethics in magic?

2

Some magicians definitely push the envelope, the case of Chung Ling Soo being a good example. (At least in his case, he was only risking himself, unknowingly of course.)

3

For the most part, I’d agree with Teller. (Though I think “evil” is hyperbole. Let’s stick with unethical.)

Magicians and their employees could be expected to take on some risks. Firefighters and lion tamers work every day just one mistake away from death/injury, so it seems reasonable that magicians could expose themselves to similar risks in their daily job.

When it comes to the audience members who are not aware of the risks they face, then it really isn’t fair to put them at any real risk. You don’t call up an audience volunteer to put their head in a lion’s mouth or send a civilian into a burning house.

4

I’ll expand on my comments in the Fool Us thread. The thing that really gets me is Uri Geller. I don’t know exactly what he is doing now, but at one time he claimed to have supernatural psychic ability. Even that doesn’t bother me that much, except that outside of his act he actively promoted the existence of such special powers which aids the frauds who are not entertainers. Obviously he knew such powers do not exist and he didn’t have them. It’s not so bad for an entertainer to make the claim about himself, though I’d prefer they didn’t in any serious way. No reasonably intelligent person would believe Mike Super was aided by an actual spirit guide. I don’t know exactly where to draw the line, but Geller was definitely over that line as far as I’m concerned. I should note that I used my own amazing powers and predicted that Uri Geller would be mentioned in this thread.

As far as stooges and confederates are concerned, I don’t really care. They are usually found out. The use of doubles is very common these days. As long as it’s entertaining it’s fine with me. I do prefer magic that is more based on skill, but entertainment itself is a skill and I’d prefer a very entertaining act using stooges over a very dull one based exclusively on manual dexterity as an example.

The risk of injury is something I hadn’t considered before. It’s most clearly unethical to place an audience member at risk of injury. To put the magicians themselves at risk is going to depend on the degree of potential injury. Magicians can easily burn themselves with flash paper. Houdini is said to have tried a risky means of doing a Buried Alive trick and then rejected it. Magicians have died when Bullet Catching routines went awry. Many escape artists do very risky tricks, but with proper preparation the risk is minimized. I wouldn’t stop aerial acrobats from engaging in risky entertainment and I don’t hold magicians to a higher standard. However I do find that magic done through wit and skill is preferable to actual risk.

Video magic is another matter. I wouldn’t say it’s unethical, but using video tricks and making a claim that they aren’t being done isn’t nice. It’s all over the place on videos these days. It’s ok for entertainment, but I dislike denials.

Back to the beginning of this, encouraging, aiding, or engaging in fraud is flat out bad, no excuses are acceptable. Putting an audience member at risk is also bad. All reasonable risks for an audience member have to be excluded. That includes asking an audience member to do something that might harm the magician such as firing a gun at him.

5
  • Topic 1 -

I don’t care for instant stooges. I agree that it can lead to some really great effects, where it just seems completely impossible for the magician to have ever have done that trick, so I can see why (if used sparingly) you might still want to do it as a magician.

From an ethical standpoint, though, I think it really doesn’t cut the mustard. A lot of the time, when you’re called up to participate on the stage, you probably will get some glimpses of things that give away how a trick is done. While that might let some people down, I think everyone knows that it is a trick, and so they can’t really complain that there’s a gimmick to it. And of course, some people will find the revelation of how it’s done to be a fun and interest fact. But when you look at the face of the people who are made to act as an instant stooge, all of them seem put out. Like, “Yeah, whatever. I’ll say what you want, but fuck you.” The simplicity of the gimmick is just too simple. And that gimmick isn’t that you’ve got a stooge, it’s that you know people don’t want to ruin the show for everyone else. You’re using a shaming technique to keep that one audience member in line, for the enjoyment of everyone else.

At the end of the day, a magician is an entertainer. As an entertainer, it’s reasonable to expect that you can’t please everyone and that there are limits to how much you can entertain the audience within the boundaries of the techniques of your art. Choosing to piss off a member of the audience, rather than entertain him, for the sake of the rest, seems like it’s going over the boundary.

But then I also have no desire to watch something like Borat. I don’t think it’s justifiable to sacrifice a few lambs in order to entertain the audiences. If someone volunteers to go see Gallagher, they should expect to get a hunk of cottage cheese to the face. But if you’re just out minding your business or you’re at a music concert, having a performer come down and start spanking your ass, that ain’t ethical, regardless of how much the crowd might be enjoying it.

  • Topic 2 -

Magic ain’t real.

  • Topic 3 -

I think that encouraging people to do things that harms themselves is bad. If you choose to put yourself in harm’s way, that’s your choice. So, for example, I have no problem with people who work as professional stuntmen or daredevils.

But, with magic, it’s a bit unclear whether the magician is putting himself in harm’s way or simply performing a trick. If, as a magician, you can figure out a way to tell people that you have a safe way to perform the trick, then you’re helping to prevent people who think (wrongly) that they know how to perform the trick from doing so, when the method they came up with is unsafe. If the method they came up is dangerous, and they know that the real trick is safe, then they know that it’s the wrong method and they need to go back to the drawing board.

But, even if they did get the wrong method, it is still up to them to decide whether to go forward with it. Putting together a magic trick takes a bit more conscious thought than, “Watch me skateboard down this staircase!”, so presumably the person has made a real choice over whether they are willing to put themselves in harms way, in this particular case.

So, basically, I’d say that notifying people that your trick can be performed safely is a good gentlemanly gesture, but not entirely necessary.

6

I have no objection at all to the use of stooges, provided that they’re a small fraction of the audience. How small? That depends on the size of the audience. I think the acceptable stooge number probably scales with the square root of the audience size. And by that I mean the live audience: If there are five people in the studio with you, then at most one of them is allowed to be in on the trick, even if it’s being televised for millions. And if there are no people watching live, then the trick had better be one that could be done live with no stooges at all.

But a small number of stooges, below whatever that threshold is? No problem, it’s just another technique. I know of tricks, for instance, where you can take fifty volunteers from the audience, and where only one of those fifty needs to be a stooge. That’s fine; you’re still entertaining the other 49, all of whom “know” that you “can’t possibly be using stooges”. And if you need three or four stooges to pull off a trick in an arena seating 20,000? Eh, who cares about three or four?

This is the first I’ve heard of the “instant stooge” technique, so I’m not sure what to think of it. My first thought is that a magician using it had better have a backup plan, in case the audience member doesn’t want to play along-- Sure, most will, but all?

7

The one that still bothers me to this day was in one of David Blaine’s first tv specials. He would do street magic to elicit real responses from people on the street but inter-splice cuts of the trick that was different than what those people saw.
He was performing the balducci levitation on the street which is a visual illusion where it appears like you can levitate 1 to 3 inches off the ground. And they’d show the people that fell for it and their amazed reactions. But on TV they’d show a shot of some legs from the knees down lifting a good 2 feet off the ground.
That pretty much invalidates the whole show.

8

Some think this technique only worked in a England because the audience was more polite and wouldn’t blow the trick, while Americans wouldn’t be so cooperative. It was controversial in some circles because the show, Fool Us, was a contest of sorts, and it was lucky that the participants cooperated. It’s possible that Einhorn had multiple outs worked out, the technique of revealing something different that would still be difficult to explain.

Also, the proper number of stooges is three, though not always the same three.

9

I saw a magic show recently where he used an ‘instant stooge’ for one trick. The audience member played along but it was kind of obvious what was being faked. After that, whenever he used an audience member, I had to wonder if they were just playing along. I didn’t think it was unethical, but it made the show less fun to watch.

10

Only because you mentioned him in that other thread. :wink:

This makes sense. Escape artists do often place themselves at some risk, such as being under water, or hanging suspended from a high place. While there are back ups and safety outs, and the artist trains hard for the task and uses other tricks to make the trick appear harder than it is, there is still risk involved. I think some risk in these cases is acceptable. The magician placing themselves at some risk is not unethical.

However, putting an assistant at risk (i.e. doing a knife throwing act or such) is one step less ethical. Sure, that assistant is hired based on accepting that risk, it’s still a little less kosher IMO.

One of the acts on AGT this season was an archer who used his assistant for target practice. It was entertaining the first time. He also happened to be 90 years old, which added an element of risk. But again, the assistant chose to work for him, so not unethical.

What I’m thinking more of is sticking the assistant in a box and really being in the box with a Tiger for the reveal. Or making her do the hold her breath under water part. That kind of thing.

Using video tricks and denying them is insulting your audience.

True.

I think that’s a strong reason why it is unethical and to be avoided. Coopting someone into the trick and shaming them into complying - that bugs me.

A different example, on Wizard Wars the other day one of the judge magicians was doing intermission filler. He pulled a trick where he drew a picture of a card on his arm, then turned it into a deck of cards, then made a card magically rise out of this deck, as a drawing. He had an audience member select the card, the 4 of Diamonds.

Now I fairly easily spotted how he made the card rise out of the deck - he used the old trick of rubber cement to prep his skin with a fold, then drew the “deck” with one edge along that line. But the part that is mysterious is how he predicted the 4 of Diamonds, because the audience member doesn’t state that until after he starts the trick and draws the first card of the deck, the Ace of Spades. So how could he have prestaged the 4 of Diamonds for the reveal? The only way I can think was coopt her as a stooge in some manner. Now maybe, in this case, she is still entertained because she doesn’t know how he got the card to rise from the deck, so she still enjoyed the show even though she was brought in on the part that amazed the more informed (and ones with slow motion) like me.

I’m a little less concerned with this, because if someone is interested in performing a magic trick, they should research how the trick is done and put in the time to really understand. If that person then tries a risky trick, that’s on them.

Example that comes to mind: the hand onto a spike trick. A traditional method of doing this trick involves a small block of wood and a nail. You put the nail so it sticks up from the block of wood, and prepare 2 additional blocks of wood without nails. Then you place a styrofoam cup over each of the blocks. You now have three cups, only one that has a nail. You then get an audience member to move the cups around while your eyes are closed/back turned/blindfolded so that you can’t know where the nail is. You then use ESP to devine where the nail is. You slam your hand down on each of the non-nail cups but not the nail.

The trick explained for this was that each cup has a serial number embossed on the bottom. So you just have to track the cup. You instruct the volunteer to slide the cups around, and the other blocks make them feel the same. However, the risk here is that the volunteer will get sneaky and change the cups, anticipating there is some secret marking you are using. Boom, you impale your hand. That is the risk by using a bad method of relying on the volunteer to not be sneaky and follow actual instructions.

The variation used on Fool Us used a different gimmick. He used for rather large blocks and a rather large nail in paper bags. He then had the audience direct which bag to slam his hand on, and at one point uses the volunteer’s hand. This trick would not work by marking the bags, as there is no room for the artistic flourish of holding your hand over the spike bag and then slamming down the bag next to it. The key to this trick is that the spike is easily removed from the block, so you palm the spike and then there are only blocks in each bag. Then you slip the spike into the last bag and have your reveal.

The variation of the trick that was shown on AGT was less dramatic because we didn’t see the spike go into a bag, only come out at the end, though a duplicate example was shown to the judges to tell us what was waiting. This was largely done, I assume, for time purposes, as 90 seconds doesn’t give long for someone to shuffle the bags where the magician can’t see, and allows them to set up the banter part of their act better. But it reduced the perception of the risk.

In either case, there’s no risk of impaling a hand, versus using a method that the spikes are in place and marking is used to track where it is.

So there are tricks like making a live elephant disappear in a parking lot. The parking lot precludes the use of a trapdoor, even if one would work for an elephant. The trick uses a tent or curtain surrounded by a ring of people. While the curtain is up, the elephant is walked out the back and off to the side and disguised by trees. This is aided by camera angles blocking line of sight on the elephant’s path.

The stated purpose of the ring of people is that they are volunteers to observe from all angles, theoretically to prevent exactly what happens. Instead, they are all stooges.

That annoys me.

If you are bringing people up on stage to verify the trick is not done a certain way, then your trick should be able to trick them. If you need them to be stooges to fool the audience, then you should device a different trick.

An example, a show “the Masters of Illusion” did a fancy cut a woman in half trick, part of the trick used a box with trapdoors on the sides to open and reveal her arms and legs during the trick. Volunteers were brought from the audience to check the arms and legs, and witness every time the trapdoors were opened. My observation of how the trick was performed (I forget which magician did this one), the legs were fake but slipped in place when the cover was brought out, and the girl tucked her legs up into the top half case. That was disguised by her loose floppy shirt. In this case, I think the volunteers were fooled by the apparatus rather than stooges. I think it would have been unnecessary to use stooges, because the act could just as easily been done without someone close to the stage with almost the same effect. Actually, on the same series, Jonathan Pendragon did a similar act that was more convincing and he did it without the close up observers. (His version was truly stunning. Even for an audience well aware of the standard methods for the trick would have been fooled. I was amazed, and had to study it closely for a couple times before I figured it out. Largely because he reduced the cabinet size to the bare minimum and disguised the table thickness well.)

I didn’t think about that example, but I agree. He used the balducci levitation to get small numbers of people on the street to react, and they were convinced. But then he interspersed that with video shot where he was lifted by a crane in order to get the 2 foot gaps, and used stooges wearing matching clothes to the actual street audience to sell the fake footage as if it were filmed simultaneously. Very dick move.

That’s an important point - that show is specifically a contest with a prize awarded by Penn and Teller, so being complicit in the act is actually ripping off the contest. So now the instant stooge has to decide is it better to annoy the audience by not complying or rip off P&T by complying. How’s that for an ethical dilemma?

Someone said the rules of the show preclude stooges. I’d be interested to see that.

11

Other then the stuff about endangering audience members, I think calling this stuff “unethical” or “offensive” is kind of over the top. Using stooges makes for kind of a lame trick, but I’m not sure its any worse then that.

And at least in the case of forced stooges, there is a certain amount of skill to doing it well. I’ve seen tricks where the trick looks different form the “stooges” perspective, so that they don’t really realize that the choice the magician is asking them to make is part of the trick from the audiences perspective, and since they still see a trick from their persepective, they still get an honest look of amazement at the reveal, rather then the pissed of expression you mention.

12

That touches on something called dual reality, and I’d be interested more in how that works in the means you describe.

13

For me, it’s an issue of not using cheats that negate the need for skill. If you’re filming a movie, I can accept some use of CGI instead of real stunts, but if you’re filming a magic show, I expect some real slight of hand and not just post-production. Stooges used poorly are just as bad.

14

In a sense, Blaine’s street-magic levitation is an example of instant stooges with dual reality. The people on the street were recruited into being stooges, and were impressed with the Balducci levitation (these were obviously people selected for being easily impressed), but their actual use was to falsely convince the TV viewers, the real audience, that what we were seeing on our screen wasn’t just a camera trick.

And the use of a stooge can require some skill, if the audience member participant is chosen at “random”. It just shifts the skill needed from impressing a real audience member on the stage, to rigging your selection method (which is actually guaranteed to pick your stooge) so that it looks random.

15

I don’t like stooges at all, because that’s not magic, it’s just acting.

I liked the first David Blaine special, because he did a lot of close-up work that looked very impressive, that looked to be pure skill and not camera trickery. But he also has a trick in that same special that I am pretty sure had to use a stooge, and I thought it weakened the whole show. Because if he’s willing to “cheat” once, maybe the other stuff was cheating, too?

However, I quickly burned out on him after the “levitation” special. That’s not even magic!

16

I wouldn’t really call that stooges, though. They were impressed with what they were shown. They didn’t intentionally mislead the rest of the audience at home over what they saw. That was done by editing in post-production.

To be a stooge, I would think the person needs to have some awareness that they are helping the magician “cheat”. (Isn’t that what all magic is - cheating?)

17

The other problem with instant stooges is that now I just assume EVERYONE from any magic audience is a stooge, instant or not, which takes the fun out of a LOT of magic tricks.

Pick card
Name the card
Now that card shows up in a seemingly impossible location

Still interesting to see how that card got into the seemingly impossible location, but MUCH less interesting if only one card has to be there instead of 52.

18

I’m the type of person who would go along with any instructions if they were given on the up-and-up. If I catch something, I will not mention it until later, so other people can be amazed.

But if I were picked to be an “instant stooge” and knew that was what was going on, I think I’d be so disheartened that I’d deliberately mess up the trick. Or, if there was too much pressure and I give in, I’d later be going around telling everyone how the trick was done.

That desire to thwart the trick is why I say I find it unethical. I dislike it enough that I want to ruin it.

19

It was several decades ago, now, but there was a time when I was quite deeply into the culture of magic. As I understood it then, the vast majority of magicians considered the use of any sort of stooge to be essentially unethical. It might be allowable very occasionally to use a stooge if it were absolutely necessary to pull off a particularly impressive effect, especially if the stooge only played a relatively small (though vital) role in the mechanism of the trick. However, I always understood that any magician who otherwise used a stooge in any but the most rare and exceptional of circumstances, certainly anyone who routinely used stooges, would soon come to be roundly despised and shunned by the rest of the profession. Presumably this attitude prevailed because it was recognized that routine use of stooges would lead to attitudes, amongst the potential audience for magic, like this:

which would, essentially, kill the market for magic.

Maybe things have changed since those days, but I doubt whether they are likely to have changed all that much.

20

I don’t enjoy magic that would tend to use a ‘stooge’. In other words, a volunteer should only be called upon to do something that needs a second person (eg pick a card), and if the audience is relying on their astonishment to get enjoyment from the trick, it’s not much of a trick, even if the audience member is genuine. Close up magic is a real skill, but I think it should only be used in situations where the audience is small enough that they are all ‘close up’.

I’m unusual, I think, in that despite being somewhat of a skeptic, I don’t see a magic show as a battle of wits between the magician and myself, where the fun comes in guessing how the trick is done. I see it as a spectacle; as entertainment. Sort of like ballet or wrestling - it’s not about whether it’s scripted or carefully planned, it’s about how well the performance is sold. Some magicians don’t think about making a ‘performance’, but worry more about ‘spectacle’ - an example: there’s an Australian magician who did an escape from a water tank, which was fine, but he had about fifty locks on him. The problem was that when he had to open them, he ripped them off as though he was pulling velcro straps off. He didn’t sell the performance of needing to struggle or achieve something in undoing the locks. It would have been a far better performance if there were only three locks, but it looked as though he was doing something impressive to open them (even if it was all fakery).

So in that case, even though he put himself at risk (he was actually submerged in water, which is always a risk, even without any locks at all on your straitjacket), there was not enough performance to justify it.