the ethics of magic

[Irishman]

@MaxTheVool

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.

So I was watching America’s Got Talent, and Mat Franco pulls off a great amazing trick using two “decks” of cards: a conventional deck that Howard Stern handles, and a human deck with 52 volunteers holding giant cards with their faces hidden that Mel B directs. Watching the trick, it was very impressive. I was rather amazed at the result. Except then I was thinking about how it could be done. Now figuring out the part with the real deck manipulated by Howard was one thing - it involved guessing how to set the deck to work with the shuffle and seeing the few cards that weren’t right that Mat fudged. It was still good. But the stagework involved the humans “shuffling” the cards, then getting into a line for Mel B to sort. That shuffle wouldn’t be easy to stage the same way. That left me with the guess that he just made 52 instant stooges - that they were given some instruction on how to line up.

It wouldn’t have to be the whole trick, just to get to the front or the back of the line. That direction, and a direction on how to line up when Mel sorted them, would make the trick work exactly the same as the set Howard did, probably better because there would be fewer mis-shuffles at the edges.

But looking at the trick and the performers on stage, I’m convinced there were 51 instant stooges with instructions on how to line up that they don’t realize exactly how they helped, and 1 real full on stooge. Because that guy couldn’t act.

And as a result, suddenly an amazing trick became a very lame trick, IMO.

@Junior_Spaceman

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).

Reminds me of an act on AGT last season. There was a lady doing escape acts. Her audition involved jumping into a pool secured by some locks and chains. The problem was, the execution included cameras in the pool filming her full escape. So we plainly see just how easy to undo the locks. There was no drama in the execution, because we saw every move. Magicians like to stage those and hide the efforts so we don’t see the lock picks or the fake locks or the quick releases, precisely because that’s where the drama comes in - will they succeed, how long will it take? Watching the escape artist click click click was anticlimactic.

She had a second go, and it had the same flaw, and she was eliminated.