Other Visions

The Downfall of Magic
By Chris Noice

Chris Noice is a 20-year-old university student in the UK who has been practicing and performing for just over a decade across the country. He is currently in the process of designing his own effects and illusions whilst taking a break from performing at clubs and dinner parties.

After being inspired by Michelangelo's piece on America's Got Talent, I led myself into trying to work out why there is such a stigma around magic acts at the moment. On the television show, the judges would groan with claims of "Not another magician!" I understand that part of the reason for this is because the majority of the magic acts on the show are truly awful with no sense of timing or the suspension of disbelief that we all hope for, but there are plenty of bad singers too and I don't hear Piers Morgan exclaiming "Not another singer!" What has the magic world done to garner such a negative reaction?

Magicians through history have been looked upon with great admiration, but this has changed drastically over the last ten or fifteen years. With the onset of the internet 'expert' who has never performed and yet claims to know all of the "magician's secrets", it is increasingly difficult to gain respect from the public. Such matters have led accomplished magicians like Derren Brown down the path of obscurity - his latest series of Trick or Treat is a grand furore of behind the scenes meetings intertwined with basic magic tricks dressed up as "training" that lead to a weekly embarrassing anticlimax.

Gone are the days when David Copperfield could go on national television and proudly claim that he was performing magic whilst receiving high ratings and a trusting audience. After David Blaine and Criss Angel's attempts to reach the "man on the street" were criticised with accusations of camera trickery and selective footage, we are left in a conundrum.

The general public are in a position where they will not accept anything on stage, dismissing effects as smoke and mirrors, they will not accept the street magician as what they see is either being "exposed" on YouTube by a 14 year old kid from California or is not acceptable because "there must be camera tricks involved" (despite Criss Angel's most vehement protests). The man at the back of the hall, sneering and dismissing the charming gentleman on stage with a plethora of silks and doves as poppycock is no longer alone. His sentiment is shared by the layman, fuelled with a Wikipedia driven thirst for a pedestal of knowledge that can only be damaging to the magic business.

Something has to give. Either magicians have to make more conservative efforts to keep their secrets just that, or the profession has to take a ninety degree turn and no longer claim to be on a higher plane - instead being on the same level as baton twirling or break dancing... a skilful but dismissible hobby.

Chris Noice