One of the reasons I have decided on my self imposed fast on purchasing magic is that the vast majority of material being produced fits into Sturgeon’s Revelation: “Ninety percent of everything is crud.”
Most magic producers and by association, the magic buying public, believe that their audiences are idiots. While some may actually be idiots, I would argue that your average audience member is a lot smarter than those of us buying the trick. The average audience member watches a trick and because the performer is focused on fooling people, they begin to try to figure out how it was done. Most of the time they hit on the right solution.
Why? Because of Occam’s Razor. Occam’s razor is a problem-solving principle that suggests the simplest explanation, requiring the fewest assumptions, is usually the best one.
The audience is smart and can quickly arrive at a solution without much effort. Many times they’re right. How do we get around this? There’s a handful of magicians who have written about burying the method to avoid this from happening. An expert resource is from Juan Tamariz in his The Magic Way and the theory of false solutions. Michael Close, Larry Hass, and Nate Staniforth have talked about this too.
We’re enamored with the principle, gimmick or gaff behind the trick. We get together with other magicians and talk about how tricks work. Other niches do the same thing – car people probably talk about engines, chess players probably talk about moves, and so on. When we see a new effect, we want it because of its components. But what we need to do is look at it from the perspective of the audience or the individual participant.
Most of the stuff being released has probably never been performed more than a few times and one of those was for the trailer. The audience in the trailer were coached to react. Is this deceptive? No, dealers have been crafting clever advertising since the beginning of retail magic sales. Their job is to sell stuff. Our job is to think about what we saw: is it truly magical?
Let’s not treat our audience like they’re idiots. Let’s treat them respectfully and stop performing transparent and obvious tricks. Pick material that’s magical. Work to bury the method through eliminating potential solutions, creating an engaging presentation, and most importantly, not becoming enamored with the method. We can do better.
