Ye Olde Magick Blogge

This article was originally published on the old Ye Olde Magick Blogge, on March 11, 2007

When in the mood for a little larceny, pickpockets sometimes brought their own signs saying “Beware of Pickpockets” to large gatherings of people. They’d put the signs in a visible place and then stand off to the side, watching the reactions of passers-by to them. People would see those signs and instinctively reach for their wallet or purse or whatnot to ensure it was still there, giving the pickpocketters a vital piece of information that actually facilitated the theft later on — namely, the location of the prize, which they might have had to guess on their own. Paradoxically, by putting people on their guard against pickpockets, they were able to make pickpocketting easier.

How does this apply to us? If I may be permitted a brief digression… Over at magicvideodepot.com somebody mentioned that in a recent performance of an ACR routine, an audience member called out the correct method. The performer handled himself quite well, I thought. He asked the spectator if he was a magician or knew a few tricks — a clever use of a personal question to get their eyes off the deck — at which point he cleaned up with the KM move and handed the top card out, showing that there weren’t any extra cards in play. Baffled spectator, minor victory against exposure won.

Now, this was a textbook “getting busted” scenario, and while the above situation was a nice escape for the magician, it still represents a slight problem, in that you never want anybody to interrupt your performances, regardless of whether or not they’ve actually heckled the correct technique you’ve used. So, we have to look at the ways one can avoid this from even happening in the first place. Firstly, you can make sure you’re the sort of performer that normal people won’t want to heckle — be likeable, don’t be too challenging, don’t present your routines as mere puzzles, etc. It’s not a guarantee, but it helps. The second is to structure your routine in such a way that you disspell the possible explanations that have been made available through exposure, thereby giving them nothing to heckle. In handling the situation the way he did, the above magician was able to use the audience’s expectations against it. Is there any way to do this pre-emptively, to baffle them AND make sure you don’t get interrupted?

If there is a positive to be taken from massive exposure, it’s this — the more broadly exposed an effect is, the more likely there’s going to be a common denominator in terms of the perceived secret behind that effect. Now, chances are increasing they’ll be right about that secret (I’m still convinced that too many magicians overstate the knee-jerk “It went up his sleeves” explanation), but if you can create a presentation that seems to deny the possibility that the secret is in play, you can still fool them. Magicians have a whole toolbag of possible explanations for routines that they see for the first time. Non-magicians will usually only have one.

Assuming you’ve got a routine that’s been exposed, and you don’t want to drop it from your repertoire, a good approach is one that takes advantage of that secret. For the ACR, if they’re expecting a DL, consider your options: The Pass, the Side Steal, the Top Change, the DB card, using techniques usually reserved for colour changes, and so on. Theoretically, the good thing about this is you don’t have to abandon the usual technique entirely… it’s possible that if you can show a legitimate rise of the card (such as through a smoothly executed pass), and thereby prove that you don’t need the usual DL technique, then you’ve basically made the statement that you don’t need it for any of the phases of your trick.

Another possibility opens up when looking at how modern mentalists have been dealing with exposure of the Center Tear. Guys like Osterlind and Banachek have a statement in the middle of the routine of some kind that lets the audience know that they can check the torn up pieces of paper to make sure the information is still there and not stolen away. Osterlind can do this because of an altered method. Banachek’s is more interesting, because in effect what he’s doing is addressing that there’s a classical method for accomplishing it, AFTER he’s already accomplished it using that classical method. It’s a piece of routining genius (every action is properly motivated and covered, you really need to see it to understand), and it also brings up a key point — just because the method’s been exposed DOESN’T mean they’re always going to know when it’s being used. In much the same way that nobody would expect a card cheat to announce card cheating tactics, nobody would expect a magician to use a move that he brings your attention to. Plus, the magician gets to control the moment. Remember the idea that people will sometimes interpret the method from the effect? Well, if an audience-member is explaining it to somebody else, they might be told “Maybe he just stole away the pieces.”, but after Banachek’s handling, the spectator will have to say “No, the pieces were all there. We even got to check.” If every other action that you’ve taken was fair-looking as well, then they cannot fathom how you could have stolen the information away. It couldn’t have happened before the pieces were being torn up by the spectator because the performer was too busy doing something else, and only a fool would do it after calling the audience’s attention to it, and yet he was able to get the information somehow anyway without looking at the paper. The only possible explanation from that frame of reference is psychic ability.

Similarly, a feint might even be in order, and there are quite a few routines that actually deliberately breed suspicion through a feint only to disspell it afterwards. This is basically the subtle creation of a counter-process (as discussed in the essay on Downplaying the Process), and if they know the usual technique, and they’re on the lookout for that usual technique, you can slip a different technique by them, or even, if you’re feeling particularly bold, using the same technique during an off-beat. You might even want to give away what the effect is that you plan to do — usually a bad idea because it takes away from the element of surprise. However, if you foreshadow an effect that has a commonly-known method, a feint of that method can be irresistable. A very devious method is one David Kaye advocates when doing a silk vanish using a TT. I don’t want to give away the routine because, frankly, it’s not my professional secret to share (buy Seriously Silly — it’s a good book for any magician, not just guys who do kids shows). While it’s perhaps not a feint in the commonly-accepted sense, suffice to say that it gives plenty of opportunity to take advantage of any knowledge that an audience might have about the commonly-exposed TT hankerchief vanish, while still using a TT to vanish a hankerchief. Basically, remember the advice given elsewhere about eliminating handling tells so as to conceal the process? Think of this as an extra obfuscator — adopting handling tells for a method you’re not even using.

Overall, I still think exposure is a net negative. Forget about guessing the technique incorrectly, I want my audience to believe there are no techniques involved. Exposure of any kind reminds the audience that the magician has these sneaky little things at their disposal at any given time, and I think each reminder of this has a cumulative jading influence on the audience. What’s more, if an effect has its most common technique exposed, then that effect becomes totally suspect, and you almost cannot do the effect without pointing out that your process completely invalidates the possibility of that technique being used, which is in itself admitting defeat because you’re no longer downplaying the process. In some ways it’s a lose-lose scenario. Part of the reason I gave up doing the ACR for Korean kids who knew the DL, is that when I tried showing them the effect even after doing it with no DL, they were still so curious as to the new method that I had to fight back even more heckling.

That said, the maxim of “Thou shalt always downplay thy process” isn’t gospel. Sometimes you can get away with highlighting the process — challenge effects like the Pea and Shell game, genuine exhibitions of skill, and sucker effects are three common ones. A fourth could be any effect with a convincing counter-process, in which case the process you offer just happens to be really different from the process you’re employing.

In any case, in order to be able to come up with alternative handlings for commonly exposed effects, one must first know which effects have been exposed. This is a difficult thing to tackle on a blog which has no access control, since the last thing I want is for somebody who doesn’t care about actually performing like a professional to come here, see the list, and then immediately head off to Youtube looking for explanations for these effects. So instead I’ll just list abbreviated forms and hope for the best in that only magicians will know what I’m talking about…

Exposed effects so far… I’ll update this as time goes on.

Cards: ACR, RHM/CO + HSF, 8CB, Gimmicked RC, BHWII? (aka 2CM) + DL

Bizarre: AshesOnP&A, BLev

Mentalism: CT, SwG, various self-working Math Tricks

Coins: TR (mechanical coin vanish)

SpongeBalls: PM’s routine

Miscellaneous: P&SG, C&B, CthroughQu

One other twist is this… I’m convinced that one side-effect of exposure is that it will show just how far from the truth certain kneejerk explanations are, particularly the old “It went up his sleeve”. I’ve never had anyone make that accusation towards me, I think because none of my magic could be explained through use of the sleeve, so I was thrilled with letting this cliche continue. Unfortunately, the more exposure that happens, the more I think these cliches are actually going to sound misguided, which, oddly enough, can open up some new interesting possibilities, such as bringing back sleeving and perhaps even the old smoke and mirrors. We’re not there yet — experienced professionals like Darwin Ortiz still maintain that rolling up his sleeves before a bit of sleight-of-hand increases his reactions drastically, and I’ll have to defer to his experience on that matter. Still, if coin handling ever becomes as badly exposed as some of the card classics are right now, it’s entirely possible that sleeving could become a legitimate tactic again because everybody’s burning you for a false transfer. As someone once said, sometimes the best way to hide something is to paint it bright red.

For what it’s worth, all of the above has worried me in the past, for reasons I’ve already stated. I’d rather give up a routine than go down the road necessary to prove the magic to a skeptical audience. I guess that’s the laziness of an amateur speaking, and I need to wake up to the fact that no steady income is guaranteed from a bunch of applauding brain-dead zombies. The history of humanity’s technological advances is itself testament to the irrepressible nature of mankind’s curiosity, and so long as mankind is curious, our secrets will find ways of getting out. At some point my tendency to write off such exposed tricks might mean that the well of magic that I’ve got will run dry, in which case I’ll be applying the ideas above in a hardcore fashion, as they’ve been shown to be useful for other magicians. Still, if you’re concerned that I’m not practicing what I’m preaching, then don’t take my word for it, but check out the sources, looking for those added subtleties I’ve mentioned. It’s another way to fight back against exposure.