Having magic on a daytime TV talk show isn’t new, but it appears that Ellen DeGeneres has shown more interest than most in getting magicians who aren’t necessarily considered A-list stars (in the magic community, anyway, seeing as how Neil Patrick Harris has done pretty well for himself as an actor).
Granted, she has had David Blaine and Criss Angel on her show, but she’s also helped promote performers that those outside the magic community might never have heard of otherwise, and could certainly use the exposure, and helped them out. And not only that, but she’s opened things up to include different genres of magic, so that people can get a taste, for example, of what mentalism is all about. And not only that, judging from the Keith Barry clip her production company is opening to editing out some of the dirty business to help out the performer — which, while I’m not a huge fan of camera edits, I do make an exception for some mentalism pieces.
And not only that, but she was recently wowed by a young guy called Mike Jacobson, who was apparently a random audience member at the show (if iTricks.com is to be believed), and she was so impressed with him that she wants to try to bring him back for a repeat appearance.
Unfortunately, if there’s a dark side to this, it’s that sometimes what sneaks through isn’t so great.
Maybe Randal was just off that day, but the death grip and tense fingers that he’s got going on in Matching The Cards, combined with the repeated use of the DL to change cards, combined with pulling out the ESP cards to do some awful variant of the Clock Trick, of all things, makes me wonder if perhaps Ellen’s willingness to help out magic means she’s not being as discriminating as she could be.
And there are things in the other videos that worry me somewhat. After having seen it go wrong, I’ll never believe that using a spectator’s hand in a smash and stab routine is anything but ridiculously irresponsible, and while I’m happy that Mike was prepared for the Chicago Opener, given that a video devoted to exposing it has almost 4 million hits on Youtube, is that a trick that needs any more air time?
Whit Haydn has long maintained that magic is more popular now than it has been in his lifetime, and he actually considers it a problem. I go back and forth between agreeing and disagreeing with him on this, but these clips do suggest some of the problems with it. Are we seeing the best presentations and executions of those tricks in the videos here? I’d say not. And yet, with a low barrier of entry for a very popular talk show, I don’t know that we’re going to see much more than a mad rush for people to get on there and perform the classics that pretty much any amateur can do.
2 Comments, Comment or Ping
magicmikeLA
Really interesting post Andrew! Awesome thoughts.
Though I’m totally biased since I was on the show, I’m a pretty big believer in the idea that any magic in pop culture is good publicity (and I’m stoked the average laymen doesn’t know to look up “red hot momma”). I definitely agree that badly performed magic can give the art a bad name, but the fact is when people are thinking about magic, we get hired for more gigs.
My biggest problem as an adult-only performer, is that people don’t think about having a magician at an event or adult party as often as a parent will think about having a magician for their kid’s party. As an example, on the day of David Blaine’s last special, my website traffic tripled, for (I assume) the fact that magic was in people’s minds that day.
~Mike
http://www.magicmikeLA.com
Tony T
Andrew
I’m inclined to agree with Mike to a degree. Consistently having a guest who discusses magic as an art and performs is a good thing even if one occasionally has an off day.
Just as with any other performing art, audiences will become accustomed to seeing a variety of performing styles & ability. The contrast in styles & talent should only help educate the public and perhaps start them down the road of acceptance of magic as a legitimate performing art.
Tony
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