Monday Mailbag #45
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Last night I met up with some of my friends for a little birthday get-together. As much as I love my friends from my hometown, they aren't the brightest people you'll meet. Once again, I'm going to have to blame the Kentucky public school system. I say this because they started giving me shit about being vaccinated. Long story short, instead of debating with them, I did magic. Specifically with the presentation about becoming magnetic and being able to conduct electricity because of the microchip.
I did the bit where you make butter knives stick to your hands (Apparently it's an old gag that Charlie Miller would do but I learned it from David Ben). and then I charged my phone by placing my tongue in the charging port. This was accomplished by Marc's beautiful app Amalgam. It made it so silly and so ridiculous that they kinda stopped with the conspiracy theories for a bit.
I was inspired by your post about getting people to question their belief systems. Maybe they will see how ridiculous it is.. or maybe you'll see a Facebook post about the vaccine giving you the ability to conduct electricity. Only time will tell. —NW
A few different people have written with similar ideas based upon this notion going around that the vaccine will make magnets stick to you. I like the idea. It’s a pretty good way to capitalize upon something in the zeitgeist to be able to perform what would otherwise be a semi pointless demonstration of a useless power.
Something else you can do in addition to the magnetism bit, or as an alternative, is say how you got the vaccine and you’ve been feeling a bit “off” since you got it. Have them touch your arm near the injection site. “Do you feel a bump there?” As you talk with them, continue to rub your arm in that area and then slowly start pushing your fingers up your arm as if you’re manipulating something under your skin. Mumble, “The fuck is this?…” as you continue pushing along your skin. Up your arm. Up your shoulder. Up your neck. Over your jaw and up your face to your eye. Where you then pull down your eyelid and a little metal ball drops out. Ideally on to a well-placed ceramic plate where it produces a satisfying small clatter.
Pick it up and examine it closely. Let the horror slowly dawn on you. “What are they doing to us? What are they doing to us!!!!???” Run away screaming.
This is just a version of the old seed/bean/popcorn kernel from the eyelid geek stunt, but using a small ball bearing, and giving it some relevance beyond, “Here’s something dumb I can do.” I have no idea how safe/dangerous this trick really is, so consider this just a theoretical idea. You should absolutely not do this unless you would like to go blind in one eye or worse. Don’t come and try to sue me if something bad happens because you did this thing I told you not to do. Sue your parents for making you a moron.
Based on your writing I’m going to assume you’re not a woman. Despite that, I was curious if you thought there was any difference in the way that men and women should approach social magic. Are there any special considerations you imagine would arise for women performing magic in the style you write about? —MS
First, let me talk about women and magic generally. My introduction into the culture of magic was in the early 90s. At that time I didn’t get the sense that there was any still-lingering codified discrimination against women in magic. I never heard a male magician say anything negative about women in magic. And all the doors were theoretically open to them. But despite that, it was still very rare to see a woman at a convention or lecture. I didn’t think much of it. I just assumed they had better taste than to want to go to a magic convention.
On the rare instance where a woman showed up who wasn’t dragged there by a guy, she wouldn’t be shunned at all. Quite the opposite. Anyone who walked though the door with a touch of mascara and/or at least one distinguishable breast was hounded by a bunch of creeps under the guise of being helpful and encouraging. The amount of infantilizing and fetishizing of women attendees must have made them long for the days when they were excluded from these events. And that’s coming from the perspective a 13-year-old me. I wasn’t cool around women at that time in my life. I would practically cum in my pants if a girl walked by me in the hall and her backpack grazed my junk. But even I was like, “Dudes, chill out. You’re being weird.”
I can only assume things are a little more comfortable for women now, but I don’t really know. I don’t go to places where magicians gather or hang out with many magicians socially. It looks like women are better represented in the world of magic these days, but that comes from a semi-outsider’s perspective. I’d be happy to hear from women about their experiences if they want to reach out directly.
Sadly a lot of the magic I’ve seen coming from female magicians is just as garbage as the stuff I see from men. The worst of them seem to have adopted all the same corny affectations and attitudes of men performing magic. That’s fine. Everyone should have the same opportunity to bore people with bad magic.
But what, specifically, of the social magic style?
Let’s start by focusing on what I consider to be the ideal representation of a social magician:
This is what I’m going for.
This is what I strive to be.
This is, in my opinion, the way that one should present themselves when performing magic socially.
Whoops… hold on…
I screwed up.
I cropped out the wrong part of the photograph.
This is what I consider to be the ideal representation of the social magician:
That is what I’m going for.
I want to be Nani Darnell. I don’t want to be Mark Wilson.
The sentiment I hear frequently when it comes to women in magic is that we need to smash the patriarchy and no longer reduce women to the role of just being shoved in boxes and penetrated, sawed in half, or vanished. But to me that’s backwards. To me the estimable partner has always been the magician’s assistant. That’s the one I want to be like.
Maybe we’re too hung up on the word “assistant.” But I don’t let that get to me. In the magician and the assistant, I just see two different entities, with dramatically different traits.
(I’m not speaking specifically about Mark Wilson and Nani Darnell. Just about the roles of “magician” and “assistant” generally.)
The assistant is the one who faces the danger. She floats in the air, gets pierced with swords and cut in half by scary looking buzzsaws.
She gets abducted by a gorilla and still remembers to satisfy the contractual obligations with the sponsors.
The magician? He waves a stick in the air, “Wheee!!! I’m a wizard!”
Sure, within the story of the show, it’s the magician who is the powerful one. But outside of that narrow perspective, there’s no fucking question who the cooler person is.
If we left a show and you said to me, “You remind me of that assistant,” I would feel flattered. If you said, “You remind me of that magician,” I would feel like I must have some sort of personality disorder.
This is a long way of saying that I think the style of magic I write about here is well suited to performers of either sex. In fact, if anything, when mapping it onto the traditional roles of male magician and female assistant, the role I think works best for the amateur—and the role I go for most often—is the role of the assistant. The “power” isn’t usually something I possess. The power is in: this weird ritual, this strange object, this haunted artifact, this magician friend of mine, this quirk of human psychology, this unusual game, this altered state of mind, etc., etc.
I want to be the assistant who brings the people to these mysteries. I want to be seen as the one helping, the one facilitating, the one who is getting the things together to allow the magic to happen. I want to be seen as the one with the killer legs and cool outfits.
Rarely do I want to be seen as “The Magician!” who is causing the magic to happen. I don’t think that comes across well in casual performing situations. I think it limits the types of “stories” you can tell with your tricks. And given that a modern audience is going to know that what you’re showing them is a trick on some level, I think it’s a much better look to underplay your involvement (i.e., to put yourself in the “assistant” role). From the audience’s perspective you are denying yourself credit you could be taking. But when you say, “I will read your mind,” or, “I have magic powers,” then—from the audience’s perspective—you are someone asking for more credit than you deserve.
So yeah, I don’t know if there are any special considerations for women when performing this style of social magic. But they are probably better equipped for it. Taking a step back and not feeling the need to get credit for everything probably comes easier to women than men.