David Blaine- magic or sorcery?
There’s no doubt about it, David Blaine’s on top of any other magician in this generation. But where the hell this magician guy got his power to trick our eyes?
Last weekend I went to a DVD shop and saw this DVD collection of Blaine’s TV show. I actually bought it because the bundle includes Christian Bale’s movie “The Prestige”. Just bought the book of the said movie two weeks ago.
Anyways, my Saturday night was filled with “oh” and “ah” and just like the people he bumped into on the street I also blew the phrase “how did you do that”. My eyes were like locked into the TV screen and I can’t just afford to blink just to trace this guy’s very swift hands.
The most terrifying part was when he asked this woman to think of two digit even numbers from 50 to 100. I also attempted to you know, for the heck of it, think of a number. My brain thought of the number “68″. What the heck, Blaine then blurted the number “68″ out to this confused woman. “There’s no way you can read my mind”, the poor woman exclaimed. Unlike her, I would like to believe that the number “68″ was just a coincidence. Fine.
But when Blaine made another woman chose a card from the deck of obviously 52 cards, again I decided to participate. Deep inside my mind I chose “Queen of Hearts”. WTF! Blaine got it right again and the woman was just jumping and walking to and fro thinking how does this very weird bald guy knew what she was thinking. I asked the same question to myself too!
But hey, Blaine is not just reading minds and that’s it. There was this scene where he asked a school girl to write the name a person to a piece of parchment. He even asked the girl to step back few meters away so that he can’t see what the girl is gonna write. Then he asked the
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girl to fold the parchment and to give it to him. Blaine suddenly burn the paper and scratch it on his wrist and kaboom the name that the girl wrote on that piece of parchment was already written on Blaine’s left arm. Now tell me, is that magic or sorcery?
Aside from reading minds, yes, he can levitate. But still, I would like to believe that all of these are just some kind of tricks or magic for that matter and not a sorcery. It’s the only trick in this world that never let you down. In fact, it entertains.
Hello, I came across this blog entry while searching for “magic” within wordpress.com blogs.
I read your entry with interest, and I want to assure you that
1) David Blaine is certainly not on the top of every other magician (in this generation).
He may be one of the more commercially successful magician in this generation but he’s not the best in his generation. I’m not saying he’s lousy; he’s good, but not he’s not *that* good.
Considering that you like the mind-reading aspect of David Blaine’s act, I recommend you check out Derren Brown as well. I think you’ll like Derren Brown also; he has made a few TV specials in the UK, and is quite well-known there.
2) Nothing David Blaine does is real. Well, other than him standing without food or water for days on that pole, or under water; those are real. But the stuff you brought up in your blog entry belongs entirely in the realm of magic, not reality.
Really. David Blaine did not read the mind of his spectators, and he cannot read yours. However, he can appear to, and if he does it well enough, a spectator cannot tell the difference. The mind reading, mind control and predicting the future stuff that Derren Brown does in his TV specials, in my opinion, feels very real, and much much closer to genuine mind-reading than David Blaine. Even so, nothing Derren Brown does is reality either.
3) Nothing David Blaine does is sorcery. Not the Queen of Hearts, and certainly not the Name on Arm effect.
It’s well-known amongst magicians that if you give a deck of cards to a person and asks him/her to choose a card, the probability of any card being chosen is not 1/52 even if the deck is a normal deck. Some cards are much much more popular than others, examples being Ace of Spades and yes, Queen of Hearts. It’s not a full explanation, I will only say this much and no more.
The choosing of a number from 50 to 100, and even the one with the name written on his arm, I assure you, are magic tricks. The difficult part of the trick is not getting the answer correct (or the name on the arm) in the first place, it’s getting the spectators to believe they “chose” their answer. That girl on TV (and TV audience) thinks the name is purely her choice, but the truth is that it isn’t.
I know a little about magic, suggestion and misdirection, but I don’t know how they do what they do specifically. It’s sort of like knowing how to cook, but don’t know specifically how to prepare Peking Duck. While I know how David Blaine and Derren Brown do some of their stuff, I don’t know how they do everything that they do. Still, I enjoy watching them perform, and I think they’re both good at what they do. However, remember that at the end of the day, David Blaine and Derren Brown are both entertainers with great showmanship. Nothing less, but nothing more.
If there’s one thing that magicians still don’t agree on, it’s this: will you (as an audience) enjoy David Blaine less, now that you know everything he does is not what it appears to be? That it isn’t real?
Sorry for hijacking your blog and posting this very long comment.
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Magic heroys David Blaine | Hot Celebrity Photos said this on November 18, 2008 at 8:49 pm |