Derren Brown: Archive
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From: Blue Chip
Date: Thu Dec 19, 2002 10:08am
Subject: Re: [Derren Brown] (unknown)
What a fantastic piece of writing GANETAUK.
I hope everybody has taken the time to read this.
With reference to point 8. Dr Timothy Leary says "Challenge Authority",
YOU are right... this is something that people just DON'T do!! I have no
idea why, it is something instinctual to me. I can only presume it slots
into the "don't rock the boat" mindset which is one so many people live within.
I have a close friend who is a stage magician, he laughs his arse off at
the Masked Magician. He states openly that he could reproduce half of his
tricks with far LESS complication. His statement is that the more
mechanics there are there more possible it is for the trick to screw up -
jammed hinge at the wrong time, assistant fogets her line, etc.
With all of this slapped together, I love to explain how I do a trick and
either (a) come up with a completely bogus description of some weird theory
of how it COULD be done, or (b) just move on and when they KNOW that the
4Clubs is on the top of the deck, it's now on the bottom - they forget
about working out the first trick and now NEED to know how the second one
was done. After 5 tricks tell them it's a marked deck and let them sit
there for hours trying to find the markings - LOL
Photoreading is very real, but just because DB claims to be able to do it,
it doesn't mean he can!
I remeber Paul Daniels doing the elctric-shock-chair trick many many years
ago ;)
Don't stop inspiring us Ganetauk.
Bc
At 19:58 18/12/02 +0000, you wrote:
>Notes...
>
>There are several techniques that help in creating a successful magic
>illusion.
>1. Ask a question that is inherently flawed.
>"How did the handkerchief move from here to here?" The audience
>struggles to solve the problem and never succeeds because they have
>accepted the floor rules of the magician in trying to answer a
>question that never can be answered when the handkerchief never did
>go from "here to here." (The proper question would be "How did I do
>this trick?" which is a question magicians rarely ask in such words,
>especially when the handkerchief never moved in the case where the
>trick was performed by pre-setting a duplicate or other technique
>outside of the realm of the question.)
>When the answer to a question is not immediately obvious, people tend
>to seek answers of greater and greater complexity which brings them
>further and further from the truth.
>2. Guide the audience toward a complicated way of solving the problem.
>It is human nature to think that when the answer to a problem is not
>immediately obvious, to seek greater complexity in the explanation of
>the problem.
>("I don't know the answer to this, therefore the answer is not easy.")
>3. Misdirection is easier to accomplish if you inflate the language.
>A big word creates more mystery than a short one. A technical term
>uncommon in ordinary discourse is better than a common one. Words of
>another language help especially. Words that establish an assumption
>of a truth that has not really been established, especially when that
>assumption is implied in a subtle way rather than stated, are very
>helpful.
>4. Do your best to create the impression that years of special
>knowledge and training are needed to perform the trick or even to
>understand how to perform the trick.
>This technique can even work on the smartest of people trying to
>figure out the mystery of the a trick that could be performed by a
>ten-year-old an hour after purchasing the trick at a magic store.
>This also helps to increase the effectiveness of directing the
>audience toward answers of greater complexity. Give yourself a title
>and never refer to yourself without the title. You are never
>just "Steve."
>5. Point out differences rather than similarities.
>When a particular technique is used more than once during an act as
>the component of different tricks, new terminology and different
>explanations and setups will keep the pattern from being recognized
>and keep the mystery intact.
>6. Claim that you are invoking forces beyond mortal understanding.
>Basically this means that you involve religion. Those who believe in
>religious ideas that conflict with physics, common sense, daily
>experience, logic, and personal self-interest are the most likely to
>believe that the magician is performing "miracles."
>7. In the act of performing a trick, never direct your gaze to the
>place on stage where the mechanisms of the trick are actually being
>played out.
>When trying to figure out the explanation for a mystery, you can look
>forever to find an answer that will never come if you are looking in
>the wrong direction. (It is amazing how helpful a dramatic wave of
>the hand can be in misdirecting an audience in the performance of an
>illusion. The audience will think the hands had something to do with
>making the magic happen when the entire trick was performed by stage
>hands working behind the curtains.)
>8. Use social misdirection.
>Most people are basically insecure. They ave been trained to believe
>that they must be humble and accept the wisdom of society over their
>own ability to think and decide. Let them know that what they are
>about to witness "has astounded many thousands of people on five
>continents." Most will immediately assume that it is not even worth
>trying to figure out how it is done if thousands of other people
>could not figure it out either. (Sometimes tricks have been figured
>out by people with forms of autism which inhibit their ability to
>catch social cues and understand the misdirection, so they have an
>easier time using logic to see how a trick is done. This, by the way,
>describes the "nerdy" nature of many people who go into performing
>magic.)
>If you have ever observed people trying to figure out how a magic
>trick was done, you will see them struggling through different
>stages. At first they will believe that they can figure out the
>answer, but the longer and longer they go without solving the
>mystery, the more complicated the theories they then present to try
>to explain the trick. The next stage is to beg for clues, sometimes
>in ways that imply that they now believe that the magician has
>knowledge beyond their immediate abilities. Eventuallly the
>frustration is great enough that they begin to believe that
>they "will never figure it out."
>What I find the most interesting is what happens when you do show
>them how the trick is performed. Professional magicians don't tell
>their secrets mostly because it makes people really mad. The answer
>to the mystery is always much more simple than imagined. Intelligent
>people will not only become mad when told the answer, but will often
>argue that the explanation is wrong until they are walked through a
>repeat of the trick with the mechanisms exposed or until they learn
>to perform it themselves.
>The rejection of a true explanation of the trick can come from an
>angry reaction concerning status when a person is stumped by somebody
>they consider less intelligent or with lesser status. As a person
>gets caught up in the progressive misunderstanding that greater and
>greater complexity of theory is needed to solve a problem, they don't
>think such a problem could possibly be solved by somebody of lesser
>intelligence. But the answers are always more simple than they think.
>
>Don't you recall?
>
>Terry
>
>
>
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