I made the mistake of subscribing to some of the magic based hashtags on instagram a while back. Now, while I have seen some clever stuff on there, it is more just face palm inducing than anything.
As a consultant and director of magic and entertainment, I try to keep up with what is going on when and where I can. Because of that I know about a lot of the products released into the magic wilderness and this is where my problems come into play.
I see far too many people who essentially just do effects verbatim from the demo video. Nothing added. No personality, no reason, just a beat by beat recreation. I then glance at the comments and people are going gaga for these videos. That's fine, good for them. However it got me wondering...
Does using other people’s tricks with no alterations
gives you a false sense of accomplishment and mastery when you are essentially just a cover band?
I have seen the same effect in three separate videos in the same day, all done the same way. Very few stand out and when they do, they just get copied. It's a never ending cycle. Of course, you can be so good, they CAN'T copy you, but how often does that occur?
Maybe it's none of my business to be exasperated by these things but... I can't help it. I just want magic to be better.
Is that so much to ask?
I think the cover band comparison is not quite right, because the point there is that everybody knows the original and is specifically interested in your imitation. You want your audience to go home thinking things like "I'm never going to see The Beatles live, but that show made me feel like maybe I did." Duplicating a magic demo is more like finding some obscure band nobody knows and performing their song without explicitly crediting it. It's theft by omission, sure, but still a kind of theft.
ReplyDeleteAs for sense of accomplishment and mastery... I wonder if this becomes a deeper philosophical discussion about creativity vs mechanics. Is it simply impossible for some people to be creative? Is it possible, but these people just don't see the need? Maybe it's a confidence thing ("I learned from a professional, and he/she must know what's right; anything I change would be wrong").
Perhaps these people are very early in their learning. One reasonable way to learn a performative art is to imitate someone else to get the mechanics down, and once you achieve that you can change it up to suit your own personality. In the past this early stage would manifest itself as showing a trick to a couple of friends or to the magic club. But in today's world, the friends/club is your Instagram page. In one sense it's a completely different scale (especially to someone like me, who was already in high school as the Internet became a common thing), but in the mind of someone younger, despite the posts being public their profiles are still one among millions, and that mentality could be the same as "anybody can join the magic club, so it's technically public... but so few people come here that it's essentially a safe, secret space."
That's me being charitable, and I'm sure it's close to the truth for a number of people. But there are going to be some that just want clickable/shareable content so they can become an influencer and get free stuff from companies. So you're not wrong in being exasperated by this practice, but maybe you can temper it a bit with thoughts of "whatever, they're just kids and they don't know what they're doing yet."
I can forgive SOME trespasses in one's youth, but bad habits learned young become lifelong beliefs.
DeleteThis is why I postulated the question. There is no hard data what the answer or lifelong damage is. It's just odd to see someone buy something released a week ago and perform it verbatim (usually poorly) with little to no thought put into it just to be lavished with attention for basically doing nothing but following someone else's choreography and lines. It's cute when it's a parrot but...
Now you've got me wondering about people having fundamentally different perceptions of what a performance is. Many of us have a story of seeing some performer and saying to ourselves "I want to do THAT." But I suppose the definition of "THAT" differs.
DeleteI might look at a band and think "I want to do THAT: deconstruct the elements of pop music and rebuild them in a way that is social commentary and/or an expression of my self." But someone else could look at that same performance and think "I want to do THAT: play 'Barbie Girl' in a minor key with heavy guitars." Only one of us is looking at what the artist is actually doing (present tense; ongoing); the other only sees what the artist already did (past tense; fleeting).
So I guess the closest thing I have to an answer is "support arts programs in early childhood" which hinges on the assumption that this mentality can be taught or fostered. But as you say, we don't know any of this fur sure. Still, it's good to think about. Thanks for initiating this discussion.