Blaine: The Stage Is You (c) 1999 Brian Wendell Morton

 

After watching most of the second David Blaine special, "Magic Man" (Not all

of it, yet -- I had to tape it, and I got through about 2/3rds before our

dogs, magic be damned, had their own idea of making things appear), I

actually began to marvel.

 

Not necessarily at the magic, although some of it was pretty good. Not at

the use of the camera, some of which was pretty eyebrow-raising. And not at

his persona, which was pretty much well-dissected after his last special two

years ago.

 

Part of what Blaine has accomplished is due to a number of factors, all of

which seem to coalesce at the right time. The public has been inundated with

Ouellet/Pudney/Jaffe specials, all set in Vegas, all set in glamorous

showrooms, all with gigantic bally tricks and stunts oversold by

breathlessly stentorian announcers. After five "World Greatest" specials,

three Champions of Magic, two (or soon to be two) "World's Most Dangerous,"

one "World's Wildest" and a partridge in a pear tree, the image of magic as

"aging hippies shoving women into boxes," as Penn Jillette is fond of

saying, is rapidly becoming the standard model in the layman's eye. Is there

any other reason why nearly every TV blurb reviewer (Matt Roush of TV Guide,

the capsule reviewer for USA Today, et. al.) dismisses magic specials out of

hand?

 

Outside of Lance Burton, who has a persona and a charm all his own (despite

the involvements of Ouellet in LB's TV specials), and the wonderful Sin City

Spectacular, which revels in the cheesy charm of Vegas for what it is, one

doesn't see magic on TV presented "differently." There is an astounding

sameness to it all.

 

And along comes Kwai Chang Blaine, who "walks the earth" (to use to the term

used by Samuel L. Jackson's character in "Pulp Fiction"). Magic up to this

point has happened on "stages." It is, therefore, "staged." It is a

controlled atmosphere, where you pay to come to it.

 

Blaine, however, comes to you.

 

It is almost insulting to hear some people post on the Internet that Blaine

is "taking advantage" of "natives," or of people who are in need of

everything including toothbrushes, so to speak. Should magic as

entertainment be the sole province of those who can afford a ticket to a

Copperfield show? And to say that some of the people of other nationalities

don't even know what playing cards are is sadly bereft of a knowledge of

history as well as couth.

 

Like many, this writer learned magic in his school years, in a school with

children from both well-to-do and less-than well-off means. The well to do

can be jaded, while those less than well off have neither the means nor the

time to affect the "been there, done that" attitude. Those kids were more

effusive, more emotional and more amazed by simple miracles, even performed

with a pack of cards, than the children of affluence. Real people make

better audiences. To use a term that has retained its flavor from those

years: duh.

 

Blaine is a creature of the current Zeitgeist, where people are enamored

once again of mysticism (as a skeptic, I can't necessarily say I think this

is a good thing), and of the yen for simplicity in our complicated lives

that tends to come along with each turn of the century. Blaine is "lo-tech."

 

Jon Racherbaumer may be right when he calls Blaine, a "trickster, an "urban

shaman." He does not bury us in trappings, rather he eschews them. The sole

patter line from his first special might be summed up thusly: "Look. Look.

Look ... watch ... watch... here ... look." Instead of telling us what to

see, what to think, he uses words the way Andy Summers of the Police used

guitar lines -- sparingly, letting us fill in the pauses, the silences, with

our own minds. He stares people hard in the face after the magic has

happened, unanswering in their queries. And then he walks away.

 

Those in magic who actually show the nerve to pick up a book every now and

then, much less commit the ultimate affront by actually reading it, should

check out Eugene Burger's "Magic & Meaning." In it, they might see a few

glimpses of David Blaine. Or his "persona," actually. Blaine has obviously

studied his Gellar, his Dunninger and quite possibly, as the esteemed Mr.

Pendragon has pointed out, his Bey as well.

 

Blaine may be as out of his element on stage or in a theatre as David

Copperfield is rumored to be off of his. But in the arena of publicity,

especially in the media-saturated era of 1997, where news travels faster

than even the news business can track it, he has his ash-stained finger

squarely on the pulse of the times. We naturally make comparisons to

Houdini, but face it -- what famous magician did not engage is a little

self-mythology? Houdini was the first and best, but Copperfield lives in a

"secret warehouse," Penn Jillette tells people "he killed a man in Buffalo

for asking personal questions," when asked about a red fingernail, Teller

has no first name, Ricky Jay won't divulge his past or his real last name

and neither does David Blaine. This isn't bad, it's show biz! Say it with me

three times: it's only show business, it's only show business, it's only

show business. Engage in no mystery, and you become, well, Grover C. George,

known now only for the fact that he got shoved off the major theatre circuit

by bigger magicians and printed a lot of bitchin' posters.

 

Maybe it's about time for a David Blaine to come along. People need to know

that miracles can happen in your face. He's taking money away from no one,

he's bringing magic to a bunch of people who'll probably never see a ticket

to a Vegas showroom, much less the show, and no one can accuse him of

stealing their jokes. So what's the problem?

 

(Published in GENII magazine, June 1999)