Here in the United States, we have enjoyed brilliant magicians like Houdini, but also embarrassing flim-flammers like David Blaine and Criss Angel, both of whom have been caught doing “magic” using video post-production while hired actors pretend (not very convincingly) to watch the trick in awe. Angel even convinced the Luxor hotel in Las Vegas to sink $100 million dollars into a stage show called “Believe” – audiences came expecting to see live performances of the magic feats Angel “performs” on his show, such as levitation. Surprise! Without video post-production, Angel is every bit as magical as a damp sponge. Audiences report overwhelming disappointment, and the Luxor must be losing money hand-over-fist, but they’re trapped in a 10-year contract.

Derren Brown is unknown in the U.S.A., so ‘The Heist’ was my first exposure, and it blew my mind; I was at the edge of my seat. I was astounded. I could talk of nothing else for days. Later, reading up on how Brown really achieves his effects, I felt that my trust had been taken advantage of, and very surprised and disappointed with the BBC for collusion in claims they apparently knew to be a big fib.

Brown was caught red-handed committing fraud in his 2003 show “Russian Roulette” — the tension of the show was based entirely on Brown’s claim to be using only live ammunition, but the policeman overseeing the event, Jersey Island’s Deputy Chief of Police Lenny Harper, told Reuters that Brown lied and actually used blanks (”Magician defends gun stunt fake,” CNN). When confronted, Brown responded: “…as a magic-related performer to have that event being asked: Was it real? Was it not real? That lifts it to a level that — I’m very comfortable with. What’s left is that fact that it was a terrific piece of television.”

Okay, so Brown himself has admitted to defrauding his viewers, which he justifies as “a terrific piece of television.” He credits David Blaine as his source for the “really simple and really great idea” of making a mundane trick seem more convincing by focusing on [fake] spectator reactions, on people “freaking out.” Was the Blaine-inspired Roulette fraud a rare one-off, or Brown’s standard method? The evidence points at option B.

* Consider the “Magic Doll” segment of Mind Games, in which Derren Brown claims to be controlling a woman’s actions through the power of suggestion. Keep in mind that Brown repeatedly claims to use no “actors or stooges.” The woman “controlled” by the vudu doll has been outed as professional television actress Magda Rodriguez, who lists the gig on her IMDB resume as “Vudu Mind Player.”

* SPOILER: Brown opens his show ‘The System’ by seemingly flipping a coin and getting the same side ten times in a row. Later he reveals the “trick” was achieved by spending an entire day videotaping himself flipping coins until he got that result. Keep this technique in mind while watching many of Brown’s “miraculous” stunts, like his schtick of dressing up like a clown and pretending to mind-read strangers. His ‘hit’ rate of correct guesses seems too high even when it’s clear he’s using standard cold-reading techniques. Comparing this video to ‘The System,’ it becomes obvious that Brown is attaining the “wow” factor with the same cherry-picking technique: he’ll film himself making guesses for hours but only show us the lucky guesses. In my eyes, anyone can do “magic” using selective video editing, but to do so is a violation of the unspoken contract between audience and performer.

* The common underlying method for almost all Brown’s tricks is: (1) claim upfront that he is NOT doing traditional stage-magic or using actors, (2) pepper his banter with claims of psychological manipulation and mind-control, then (3) do stage-magic or use actors. Brown’s signature technique and innovation is to misdirect our attention away from his real method with a constant froth of psychobabble. The celebrity is too busy pondering how he was “subconsciously mind-controlled against my will to pick the cards Derren had already chosen” to realize he’s actually been had by a simple card trick. There is some genuine verbal suggestion happening in most of these tricks, but it’s usually only about 5-10% of the claimed effect. This is why Brown frequently makes vague but tantalizing allusions to the mostly-pseudoscience of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), as part of an overall campaign of misdirection.

Simon Singh, writing for The Daily Telegraph, explains very succinctly: “Derren selected his ten cards very carefully – three aces, three kings, three sevens and a queen. This combination ensures that whoever has the queen will always lose the game… At the start of the game Derren merely has to deal the queen to his opponent, and then he will win no matter what cards his opponent chooses. In short, this is nothing to do with psychology. It is a magic trick. In fact, exactly the type of trick that Derren denied using at the very start of the show.” Singh gives a second example, in which Brown stares into a boxer’s eyes and claims to “use [his] mind” to “take [the boxer's strength] away,” thus making it impossible for the boxer to lift Brown’s assistant in the air a second time. In real life the assistant has furtively stepped a few inches away, moving the fulcrum-point and thus multiplying the strength the boxer would need to lift her. So a clear pattern is established of Brown using false claims of mental influence to misdirect attention from the traditional stage-magic he’s really using after claiming not to.

Brown is famously an atheist, denouncing Christianity as “nonsense” and a “circular belief system” in his 2007 book ‘Tricks of the Mind.’ But if ‘The Heist’ is a fraud, as the evidence would suggest (notice that the most prominent credit at the end of the program is “Written By,” notice that Brown’s usual “no actors or stooges were used in this production” disclaimer is suspiciously absent), isn’t Brown repeating that same abuse-via-fraud dynamic against millions of viewers? Am I over-estimating the civic responsibility of the BBC in expecting at least a brief disclaimer, clarifying that the results were faked, the key participants were actors, and no one was really manipulated into believing they have electrocuted a stranger to death on national television?

Brown has a brilliant mind and is undeniably scintillating as a performer. His book ‘Tricks of the Mind’ is well worth reading. Brown is certainly a step up from the sad posturings of David Blaine or Criss Angel. But ultimately, Derren Brown seems guilty of exactly the same flim-flammery he condemns in others — humbug on the BBC for betraying the essential contract of trust with their audience by pretending otherwise.

Cross-posted to Amazon.uk.

i’m headed out of town for a few days. would like to get back to this discussion when i return. some food for thought:

Also, a very interesting article from The New York Review of Books: The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment.

The young actress who played Reggie in Dead Like Me (younger sister of the main character, George) sings in a duo with her real-life older sister, called One More Girl. Over the course of the two seasons of DLM, Reggie became my favorite character, the only one with a consistent and for me resonant emotional core. This consistency had partly to do, i think, with the fact Reggie was peripheral and so not overdeveloped. Her experience of being in between worlds, having lost her sister and yet convinced that she wasn’t fully gone, persisted throughout. George, by contrast, having seen through the veil to the other side, lost her emotional power as the limitations of the world were established and she settled in to her new role.

Anyway, i was very impressed by Britt Mckillip, the young actress who played Reggie with such unaffected gravity. Turns out she’s a great singer, too.

One of my favorite Randy Newman songs:

a musical illustration of one axis of the cosmic cube…

the story of a a whistleblower not driven by delusions of grandeur, Brooksley Born, who warned of the instability of the financial system.

still watching this…

part 1:

part2:

in short, concern that the perfect not be the enemy of the good is only of use in a society where the good isn’t the enemy of the perfect. or in other words: a society in which the institutions (dominant class interests, or ‘the good’) are in harmony with the the common good (i.e. the perfect).

loving this show…

there is perhaps no more perfect example of the President’s function as mediator of the logic of state interest and the common emotion than expressed near the end of this clip of President Obama:

Ultimately when I make a decision, it’s going to be based on the over-arching view of U.S. national security, but, I think I’d be making poor decisions if I didn’t have to look into the eyes of a family member who had lost a loved one and tell them how… grateful we are as a nation. That… that… moment insures that I’m making the best possible decisions, going forward.

It is a sort of magical power, psychologically speaking if not in reality, that the President has, to render a death of value – particularly in a time where the aims of every war have become obscure. In the absence of anything resembling victory, only the President’s special charisma stands between a noble sacrifice and a tragic waste.

The fascinating thing in this for me is the idea that the president in that “moment” of emotional authenticity with a grieving family in reality bridges the gap between sane human values and the “over-arching” needs of national security. It’s a remarkable enough accomplishment if indeed those security needs are both as stated and served by the strategies being employed by the state, but verges toward the truly miraculous as this ideal state degrades toward reality.

The first degradation occurs in the step from official aims and actual aims. That is: the official aim of preventing Al-Qaeda from having a save haven within which to train is quite flimsy, given both the other lawless lands (e.g. Somalia) and (more importantly) the fact that in an age of terrorism, such safe havens are unnecessary. Indeed, the alleged 9/11 hijackers trained to fly in the US. So, it’s not difficult to imagine that these official aims are ideas for public consumption (as, similarly, the invasion of Iraq was sold on the basis of WMD’s, as this was reckoned to be the easiest sell), and that the real aims are something else.

At the first level of degradation of the ideal, the security aims of America, if not what they are supposed to be, are nonetheless genuinely conceived with the common good in mind. Securing a pipeline across Afghanistan for the removal of oil and gas from the various former-Soviet-stans might, for example, be conceived of as in the genuine security interest of the United States, even though this is not the public reason given for continuing the war. In this situation, though the President is involved in some duplicity, he might still authentically participate in the sacred ‘moment’ that binds national security with familial sacrifice.

The real difficulty arises as these covert aims diverge from the genuine common good and instead serve the private good of the various industries involved. Such divergence has been, you might say, the history of the CIA, and the ‘black’ government in general. So what amazes me about Obama is the idea that he’s mediating between those covert interests who have long acted under the over-arching rubric of national security and familial emotion. It’s as if he’s mediating between wolves and sheep.

And of course in ecological terms, wolves and sheep form a dynamic whole – or rather take part within a dynamic whole. There’s nothing inherently wrong with mediating such opposites. The question really is whether or not it can be done. Is the dynamic, as a whole, ecological?