The Super-Hero Theory Of Magic
Or “What’s The Difference Between Magic & Mentalism?”
To those uninitiated into the world of magicians, allow me to clear something up. Magic covers things like transformation, transubstantiation, impossible penetration, appearance, vanish, and the like. Mentalism, by contrast, tends to cover things like mind reading, impossible predictions, and mind over matter. Mentalists are magicians, but not all magicians are mentalists. Those are the 101 definitions. Don’t worry, it’ll get more complicated. But first, super-heroes.
Super-heroes each have a premise. They may all have a climactic battle on top of an office building, mountain, or another precipice, and they may mostly be motivated by murdered parents or other loved ones, but every popular super-hero idea has its own thing.
The Super-Hero Theory: Magicians Are Like Super-Heroes
Spider-Man cannot fly, because he has spider powers. Quicksilver is fast, but he cannot become insubstantial. The Black Widow is a master assassin, but she isn’t bulletproof. Each of these characters has special abilities, but they are limited by their premise, like magicians.
Any supernatural act, be it knowing a playing card’s identity from across a room or sticking to a wall like a spider, implies a method or premise. The clearer the implied premise, the more powerful the impression on the viewer.
Of course, then there is always Superman, but his powers are so broad, he becomes what you get when you paint a super-hero beige. If anything, he’s the exception that proves the rule.
As a magician or a super-hero, indicating that you are more than one thing introduces confusion to your act unless you have an already well-established character, like Superman or David Copperfield. This level of mixing can be earned, but only with the benefit of time with the audience, either on stage or on television.
Enter Mentalism
This is why mentalists often say you shouldn’t mix magic with mentalism. Here’s a more specific reading of the idea: to a lot of mentalists, “mentalist” itself is a premise. A good deal of mentalists play essentially the same character, and that’s usually bad. It’s one of the reasons a lot of magicians get into mentalism to define their performance persona, not because they prefer mind reading effects. “Mentalist” is to them as much of a definition of character as “The Incredible Hulk” is.
The theatrical goal of the magician or mentalist should be to become familiar to the audience like Superman, but to stay within boundaries like Spider-Man. One should never make those boundaries so clear that the audience can say a trick is one yard out of line. By defining a canon too clearly, in any medium, the audience can get ahead of you. Just think of all those super-hero movies you’ve seen where you saw the end of the movie coming twenty minutes in. It’s also where “badass decay” comes from: once we know what James Bond was like as a boy, his movies suck.
Implicit Claims
In a stage act, with hours to fill, establishing your character isn’t too difficult. In a ten minute close up performance or The Illusionists, it is a challenge. This isn’t to say that one must announce that one is either a hypnotist, or a gambler, or Spider-Man, but doing certain effects in certain ways makes those claims implicitly.
But what if one were to avoid the existing character premise archetypes altogether? No beardy wizards, awkwardly tailored $20 tuxedos, or old-timey psychics. Don’t try to be Derren Brown, or David Blaine, or Spider-Man. What if, and this is a revolutionary idea, you played a version of yourself? What does that look like? If you, as a person, aren’t very interesting, work on that. No amount of tricks will fix you. Marvin Roy once said “the magic isn’t the tricks, the magic is you.”
Think about why you like performing the magic you perform. What appeals to you about these effects? How are they the same? How are they different? Is there a similarity of effect (teleportation, telepathy, transformation, etc.) or artistic theme (imagination, risk, relationships, etc.) or prop (everything done with electrical things like bulbs, etc.)? Why should you perform this magic and not someone else? What’s special about the effects in relation to you? These dramatic questions will lead to a premise, which will show you what you should and what you should not include in your act.
Conclusion
The difference between magic and mentalism is largely artificial. It is one we have constructed as artists to draw a distinction between two styles of the same art form. Their only distinction is the approach to their presentation. Magicians (and mentalists) are often big nerds, so we tend to focus on the technical details rather than the theatrical ones when drawing categories. From that perspective, the two styles are completely different, yet exactly the same.
They are where the ocean meets the sea.
