Disclaimer: what's left unsaid

In conjuring adverts, you will often see a list of methods not used, designed specifically to divert magicians, who will read a description of the trick and start speculating. "Probably magnets..."

* NO magnets!

"Well, invisible thread, then..."

* No threads!

And so on, until the magician gives up, and spends the money just to find out about this

*entirely NEW principle!

UNLESS, he can think of something they didn't mention, which might just work...

Similarly, magicians on public television will often have to run off a list of disclaimers, otherwise (not being a live audience) the public may dismiss the effect all too easily. So they have to say "No cuts! No camera tricks! No stooges! No actors!" before even getting to the magic. We've all seen far too many amazing film special effects these days.

AND YET, they still need to have a method of achieving the effect, of course. You might be able to figure it out by spotting what they DIDN'T say - just like advertising and political speeches, performers consider it important that they didn't actually lie. There were no cuts or camera tricks when the Statue of Liberty disappeared, for instance.

Keith Barry & Hypnotism

I have recently caught Keith Barry on tv, doing the Derren Brown Schtick, including what may appear to you as morally dubious hypnosis tricks (instant inductions on random passers-by looks pretty like mugging to me) - getting their permission afterwards seems odd, too, as when will they know they have their free will and judgement back? When will they trust a stranger?

Having said that, such shows have to induce paranoia in the audience to prove effective (the Black Ops programme specifically appeals to all the conspiracy theory/MKULTRA/mind manipulation stuff, for instance). The fact that mentalists (as opposed to magicians) blur the area between conjuring tricks and tricks of the mind leaves one wondering...


As Dunninger used to say "For those who believe, no explanation is necessary; for those who do not believe, no explanation will suffice."

So naive punters will think the blindfold drive another and inexplicable trick of the mind, but people who know the trick, and also may think of hypnosis as predominantly social compliance, peer pressure, participant selection, suggestion, etc. might suspect that the hypnosis demonstrated may also have a couple of unmentioned tricks - for instance, to say 'no actors' are involved does not eliminate the possibility of stooges (whether 'instant stooges' - people invited to play along - or hired hands), being employed. Or of using people who have already, and previously, been hypnotised, so that one simple trigger can put them back under.

I don't want to go into that debate, right now, but check out Martin Taylor's site, about his show Hypnotism Without Hypnosis which so impressed Derren Brown. And Derren himself keeps that 'mentalist' ambiguity going by claiming to "combine magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship in order to seemingly predict and control human behaviour..."

Anyway, judge for yourselves - this is Keith Barry on the TED conference, he's certainly amusing.

Disclaimers

And as to those disclaimers, they are so familiar to magic shoppers that they have become almost a joke - look at Penguin Magic:

No mirrors!
No wax!
No chemicals!
No magnets!
No wires!
No strings!
No counting!
Not a stacked deck!
Not a marked deck!
Not a peek!
Not a pull!

Are We Live?

Penn & Teller forgetting to mention something important...