Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Lemme Reiterate...

.:TV Appearance Tomorrow!:.

Tomorrow, I'll be making an appearance for an interview regarding psychic phenomena in ANC around 9:30 AM or so. I'll be doing the Acid Test, so this will be a doozy that you better not miss out on!

.:What Business Do They Have Exposing The Art?:.

Last Saturday, GMA-7's program, "Imbestigador", had a segment where they exposed several magic illusions including the Zig-Zag Lady, the Linking Rings, and even a locally devised effect known as "Burikadabra".

For a program that prides itself in bringing to justice the less desirable elements of our society, it boggles the mind why they would make it a point to disrespect the art of magic and expose these effects? Has it ever occurred to them that these people perform and keep a code of secrecy to preserve the integrity of the art? Or are they too concerned in exposing magic for no other reason than to just bring the craft down even further?

Programs like these are not unlikely to find themselves at odds with pirates: people with no regard for intellectual property and profit off of it. Isn't that what they just did here? Did they ever care about the livelihood of magicians whose credibility they undermined with their exposure? Did they even care that they were divulging ideas that they did not themselves own, and almost assuredly did not pay for either?

It's a slap in the face of an art that has made it clear that they deal in deception to begin with. People pay to be deceived. To even compare the art of magic to street hustlers and swindlers is an outright insult to magic as a whole.

What business does Imbestigador, a show meant as a public service, in sticking their noses into someone's decent, honest livelihood? If they want to do a witch-hunt of quacks and frauds whose claims bite off more than they can choose, sure thing, but expose magic wantonly and irregardless of the fact that people pay their bills through it? That's just uncalled for, especially when it even goes as far as to trample over intellectual property rights?

This isn't just a protest over something petty. It's a protest over a very unethical, unscrupulous, and willful exposure of an art whose key to success is secrecy, for no malicious reason, but simply to entertain. It honestly makes no sense why a reputable program like Imbestigador would go against its own principles of fair play and justice and flat-out ignore the welfare of magicians trying to make a living all for the sake of what? For the sake of ratings?

Count me in as someone who wishes to file my indignation against this program.

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