.:296/365: We Interrupt Your Regular Programming...:.
No magic secret is safe on TV 5’s piece of crap.
Well, hello there, magic community! Welcome the newest bunch of jackasses who just can’t seem to help but want to look like they’re so smart so they go right ahead and “expose” the secrets of magic for everyone to see.
Yeah. Sure.
When Valentino pulled this stunt some time ago, many magicians were frothing at the mouth and all but wanted to murder the guy: under the guise of “forcing magic to evolve,” Valentino revealed the secrets behind some of the best illusions performed by magicians over the decades, and in one fell swoop, destroyed the honor and prestige of being a magician like it has never been decimated before. From that day on, an interview with any magician could never be completed without some reporter asking how the magician feels about Valentino’s actions.
Many magicians, solely because of the “Breaking The Magician’s Code” expose’s , found themselves in need of a new career. Their popularity flagged because *gasp* apparently, magic wasn’t real. It seemed that many people took delight in running across rooftops and shouting to everyone who would care that nobody has genuine magic powers.
I tried that once, actually: I went around school, telling everyone that Hugh Laurie wasn’t really a doctor. I can’t believe nobody was shocked, let alone gave a damn.
Newsflash: the deception of magic is an implicit contract of willing suspension of disbelief. We didn’t go here to start a new religion or to regale you with our extraordinary abilities. We went here to make a living. When the formula of a stupid softdrink is considered worth dying for because Coca-Cola’s secret formula equates to a multi-billion dollar company’s well-being, then is it any wonder when other magicians feel deeply offended when their trade secrets are being aired out for all to see, considering that it jeopardizes their livelihood and casts a very condescending eye towards the industry at large?
Why is it that these TV producers seem to think that they know what’s best for the magic industry? Who died and made them the people who can declare that “we’re not doing this to denigrate the art, but to force it to evolve?” Why is it deconstructionists seem to have no idea how to be reconstructionists, and leave the mess to the very same people they already castrated? And why is the Philippines copying an already tired trope and then trying to pass it off as “good” for an industry they have nothing to do with?
I’m one of those magicians who has never been directly affected by exposure. As a comedy mentalist, I always make it very clear that I’m not out to make believers when I perform. I’m merely there to entertain, and surely, there is nothing wrong with doing that. Despite that, every single magic or mentalist performer has been indirectly affected by exposure, because exposure has made it seem like magicians maliciously hide their secrets, rather than them hiding their secrets much the same way any business tycoon would never let you have a franchise of their successful business model if you don’t compensate them properly for it.
Magic is an art, but it is also a business. If you can’t respect magic’s business practices and instead decide for yourself that they should reveal how they do everything, then it’s pretty obvious that you’re not doing this to “evolve” magic, but because you take abnormal pleasure in killing people’s sense of wonder for no other purpose than to make you feel better about your own pathetic existence. That you had to destroy other people’s livelihoods to do it just makes it all the worse.
You’d think a musician like Kean Cipriano would be more sensitive towards respecting people’s intellectual property, yet surprise surprise, it turns out that we’re just going to have to remind everyone that YOU CAN DOWNLOAD CALLALILY’S DISCOGRAPHY HERE. Remind me never to catch Callalily’s gigs again.
I am outraged at the kind of disrespect that the producers of this show have demonstrated, all after the buckets of business one of their Talentadong Pinoy Hall-of-Famers, Wanlu, has brought to the table for them. I am outraged at the condescending tone that they take against magic, encouraging people to treat magic with disdain rather than as a source of entertainment. We all know that actors aren’t the characters they portray. Why can’t people get it in their heads that magicians are simply more of the same?
Fuck you, TV 5. And fuck you, Kean and Empoy.
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