The Issue of Exposure in Magic by David Ung

Exposure in magic has always been around, from the very first treatise exposing the trickery used by “witches” in 1584 to the Masked Magician in the 90s and now social media magicians exposing the inner workings for views, engagement and moola.

The stance of magicians is always against the exposure of magic, after all the first lesson you learn as a magician is to never reveal your secrets! This is different from being taught magic, which is for magicians or people interested in learning magic. In this case exposure is the intentional revealing of magic effects to the public.

With that in mind why do so many magicians expose magic these days and what are my thoughts on this controversial topic?

History of Exposure

Before we look at modern examples lets dive into the past and see what we can learn from history.

I mentioned the very first book on magic published in 1584, called The Discoverie of Witchcraft by Reginald Scott, which was an exposé of the magic witches did at that time. This was done so that the public would realise and understand that there weren’t real witches in the hocus pocus sense in order to prevent them from being caught and killed for practicing witchcraft.

Harry Houdini regularly attended séances and exposed psychics and mediums who claimed to be the real deal but were really just taking advantage of people who wanted to hear or find out about loved ones who has passed on. All Houdini wanted to do was to get in contact with his mother but it was his knowledge of magic that allowed him to see through the tricks during a séance and in anger send him on a mission to disprove all psychics. He would write a book A Magician Among The Spirits detailing his encounters with fake spiritualists and detail the method behind their “paranormal” effects.

These two reasons for the exposure of magic I would deem noble, one to prevent the deaths of women and the other to prevent people from being taken advantage of, which is contrasted with the reasons for exposure today.

Exposure in Today’s World

Now, we primarily see the exposure of magic for the purposes of entertainment, views and of course money.

We no longer fear witches and seances are a form of entertainment, although psychics and mediums still continue to work with people still eager to find out their fortune or see how their departed ones are going, which I’m not a fan of.

The Masked Magician continues to be one of the more well known exposers (is that a word?) of magic. The allure of money plucked Val Valentino from obscurity in the 90s to front a show detailing how illusions and other effects are done. Even though he wore a mask to conceal his identity, it didn’t take long for magicians to find out who he was and express their outrage on whatever platform they had available. Even now as I perform I’ll have people occasionally ask if I ever watched that show, which I had but as a young boy I barely remember any of the revelations.

Now we don’t have someone who is the face of magic exposure, but a lot of different magicians who have either dipped their toe into the exposure scene or jumped headfirst into what is a pool of ad revenue. You have probably seen the videos yourselves, whether it’s the one with two Chinese men, one demonstrating the trick only to be foiled by his friend who exposes it on camera as a punchline or Justin Flom, showing the mechanics of an illusion before using it to prank someone and most recently Murray SawChuck who went viral with a video with the same premise as the original Chinese one where his wife reveals the tricks Murray performs.

These are the more examples out there with many viral videos showing how a trick works as the punchline but I’d rather you not watch them hence my lack of names and links ? .

Exposing The Arguments

The common reasons given for the exposure of these magic tricks are:

• They’re old, prop magic that most people “should” know
• It’s entertainment, so therefore it’s fair game
• There are no real secrets in magic anymore
• It’s good for the art as it exposes more people to magic

As you may infer, I’m predominantly on the side against the exposure of magic to the public and I hate seeing the art I love being butchered in such a way just for views and a quick buck.

I could spend more time arguing against the arguments but in a nutshell, here are my counter points:

• Just because it’s deemed old and you bought it off Amazon doesn’t mean you can expose it under the assumption everyone knows about it. There are people who don’t.
• Magic itself is already entertaining, exposing it is cheap entertainment
• Even though magicians guard an empty vault, we are still able to keep some secrets to ourselves, but we need to do better. Also, not everyone wants to know the secret
• I don’t know if there are many people who want to become a magician after watching an exposure video. Seeing a good performance is more likely to get them interested in magic instead

But are there times were exposure is okay? I think there are entertaining cases where it’s acceptable and my criteria is that it’s done well and showcases the magician in a good light.

Penn and Teller’s clear cups and balls in a prime example of this, they were dubbed the bad boys of magic early on and the magic community were outraged at them for exposing the cups and balls. If you were upset at their performance then you missed the point they were making, that even when you know how it’s done, it’s still compelling to watch and should give you an appreciation of a magician’s skill. People watch that and realise they couldn’t do it either, even when they see how it’s done.

The equivalent of that in our digital age would be a magician showing someone a trick and we the viewer get to see how the magician is accomplishing it (primarily through sleight of hand) while the participant is none the wiser and reacts appropriately, although these are difficult to pull off well so aren’t as common.

Giving the audience a peek behind the curtain in this way hopefully results in them having a greater appreciation for the magic and the work a magician puts into their craft. Plus, they don’t look like a joke in the process, which a lot of these other videos tend to do, trivialising what magicians do in the process. We’ve already got a bad rap, why continue to punch down on yourself?

What To Do, What To Do?

So what can we do as magicians to combat this exposure?

Magicians are going to keep exposing magic, especially when they see the views and potential money to be made from it. We are prone to see what works and copy it hoping for the same success. Going after them with pitchforks isn’t going to sway them, and even if you talk to them nicely, most times they’ve already made up their mind on how to monetise magic.
If they’re exposing marketed material created by other magicians, then by all means call them out to educate them because that’s someone else’s livelihood they’re messing with.

We should focus on being better ourselves, and propping up the magicians we want instead of dragging down the ones we don’t like. For every magician resorting to cheap tactics for views, there are actual good magicians churning out great content on social media that deserve more views.

The other thing we can do is not to give those who expose any attention. If you don’t enjoy what they do, ignore it and divert your attention to something else you enjoy more. I enjoy watching magicians perform on AGT but hate the subsequent videos that pop up attempting to explain how the act was done. I used to be recommended those exposure videos but never watched them and now I stopped getting them recommended to me.

You could say I’m pleading ignorance, but short of trying to take them down, which would be the same as taking on a hydra my time and effort can be better used elsewhere, which I already have trouble with as I’m so good at procrastinating. There’s more to explore with this topic, I haven’t even touched on teaching magic online yet, but until next time I would like to sum things up with the following:

Magic is good

Exposure is bad

Focus on what is good and you’ll be happy.