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Mimmicking. Cloning. Channeling. All words we occasionally use to describe the process of studying a particular performer’s technique and presentation, and proceeding to repeat it. Word for word, move for move. And in the case of Deddy Corbuzier, even eyebrow for eyebrow. (Although, sadly, it seems there are lots of people who, unlike me, see nothing particularly wrong with that egregious behavior.)

No one I know was born a magician or mentalist. Like riding a bike, hitting a baseball, or running over a squirrel in the road, it’s a learned behavior. How we learn is a facinating subject. While many have attempted to distill into neat little boxes the primary methods human beings learn, for the purposes of this piece I’ll focus on four of them.

The first is Reflex or Classical Conditioning. Basically, it’s stimulous-response. This is typified in the story of Ivan Pavlov and his experiments with dogs. When Ivan fed his dogs, he’d ring a bell. The dogs associated the ringing bell with being fed. Soon enough, Pavlov could ring a bell and the dogs began salivating. (The parallel between “bell ringing and dogs salivating” can also be drawn by observing the behavior of some men when certain women enter a room.)

Classical Conditioning is evident in my own life. For instance, when I hear news of a new book from Hermetic Press or The Miracle Factory, or a new CD from Loreena McKennitt, my eyes glaze over and I immediately reach for my credit card.

Another method of learning is Instrumental or Operant Conditioning, or goal-oriented conditioning. We learn to do certain actions because it occasionally returns a desireable result. Initially, that action may have been discovered purely by accident. At the turn of the last century, Edward Thorndike’s work explored this, as did B. F. Skinner’s work with what has become known as the Skinner Box. In it, a rat learns that pressing a bar dispenses a pellet of food.

In our own world of magic and mentalism, it’s like ordering a magic trick from a dealer without reading an accurate review by Mike Close, and — miracle of miracles — what you receive somehow resembles the ad to which you responded. Despite that result happening only once in a blue moon, we still tend to continue ordering tricks based on ads we read.

Another method of learning is Multiple-Response Learning. This is a bit more involved. In Multiple-Response Learning we successfully string together a series of simple actions which result in a desireable outcome.

In a way, this a lot like the experients with the Skinner Box; rats had to learn a series of turns in a maze in order to locate the cheese. Richard Bandler and John Grinder mention this in their book, “Frogs Into Princes”:

B. F. Skinner had a group of students who had done a lot of research with rats and mazes. And somebody asked them one day “What is the real difference between a rat and a human being?” Now, behaviorists not being terribly observant, decided that they needed to experiment to find out. They built a huge maze that was scaled up for a human. They took a control group of rats and taught them to run a small maze for cheese. And they took the humans and taught them to run the large maze for five-dollar bills. They didn’t notice any really significant difference. There were small variations in the data and at the 95% probability level they discovered some significant difference in the number of trials to criterion or something. The humans were able to learn to run the maze somewhat better, a little bit quicker, than the rats.

The really interesting statistics came up when they did the extinguishing part. They removed the five-dollar bills and the cheese and after a certain number of trials the rats stopped running the maze…. However, the humans never stopped!… They are still there!… They break into the labs at night.

College-age males are also frequently seen to demonstrate this behavior in bars. They perform a series of simple actions — approach a female, utter a banal come-on line, purchase the female a strong drink, utter another banal come-on line, purchase more strong drinks — all in an effort to “obtain the cheese,” as it were. (Evidently this method remains successful, even after all these years, proving once again that human nature doesn’t change; only the price of the drinks does.)

Then there’s Insight Learning, or The Lightbulb Going Off method. With this method, a person considers a problem by noticing the relationships between the intrinsic parts and, like a bolt of lightning out of the clear blue sky, or Ed McMahan knocking on your front door with the Publisher’s Clearinghouse Sweepstakes winning check, a solution is dropped into his lap.

Of course it’s not just happenstance; it’s a now-rare process called “thinking.” In the world of magic and mentalism, a perfect example is embodied in the human being known as Stewart James.

When you consider how we, as magicians and mentalists, learn our craft you can easily see examples of all four types of learning, as well as combinations of the four. Each of the methods I listed above require more effort than the one preceeding it.

But there is one more method to mention. This is the one we see most often because it requires the least amount of effort. And, rightfully so, it’s the most troubling.

This method of learning is pointed to as a primary reason to call a Catholic priest to perform an Exorcism of most all instructional DVDs from the world of magic. It’s mimmicking. Cloning. Channeling. The “Chimp Off the Old Block” method of learning and subsequently performing magic. It’s someone watching a DVD of a magician and learning the moves, speech patterns and mannerisms of the performer, and going out an “doing” that magician.

Eugene Burger has mentioned many times how, as a very young person and student of magic, he idolized Don Alan to the point of channeling Don’s performance. Soon enough, Burger realized the path to enlightenment was not by cloning someone else, but by developing his own character. (As an aside, I find it interesting — if not amusing — to see people today channeling Burger.)

Aside from the obvious ethical reasons for not cloning an existing performer, there’s the broader issue of how audiences respond to seeing essentially the same tricks performed in the same manner by different people. The unspoken, rhetorical question is, “What’s so special about magic?”

The fact is, we all have to start somewhere. Absent a Dai Vernon-styled mentor to whack you over the head with a magic wand as you work your way through learning how to be yourself — whatever that’s supposed to mean — it’s natural to seek out and learn a performance style in whatever manner we can. In the beginning that was done via in-person live performances. Then came watching television performances. Now, we have video tapes and DVDs to play, rewind, play, rewind. Rinse and repeat.

Has this caused great numbers of neophyte magicians to duplicate the spirit and image of another performer? Well, how often these days do we see a young magician wearing a black t-shirt and jeans walking up to someone saying, “Look. Look. Watch.”

But the speed with which those performers move from cloned status to genuine original style is in direct proportion to the burning desire to be special — which is what magic and mentalism is supposed to be. That process necessarily involves a great deal of thought and effort, fed by an equally large amount of raw material on which to base path decisions.

Lazy dilettantes aren’t likely to put in the effort required to be special. If we could somehow send them to their rooms and keep them out of the eyes and ears of lay audiences this wouldn’t be such a big deal.

When Michael Ammar released via L&L Publishing his “Easy to Master Card Miracles” videos, you’d have thought the world was coming to an end. Many of the Card Godz were absolutely horrified that Ammar would assemble in one, easy to obtain place, such a large number of astounding, audience tested card magic tricks. The argument heard most often was that we (the world of magic) would end up with hundreds of Ammar clones roaming the planet, foisting upon audiences Ammar-cloned performances of card magic.

But the interesting thing is, that didn’t happen to any alarming extent. What did happen, though, was that a large number of new magicians — and not a few old hands — were directly introduced to quality, entertaining card magic that make up the foundation of great close-up magic. But they were also instructed that they had to learn the routines and perform them in a manner that fit their individual style.

The latest chapter in the “Easy to Master…” world is Richard Osterlind’s recently released set of four DVDs, Easy to Master Mental Miracles.” I received my set on Wednesday of this past week and I’m nearly done viewing them. (A full review will probably be posted tomorrow.) What I can say of them now is this: these DVDs follow in the successful footsteps of the Ammar videos in that they present rock-solid, classic tricks in a manner befitting their classic status.

Osterlind reached across nearly a century of published mentalism and assembled a collection of tricks that embody the foundation of what makes great mentalism great.

Is this a good thing, or a bad thing?

To hear some people put it, this will put an end to mentalism — magic’s last great frontier — because budding mentalists will no longer have to wade through tons of books to find the real gems. It’s as if being forced to digest tons of books and manuscripts — some of which are far out of reach physically and intellectually of beginners — is, somehow, the only honorable way to learn.

Worse, they won’t be inclined to purchase “new” versions of classic effects because — horror of horrors — they’ll actually have learned the original, classic version first and may find nothing particularly interesting in the new versions that they couldn’t create on their own. (Fundamental, foundational knowledge can do that sometimes, you know.)

Actually, I believe the release of these videos is a good thing, and for several reasons. I’m a loud and vocal proponent of learning the fundamentals of magic and mentalism. It’s on these foundations we build great performance pieces. Richard teaches viewers where to find these fundamentals — primarily in Annemann and Corinda’s work — and proves by demonstration that those “dusty, old tricks” play as strongly today as they ever did. It invites exploration into what makes them strong audience pieces and, as a result, invites experimentation and innovation.

We learn by a number of different methods. We learn by example. We learn by exploration. Given the proper tools and pointed in the right direction, we’re far more likely to see created new stars of mentalism, rather than yet another clone of one of our current stars. I find that an exciting possibility.

4 thoughts on “Lip sinking.

  1. I hate to add on only a “me too” to the end of a wonderful post, but I agree with you down the line, including about Loreena McKennitt.

  2. Hello, Jim.

    “Me too” comments are perfectly acceptable in my book!

    Thanks for the visit and for leaving a comment; much appreciated.

  3. I visited the cafe link and at first thought the comments were meant to be sarcastic, unfortunately I was mistaken. I just can not fathom that these people think the blatant theft of someone’s fine tuned image is acceptable. It really is sad. I took part in a longer post at one time where I was told that this was covered under the oft misconstrued quote that “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” to wit I responded that it’s always flattery if you are the one stealing, but if you are the one supposedly being “flattered” it’s not always viewed the same way.

    I enjoy your comments about behaviorism. In my previous vocation I put my masters in psychology to use and have found it invaluable in my current full time performance life.

  4. Hello, Christopher. I was (and am) baffled by the idea of defending Deddy’s actions, which I find to be indefensible. Deddy claims to be planning to turn over a new leaf when he gets married next year. Someone asked, “Why wait?” Good question. Very good question.

    Another participant mentioned he wasn’t much concerned about the situation because it didn’t directly affect him. I find that sad commentary. There are plenty of examples in the last century of human history to demonstrate plainly why it is necessary to care about right and wrong, even when the wrong doesn’t directly affect you. As Terence observed,”I am a man, therefore mankind is my business” — although I am more partial to Jacob Marley’s version found in one of my favorite movies of all time, when he screamed at the top of his lungs, “Mankind is my business!”

    I’m glad you enjoyed this post. I enjoyed writing it. Thanks for visiting and especially for leaving a comment. Would you kindly mention this blog to your friends?

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