Rant - magic

What happened to good old-fashioned magic? The kind that relied on misdirection and had the power to make the audience believe that maybe there really is a little magic in the world (a sense of childlike wonder and all that). These days, David Blaine and Criss Angel have teams of engineers working to create big ‘illusions’ that involves a variation on drowning, setting themselves on fire, or some other dangerous flirtation with death.

Maybe my taste in tricks (not the working-girl kind) are a little more old-school, but once upon a time, magic was a real art, not part of a Las Vegas hotel package. Give me Penn & Teller’s quirky presentation over Siegfried & Roy any day. The former – an American duo who’ve performed together since the 1980s – have inimitable flair that elevates them above any other magician double act in recent history. Like bad remakes of classic movies, why re-enact old tricks without putting an original spin on it? Penn & Teller for instance, developed their own version of the legendary ‘bullet catch’ trick – one that the great Harry Houdini refused to perform. Their TV show, Penn & Teller: Bullsh*t! takes it one step further and uses magic as a vehicle for social commentary, not just as parlour tricks.

Sensationalists like Angel prefer large-scale illusions like walking on water (boring) or making a Lamborghini disappear (clichéd). Then there’s Blaine, still in the doghouse for last year’s epic failure Dive of Death, which saw him suspended upside-down for 60 hours. He took water breaks, had a medical checkup, and cancelled the grand fi nale because of ‘adverse weather conditions’. This isn’t magic – this is an egomaniac willing to screw up his body for long periods of time, because a medical team and technicians are on standby to attend to him. Stick to street magic – at least that isn’t contingent on the weather. So, why am I getting so worked up about a bunch of rich magicians? Well, at this year’s Chingay Parade, we have our very own illusionist duo, Lawrence and Priscilla Khong. The former is going to set himself on fire. Hate to be a downer, but Hollywood has desensitised that whole spectacle for me. Oh, and sometimes this other little thing called the news. Seen the Human Torch in the Fantastic Four movie? It’ll be like that, except you’ll probably cringe more – and wonder how much money and time he spent perfecting the trick.