Still - the biggest direction magic is heading in is the: "eveyrthing visual is better" style - and I think this is different than in the past - where people understood the effect happened in the mind, and - in a horror movie analogy - the monster in our mind is always more terrfying than the one you can actually see. With our ADHD riddled minds, everything has to happen right away, or we lose interest - so it seems that this focus on visual magic is so important to appease the crowds.
I don't think the analogy quite applies. We're going out there and peddling deception to people who are wary of it. You know when you go to see a magician perform that he is doing something tricky. He's using sleight of hand, special props, and misdirection to create an illusion.
When you see a monster movie, you are accepting that this movie portrays an alternate reality where this monster exists. You and the movie have a contract. You don't question it, you don't say, "No way are sea monsters real - I'm not buying this!" The movie guides you into its reality, and you enjoy the ride. When someone sees a magician perform, they don't do that. They don't suspend reality or buy into the magician's reality. They impose what he's trying to do over their own standards.
If I held a deck of cards and said, "I'll make your card rise to the top!" and then covered it with a handkerchief for a few seconds, then pulled it off to reveal your card at the top - you don't buy that something weird happened. You know I covered the deck so I could do something sneaky. If I just held the deck out in the open and gave it the slightest little shake, and there your card was, that's different. (You'd probably then think a trick deck or something, but still.)
For most people, no matter what, they're just not going to suspend disbelief. Even those buying tickets for a magic show are somewhat skeptical. Why is it we'll let a monster be real, but not magic? Even after the movie, we still have that contract with the film - that monster is still real in that world. Magic never is.
Magic has to be visual because we won't buy it any other way. When we add cover, we're saying, "You can't see this right now." And why can't they see it? Because we're
doing something, and the audience isn't allowed to see. Without cover, it's more impressive. True, that doesn't eliminate skepticism, disagreement, and lack of imagination in an audience, but it pulls them in closer.
In your horror movie example, we as an audience can't see the monster for some time. We build it up and imagine the scariest thing, and our own imagination always trumps someone else's. Our vision is scariest. That has a place in magic, definitely - but I don't think it's in this specific case. I think, with visual magic, what we're doing is putting the audience IN THE MOVIE with the monster, letting them see it and coexist with it. Saying, I have nothing to hide. This is what it is.
If anything - this gives us a bigger reason to live the magicians oath and keep the secrets, practice our magic - and become a tight knit group....instead of constantly arguing in forums...but that is another post, that may answer the same question.
Yes. We need to be a community. We need to share more. Create, expand, reinterpret, and present. When you go to a magic site, what are you going to? A store. It's always a store. You have a few outcasts like iTricks and some forums, but 9 times out of 10, it's a store. We need to change that into something more - stores, forums, philosophical journals, presentation networks, and much, much more. A community doesn't just sell crap to each other. They trade ideas, and not for a price.
