That being said, it isn't fair to rate magic that way; it's ridiculously subjective.
Even subjective art has objective quality to its craft.
no magician intentionally doesn't cater to their audience
I disagree. I've seen magicians here who admitted that they think the stage is an appropriate place to indulge themselves whether or not the audience cares. We need to do everything we can to stop that because it's a disease that needs to be wiped out.
This isn't like playing a guitar where you can learn a couple of cords with a few months practice and be decent.
Speaking as a musician, it's not nearly that simple. If all you do is practice a few chords for a couple of months, you're still going to be a pretty awful guitarist. Everything is about skills.
This also deals with Fitzkees idea of "Modern Magic". We have no idea who he was talking about at the time the book was written and which magicians he's seen (though I can differ that he was mainly talking about Stage magic, sense I don't think strolling or close up magic was popular back when the book was written.). So there is that to think about as well.
If you don't yet understand the historical context, isn't that something you should research then instead of just leaving it up to assumptions?
In my opinion, the biggest problem with the industry right now is ego. And in that sense the Fitzkey points do nothing to solve the problem. In fact it seems to foster it. If you get a bunch of big headed, egotistical magicians who convince themselves that they are excellent then they never improve their own performances. If those egotists can convince the newbies not to perform because they are not "good enough" then you are narrowing the actual talent pool of potential magicians. Good for the self deluding egotists but bad for magic.
Or one could see his point as saying to the egotists, "Wake up, junior. You're not nearly as good as you think you are. Now get back to rehearsing before I brain you with your own pasteboards until you stop being such a bloody embarrassment."
I don't think we'd help the art form by adding other forms of entertainment to it.
That wasn't his point.
But even so Redi, at what point do we cross the line and cease being a show on magic and become a show with special effects?
Is there such a thing as too much theater?
Let me answer that with another question: Did Alice Cooper's stage show stop being a rock concert and start becoming a theatrical morality play?
Also the bigger point was that bad musicians don't effect the industry as a whole and bad movies don't negatively effect the movie industry as a whole.
So if the producers put out too many bad movies or albums, it will in no way change the public's attitude toward them?
There will always be gold and there will always be crap. But when you give people too much of the bad stuff, they stop buying and look for entertainment elsewhere, or try to get it for free so they at least don't feel ripped off.
On top of that, magic is much more insular. People don't see magic very often. And while that does mean they have less of a reference pool to judge crap from non-crap, people are willing to swallow only so much garbage before they kick you to the curb and look for their fix somewhere else. Why hire a magician for a couple hundred bucks when they can get two hours of entertainment for a tenth the cost at a movie theater? Why pay that money to see Michael Bay's latest showcase of explosion porn when you can just torrent a bootleg for free?
So somebody literally needs to find the logical thread that means that bad magicians will negatively effect the magic industry. I hope that makes more sense.
If someone hires a bad magician and walks away with a negative impression of magic, what are the odds that they will hire someone else? You're failing to account for the ubiquity of other media. Movies have had a century to permeate our pop culture. We've had music since time meant nothing. You can't get away from this stuff.
But stop and think for a second. What if you had never seen a movie before in your life? And what if your first exposure to movies was in the form of Enzyte commercials? Would you walk away with a very positive impression of the medium? And don't tell me that's apples and oranges either. If the wankery that magicians sell to each other gets counted as magic, then a commercial can count as a movie.
I'm still with you that we all need to strive for better performances but before we start kicking new and less experience performers to the curb, ostracizing them, and disassociating ourselves with them there needs to be a pretty darn good reason for that. There needs to be some solid logic that suggests that they really do reflect poorly on us as a whole.
You're still stuck on that? It's not the newbies themselves that are the problem. It's the ones that say, "Good enough." Those people need a kick in the ass so that they either get over themselves and learn to improve or do us all a favor and move on to something else.
Not everything is black and white and underdogs aren't always the good guys. Sometimes people just suck.
Because bad musicians, actors, directors, writers, etc. don't reflect poorly on there industry, we need to logically form an argument that somehow the magic industry is fundamentally different than other entertainment industries.
Yes, they do. Put out one too many lousy movies and people stop buying tickets to go to the movies. Release too many lousy albums and people stop buying music.
Until we can do that, the best hope for our industry is to actually help foster good performances, not discourage average performers who may have the potential to some day be great.
Question: Who here has actually said, "Screw newbies!" Seriously. Point me to the people who are saying this so I know what the foundation for this paranoia is. Do it now, because so far I see no proof that there is any merit to this perception. It looks like just another knee-jerk reaction using "elite" as a pejorative.
