I'm not saying CG IS magic - I'm saying that at a time it could be considered so (when we're discussing "magic" as that feeling of wonder and befuddlement); but not today in our digital world.
Same difference. You're expanding the definition because it sounds good, not necessarily because it's grounded in true artistic theory.
History lesson: Special effects were actually invented by former stage magician turned filmmaker Georges Melies. Now before you go ahead and assume that this proves your point, I will contend that it does not and here's why.
Melies was a very successful illusionist, but at heart he was very much a storyteller. He chose the medium of magic originally because it provided the quickest avenue to performing in a way that evoked the greatest sense of wonder and impossibility. When he saw the Lumiere brothers and their new invention the motion picture camera, he immediately saw the possibility. Please keep in mind that at this time film was an
extremely new concept. The earliest movies were only minutes long at best. For the most part it was a carnival attraction. People paid money to see a few seconds of a man sneezing. That is not hyperbole, that literally happened. Footage of a train pulling into the station scared the bejeezus out of audiences who thought the train was going to come through the screen and run them over. It had a powerful effect on people because this was previously considered impossible. Prior to this, the closest we had come was sequential photography that was more of what we think of today as a strobe effect. I'd go into more detail, but that would take too long.
Melies recognized two important things however. First, he saw that the motion picture camera, like still photography, could be manipulated into showing doctored or untrue images. Second and more importantly, he also recognized that people still believed what they saw to be real. With this paradigm and his knowledge of illusion mechanics, he turned the camera into just another eye to be misdirected.
However, Melies' goal was no longer to inspire the wonder that is the defining quality of mystery entertainment. No, he sought to expand on what theater was capable of. Special effects in some capacity already existed in the theater world. A Japanese noh play written centuries ago used a prop of a large bell to facilitate an actor changing costume and mask in only a few seconds to turn from a woman into a demon. It's that old. Melies simply exploited the nature of the new technology to accomplish what previously had not been possible.
Melies' films were primarily in the science fiction and fantasy genres. Mind, this was pre-Tolkien. These were the days when speculative fiction and fantasy were very open and wild. It was a fiercely imaginative time that would eventually produce such notable works as
Metropolis,
The Phantom Carriage and the Barsoom Series by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Melies was one of the first in film.
What Melies did was not advance the theory or language of magic as form of theater or mystery entertainment. Rather, he was helping to create the language of film as a then-nascent artform and medium unto itself. Magic is designed specifically by its mystery and the desire to leave that mystery unsolved. Special effects are not magic. They are tool in the medium of film. They are part of the language of the medium. And like any tool, they are not always called for. Do you really need pyrotechnics and CGI in a Woody Allen film?
Here's another thing most people don't realize about CGI: most of it you never see. Or at least, you're not aware of the fact that you're seeing it. You see the
Lord of the Rings trilogy? Yeah, 90% of the CGI in that movie is so subtle you don't know it's there. It's not there to add to any sense of mystery or awe. Typically it's used to enhance the verisimilitude of the scene or subtly alter a scene to more seamlessly fit the art direction.
To sum up, CGI is to film what the double lift is to magic: a tool that is not supposed to call attention to itself, but to help facilitate the work itself. Similarly, the guitar is to music what the false transfer is to magic.
On that note, the fact that a work has affected you may be magical in the generic emotional sense. But it is not magic in terms of genre or theatrical performance theory. The Spanish have a word for this specifically:
duende, the emotional response to art. I could write an essay on that topic alone, but I don't want to ring in the new year with a case of carpal tunnel syndrome.
To repeat, your problem is that you're conflating definitions into gross oversimplifications because you think it sounds good. But that does a disservice to the centuries of academic study into art and media from those who came before us, trying to make it better with each subsequent generation.