That Penn and Teller special last night reminded me of some ongoing debates within the magic community having to do with ethics and misrepresentation. When a magician tells you that no camera tricks were employed in the taping of his show, that's supposed to mean that no camera tricks were used. But that same magician also told you that he put the three of diamonds in his pocket and he didn't. A lot of magic involves lying and getting you to think the trunk is empty when, in fact, the trunk contains three geese and two showgirls. Some in the magic biz have argued and continue to argue over which misrepresentations constitute lying and which are just acceptable parts of a trick.
Any magician on TV will tell you that no camera effects are used and that what you're seeing at home is exactly what you'd see if you were there live. But of course, there's plenty of wiggle room in that claim. All these shows are edited, especially when they do the big tricks. It really took thirty minutes to "vanish" the jumbo jet or the Empire State Building or whatever they made disappear. It may even have required two or three takes. All this is chopped down to five minutes and you are, in one sense, seeing just what you'd see if you were there. You just aren't seeing all of it because that would make the trick seem less spectacular and maybe even boring.
Is that a camera trick? Maybe.
And while you may be seeing what you'd see if you were there, you're also seeing what you'd see if your attention was as rigidly controlled as the camera's lens is on what they want you to see. If you were there and you looked slightly to the left or right, you'd see exactly how the trick was done. What makes it work is that you can't.
Another camera trick? You might say that.
Magicians, live and on TV, will often tell you that no confederates or audience "plants" are employed and sometimes, that's true. But sometimes, it's not. It's a running joke among magicians to wonder aloud how certain magicians can make any money when so much of their audience is on their payroll. Is it lying to bring up someone out of the audience and pretend they're not in on the trick when in fact, they are? Or is it like saying the trunk has no secret doors when it actually does? These are issues that magicians debate. Or should debate.
Throughout most of their special, Penn and Teller got around most questions of honesty by simply showing you how they did everything. Years ago, when a rogue magico was exposing tricks in a series of Fox TV specials, a lot of magicians cursed his name and/or reassured one another that it didn't matter; that the magic of magic was in the performance, not in the secret. With some presentations, it's both but in most cases, it doesn't ruin a trick because you know about the trap door. Heck, with some tricks, you can't fully appreciate how good the magician is or how much skill it takes to do what he's doing unless you know what he's really doing. It sure never ruined my enjoyment of a ventriloquist to be well aware that the dummy's voice was coming from the guy next to him with the quivering lips and forced smile. Penn and Teller are clever enough to do a two-hour magic show, expose all the tricks and still be entertaining.
And then at the end of their special, they pulled a super-reverse gag on the audience and on all of magic. If you didn't see it, let me summarize: The big finale, touted in ads and all through the special, was that they would make a full-size submarine disappear. Which they did. It was on the bottom of a lagoon, surrounded by scuba divers with underwater video cameras…and I guess the implication was that you at home were seeing what you'd see if you were one of those divers.
Penn kept saying over and over, "We're going to tell you how we did it" and just before they showed it, he admonished us that if we wanted to preserve the wonderment, we should close our eyes and look away. I'm guessing less than 1% of the viewership opted not to peek. If you looked, what you saw was this not-too-convincing CGI trick shot of three helicopters flying the submarine away on cables.
Much of America said, "Ah, of course, that's how it was done" but of course, that's not how it was done. (There are a couple ways they could have done it. I'm guessing they used the same method Copperfield used to vanish that airplane in one of his first specials.) Few people probably noticed the special effects footage didn't look all that real. Few people probably noticed that Penn initially described the sub as weighing eight tons and that he later added a syllable and it turned into eighty tons, which may have been a deliberate hint for the terribly-observant. Even the lesser weight would be quite a strain (and balancing act) for three helicopters, to say nothing of the fact that if the idea was just to raise the submarine vertically, it could have done that under its own power. Nothing in the special said that those divers couldn't or didn't look up. Come to think of it, nothing in the special even claimed that none of the divers were confederates who were in on the gag.
It was a great trick but it wasn't the one most viewers thought they were seeing. By showing us how all the earlier tricks were done, Penn and Teller had done what every good confidence man does: Gain our trust. Then once they had that, they tricked the home audience so well, most of it didn't even know it had been tricked.
You see? Even when you think you know how the trick is done, you too can be fooled.