It's Magic. Or Is It?

Is it just me? Am I the only one who looks at David Blaine's antics and simply shrugs 'so what'? I was just reading about his latest venture - being strapped to a giant gyroscope over New York. One has to ask - why? This seems even more pointless than such previous stunts as living underwater, living in a box suspended from a crane or being encased in ice. Indeed, the key word here is 'stunt'. The problem is that Blaine still touts himself as an 'illusionist', yet increasingly his activities seem to constitute endurance tests rather than illusions. Trust me, there is nothing mysterious or illusory about being strapped to a gyroscope. The whole point of an illusion is that we, the audience, know that we are being deceived, we just can't figure out how. Of Blaine's recent stunts, only the one where he lived in that transparent box had an element of illusion to it - clearly, without food or drink he would have died, so we know there was something going on (probably substitution by a double), but couldn't be sure what. Nevertheless, it still didn't feel like an illusion - there just wasn't enough mystery about it, and no real denouement.

Ultimately, Blaine's stunts just don't adhere to that three part structure laid out in The Prestige. Sure, he has 'the pledge', where he shows us something (himself), and there's definitely a 'turn', where he transforms the object - in this case himself - in some way (by being encased in ice, or strapped to that gyroscope, or whatever), but there's no real 'prestige', where the object is returned. (I hope I'm remembering the structure correctly). The problem is, of course, that he is always in plain sight. He cannot truly be restored or transformed, if he doesn't, at some point, appear to vanish, or be destroyed. All of which makes me wonder how Blaine ever got such a reputation as a showman, when this basic point seems to elude him. Quite frankly, even Paul Daniels has more sense of drama than Blaine.