DECEPTION
The Age of the Stage Magician may well be on hold at the present time, but we are still subject to being fooled by the experts at deception found in the advertising field.
Slight-of-hand of the most insidious type is evident in many TV commercials. You can see it most readily in those advertising efforts intended to influence children.
Look for the element of deception if they are featuring sets of small plastic figures withwhich children might wish to play. The figure moved about in a lively fashion and appear in one exotic setting after another, with stance altered a bit in each instance. The child, watching these transitions on TV – everything from a scene on a polar ice cap to the depths of a steaming jungle or a sandy beach in pleasant sunlight - comes to accept the suggestion that the tiny dolls move about of their own violition. Give it all a background of terse, semi-authentic ethnic music and you've got yourself a winner. Orders will flow in from parents who's kids say they've "gottta have 'em".
The whole idea, of course, is to convince the viewer that sometghing exists which has not been apparent until that moment. One can have his or her attention distracted by music, color or sudden, offside or by a sudden movment offside and not see the quick hand effect the change. I worked with a man year ago who had developed a novel type of social "ice breaker". He would accept a persons business card and immediately ask why they had their cards printing on both sides. He waved the card toward those about him and, sure enough, the card appeared to be printed on both sides. His quick fingers turned it, not once but twice . The trick wore thin with time, however. On- lookers knew they were being tricked even if they did not know exactly how it had been done.
We are fooled more often than we know, of course.
There are so many ways of such trickery "coming at us" these days as science outstrips itself in so much our daily lives. Oddly enough, so many of the old scams which used to puzzled our grandparents are stlll around in modern dress. The hand is still quicker than the eye.
A.L.M. JANUARY 6, 2004 [c392wds]
