So you want to use the Dark Judges from Judge Dredd as characters? Life is a crime and the punishment is death?

Or is this only as deep as toying with Descartes using something like: I fear therefore I am as an axiom?

So you are saying you asked a girl if she wanted to see a card trick and she said yes please but I am blind. But she was only kidding.

? feel the ink on this two of clubs move and rearrange into the four of clubs.



Was that the precursor to Jack Benny's line "take my wife, please"?

Posted: Aug 27, 2010 6:56pm
Directly to Tommy - I agree that the theater should be a safe place where the audience does not need to relive their mortgage acquisition process or the first time they got dumped by a girlfriend.

My issue here is that of entangling the notion of reality and "things we fear" - especially in the context of the performing arts. At least unless we are out to sell them something (anchor fears to not buying the product) or induce phobias.

@Donnie: "the language we use (expressed most susccintly in Derrida's Of Grammatology). " You've read Derrida? I wish my French were up to that challenge.

They have nothing elude but illusion itself.

Posted: Aug 27, 2010 8:42pm
They fear death so one could show them they are immortal.

They fear poverty so one could fill their cup with coins.

They fear the climate so one could show them some data manipulations.

Vanish Osama Bin Laden.

They fear heights, give em Dumbo’s feather.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIDl8Wb1va0

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood. ~Marie Curie

Panic at the thought of doing a thing is a challenge to do it. ~Henry S. Haskins

Fear cannot take what you do not give it. ~Christopher Coan

Those who fear life are already three parts dead. ~Bertrand Russell


so, not everyone seeks to escape from life or run from fear.

Now, if you were to suggest that magic an help conquer fear I'll be with you -- for it does.

It’s a matter of fact that man lives in fear. And denial.

And you would thus have us refrain from making idiots out of our volunteers from the audience.
:applause:
Curtain.

agreed -- but that does not equate to "fear" as a motivating influence. If anything it stultifies action and decision in life. Also "Fear IN life" is not the same as "fear OF life" which was the original premise.

as this statement is true, then "fear" is part of each person's reality. Concern about these fears leads to anxiety and a person might welcome entertainment diversion during which such discordant thoughts are minimized -- except when some action within the entertainment accentuates some fear or anxienty. But, any form of entertainment can do that -- not magic in particular.

If magic does have a greater capacity for reducing anxiety than other forms of entertainment, then would it not be a result of the "complete attention" required rather than "illusion" or "fantasy?" People are perhaps more willing to "appear foolish" during a magic or mentalism or hypnotism demonstration because they can say, "he made me do it!" -- completely consistent with their denial of accountability in "real" life.

Yes, as you say, any form of entertainment can do that -- not magic in particular.

I said three pages ago “Its simple: People fear reality and flee to the security of the unreal. The performance of magic is a miniscule piece of a great complex of things that are fundamentally unreal.”



All Art is an IMITATION of something real or imagined.

The daily activity of man that's not an IMITATION of something real or imagined is life in reality.

When an audience is presented with a work of art they are experiencing an IMITATION of something real or imagined.

When people are at the Cabaret old chum, or reading a book, whether its a true story or not, they are experiencing a work of art, which is an IMITATION of something real or imagined. Are you with me?

So just where do we fit in Maslow's hierarchy of needs?
Or perhaps we assist in reinforcing some normative neurosis ala Fraud?

The magic show lead man straight into an artificial paradise from the environment of fear in which he lives. Rather than face his own phantom, he seeks a magic phantom into which he can project himself and which permits him to live as he might have willed. For an hour or two he can cease to be himself, as his personality dissolves and fades into the anonymous mass of spectators. The show makes him laugh, cry, wonder, and love. He has a beautiful lady assistant, beats the cardsharp at his own game, and masters life’s absurdities and impossibilities. In short, he becomes the illusionist. Life suddenly has meaning.

Well that’s my interpretation of - Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society –

:)

Tommy, your last two psts give a clearview of what it seems you ere attempting to convey -- and neither supports the original theme that fear causes people to look to illusion as an escape. Most people live in some sort of fear of something -- yes! most people can find moments if diversion in which the anxiety is minimized -- yes! but there is no causal link implied. I will agree that as people have more anxiety, feeling of being out of control, etc (fears if you wish), that they may turn more frequently to activities that do not require decsions or responsibility, but it is the unwillingness to solve their probelms that creates the anxienty -- not fear. In sales training the word "Fear" is used to mean "False Evidence Appearing Real." Thus, most fear is an illusion and perhasp makes people appriciative of other illusions -- as opposed to eliminating the casues of the fear.

and you have not dealt with the "bridge" example in which the sought entertainment is "more real" than their mundane living and not an illusion at all.

Ken you speak above about people fearing making the wrong decisions, so lets just take that as an example. Its seems to me that making decisions is part of the reality of an irritable fact of life. Everyone must make decisions in their daily life and everyone wrong decisions. So it follows as surely as night follows day it seems me that if man lives in fear making the wrong decisions, then he is in fear of that part of reality of life which he lives. That is merely one the of the many realities in which man lives in fear of. It is a mans natural instinct to take flight from that which he fears. There are many places that man can go where he does not have to make any decisions at all and so be free of that fear of making the wrong decisions. These places are all worlds of illusion in sense that I explained above. One of those worlds of illusion is the world of entertainment. Contained in the world of entertainment is the art of magic. Magic offers, among other things, the illusion that magic is happening, when it isn’t in actuality. Importantly for man seeking such a safe place he must be aware that the illusion, is an illusion, for the illusion that he knows to be an illusion holds no fear for him. The illusion that man does not know to be an illusion can be fearful; I thought I saw a ghost and so on. The powers that be have always used the and using all the time power of nightmares, to move or control the people. So man always fearing one thing or another. In times of war, when man is living in more fear than usual, he seeks more entertainment. However that doesn’t help business as during war and bank crashes and all of that, no matter how much more entertainment man wants, the reality is money is tight in such times and so can‘t it. I mention that to illustrate that fear is factor in motivating man to seek the world of illusion, that is the world entertainment and so on.

Okay let's go with that notion of a fear (bad choice - and made public). I see it and raise it Nemo 1500 as a way to acknowledge that fear and diminish it's associated public anxiety.

Nemo 1500? Don’t make me laugh. Have you lost your sense of adventure? Call your bluff Nemo 1500 and raise you a swim in the real ocean fish face.

What ocean would you like?

And are you enjoying The Deep?

Not the oily one, too risky.

I am enjoying this this deep financial depression as it happens. A con man tried selling me 50% of a little cabaret club that he only owned 10% of. The 90% owner only wanted the same price for his 90%, I found out. So I bought the 90% instead, sold 45% of it for what I had paid for the 90% and ended up with 45% of the place for nothing. The con man, who was the manager there, I have just sacked. My pal has just bought his s 10% for next to nothing and I have given him the mangers job. So I was thinking of doing a bit of magic there now but my pal said I would scare the customers off.

See -- "fear" is an illusion -- and nothing to escape from, but somthing to run towards. Magic, being a real demonstration of something considered impossible, gives people real hope of conquering their illusionary fears. Thus, an illusion can be used to conquer an illusion (entertainment), just as reality can be used conquer reality and illusion (knowledge). And that may be a side benefit of seeking to be entertained -- but hardly the motivating force.

Yes, movies/stories like Nemo can have the same effect on people -- children who leave the theater and decide to do their homework or have better manners. Some would say such a transformation to be magic. Magic, being an allegorical representation of conquering the impossible, may often be believed more readily than words from a professor, psychologist or preacher.

Behind the shelter in the middle of a roundabout
A pretty nurse is selling poppies from a tray
And though she feels as if she's in a play
She is anyway

-Penny Lane

I think it's simpler and more classic. We like Illusions because we want to ESCAPE from reality. Illusions give us the perfect door to walk through to do that, if only for few brief, fleeting moments. (Till the point where people burst their own astonishment bubble by questioning what they just saw.