In 1998, David Blaine changed the face of television magic by including documentation of spectator reactions as a core component of his TV special, Street Magic. Here is a typical scene:
Blaine borrows a quarter and apparently bites a chunk out of it. The two spectators scream, jump, turn away, cover their mouths, hide their eyes, laugh. Blaine then blows on the quarter and it magically restores to its original condition. More screaming and paroxysmic laughter: “I'm going home, I'm going home.” “I think I'm going to have my baby right here.
Blaine's special made visible magic's power to provoke potent and complex emotional responses, including feelings of joy, amazement, wonder, surprise, vulnerability, loss of control, apprehension, fear, interest, curiosity, confusion, and bafflement. Yet, although cognitive scientists have long recognized that magic is worthy of attention (see Kuhn et al. Reference Kuhn, Olson and Raz2016), there has been no systematic examination of the nature of the pleasure we take in watching magic performance. Indeed, although magic has been almost entirely ignored by philosophers, art critics, and art historians, scientists have typically treated it as a mere tool for learning about the mind by studying our susceptibility to deception. And though there is a trend toward treating the science of magic as a part of a general “psychology of wonder” (Lamont Reference Lamont2017; Rensink & Kuhn Reference Rensink and Kuhn2015), the question why we enjoy magic remains largely unexplored. This commentary takes a step toward rectifying this by sketching how the Distance-Embracing (D-E) model might be applied to the philosophical analysis of the experience of magic developed in Leddington (Reference Leddington2016). On the account recommended here, the experience of magic is aesthetically pleasurable, not despite, but thanks to, some of the strong negative emotions it provokes.
The core idea in Leddington (Reference Leddington2016) is that the experience of magic is essentially aporetic: It involves a form of intellectual bafflement – and so, a form of cognitive failure – that follows from encountering an apparent violation of the laws of nature that we know is fake, but that we nevertheless cannot explain. (Effective magic performance should leave you saying, “I know it's a trick, but I don't see how it could be.”) There are two distinct negative moments in this experience: (1) the apparent violation of our ordinary, yet well-founded expectations for how the world behaves (naïve physics); and (2) our failure to be able to explain this apparent violation (beyond noting that it's a trick). The question is then: How can an experience in which these moments are primary nevertheless be aesthetically pleasurable?
When magicians attempt to explain this, they sometimes appeal to a “compensation model,” on which other theatrical elements, such as comedy or spectacle, compensate for negative elements (sect. 4.6). The basic idea is that, because it's “not fun to be fooled, … it is one of the magician's first orders of business … to add a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine of magic go down” (Swiss Reference Swiss2002). But the problem is that this cannot explain magic's distinctive appeal. After all, why not simply drop the magic and keep the theater? It is undeniable that many people enjoy the magic itself. Thus, making sense of magic as an artform requires explaining how intensely felt negative emotion can positively contribute to the enjoyment of a magic trick. The D-E model provides a plausible framework for this.
One Distancing and two Embracing factors seem to be essential to magic performance. First, witnessing a magic performance involves activation of the art schema (sect. 3.1). That the sign reads “Magic Show” allows us to feel a measure of safety and control in the face of what might otherwise be a frightening experience: encountering an apparent violation of natural law. The activation of the art schema is related to an embracing mechanism: the activation of the “magic” genre script. This contributes to “(re)appraising negative emotions [such as feelings of apprehension, loss of control, and bafflement] in a more favorable light” (sect. 4.5, para. 1). After all, a good magic show should disturb and baffle us! More interesting, however, is the idea that the experience of magic involves “concomitant mixed emotions … serve as bipolar mediators for incorporating negative emotions into positive enjoyment” (sect. 1, point A, para. 3). This is where the D-E model is especially illuminating vis-à-vis the enjoyment of magic. Arguably, mixed emotions such as amazement, wonder, surprise, and curiosity “can inform and partly transform co-occurrent or adjacent feelings of” apprehension, loss of control, and bafflement “and, hence, lead to perceiving [them] … as (more) enjoyable” (sect. 4.2, para. 2). This would explain not only how we can genuinely enjoy the magic that most disturbs and baffles us, but also why such performances can be so captivating, memorable, and emotionally powerful (sect. 2). (It is not uncommon for someone to remember in detail a magic trick witnessed decades ago and, when asked, to recount the experience with great relish.)
On the other hand, the other two Distancing factors – activations of representation and fiction schemas – are inappropriate for magic performance. Magic involves the apparent presentation of an impossible event as impossible (Leddington Reference Leddington2016). This means: Something that we know cannot happen seems actually to happen (contra the fiction schema) here and now (contra the representation schema). However, other Embracing factors, although inessential, are often active in the reception of magic and can facilitate our enjoyment of negative emotions. For example, magic can inspire reflection on the limits of human understanding (meaning construction, sect. 4.4), which can lead us to positively appreciate the feelings of bafflement provoked by the performance.
Finally, magic provides rich opportunities for empirical study of the role of negative emotion in aesthetic enjoyment. For instance, some magicians believe that blurring the line between illusion and reality – and thus, putting the art schema and magic genre script into question – can both increase the emotional power of a performance and amplify spectator enjoyment. Is this correct? The D-E model would seem to predict, “No.” But this is something that can be empirically tested – and there are many other possibilities besides.
In 1998, David Blaine changed the face of television magic by including documentation of spectator reactions as a core component of his TV special, Street Magic. Here is a typical scene:
Blaine borrows a quarter and apparently bites a chunk out of it. The two spectators scream, jump, turn away, cover their mouths, hide their eyes, laugh. Blaine then blows on the quarter and it magically restores to its original condition. More screaming and paroxysmic laughter: “I'm going home, I'm going home.” “I think I'm going to have my baby right here.
Blaine's special made visible magic's power to provoke potent and complex emotional responses, including feelings of joy, amazement, wonder, surprise, vulnerability, loss of control, apprehension, fear, interest, curiosity, confusion, and bafflement. Yet, although cognitive scientists have long recognized that magic is worthy of attention (see Kuhn et al. Reference Kuhn, Olson and Raz2016), there has been no systematic examination of the nature of the pleasure we take in watching magic performance. Indeed, although magic has been almost entirely ignored by philosophers, art critics, and art historians, scientists have typically treated it as a mere tool for learning about the mind by studying our susceptibility to deception. And though there is a trend toward treating the science of magic as a part of a general “psychology of wonder” (Lamont Reference Lamont2017; Rensink & Kuhn Reference Rensink and Kuhn2015), the question why we enjoy magic remains largely unexplored. This commentary takes a step toward rectifying this by sketching how the Distance-Embracing (D-E) model might be applied to the philosophical analysis of the experience of magic developed in Leddington (Reference Leddington2016). On the account recommended here, the experience of magic is aesthetically pleasurable, not despite, but thanks to, some of the strong negative emotions it provokes.
The core idea in Leddington (Reference Leddington2016) is that the experience of magic is essentially aporetic: It involves a form of intellectual bafflement – and so, a form of cognitive failure – that follows from encountering an apparent violation of the laws of nature that we know is fake, but that we nevertheless cannot explain. (Effective magic performance should leave you saying, “I know it's a trick, but I don't see how it could be.”) There are two distinct negative moments in this experience: (1) the apparent violation of our ordinary, yet well-founded expectations for how the world behaves (naïve physics); and (2) our failure to be able to explain this apparent violation (beyond noting that it's a trick). The question is then: How can an experience in which these moments are primary nevertheless be aesthetically pleasurable?
When magicians attempt to explain this, they sometimes appeal to a “compensation model,” on which other theatrical elements, such as comedy or spectacle, compensate for negative elements (sect. 4.6). The basic idea is that, because it's “not fun to be fooled, … it is one of the magician's first orders of business … to add a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine of magic go down” (Swiss Reference Swiss2002). But the problem is that this cannot explain magic's distinctive appeal. After all, why not simply drop the magic and keep the theater? It is undeniable that many people enjoy the magic itself. Thus, making sense of magic as an artform requires explaining how intensely felt negative emotion can positively contribute to the enjoyment of a magic trick. The D-E model provides a plausible framework for this.
One Distancing and two Embracing factors seem to be essential to magic performance. First, witnessing a magic performance involves activation of the art schema (sect. 3.1). That the sign reads “Magic Show” allows us to feel a measure of safety and control in the face of what might otherwise be a frightening experience: encountering an apparent violation of natural law. The activation of the art schema is related to an embracing mechanism: the activation of the “magic” genre script. This contributes to “(re)appraising negative emotions [such as feelings of apprehension, loss of control, and bafflement] in a more favorable light” (sect. 4.5, para. 1). After all, a good magic show should disturb and baffle us! More interesting, however, is the idea that the experience of magic involves “concomitant mixed emotions … serve as bipolar mediators for incorporating negative emotions into positive enjoyment” (sect. 1, point A, para. 3). This is where the D-E model is especially illuminating vis-à-vis the enjoyment of magic. Arguably, mixed emotions such as amazement, wonder, surprise, and curiosity “can inform and partly transform co-occurrent or adjacent feelings of” apprehension, loss of control, and bafflement “and, hence, lead to perceiving [them] … as (more) enjoyable” (sect. 4.2, para. 2). This would explain not only how we can genuinely enjoy the magic that most disturbs and baffles us, but also why such performances can be so captivating, memorable, and emotionally powerful (sect. 2). (It is not uncommon for someone to remember in detail a magic trick witnessed decades ago and, when asked, to recount the experience with great relish.)
On the other hand, the other two Distancing factors – activations of representation and fiction schemas – are inappropriate for magic performance. Magic involves the apparent presentation of an impossible event as impossible (Leddington Reference Leddington2016). This means: Something that we know cannot happen seems actually to happen (contra the fiction schema) here and now (contra the representation schema). However, other Embracing factors, although inessential, are often active in the reception of magic and can facilitate our enjoyment of negative emotions. For example, magic can inspire reflection on the limits of human understanding (meaning construction, sect. 4.4), which can lead us to positively appreciate the feelings of bafflement provoked by the performance.
Finally, magic provides rich opportunities for empirical study of the role of negative emotion in aesthetic enjoyment. For instance, some magicians believe that blurring the line between illusion and reality – and thus, putting the art schema and magic genre script into question – can both increase the emotional power of a performance and amplify spectator enjoyment. Is this correct? The D-E model would seem to predict, “No.” But this is something that can be empirically tested – and there are many other possibilities besides.