David Blaine: Attention Seeking 29 September 2008

With all the excitement of the first Obama/McCain Debate, the news that US Magician David Blaine was going to hang upside down without a net for 60 hours kinda got lost in the news-cycle. Sadly, “David Blaine: Dive of Death” did not live up to its promised conclusion: the death and joyful celebration of Blaine’s demise.

The apparent intention was that Blaine would remain upside down for 60 hours, before making a “dive of death” off a 44 foot platform and, at 10 feet, be swept away by a bunch of helium-filled balloons. Well first off, he did not and never intended to stay upside down for the entire 60 hours, as he was seen taking regular breaks on his feet to undergo medical checks, drink liquids and urinate. The “dive of death” climax, ended up with him jumping off a cherry-picker attached to a harness, before wobbling around in the air for a bit before being yanked up into the night sky. To quote an onlooker;

I’m going to be honest, it wasn’t really that impressive. He didn’t dive… he like got caught, I don’t think… I don’t know what went wrong.

I’ve not be impressed with any of Blaine’s endurance attempts so far, in order:

• Buried in a plastic box for seven days
• Encased in ice for 63 hours
• Standing on a pillar for 35 hours
• Sealed inside a Plexiglas box for 44-days
• Submerged in water for seven days and seven nights
• Spinning for 16 hours inside a gyroscope.

It’s a good list of stupid things to do. I suspect Blaine is trying to make the point that he can do it, and we can’t. Well, good for you David I’m sure your parents are very proud, and you are quite right I couldn’t do it. But more to the point however, there is no way I would I want to do it or see any point in doing it.

When David Blaine started out in 1997 performing street magic, I like everyone else was impressed by the way he had taken the fairly simple tricks and given them new life on the streets of the US. But then why did he decide to start the endurance stunts? Why does David Blaine continue to do this? Who is supposed to be impressed?

This not some anti-magician thing. Like many young boys who found girls scary and/or difficult to talk to, I spent quite a bit of my childhood mastering card tricks, simple illusions, and slight of hand. I haven’t tried doing any tricks in years, but I still believe there is a purpose to performing magic tricks- to wonder and amaze. For a brief moment, your audience is a child again, experiencing something they’ve never seen before and being surprised and delighted. However, what Blaine now spends his time performing is not magic, nor is it impressive feats of endurance, it is a grown man looking for attention.

I’m not alone in being bored by David Blaine’s self indulgent spectacles, for when he attempted his 44-day dangling in a box over the River Thames stunt a few years back, the British were wonderfully non-impressed, and as a collective eggs, lemons, sausages, bacon, water bottles, beer cans, paint-filled balloons and golf balls were lobbed at the box. More impressively, a burger was flown up to the box by a remote-controlled helicopter as a taunt. Comedian, Marcus Brigstocke on the negative attitude of the British public had towards his Plexiglas box stunt:

I have never been more proud of the British public that I have been over the past six weeks. The depth of cynicism that we can sink to within mere moments of an idiot doing something idiotic that isn’t for charity. It’s truly magnificent. There’s no apathy in this country - not when there’s a moron in a box doing something moronic. We’re out in force. He was about as near to the East End as he dared to get, I tell you. Another 200 yards down river and that police bill would have been a lot higher. He wouldn’t have been wiping eggs off the side of his box, it would have been skulls. … I’ll be honest folks, it was my hope that David Blaine would die in that box and we could leave him there as a warning to all numb-nutted wizard scum that we won’t tolerate this nonsense here. … Go home David Blaine, spend the $5,000,000 you made well. If you want to beat your 44 day record, I can only suggest you attempt to double it underwater.