Advent Calendar: Day 16

By Circe -

Stage magic is a fascinating blend of entertainment and engineering. Sleight-of-hand and street magic can often be accomplished with minimal props, but larger illusion designed to be viewed from a stage use what amounts to cleverly designed furniture. The props are "gaffed" -- rigged with some concealed mechanism or secret that makes them function in a way not obvious to the audience.

The Masked Magician has done a series of videos revealing some of the rigging behind popular stage illusions. The mask is because professional magicians hate this; they sink a lot of time and money into engineering these tricks, and I seem to be in the minority who thinks they're more engaging when I know the secret. 

The videos also highlight the surprisingly logical reasons why the magician's assistants are almost always attractive women. Firstly, pretty ladies are distracting, which is great when you don't want the audience thinking too hard about your equipment. But secondly, for the illusion to be most convincing, the gaffed apparatus is built to be used by an assistant who is short, thin, and flexible -- three things often found in trained dancers, who are largely female. The cabinets for a lot of famous illusions are built assuming a female assistant with an hourglass figure, as someone who is significantly thinner in the waist than at the shoulders and hips can fit into a shockingly narrow space when twisted just right. The audience is also primed to assume that froofy bits on a woman's costume, such as large ruffles or flowing silks, are decorative, rather than disguising bits of rigging or altering the apparent outline of her body.

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