Of course mentalism isn’t a “magic power.” Derren Brown is a stage magician, not a mystical sorceror! But he does use “mentalism” skills, especially cold reading. A lot of that is traditional magic too.
Simon Singh’s article is silly. Of course it’s misdirection when a magician tells you how he’s about to perform his trick. Of course Derren Brown implies his tricks are more real, more impressive and more noteworthy than they really are. Of course you can’t really psychologically manipulate people in the way Derren Brown claims to, any more than David Copperfield really can make the statue of Liberty disappear. That’s precisely why it’s an entertaining show—no-one would be impressed by a magician whose “tricks” were mundane things that people really could do.
Derren Brown says he uses a mixture of “magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship”. He never claims to have genuine magic powers.
Indeed, but if Derren Brown guesses your mobile number, it’s probably a “trick” rather than “mentalism”. ThisSpaceAvailable has claimed that he can manipulate people. I would argue that this is weakly true, and he uses it for the simpler tricks he performs, but for the really impressive effects he probably falls on traditional magic tricks most of the time. The card trick by Simon Singh demonstrates that: he hasn’t used mind manipulation to pick the cards, he’s used a standard card trick and dressed it with the language of “mentalism”.
Note that I make no claim that there is anything wrong with all this! But Derren Brown is trying to fool you, and that is to be remembered. He also does a similar thing to Penn and Teller, where he shows you how some of the trick is done but leaves the most “amazing” part hidden (I’m thinking of the horse racing episode, which was great, and the chess playing trick)
Of course mentalism isn’t a “magic power.” Derren Brown is a stage magician, not a mystical sorceror! But he does use “mentalism” skills, especially cold reading. A lot of that is traditional magic too.
Simon Singh’s article is silly. Of course it’s misdirection when a magician tells you how he’s about to perform his trick. Of course Derren Brown implies his tricks are more real, more impressive and more noteworthy than they really are. Of course you can’t really psychologically manipulate people in the way Derren Brown claims to, any more than David Copperfield really can make the statue of Liberty disappear. That’s precisely why it’s an entertaining show—no-one would be impressed by a magician whose “tricks” were mundane things that people really could do.
Derren Brown says he uses a mixture of “magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship”. He never claims to have genuine magic powers.
Indeed, but if Derren Brown guesses your mobile number, it’s probably a “trick” rather than “mentalism”. ThisSpaceAvailable has claimed that he can manipulate people. I would argue that this is weakly true, and he uses it for the simpler tricks he performs, but for the really impressive effects he probably falls on traditional magic tricks most of the time. The card trick by Simon Singh demonstrates that: he hasn’t used mind manipulation to pick the cards, he’s used a standard card trick and dressed it with the language of “mentalism”.
Note that I make no claim that there is anything wrong with all this! But Derren Brown is trying to fool you, and that is to be remembered. He also does a similar thing to Penn and Teller, where he shows you how some of the trick is done but leaves the most “amazing” part hidden (I’m thinking of the horse racing episode, which was great, and the chess playing trick)