March 21, 2024: American Magic: Penn & Teller

[This coming weekend marks Harry Houdini’s 150^th birthday! So this week on the blog I’ll perform some AmericanStudying magic of my own, leading up to a special post on that legendary prestidigitator.]

On three telling influences on one of the most famous magic acts of the last half-century.

1)      Wier Chrisemer: That enjoyable 1989 Calvin Trillin New Yorker profile of the duo makes clear the debt that Penn Fraser Jillette & Raymond Joseph Teller owed to Wier Chrisemer, a friend of Teller’s from his undergraduate days at Amherst College whose scholarly and professional interest in music was their first entrée into the world of performance and whose talents as an amateur magician led the three men to form a trio known as “The Asparagus Valley Cultural Society.” A couple months back I wrote in this post about how The Three Stooges were originally part of a comedy troupe led by Ted Healy, but ended up achieving their lasting fame without him; similarly, it was after Chrisemer retired from show business in the early 1980s that Penn & Teller truly took off as a magical act. I don’t know exactly what to make of this pattern, but at the very least it’s a reminder that there’s usually more to any artistic success story—including more individuals to remember—than meets the eye.

2)      James Randi: Most successful artists have both personal mentors and influences and other professionals on whom they model aspects of their career, and for Penn & Teller the Amazing Randi was an example of the latter. Randi made his fame as both a magician and a skeptic, performing his own tricks but debunking those of paranormal con artists and the like (all of which he discussed in his 1980 book Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions). Not long after their magic career began to take off Penn & Teller crossed over into the realm of professional skeptics as well, as illustrated for example by their long-running television show Penn & Teller: Bullshit! (I like to think the exclamation point was at least in part a nod to Randi’s book title). It’s a complicated lane to occupy, making a main living performing tricks that require folks to suspend their disbelief (or at least refuse to be explained) yet turning a disbelieving eye toward many other cultural forms and narratives. But Penn & Teller have successfully occupied it for decades, inspired to be sure by prior figures like the Amazing Randi.

3)      Television: Bullshit! is one of a few shows of their own that Penn & Teller have had over the years, but it was their countless appearances on other television shows in the 1980s and 1990s that really established the pair’s reputation and prominence. That included not only performances on late-night shows like Saturday Night Live and The Tonight Show, but also and even more tellingly both acting roles and cameos as themselves on a huge range of other shows, from Miami Vice to Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, The Drew Carey Show to Babylon 5, and many many more. The trend has even continued in recent years, with a 2022 appearance for example on the reality performance show The Masked Singer. Penn & Teller were far from the first magicians for whom TV was instrumental to their success, but none have better utilized that defining late 20^th and early 21^st century medium than did this pair.

Last MagicStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Magicians or magic histories or contexts you’d highlight?

March 20, 2024: American Magic: Orson Welles

[This coming weekend marks Harry Houdini’s 150^th birthday! So this week on the blog I’ll perform some AmericanStudying magic of my own, leading up to a special post on that legendary prestidigitator.]

On two ways to AmericanStudy Orson Welles’ Magic Show.

I’m not particularly proud of the fact that the only post to date in which I’ve thought at length about the iconic artist and American Orson Welles (1915-1985) was my non-favorites examination of Citizen Kane (1941). I stand by the critiques in that post, but I don’t want to suggest for a second that I don’t recognize Welles’ towering talent, nor the countless aspects of American culture and society which he impacted in the course of his influential career and life: from his early work with the Depression-era Federal Theatre Project in New York through his groundbreaking radio shows (especially the infamous 1938 War of the Worlds adaptation) and up to a hugely important career as a film actor and director for which Kane was just the tip of the iceberg. I could dedicate an entire week’s series to Welles, and maybe will have the chance at some point; but for today, I’m writing about a project of his that was never completed in his lifetime, his unfinished television special Orson Welles’ Magic Show (filmed between 1976 and 1985 but as those hyperlinked clips indicate never finalized in his lifetime and only edited together and partially shared, both by his romantic partner Oja Kodar, after his death in 1985).

It’s pretty striking that Welles spent so much of his last decade working on this seemingly quixotic project, and I think there are a couple ways we can make broader analytical meaning of that quest. Clearly magic was something personally important to Welles, as he details in the posthumously published autobiographical book This is Orson Welles (1992; it’s really a series of conversations between Welles and filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich) where he describes being taught magic tricks at a young age by none other than this week’s inspiration Harry Houdini. I’m not saying that magic tricks are Welles’ “Rosebud,” exactly, but at least that there’s something telling and moving in seeking in the final stage of life to connect back to and recapture a part of our childhood that we’ve moved away from. And, in this case, that element is also a skillset that Welles had not been able to master or make central to his success, compared to the many aforementioned artistic and cultural arenas in which he had already left lasting legacies by that time.

Speaking of those many other cultural arenas, I also think it’s worth considering ways in which magic might be more parallel to and interconnected with them than we generally acknowledge. This Saturday Evening Post Considering History column on blackface entertainment led me to think more than I ever had before about just how much Vaudeville is a part of (and was an influence on) other defining 20^th century media like radio, film, and television. Magic tricks were a part of countless Vaudeville routines and performers’ acts, so there’s a direct intersection here; but more broadly, I’d say that both are examples of early and foundational forms of mass entertainment, late 19^th and early 20^th century cultural forms that foreshadowed and helped shape the way that other multimedia genres developed and evolved. So it stands to reason that one of the American artists who most fully mastered those multimedia worlds of radio, film, and the like was also greatly influenced by, and apparently spent his life and career trying to recapture, the world of magic.

Next MagicStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Magicians or magic histories or contexts you’d highlight?

March 19, 2024: American Magic: Thurston and Kellar

[This coming weekend marks Harry Houdini’s 150^th birthday! So this week on the blog I’ll perform some AmericanStudying magic of my own, leading up to a special post on that legendary prestidigitator.]

On a pair of magicians who help us think about both competition and collaboration.

I’m one of those film buffs who think that Christopher Nolan has gotten a little overexposed in recent years, but I’ll stand by many of his early films as truly groundbreaking and great in equal measure. That’s especially true of Memento (2000), which as I wrote in that post occupies a spot very high on my list. But not too far below it is The Prestige (2006), a very intricate and clever historical drama that also happens to be for my money the best film about magic ever made (as well as very much a magic trick in its own right, and if you haven’t seen it I won’t spoil the trick!). And while The Prestige is about many things within and around the world of 19^th century magic (including electricity as its own magic trick, courtesy of David Bowie’s performance as Nikola Tesla [some SPOILERS in those clips]), at its heart it is a story of a lifelong conflict and competition between two equally talented magicians and showman and equally bitter rivals, Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Christian Bale).

Late 19^th century America was home to its own famous pair of rival magicians, Howard Thurston (1869-1936) and Harry Kellar (1849-1922). As I highlighted in yesterday’s post, both Thurston and Kellar claimed to be the true heir to the origin point for 19^th century American magic, the Fakir of Ava; Kellar literally worked for years as the Fakir’s apprentice starting at the age of 12, so he might well have the better claim, but as with all things magic the question is at least a bit shrouded in mystery, natch. And in any case, the competition between the two men went beyond their relationship to this professional progenitor, with both for example claiming to be the true master of a very famous specific illusion known as the “Levitation of Princess Karnac” (neither man seems to have originated the trick, as that honor apparently goes to English magician and inventor John Nevil Maskelyne). As Nolan’s film nicely explores, the world of magic is often defined by these questions over what performer truly “owns” a particular illusion, both in the literal sense of proprietary concerns but even more in terms of mastery, and Thurston and Kellar embodied that competitive conflict in spades.

Or was it all just an act? (Not in Nolan’s film, to be clear—again, no spoilers, but those two characters really, really don’t like each other.) After all, Kellar was a generation older than Thurston, served in at least some ways as another mentor to the younger performer, and the two men toured together for many years with their Thurston-Kellar Show (which as that advertisement reflects billed the act as “Thurston, Kellar’s Successor). While any performer faces genuine questions about their legacies after they’re gone, questions which would certainly be connected to who “owns” a famous illusion, every performer also and perhaps especially wants an audience while they’re alive. Both of these magicians unquestionably learned from the Fakir about how to generate publicity, not only in one moment but across a long career, and presenting themselves as rivals (even, if not particularly, when they shared a stage) was quite possibly an elaborate way to do just that. As with any great magic trick, we’ll never know the answer for sure!

Next MagicStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Magicians or magic histories or contexts you’d highlight?

March 18, 2024: American Magic: Fakir of Ava

[This coming weekend marks Harry Houdini’s 150^th birthday! So this week on the blog I’ll perform some AmericanStudying magic of my own, leading up to a special post on that legendary prestidigitator.]

On three ways that the first famous American magician paved the way for the profession.

1)      Persona: Isaiah Harris Hughes (1813-1891) was born in England and immigrated to the U.S., but the Fakir of Ava, Chief of Staff of Conjurers to His Sublime Greatness the Nanka of Aristaphae, was born sometime later. I don’t think too many future magicians have gone to quite the lengths that Hughes did to imagine and inhabit their constructed persona, as besides creating an entire fictional backstory (although not the character’s geographic origin, as Ava was the Anglicized name of a real city in Burma [now Myanmar]), he also put on blackface, wore elaborate costumes, and claimed that his tricks were “Oriental feats.” But at the same time, it seems clear to me that Hughes expected his audience to be in on the act, or at least to recognize it as a performance—“Fakir” is a pretty telling name for an invented role, after all. And once Hughes got successful enough, he apparently ditched most of the costume, but not the name—a persona is a persona.

2)      Publicity: The Fakir achieved that level of success not only because of his impressive bag of tricks, but also because he was equally adept at making people aware of them and him. He did so through a variety of techniques beyond his own elaborate advertising (although that was impressive as well, as that hyperlinked broadside illustrates), including befriending reporters to gain favorable newspaper coverage, joining popular existing shows like P.T. Barnum’s to tap into their audiences, and coming up with new promotional ideas like the “gift show” (offering lucky audience members prizes in the course of the act). Magic isn’t much without the show that accompanies it, and those shows aren’t much without an audience to trick and misdirect and amaze. Hughes’ mastery over connecting to and amplifying his audience certainly modeled that skill for future magicians.

3)      Passing it on: Some of those future magicians learned from Hughes quite literally, as his apprentices. I’ll write more about the two most famous, Howard Thurston and Harry Kellar, in tomorrow’s post, but will note here that both overtly claimed to be Hughes’ heirs: Thurston by arguing “The historian of magic can trace an unbroken line of succession from the Fakir of Ava in 1830 to my own entertainment”; and Kellar by performing under the Fakir of Ava name when Hughes became too old to travel and retired to his Buffalo home. It’s easy to think of magicians’ helpers as the stereotypical pretty girls in spandex—and maybe they too should be seen as apprentices instead—but the truth is that both persona and publicity are often intended to live on beyond the performer’s career, and heirs are a vital part of that goal. One more way that the Fakir set the standard!  

Next MagicStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Magicians or magic histories or contexts you’d highlight?

March 16-17, 2024: NeMLA Reflections: A Special Organization

[This past weekend I attended the one scholarly conference I never miss: the Northeast MLA. It was a great time as it always is, so this week I’ve featured a series of reflections on some of the great work I heard, saw, and shared there! Leading up to these additional reflections on NeMLA as an organization!]

Much of what I’d want to say about NeMLA is summed up in two posts that I’ll ask you to check out if you would and then come on back here:

This one from 2017 when I left the NeMLA Board for the first time (only because my service time was up, as I’d happily and stayed on forever);

And this one from 2018 when, proving my above point, I rejoined the Board.

Welcome back! As of a couple years ago I am once again done with my service on the Board, and while I’ll never say never when it comes to anything and all things NeMLA, I think it’s likely that I will only be a conference attendee and participant from now on. (Or, putting this out into the Universe, maybe one day a keynote speaker?!) But on that note alone, my annual attendance at most if not all of the conference (which has been the case since 2013 and I hope will be in the future as well) is a very telling thing—I’m not so much of a conference person (I enjoy them whenever I get to go, but I just mean I’m not someone who seeks out and attends a ton of them), and as any reader of this blog likely knows it takes a lot to take me away from my sons for any length of time. So this history of annual and thorough NeMLA attendance, and a pledge to do the same moving forward, is high praise indeed.

If I had to sum up why that’s the case, I would use two words that appear in those prior NeMLA posts and other places I’ve written about the organization: community and solidarity. Community is the more obvious one, and the focus of much of what I’ve said previously about this particular community and all that it means to me. So to say a little more about what I mean by solidarity: at worst, academia can feel quite competitive, like others are our rivals for jobs or publishing slots or attention or etc.; and even at best, it can feel quite isolated, like we’re in those things on our own. Of course individual colleagues and friends and loved ones can be company for the journey, as with everything in life. But to find a whole scholarly community that feels very consistently like it’s got your back rather than is either turning its back or stabbing you in yours? That’s a very very rare thing in my experience, and that’s what I feel with and at NeMLA. Makes me want to keep coming back for sure!

Next series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. If you were at NeMLA, what would you share? If not or in any case, other organizations you’d highlight?

March 15, 2024: NeMLA Reflections: Community Connections

[This past weekend I attended the one scholarly conference I never miss: the Northeast MLA. It was a great time as it always is, so as usual here’s a series of reflections on some of the great work I heard, saw, and shared there! Leading up to a few more reflections on NeMLA as an organization!]

On three ways the NeMLA conference connected to local communities and its host city.

1)      Boston Poetry Slam: In my experiences NeMLA conferences tend to find good ways to get attendees out into the local community, but this year the conference brought local communities to the conference space itself in two compelling ways. One was these three performances by local poets connected to Boston Poetry Slam, a weekly performance that features some of the most talented voices in the city’s poetry and cultural scenes. I don’t know who in particular was behind getting this very cool group connected to and present at the conference, but I definitely give them a standing ovation!

2)      Choreopoems/Choreotexts: The conference’s other unique poetic performance was a bit more scholarly, and thus perhaps more familiar for a conference and organization like NeMLA. But nonetheless, this trio of performances inspired by Ntozake Shange’s choreopoem For Colored Girls bridged the seeming (but far from genuine) gaps between scholarship, poetry and art, and performance, featuring five local scholars whose own work, voices, and careers likewise challenge our sense of these areas as distinct or separate silos. As someone who worked hard in my time as NeMLA President to diversify the conference’s program in every sense, I love this excellent example of that ongoing goal!

3)      Archival Spaces: While NeMLA 2024 thus did a particularly good job bringing local voices and communities to the conference, it still also featured its share of communal connections in the other direction. As someone who’s had the opportunity to give multiple book talks at both the Boston Athenaeum and the Massachusetts Historical Society, I was especially excited that NeMLA made sure to connect any interested attendees to those phenomenal local archives and spaces. Both of these kinds of communities, local archives and scholarly organizations, depend on support and solidarity from one another, and I’ve always loved the ways in which NeMLA models those interconnections.

Special post this weekend,

Ben

PS. If you were at NeMLA, what would you share? If not or in any case, other organizations you’d highlight?

March 14, 2024: NeMLA Reflections: Guilty Pleasures Panels

[This past weekend I attended the one scholarly conference I never miss: the Northeast MLA. It was a great time as it always is, so as usual here’s a series of reflections on some of the great work I heard, saw, and shared there! Leading up to a few more reflections on NeMLA as an organization!]

On two interesting throughlines I took away from a pair of provocative panels.

Before the Saturday morning panel of my own about which I wrote in yesterday’s post, I had the chance to attend a pair of interconnected sessions organized by literary scholar Melodie Roschman around the same topic: Guilty Pleasures: Sexy Stories, Female Desire, and Resistance. A number of the talks understandably focused on aspects of the Romance genre (and related subgenres like Paranormal Romance, Romantasy, etc.), which is not a topic about which I know a great deal (although I did write a Grad school paper analyzing audience expectations and experiences through the lens of Janice Radway’s influential 1984 book Reading the Romance) and so I was happy to learn more from these scholars of it and the particular authors and works they discussed. But as with all of the NeMLA panels I’ve attended in my multi-decade association with the conference and organization, I also found ways to connect these conversations to my own work and ideas, and wanted to mention two of those thought-provoking throughlines from these sessions here.

One debate which came up in a number of the talks across both sessions, as you might expect with this overarching topic, was whether it’s a good/productive or bad/destructive thing to use literary/cultural works as escapism (or related frames like enchantment). To be clear, none of the presenters bought into the longstanding narratives that novels and other cultural works are themselves “bad,” not for women and not overall; but there was a great deal of thoughtful analysis of the potentially limiting but also potentially liberating effects of getting lost in such works. In particular, the chair of the second session, Babson College Professor Samantha Wallace, provocatively used a J.R.R. Tolkien essay to frame these questions in her talk on Romantasy novelist Sarah Maas and the dangers and benefits of becoming enchanted by such books and their worlds. Which was especially thought-provoking for this audience member as I’ve been having very similar conversations throughout my current section of Introduction to Science Fiction and Fantasy, beginning with our first reading, Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring. I always love when a NeMLA panel can inform my current semester and teaching, and this was an excellent example of that effect.

I frequently glean such lessons for my teaching at NeMLA, but I always learn a great deal about American literature, culture, and history—there’s a reason why I decided to serve a three-year term as the organization’s American Area Director, after all. And in this case, it was an excellent paper from the chair of my own panel (about which and whom I wrote yesterday), Vaughn Joy, that offered the most fascinating lessons about American history and culture. Vaughn’s paper discussed the Hays Code, the multi-code policy (first created as a set of recommendations, but shortly thereafter and for many years an enforced set of restrictions) through which Hollywood authorities sought to control and censor film productions. I had long seen reference to the Code as a part midcentury Hollywood histories, but Vaughn went into significantly more detail about its origins, evolutions, specific provisions, effects, and, most inspiringly, the manifold acts of resistance through which artists and filmmakers (including none other than Frank Capra himself) challenged and eventually helped end the Code. I’ve never attended a NeMLA conference without coming away thoroughly impressed by at least one scholarly presentation, and this was the paper that did it for me in 2024.

Last reflection tomorrow,

Ben

PS. If you were at NeMLA, what would you share? If not or in any case, other organizations you’d highlight?