Importance of "The Prestige"

It is said that very small kids are hard to fool with magic tricks. Why? Because they’ve not experienced the world enough, they have fewer ideas from experience as to what should happen next. Hence they don’t look at/for the “expected” thing, which is exactly the window when the magician pulls his trick.

The violation of what you expect based on years of experience. That’s how Alex Stone defines magic in his engrossing book, Fooling Houdini. But that definition doesn’t factor in for the scenario where your expectation may be wrong or invalid in the first place! Which is why, Stone being a physicist, goes a step deeper and describes magic as the perceived violation of the very laws of physics:

“Magic transports us to an absurd universe, parodying the laws of physics in a whimsical toying of cause and effect.”

And most of us don’t really want to know how the trick was done:

“Being fooled is fun, too, because it’s a controlled way of experiencing a loss of control. Much like a roller coaster or a scary movie, it lets you loosen your grip on reality without actually losing your mind.”

In Christopher Nolan’s awesome movie on two magicians, The Prestige, Michael Caine describes the 3 parts of a magic trick:

“The first part is called "The Pledge". The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man… The second act is called "The Turn". The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary… But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call "The Prestige"."

The importance of the “bringing it back” part was brought home to me when I was reading this Geronimo Stilton story called Magical Mission to my 6 year-old. The hero of the story is forced into a magic competition in London where he has to make Big Ben vanish. His sister pulls off the trick for him, but then the crowd starts getting anxious: surely, Geronimo will bring back Big Ben, right? But since Geronimo didn’t do the trick, he too gets worried about “The Prestige” part of the trick! (Eventually, Big Ben does come back).

Now if this had been a magic show, I wouldn’t want to know how the trick was done. Neither would my daughter. But this was a story: so both of us wanted to know how the trick was done. I guess we weren’t alone in that, because the book had an appendix (really!) that explained how the trick was done!