September 8, 2010 • 27 mins
Historically, most stage magicians have been men -- and there's still a gender imbalance in the profession today. Why? What's the deal with women and magic? Molly and Cristen explore the gender implications, roles and politics of magic in this episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?
From House to works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm the magical most Well,
(00:21):
I really hope that you don't mind me sharing this
with our listeners. But ladies and gents, this might have
been Molly's favorite podcast research you might have seen on
your iTunes queue women in magic? What are these girls
talking about? Wow? Folks, Molly gunned hard for this man.
(00:44):
Molly I think might be secretly pursuing some kind of
career in magic, magic and of lousions. Yeah, because she
she sent me a list of articles and said we
have to do this. Well, Kristen mentioned magic offhand one
day and it suddenly struck me. I've never seen a
(01:05):
female magician. And I said something like I've never seen
a female magician, and Kristin dismissed me. But never dismissed me, folks,
because like a rabbit, I will reappear out of your
hat to remind you of gender differences, which is what
I did. I went, which is why I never wear
a hat to work, because I'm always trying to pull
things out of it. Um So, anyway, once once Kristin
(01:26):
dismissed my magic idea, I turned to the magical Internet,
if you will, and found a great article by Peter
Nardi that was called why have women Magicians Vanished? Which
confirmed all my beliefs that this was a totally, uh
gender segregated profession. And granted it's not the most popular profession.
(01:47):
I mean it's it's not like this is a gender
problem we need to solve because it affects so many women,
like you know, Wall Street, let's say. But it's a
problem nonetheless, because what we're gonna get into them, and
this might be what Kristen is laughing at me about,
is that when you look at these tricks, they are
so loaded with gender implications that I'm just amazed we
(02:11):
made it this far almost more than two years now,
Christal without getting to the topic of women in magic, Well,
it's gonna start protesting magic shows, children's birthday parties, and magicians.
It's going to be great. Well, and you know, once
you start trying to find female magicians, it's very hard
to find that find some that don't perform in bikinis,
(02:32):
which is a whole another topic. And like the clothes
disape like their clothes disappear, like, yeah, a self respecting
male magician wouldn't make his closes they are texedos. It's
it's um, it's very it's it's so loaded. I can't
wait to start talking about Let's start talking about I
start talking about it. Now we have to clarify that
this is stage magic. This is stuff like card trip um,
(02:53):
sleight of hand, disappearing acts and illusions. Think of Joe
Bluth from Arrested development Um and a favorite magician probably
mine too, for all is problems in executing tricks Um.
Because when you are searching for women in magic, it's
(03:14):
important to make that distinction. Christ because when you're searching
for one in magic, it's easy to find people like
tarot card readers, psychics. I mean, there's magic is a
broad definition, but we are talking about stage magic, and uh,
you know, making that distinction. It was very important in
the early days of magic becoming entertainment because and I
think this will get into one of the reasons why
women might have been wearied to join the fields of
(03:37):
this profession was because at the time they were burning witches.
They were burning witches. Yeah, obviously, magic, the dark magic,
the occultish magic, if you will, was associated largely with
old women. And we had we did a podcast a
long time ago about women and witchcraft, and a lot
of times these were just single, older, married, childless women
(04:01):
who were demonized in their villages whenever some kind of
illness would or some kind of natural disaster would befall
the people. So when when people start becoming interested in
things like juggling and making you know, a ball disappear
under a cup, people didn't automatically think, oh, this is entertainment.
(04:22):
They thought it was the same sort of dark magic.
And these people, you know, we're we're dangerous. And so
in four we have kind of a big turning point
because Reginald Scott published a book called Discovery of Witchcraft,
and this was a book that made the argument that
magicians weren't witches, basically by exposing how a lot of
(04:43):
tricks were done. But you know, just making the point
that if if someone knows how to juggle, it's because
they know how to throw things in the air, not
that they are working in conjunction with the devil to
levitate objects and this makes sense because a right around
this time in the sixteenth century, we have this backlash
of well, I guess, intellectual backlash if you will, of
(05:05):
rational skepticism against all of these kind of um, I guess,
church driven hyper religious overtones that were sending you know,
women to the stake for witchcraft when they, in fact
weren't doing anything at all. And so Scott was trying
to point out, like you said, that hey, these jugglers
were just doing these fancy little tricks. They're not summoning
(05:28):
up demons to hold the balls in the air for
them or something like that. And he actually breaks down
some of these magic tricks that are not unlike the
illusions that one might see today. And you would think
that centuries later, this connection between witchcraft and magic would
be done. You know, that was a long time ago,
but it's still brought up. You know, even in this
(05:49):
two thousand ten article by Nardi, is this you know,
sort of uh, specter, I guess, just hanging over the
magic field that if a woman does something like you know,
make something disappear, conjure something, it still has that associations
in people's mind of the occult. So that's something that
keeps coming up. And another thing that was keeping women
(06:11):
out of magic back in the day were the all
male magician guilds. I mean it's we kind of see
the same thing like when we were talking about our
podcast on women in art, the artists guilds which were
exclusively for um, for men, and uh so you have
the same thing even with magic. And even today in
(06:34):
l A there's this place called what is it the
Magic Castle, I believe, um, which a friend of mine
is actually pen to the Magic Castle and incredibly jealous.
But when you walked into the Magic Castle, which is
this kind of enclave for higher end magicians, you don't
seem any women hanging around. It's guys and suits. Right.
It was only in the last few decades that they
(06:55):
allowed women into some of their magic clubs and guilds,
and even today female membership and those clubs hovers around
five percent, very low. And I think that this discouraging
of women in magic starts when you're a kid. I
remember my brother playing with magic kit when he was
a young boy, putting on his magic ticks as he
(07:15):
called them for us. He couldn't see his ours, um,
but you know the on the front of the kit
was a boy. Yeah, I think that. You know, female
magicians have mentioned that over and over again that when
you're looking in magazines, Uh, all the magazines feature male magicians.
All the toys feature male magicians because you know, I
think just for one simple reason, because they're all wearing
(07:36):
the tuxedo and we don't think of women wearing tuxedos. Well,
and let's go to this Miller mccun article that you
talked about earlier, which was the one that you sent
me that really got this magic ball rolling magic ball.
And aside from the witchcraft connection and these kind of
gender roles we're talking about, the author Peter Nardi points
(07:59):
out that there might be some other aspects at work
that are that has created this gender gap in magic.
And I don't necessarily buy all of his points, but
I do you do? Okay, Well then, Molly, please, well
which one did you have trouble with? I bet you
have trouble with the masculinity of a magic wand that's
what dont have a magic Wand yeah, I mean that's
(08:19):
a little much for me. I mean, let's be honest,
it can be phallic looking a magic wand yeah, they're
always talking about boys and their toys, and so he
makes that point that the instruments of magic, wand sword, sauces,
these are things that we associate with men, and we
associate with power. And here's I bet another one where
(08:40):
you had some trouble buying the argument that magic is
a display of power and we're uncomfortable with watching women
on a stage exercising power, particularly over men. Well, here's
the thing I could see that, you know, back in
Reginald Scott's days, back in the sixteenth century. Today, however,
just yeah, I don't know, you know, by it. I
(09:03):
don't really buy it. I think that we might have
progressed beyond that point. What I do buy, though, is
that most magic instruction is designed for men with jackets,
and women's clothes don't have pockets a lot of times
and can't reach into breast pockets. Although there was one
funny anecdote from a magician and another article that came
across and they were, you know, she was wearing a
(09:23):
strapless dress to perform her magic, and someone was like,
where did those doves come from? And she was like,
but you never noticed how flat chested I am. Pallusions allusions,
but speaking of that too, since magic has been more
popular among men, the tools that they need, because this
(09:43):
is a highly kind of technical art, you know, Joe
Blue test to buy magic tombs, yes, and things like that,
and a lot of times these tools are built for
for men, except for things where they need an assist,
right for assistance, like if you have a box that's
someone you're gonna saw in half, or someone's going to
(10:04):
disappear from they're going to be small. So they think
that's why women have been pigeonholed into the role of assistant,
because they're the only ones who can, you know, crawl
into a very small box, who are flexible to crawl
into this to the small box. And uh, there's actually
a documentary made called Women in Little Box as the
examined the role of the magician's assistant and why we
(10:25):
so often associate women with that assistant role. And many
magicians have said, it's the assistant who does all the work.
They're the ones who've got to you know, go through
a trap door maneuver like some pulley with their toes.
What they're actually doing was of course made very obscure
by the article. Since we're not sworn to the magician code,
(10:46):
and we can't find out how the trick is actually done.
We can't get into the magic castle. But they're saying
that it's actually the assistant who is the real magician.
So it's That's what's kind of interesting about this is
despite the fact that it's very hard to name a
female magician off the top of my head, the fact
is they were probably pulling the strings behind many of
the male magicians that we could name but speaking of
(11:08):
which were like, why don't we name a few famous
women magicians. That's a great idea, Christen. One that I
was particularly impressed with, who was highlighted in a two
thousand eight article of Bus magazine was Dorothy Dietrick because
she pulled off a trick that even Harry Houdini would
not attempt. Yeah, this was an intense trick. She held
(11:29):
a metal cup in her mouth and caught a twenty
two caliber bullet and someone shot a gun at her face,
and she caught the bullet in this cup. And it
has killed twelve men since people have started trying this trick.
And so by doing this in she has earned her place,
as Nichol Summer says in the Pantheon of magic history.
(11:52):
Now there's also del O'Dell, who was the original Queen
of Magic and she was born in nineteen o two
and grew up in Handsas and she this is awesome.
She developed a strong woman act and actually won the
title of Miss Physical Culture, and then she started to
integrate magic into her strong woman act and also had
(12:14):
a pretty pretty rise sense of humor as well. And
people just loved hell O'Dell and she was, Yeah, she
was a celebrity of the day. She had her own
half hour show. She was on books and stamp albums
and dolls. So I think that really is one exception
to the to the thing that we don't know the
names of a female magicians. So if we had grown
up in that age, maybe it would have. Well, yeah,
because Bus Magazine points out that in the fifties and
(12:36):
sixties there was a search of lady magicians on the
scene and they were becoming more accepted along with you know,
them showing up more in the workplace, and you know,
we have the slow rise of second way feminism around
this time and all this stuff. And also Vegas and
also Vegas, yeah, uh, they Vegas and the nightclub scene
(12:59):
out there. He needed something new and spectacular every night
to keep audiences coming back for more, and lady magicians
were a big crowd pleaser because it was unconventional. And
you know a lot of the magicians who are profiled
in this Bust magazine article which we'll put up on
our blog round up and that publishes uh is that
(13:21):
there they were originally drawn to magic because a boy
or a man said they couldn't do it. One magician,
celest Evans, you know, she was playing with some boys
one day and they tied her up because she was
going to play the damsel in distress role. You know
that they were going to come and rescue her at
the last minute before the train ran her over and
she got out of the ropes on her own, and
(13:42):
someone saw her and said who do you think you are? Hohodini?
And she's like, well, don't really know who this Whodini
fellow is. I beary go find out. And she realized
that because she had the skill and because she found
out Whodini was, she was going to pursue this career
in magic. And we should also add that that Sliss
Evans is the one who pulled doves out of her
small just ra and these magicians talk about how when
(14:06):
they're rising in the ranks that you know, it was
very much you know, they did come across that boys
club where men wouldn't tell them the secrets of the
magic Society and wouldn't help them with their stage performance
and things like that. And it does circle back to
this idea of men having power that we were talking
about earlier and not willing to see that to someone
who might take their job or might upstage them. So
(14:29):
I think that that's something we do see that is
a parallel to Wall Street, let's say, and that it's
hard for these women to find mentors and someone who
can bring them up because of the power that men hold.
And uh, speaking of male power and magic, Kristen, I
think we need to talk about the first time that
a man made a woman disappear on stage, because if
(14:52):
you want to get into power implicit in some sort
of performance, I don't think we can get much better
than that story. And this is coming from a paper
by Karen Beakman called Vanishing Women, Magic, Film and Feminism
and the setting just just to give you, you know,
an idea of when this is taking place. We are
(15:13):
in Victorian era Britain around the eighteen fifties, there is
some economic trouble. There are a lot more women who
are choosing to not get married, were remaining single around
this time surplus of women. It was declared by the census. Yeah,
and we then that came up also in our spinster
(15:34):
podcast is when that whole negative notion of a spinster,
if you will, um comes up. So you've got all
these women, Yeah, all these ladies. They they are starting
to have fishy ideas like wanting to vote, make their
own money, like whoa all right, So the British Man
is a little intimidated not to mention. At this time,
(15:54):
Britain is an imperial power. They've got colonies all over
the country. And one man even oakingly says, you know,
we've got Australia. We could just send all these women there,
get rid of all the extra women. Yeah, they really
did consider all these women making them vanish. So do
you see do you see where this is going? Yeah?
Karen Beekman takes it there, guys, because another one of
(16:16):
their imperial uh involvements was India. And now she writes
about how the Indian mutiny is linked strangely to this
first magic trick, because a lot of the magic tricks
that did become popular in that time they got from
India and other places that they were traveling to. And
(16:37):
so there was this mutiny in which many women and
children were killed, uh, British women and children, and so
this was really an attack, another attack. She writes on
British manhood that not only at home did they have
these women threatening to take more power, that they had
their colonial subjects killing their women and making this violence
against the British body very um apparent. It was very raw,
(17:00):
big wound for them. And so she writes them that
seeing the first woman disappear on stage in six by
magician Charles Bertram sort of was a way to wrap
up all these inadequacies into a way uh and and
take back that power. Because what you're doing is you're
putting a woman in a box, the superfluous woman who
(17:20):
does no good to your society except want things and
make her disappear. But you know, as a magic trick,
you still bring her back, which is what separates you
from the Indians who massacred all these women. And so
that she really writes, you can take it with a
grain of salt. It's a very deep reading about how
uh these these British audiences really responded to the idea
(17:43):
of making a superfo superfluous woman disappear, bringing her back
in a way that didn't align yourself with the violence
of the savages that you were dealing with abroad. Yes,
heavy stuff, very deep reading. Indeed, So do we want
to talk a little bit about this Vanishing Woman act then? So?
(18:05):
According to Beakman, the een eighties was the decade of
vanishing women. When this trick first came on the scene.
It uh became very popular, very quickly, and it all started.
It made like the newspapers every day for a month.
That's how cool it was that this magician had made
a woman disappeared. Man um slow news month. Uh. And
(18:28):
this starts in eighteen eighties six with a French born
Hungarian magician, Okay, who comes up with this act called
Surprise the Vanishing Lady. Now, in writing about this Vanishing
Lady act, when it first happened August six six, a
day that will go down in the history books, I
(18:51):
would love to be at the Magic Castle that I'm
kind of chum that day. I wonder if they celebrate it.
But there was another magician who wrote years later her
about um seeing this trick, and he describes it as
what is considered by every known professor of the magic
art to be the most perfect and most startling stage
(19:12):
trick which has ever been produced. And it was. I
don't know now reading the description of it, you're kind
of a little bit are you still mystified by it? Kristen?
If this guy picked up a woman who he describes
the writer describes as not petite, which Beckman makes the
point he weighed a little over nine stone. Beckman makes
(19:35):
the point that this was a really overt way of
saying women take up too much space in our society.
The fact that he noted that, now you can take
that with a great assault too. I think he was
just saying, well, she was bigger, so there's more to disappear. Okay,
So I gets this someone on stage. He puts a
red silk covering over her, and Beckman claims this is
a sign of the India connection because it had come
(19:58):
from India, and then he does a little magic. She disappears, Yeah,
she disappears. She's sitting in this chair under the shawl.
Next thing, you know, Bingo Bengo, she's in the audience.
She's in the audience, totally freaking some audience members out too,
because according to this illustration, uh, they're all bad. Yeah,
(20:20):
they are mystified. So with this incredibly simple trick, this
doesn't even involve you know, like an Egyptian tomb like
Joe Bluth might use. Um, this is just a chair
and a shawl and a woman disappearing. Something that's simple
in uh really just blew people's minds. It blew people's minds,
(20:43):
and it blew Karen Beckman's minds and mine when she
presented her research on how everything was connected like match
like magic, and um, I think it really set the
tone for modern magic. It did. I think the vanishing
woman act well. I think that you have, um a
picture in your mind now of the woman as the
(21:04):
lovely assistant who will crawl into a box or be
the one that disappears. And you know, one site made
the point would we be comfortable watching a woman make
a man disappear? Or would that seem you know, uh
to too politically loaded. I think that if if we
tried to reverse the trick today, it be impossible to
ignore the gender implications, Whereas I think the reason I
(21:27):
respond to the argument that Beppa makes in this paper
is that you know, why didn't we You know there
was a reason to pay attention to the gender implications
of what they were doing then as well. Um, so
I think it'd be interesting to see what what it
would look like in reverse. I know there are some
editions out there that can be kind of cheeky and
get the mail volunteer from the audience and and do
(21:48):
the reverse. But you know, the argument keeps coming back
is would you be comfortable watching a woman do that?
Or do we respond more to a man in that
charismatic role and you know he's not evil because he
makes her reappear well. And I'll just throw out this
one little theory of mine, Molly, I'm ready for the end.
Perhaps women are especially suited to do the magician's assistant role,
(22:13):
if you will, because they are in charge of distracting
the eye a lot of times while the magician is
preparing his illusion. Like you said, magician's assistant is really
the one doing all of the grunt work to pull
off a successful trick. And I would say that a
dazzling lady perhaps is more, is more eye catching than
(22:36):
a dude in a suit? You know who would you
pay attention to John Hamm and a suit? Okay, you
you just change things, see exactly. This is gonna be
my new career everyone. I'm gonna be the magical Molly.
I'm gonna go around and do feminist loaded magic tricks.
My slide of hand, uh distracting assistant be John Hamm.
Maybe you could make you know, Josh and Chuck from
(22:57):
stuff you should not disappear or turn them in to rabbits.
Oh can't you imagine if you had a little keyte rabbits,
Josh and Chuck rabbits. That would be kind of cute,
the little faces as rabbits. I'm picturing it now, all
right before we, you know, start just planning our our
magic show extravagant. We're going to turn all the house
to first podcasters into something into something I don't know, man,
(23:18):
I'm gonna turn Jonathan and Chris into computers. All this
magic stuff is really taken over Molly's brain. I'm getting
a little concerned. I'm just yeah, is that why you
wore a top hat to work today? Molly? Today and
every day until the end of time. So we want
to know, We want to know what you think about
this whole magic conundrum. Is it just are there any
gender politics associated with magic? Or is it just for
(23:40):
a bygone crazy has probably got a little crazy, our
allusions just meant for to entertain. Or is there something
to the fact that, hey, you know, why are there
only lady assistance? All entertainment has cultural So this true?
This is true? So let us know your thoughts. Send
us a magical email at Mom's stuff and how stuff
we're dot com and really is an email pretty magical
(24:02):
because just coast through like just goes from one computer
or to an order. Yeah, I don't even see it.
Magic is everywhere. People sils through some some emails. I've
got one from Tia who's running about the Guerrilla Girls podcast,
and she writes of one of our favorite subjects, Canada.
(24:23):
She says, I want to shift attention up north. As
a Canadian, I felt I should plug two iconic folk
artists who are revered nationally, Emily Car and maud Lewis.
Emily Car is probably the most prolific and well known
of the two. Moud Lewis is a Nova Scotia and
hero who has an entire display devoted to her at
the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, complete with her original house.
While it's true the outside of Canada these names probably
(24:44):
do not mean much. Within the country, they have always
been respected for their amazing works and never titled as
female or woman artist, but simply artist. I find, in fact,
when you ask the average Canadians name a Canadian artist,
these who are usually names mentioned well before a majority
of male artist. Just another reason that we love Canada.
Canada rocks. All right. I've got one here from Lindsay
(25:04):
and this is in response to our episode on how
breakups work in your brain, and she says, I'm so
excited to hear that they are scientific studies supporting two
terms my friends and I have coined called distraction itis
and forget the bad itis. Forget the bad itis is
a period during an after breakup when you completely forget
all of the horrible parts of the relationship that made
(25:26):
the experience not worth it. You forget the hard feelings
of fights, the nitpicking, etcetera, etcetera, and all you do
is think about how happy you were in those happier
times than how you will never be that happy again,
when you're experiencing a strong a bout of forget the
bad itis, your friends may end up pushing you into
an even stronger a bout of distraction itis. Distractionist is
(25:47):
when you're so focused on distracting yourself and the hardships
of the breakup that you end up doing rather uncharacteristic
and sometimes self destructive things such as drinking too much,
one night stands, rebounding, over eating, etcetera, etcetera. There are,
of course, positive ways to exhibit distraction itis that can
help you hell you forget the bad iteis. However, if
(26:08):
you go down the negative route, it generally only makes
you feel worse, and then forget the bad itis will
get much stronger. So thank you for sending on along
those very important terms, lindsay that I think yeah, everybody
does experience a little bit of both of those with
with breakups. So if you have any stories you'd like
to share with us, feel free to email me and
(26:28):
Molly at Mom's Stuff at how Magical Molly I'm So
Sorry at Mom's Stuff at how stuff works dot com.
If you would like to share your thoughts get other
people's feedback, head over to our Facebook page and write
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can check out our blog where you can find all
(26:49):
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(27:16):
thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?
From House to works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm the magical most Well,
(00:21):
I really hope that you don't mind me sharing this
with our listeners. But ladies and gents, this might have
been Molly's favorite podcast research you might have seen on
your iTunes queue women in magic? What are these girls
talking about? Wow? Folks, Molly gunned hard for this man.
(00:44):
Molly I think might be secretly pursuing some kind of
career in magic, magic and of lousions. Yeah, because she
she sent me a list of articles and said we
have to do this. Well, Kristen mentioned magic offhand one
day and it suddenly struck me. I've never seen a
(01:05):
female magician. And I said something like I've never seen
a female magician, and Kristin dismissed me. But never dismissed me, folks,
because like a rabbit, I will reappear out of your
hat to remind you of gender differences, which is what
I did. I went, which is why I never wear
a hat to work, because I'm always trying to pull
things out of it. Um So, anyway, once once Kristin
(01:26):
dismissed my magic idea, I turned to the magical Internet,
if you will, and found a great article by Peter
Nardi that was called why have women Magicians Vanished? Which
confirmed all my beliefs that this was a totally, uh
gender segregated profession. And granted it's not the most popular profession.
(01:47):
I mean it's it's not like this is a gender
problem we need to solve because it affects so many women,
like you know, Wall Street, let's say. But it's a
problem nonetheless, because what we're gonna get into them, and
this might be what Kristen is laughing at me about,
is that when you look at these tricks, they are
so loaded with gender implications that I'm just amazed we
(02:11):
made it this far almost more than two years now,
Christal without getting to the topic of women in magic, Well,
it's gonna start protesting magic shows, children's birthday parties, and magicians.
It's going to be great. Well, and you know, once
you start trying to find female magicians, it's very hard
to find that find some that don't perform in bikinis,
(02:32):
which is a whole another topic. And like the clothes
disape like their clothes disappear, like, yeah, a self respecting
male magician wouldn't make his closes they are texedos. It's
it's um, it's very it's it's so loaded. I can't
wait to start talking about Let's start talking about I
start talking about it. Now we have to clarify that
this is stage magic. This is stuff like card trip um,
(02:53):
sleight of hand, disappearing acts and illusions. Think of Joe
Bluth from Arrested development Um and a favorite magician probably
mine too, for all is problems in executing tricks Um.
Because when you are searching for women in magic, it's
(03:14):
important to make that distinction. Christ because when you're searching
for one in magic, it's easy to find people like
tarot card readers, psychics. I mean, there's magic is a
broad definition, but we are talking about stage magic, and uh,
you know, making that distinction. It was very important in
the early days of magic becoming entertainment because and I
think this will get into one of the reasons why
women might have been wearied to join the fields of
(03:37):
this profession was because at the time they were burning witches.
They were burning witches. Yeah, obviously, magic, the dark magic,
the occultish magic, if you will, was associated largely with
old women. And we had we did a podcast a
long time ago about women and witchcraft, and a lot
of times these were just single, older, married, childless women
(04:01):
who were demonized in their villages whenever some kind of
illness would or some kind of natural disaster would befall
the people. So when when people start becoming interested in
things like juggling and making you know, a ball disappear
under a cup, people didn't automatically think, oh, this is entertainment.
(04:22):
They thought it was the same sort of dark magic.
And these people, you know, we're we're dangerous. And so
in four we have kind of a big turning point
because Reginald Scott published a book called Discovery of Witchcraft,
and this was a book that made the argument that
magicians weren't witches, basically by exposing how a lot of
(04:43):
tricks were done. But you know, just making the point
that if if someone knows how to juggle, it's because
they know how to throw things in the air, not
that they are working in conjunction with the devil to
levitate objects and this makes sense because a right around
this time in the sixteenth century, we have this backlash
of well, I guess, intellectual backlash if you will, of
(05:05):
rational skepticism against all of these kind of um, I guess,
church driven hyper religious overtones that were sending you know,
women to the stake for witchcraft when they, in fact
weren't doing anything at all. And so Scott was trying
to point out, like you said, that hey, these jugglers
were just doing these fancy little tricks. They're not summoning
(05:28):
up demons to hold the balls in the air for
them or something like that. And he actually breaks down
some of these magic tricks that are not unlike the
illusions that one might see today. And you would think
that centuries later, this connection between witchcraft and magic would
be done. You know, that was a long time ago,
but it's still brought up. You know, even in this
(05:49):
two thousand ten article by Nardi, is this you know,
sort of uh, specter, I guess, just hanging over the
magic field that if a woman does something like you know,
make something disappear, conjure something, it still has that associations
in people's mind of the occult. So that's something that
keeps coming up. And another thing that was keeping women
(06:11):
out of magic back in the day were the all
male magician guilds. I mean it's we kind of see
the same thing like when we were talking about our
podcast on women in art, the artists guilds which were
exclusively for um, for men, and uh so you have
the same thing even with magic. And even today in
(06:34):
l A there's this place called what is it the
Magic Castle, I believe, um, which a friend of mine
is actually pen to the Magic Castle and incredibly jealous.
But when you walked into the Magic Castle, which is
this kind of enclave for higher end magicians, you don't
seem any women hanging around. It's guys and suits. Right.
It was only in the last few decades that they
(06:55):
allowed women into some of their magic clubs and guilds,
and even today female membership and those clubs hovers around
five percent, very low. And I think that this discouraging
of women in magic starts when you're a kid. I
remember my brother playing with magic kit when he was
a young boy, putting on his magic ticks as he
(07:15):
called them for us. He couldn't see his ours, um,
but you know the on the front of the kit
was a boy. Yeah, I think that. You know, female
magicians have mentioned that over and over again that when
you're looking in magazines, Uh, all the magazines feature male magicians.
All the toys feature male magicians because you know, I
think just for one simple reason, because they're all wearing
(07:36):
the tuxedo and we don't think of women wearing tuxedos. Well,
and let's go to this Miller mccun article that you
talked about earlier, which was the one that you sent
me that really got this magic ball rolling magic ball.
And aside from the witchcraft connection and these kind of
gender roles we're talking about, the author Peter Nardi points
(07:59):
out that there might be some other aspects at work
that are that has created this gender gap in magic.
And I don't necessarily buy all of his points, but
I do you do? Okay, Well then, Molly, please, well
which one did you have trouble with? I bet you
have trouble with the masculinity of a magic wand that's
what dont have a magic Wand yeah, I mean that's
(08:19):
a little much for me. I mean, let's be honest,
it can be phallic looking a magic wand yeah, they're
always talking about boys and their toys, and so he
makes that point that the instruments of magic, wand sword, sauces,
these are things that we associate with men, and we
associate with power. And here's I bet another one where
(08:40):
you had some trouble buying the argument that magic is
a display of power and we're uncomfortable with watching women
on a stage exercising power, particularly over men. Well, here's
the thing I could see that, you know, back in
Reginald Scott's days, back in the sixteenth century. Today, however,
just yeah, I don't know, you know, by it. I
(09:03):
don't really buy it. I think that we might have
progressed beyond that point. What I do buy, though, is
that most magic instruction is designed for men with jackets,
and women's clothes don't have pockets a lot of times
and can't reach into breast pockets. Although there was one
funny anecdote from a magician and another article that came
across and they were, you know, she was wearing a
(09:23):
strapless dress to perform her magic, and someone was like,
where did those doves come from? And she was like,
but you never noticed how flat chested I am. Pallusions allusions,
but speaking of that too, since magic has been more
popular among men, the tools that they need, because this
(09:43):
is a highly kind of technical art, you know, Joe
Blue test to buy magic tombs, yes, and things like that,
and a lot of times these tools are built for
for men, except for things where they need an assist,
right for assistance, like if you have a box that's
someone you're gonna saw in half, or someone's going to
(10:04):
disappear from they're going to be small. So they think
that's why women have been pigeonholed into the role of assistant,
because they're the only ones who can, you know, crawl
into a very small box, who are flexible to crawl
into this to the small box. And uh, there's actually
a documentary made called Women in Little Box as the
examined the role of the magician's assistant and why we
(10:25):
so often associate women with that assistant role. And many
magicians have said, it's the assistant who does all the work.
They're the ones who've got to you know, go through
a trap door maneuver like some pulley with their toes.
What they're actually doing was of course made very obscure
by the article. Since we're not sworn to the magician code,
(10:46):
and we can't find out how the trick is actually done.
We can't get into the magic castle. But they're saying
that it's actually the assistant who is the real magician.
So it's That's what's kind of interesting about this is
despite the fact that it's very hard to name a
female magician off the top of my head, the fact
is they were probably pulling the strings behind many of
the male magicians that we could name but speaking of
(11:08):
which were like, why don't we name a few famous
women magicians. That's a great idea, Christen. One that I
was particularly impressed with, who was highlighted in a two
thousand eight article of Bus magazine was Dorothy Dietrick because
she pulled off a trick that even Harry Houdini would
not attempt. Yeah, this was an intense trick. She held
(11:29):
a metal cup in her mouth and caught a twenty
two caliber bullet and someone shot a gun at her face,
and she caught the bullet in this cup. And it
has killed twelve men since people have started trying this trick.
And so by doing this in she has earned her place,
as Nichol Summer says in the Pantheon of magic history.
(11:52):
Now there's also del O'Dell, who was the original Queen
of Magic and she was born in nineteen o two
and grew up in Handsas and she this is awesome.
She developed a strong woman act and actually won the
title of Miss Physical Culture, and then she started to
integrate magic into her strong woman act and also had
(12:14):
a pretty pretty rise sense of humor as well. And
people just loved hell O'Dell and she was, Yeah, she
was a celebrity of the day. She had her own
half hour show. She was on books and stamp albums
and dolls. So I think that really is one exception
to the to the thing that we don't know the
names of a female magicians. So if we had grown
up in that age, maybe it would have. Well, yeah,
because Bus Magazine points out that in the fifties and
(12:36):
sixties there was a search of lady magicians on the
scene and they were becoming more accepted along with you know,
them showing up more in the workplace, and you know,
we have the slow rise of second way feminism around
this time and all this stuff. And also Vegas and
also Vegas, yeah, uh, they Vegas and the nightclub scene
(12:59):
out there. He needed something new and spectacular every night
to keep audiences coming back for more, and lady magicians
were a big crowd pleaser because it was unconventional. And
you know a lot of the magicians who are profiled
in this Bust magazine article which we'll put up on
our blog round up and that publishes uh is that
(13:21):
there they were originally drawn to magic because a boy
or a man said they couldn't do it. One magician,
celest Evans, you know, she was playing with some boys
one day and they tied her up because she was
going to play the damsel in distress role. You know
that they were going to come and rescue her at
the last minute before the train ran her over and
she got out of the ropes on her own, and
(13:42):
someone saw her and said who do you think you are? Hohodini?
And she's like, well, don't really know who this Whodini
fellow is. I beary go find out. And she realized
that because she had the skill and because she found
out Whodini was, she was going to pursue this career
in magic. And we should also add that that Sliss
Evans is the one who pulled doves out of her
small just ra and these magicians talk about how when
(14:06):
they're rising in the ranks that you know, it was
very much you know, they did come across that boys
club where men wouldn't tell them the secrets of the
magic Society and wouldn't help them with their stage performance
and things like that. And it does circle back to
this idea of men having power that we were talking
about earlier and not willing to see that to someone
who might take their job or might upstage them. So
(14:29):
I think that that's something we do see that is
a parallel to Wall Street, let's say, and that it's
hard for these women to find mentors and someone who
can bring them up because of the power that men hold.
And uh, speaking of male power and magic, Kristen, I
think we need to talk about the first time that
a man made a woman disappear on stage, because if
(14:52):
you want to get into power implicit in some sort
of performance, I don't think we can get much better
than that story. And this is coming from a paper
by Karen Beakman called Vanishing Women, Magic, Film and Feminism
and the setting just just to give you, you know,
an idea of when this is taking place. We are
(15:13):
in Victorian era Britain around the eighteen fifties, there is
some economic trouble. There are a lot more women who
are choosing to not get married, were remaining single around
this time surplus of women. It was declared by the census. Yeah,
and we then that came up also in our spinster
(15:34):
podcast is when that whole negative notion of a spinster,
if you will, um comes up. So you've got all
these women, Yeah, all these ladies. They they are starting
to have fishy ideas like wanting to vote, make their
own money, like whoa all right, So the British Man
is a little intimidated not to mention. At this time,
(15:54):
Britain is an imperial power. They've got colonies all over
the country. And one man even oakingly says, you know,
we've got Australia. We could just send all these women there,
get rid of all the extra women. Yeah, they really
did consider all these women making them vanish. So do
you see do you see where this is going? Yeah?
Karen Beekman takes it there, guys, because another one of
(16:16):
their imperial uh involvements was India. And now she writes
about how the Indian mutiny is linked strangely to this
first magic trick, because a lot of the magic tricks
that did become popular in that time they got from
India and other places that they were traveling to. And
(16:37):
so there was this mutiny in which many women and
children were killed, uh, British women and children, and so
this was really an attack, another attack. She writes on
British manhood that not only at home did they have
these women threatening to take more power, that they had
their colonial subjects killing their women and making this violence
against the British body very um apparent. It was very raw,
(17:00):
big wound for them. And so she writes them that
seeing the first woman disappear on stage in six by
magician Charles Bertram sort of was a way to wrap
up all these inadequacies into a way uh and and
take back that power. Because what you're doing is you're
putting a woman in a box, the superfluous woman who
(17:20):
does no good to your society except want things and
make her disappear. But you know, as a magic trick,
you still bring her back, which is what separates you
from the Indians who massacred all these women. And so
that she really writes, you can take it with a
grain of salt. It's a very deep reading about how
uh these these British audiences really responded to the idea
(17:43):
of making a superfo superfluous woman disappear, bringing her back
in a way that didn't align yourself with the violence
of the savages that you were dealing with abroad. Yes,
heavy stuff, very deep reading. Indeed, So do we want
to talk a little bit about this Vanishing Woman act then? So?
(18:05):
According to Beakman, the een eighties was the decade of
vanishing women. When this trick first came on the scene.
It uh became very popular, very quickly, and it all started.
It made like the newspapers every day for a month.
That's how cool it was that this magician had made
a woman disappeared. Man um slow news month. Uh. And
(18:28):
this starts in eighteen eighties six with a French born
Hungarian magician, Okay, who comes up with this act called
Surprise the Vanishing Lady. Now, in writing about this Vanishing
Lady act, when it first happened August six six, a
day that will go down in the history books, I
(18:51):
would love to be at the Magic Castle that I'm
kind of chum that day. I wonder if they celebrate it.
But there was another magician who wrote years later her
about um seeing this trick, and he describes it as
what is considered by every known professor of the magic
art to be the most perfect and most startling stage
(19:12):
trick which has ever been produced. And it was. I
don't know now reading the description of it, you're kind
of a little bit are you still mystified by it? Kristen?
If this guy picked up a woman who he describes
the writer describes as not petite, which Beckman makes the
point he weighed a little over nine stone. Beckman makes
(19:35):
the point that this was a really overt way of
saying women take up too much space in our society.
The fact that he noted that, now you can take
that with a great assault too. I think he was
just saying, well, she was bigger, so there's more to disappear. Okay,
So I gets this someone on stage. He puts a
red silk covering over her, and Beckman claims this is
a sign of the India connection because it had come
(19:58):
from India, and then he does a little magic. She disappears, Yeah,
she disappears. She's sitting in this chair under the shawl.
Next thing, you know, Bingo Bengo, she's in the audience.
She's in the audience, totally freaking some audience members out too,
because according to this illustration, uh, they're all bad. Yeah,
(20:20):
they are mystified. So with this incredibly simple trick, this
doesn't even involve you know, like an Egyptian tomb like
Joe Bluth might use. Um, this is just a chair
and a shawl and a woman disappearing. Something that's simple
in uh really just blew people's minds. It blew people's minds,
(20:43):
and it blew Karen Beckman's minds and mine when she
presented her research on how everything was connected like match
like magic, and um, I think it really set the
tone for modern magic. It did. I think the vanishing
woman act well. I think that you have, um a
picture in your mind now of the woman as the
(21:04):
lovely assistant who will crawl into a box or be
the one that disappears. And you know, one site made
the point would we be comfortable watching a woman make
a man disappear? Or would that seem you know, uh
to too politically loaded. I think that if if we
tried to reverse the trick today, it be impossible to
ignore the gender implications, Whereas I think the reason I
(21:27):
respond to the argument that Beppa makes in this paper
is that you know, why didn't we You know there
was a reason to pay attention to the gender implications
of what they were doing then as well. Um, so
I think it'd be interesting to see what what it
would look like in reverse. I know there are some
editions out there that can be kind of cheeky and
get the mail volunteer from the audience and and do
(21:48):
the reverse. But you know, the argument keeps coming back
is would you be comfortable watching a woman do that?
Or do we respond more to a man in that
charismatic role and you know he's not evil because he
makes her reappear well. And I'll just throw out this
one little theory of mine, Molly, I'm ready for the end.
Perhaps women are especially suited to do the magician's assistant role,
(22:13):
if you will, because they are in charge of distracting
the eye a lot of times while the magician is
preparing his illusion. Like you said, magician's assistant is really
the one doing all of the grunt work to pull
off a successful trick. And I would say that a
dazzling lady perhaps is more, is more eye catching than
(22:36):
a dude in a suit? You know who would you
pay attention to John Hamm and a suit? Okay, you
you just change things, see exactly. This is gonna be
my new career everyone. I'm gonna be the magical Molly.
I'm gonna go around and do feminist loaded magic tricks.
My slide of hand, uh distracting assistant be John Hamm.
Maybe you could make you know, Josh and Chuck from
(22:57):
stuff you should not disappear or turn them in to rabbits.
Oh can't you imagine if you had a little keyte rabbits,
Josh and Chuck rabbits. That would be kind of cute,
the little faces as rabbits. I'm picturing it now, all
right before we, you know, start just planning our our
magic show extravagant. We're going to turn all the house
to first podcasters into something into something I don't know, man,
(23:18):
I'm gonna turn Jonathan and Chris into computers. All this
magic stuff is really taken over Molly's brain. I'm getting
a little concerned. I'm just yeah, is that why you
wore a top hat to work today? Molly? Today and
every day until the end of time. So we want
to know, We want to know what you think about
this whole magic conundrum. Is it just are there any
gender politics associated with magic? Or is it just for
(23:40):
a bygone crazy has probably got a little crazy, our
allusions just meant for to entertain. Or is there something
to the fact that, hey, you know, why are there
only lady assistance? All entertainment has cultural So this true?
This is true? So let us know your thoughts. Send
us a magical email at Mom's stuff and how stuff
we're dot com and really is an email pretty magical
(24:02):
because just coast through like just goes from one computer
or to an order. Yeah, I don't even see it.
Magic is everywhere. People sils through some some emails. I've
got one from Tia who's running about the Guerrilla Girls podcast,
and she writes of one of our favorite subjects, Canada.
(24:23):
She says, I want to shift attention up north. As
a Canadian, I felt I should plug two iconic folk
artists who are revered nationally, Emily Car and maud Lewis.
Emily Car is probably the most prolific and well known
of the two. Moud Lewis is a Nova Scotia and
hero who has an entire display devoted to her at
the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, complete with her original house.
While it's true the outside of Canada these names probably
(24:44):
do not mean much. Within the country, they have always
been respected for their amazing works and never titled as
female or woman artist, but simply artist. I find, in fact,
when you ask the average Canadians name a Canadian artist,
these who are usually names mentioned well before a majority
of male artist. Just another reason that we love Canada.
Canada rocks. All right. I've got one here from Lindsay
(25:04):
and this is in response to our episode on how
breakups work in your brain, and she says, I'm so
excited to hear that they are scientific studies supporting two
terms my friends and I have coined called distraction itis
and forget the bad itis. Forget the bad itis is
a period during an after breakup when you completely forget
all of the horrible parts of the relationship that made
(25:26):
the experience not worth it. You forget the hard feelings
of fights, the nitpicking, etcetera, etcetera, and all you do
is think about how happy you were in those happier
times than how you will never be that happy again,
when you're experiencing a strong a bout of forget the
bad itis, your friends may end up pushing you into
an even stronger a bout of distraction itis. Distractionist is
(25:47):
when you're so focused on distracting yourself and the hardships
of the breakup that you end up doing rather uncharacteristic
and sometimes self destructive things such as drinking too much,
one night stands, rebounding, over eating, etcetera, etcetera. There are,
of course, positive ways to exhibit distraction itis that can
help you hell you forget the bad iteis. However, if
(26:08):
you go down the negative route, it generally only makes
you feel worse, and then forget the bad itis will
get much stronger. So thank you for sending on along
those very important terms, lindsay that I think yeah, everybody
does experience a little bit of both of those with
with breakups. So if you have any stories you'd like
to share with us, feel free to email me and
(26:28):
Molly at Mom's Stuff at how Magical Molly I'm So
Sorry at Mom's Stuff at how stuff works dot com.
If you would like to share your thoughts get other
people's feedback, head over to our Facebook page and write
something on the wall there, or you can follow us
on Twitter at Mom's Stuff podcast. And then finally, you
can check out our blog where you can find all
(26:49):
of these sources that Molly and I've been referencing throughout
these podcasts. You can find it at how stuff works
dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
visit how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
check out our blogs on the how stuff works dot
com home page. Brought to you by the reinvented two
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