The Magic of Plagiarism; the Plagiarism of Magic

September 30, 2006 
Posted by Jay Livingston

You can’t copyright a joke, you can’t copyright a magic trick. So what do you when another performer steals your stuff?

Eric Walton is a magician. He’s doing a show, “Esoterica,” at a theater down on E. 15th. But some of his act resembles a show another magician, Ricky Jay [photo on the right], did a few years back. The Times ran a story (here) on the on the controversy.

Jules Fisher, the Tony Award-winning lighting designer, who is also an amateur magician . . . .sent an e-mail message to Mr. Walton saying the presentation of the Knight's Tour “so closely approaches its inspiration as to border on plagiarism.”
“Does performing an existing effect, or variation thereof, confer upon the performer of it ownership of that effect, or the exclusive and perpetual right to all subsequent interpretations of it?” Mr. Walton asked in his message. “On this point you and I are obviously in disagreement.”

This was of some interest to me because many years ago, I was hanging around with magicians, thinking that there might be something interesting and sociological there. In survey research, you start with an idea, then you get data to support it. But I was doing ethnographic research, where you often begin with the “data,” usually a group of people in some setting, not sure exactly what you’re looking for but with the sense that, as I once heard William H. Whyte say, “If I look at something long enough, eventually I’ll see something nobody else has seen.”

I wasn’t as successful as Whyte. I never did figure out a framework for my observations with the magicians. I don’t even know where my fieldnotes are now. But on the topic of plagiarism, I do remember this: When magicians talk among themselves, when they demonstrate tricks for one another, they are unusually scrupulous about giving credit where it’s due. Much like academics, they footnote everything. They’ll say things like, “The routine combines Gene Finnell’s Free Cut Principle with the plot from Dai Vernon’s Aces.” They are especially careful to footnote the specific “moves” (sleights) that they use in a trick. “This is an extension of a coin change by Dr. E. Roberts in Bobo,” (Bobo being the author of a classic book on coin magic.)

The problem is that you can’t do this kind of footnoting in a performance. In the first place, it comes close to disclosing secrets of how the trick is done. But more important, the audience doesn’t care. They want to be entertained, not informed. What’s important to magicians — authorship, originality— is not important to the audience. I remember once seeing a street magician in New York who had taken most of his act from another street magician I’d seen a couple of years earlier but who had since moved on. He finished his little seven-minute show and passed the hat for donations from the small sidewalk crowd. The crowd was pleased. I was not really a magician but I was in the know, and I resented his stealing the other guy’s act. I had the feeling that real magicians would too. As the crowd dispersed and the magician turned back to arrange his props for the next show, I approached him and mentioned something about the other magician. “Oh yeah,” he exclaimed, “he’s my idol. I’ve patterned my whole act after his.” And for some reason, I felt that made it okay. I think other magicians hearing this would have had the same reaction. They might not have admired him; they might have looked down on his lack of originality. But his footnoting would have legitimized his act.

Eric Walton cannot get up on stage and say, “A lot of what I’m going to do tonight I took from Ricky Jay.” I suppose he could mention Jay in the notes in the Playbill. And he did, in a way. It turns out that Eric Walton had given an interview to a website where he said that Ricky Jay had been a source of inspiration to him. However, after others noted the similarity of the shows, Walton asked the website to remove that quote.

If students plagiariaze papers, they can be given an F for the paper or even the course. They can even be tossed out of school. If writers plagiarize, they can be sued for real money. But if a performer steals someone else’s act, he is subject only to informal social control

Hug a Thug

Posted by Jay Livingston

September 28, 2006

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal had an article on a strategy used successfully against drug dealers in High Point, North Carolina and presumably elsewhere. Much of the strategy was familiar — undercover buys, videotapes, informants. The new twist was that the police did all they could to keep the dealers from going to prison.

The police sent out word to dealers who had more or less taken over one particular area turning it into a drug market: come to a meeting. The police got to know dealer’s mothers, grandmothers, and others who might be influential and asked them to pressure the dealers to come. A dozen were invited, with a promise of no arrests that night; nine showed up. In room one, clergy and community leaders talked to the dealers about all the harm they were doing the community. The dealers seemed bored. Then they moved to room two, where law enforcement people showed them all the evidence they had right up to arrest warrants filled out completely save for a judge’s signature.

The West End street drug market closed "overnight" and hasn't reopened in more than two years, says Chief Fealy, who was "shocked" at the success. High Point police say they have since shut down the city's two other major street drug markets, using the same strategy.

Not prosecuting people and not housing them in prison for years and years is obviously a lot cheaper than doing so. Yet something about the strategy, despite its success and savings, doesn’t quite sit right with some people. “Hug-a-thug,” some called it, and an Indiana prosecutor quoted in the article said, “Why not slam 'em from the beginning and forget this foolishness?”

The trouble with the program is that it doesn’t perform the symbolic function of clearly marking moral boundaries, and for some reason, that function is very important to a lot of Americans. Our typical way of thinking about a problem is to label it as evil and then declare war on it. The war on drugs is a good example. If you are fighting a war on some absolute evil, you can’t compromise, and you have to be punitive, even if your strategy, at least in terms or rational goal-attainment, is costly and ineffective. At least it makes you feel morally righteous. The moralistic orientation also explains why the war on drugs was (and continues to be) big on enforcement and light on treatment, despite much research showing that treatment is far more cost-effective. If someone is a “thug,” he should be punished, not hugged. To do otherwise would threaten our own moral purity.

Framing a policy as a war against evil does one more important thing. It justifies any means. If what you are fighting is an absolute evil, then it’s all right to violate the usual rules. As many others have pointed out, judges have been very willing to allow police and prosecutors in drug cases to do things that in previous criminal cases would have been unconstitutional if not unthinkable. I recall an article called “This Is Your Bill of Rights on Drugs” detailing some of these judicially approved violations of constitutional rights. (Obviously the war in Iraq and the War on Terror fall into the war-on-evil category.)

Over fifty years ago, sociologist Robin Williams listed a “moralistic” orientation as one of the characteristics of American culture. Basing policy on principles of moral purity may make us feel righteous, but we may be doing so at the cost of actually getting something done. But cultures are not monolithic, and in addition to our American moralism, we also have long history of pragmatism, which in the some cases may be our salvation. At least it saved the West End of High Point, NC.

Covers and Culture

Posted by Jay Livingston

September 27, 2006

Newsweek’s website shows the covers for their international editions. One of these things is not like the others. Can you tell me which one is not like the others? And why?



Is this just a “one-off” (as the British say), a unique occurrence? OK, here are the covers from the previous week (thanks to sociologist-blogger Kieran Healy).

Does Newsweek’s choice tell us something about American culture — that we prefer “lifestyle stories” to real news, especially when the news is bad? Annie Liebowitz, a very successful photographer who does portraits of the famous, here with her children; but spare us “losing Afghanistan.” Successful women— young, pretty, and smiling— but not China or Russia.
I’m reminded of a line from “The House of Sand and Fog.” Ben Kingsley as Behrani, an Iranian immigrant, a man who has worked hard and lived according to principle to achieve some moderate success, speaks to his son: “Americans, they do not deserve what they have. They have the eyes of small children who are forever looking for the next source of distraction, entertainment, sweet taste in the mouth.”

Small Worlds

September 26, 2006

Posted by Jay Livingston

Six degrees of separation. Stanley Milgram (yes, he of the obedience experiments) didn’t coin the phrase, but he may have been the one to come up with the concept. The “small-world” hypothesis, he called it.

I was reminded of it twice yesterday.

1. Last night I went to a memorial service for someone. I had barely known him, but our kids have been in the same schools since kindergarten. Even after this man and his wife split up and he had left, my family remained friendly with his wife and son. But at the service, I saw people I knew not from the schools but from completely different contexts. Here was a couple I knew only because they were friends of a mutual friend, and we’d see them at her house. Another woman I knew asked me almost accusingly, “What are you doing here?” She had known the deceased professionally (they were musicians) but knew me only because our kids had been in the same school. Two different networks leading to the same place. Small world.

2. I think the explanation for the six degrees is that you go from small people to big people and then back down. People fairly far down in some organization will have some connection to those higher up in that organization. Those higher-ups know higher-ups in other organizations, who will in turn have a connection to those lower down.

Example. My wife has a good friend whose husband is high up in some do-gooder federal agency or program (something about the arts perhaps). Yesterday, the friend phoned to say that she’d been at some benefit in Washington at the Kennedy Center focused on this agency. So while her husband was on stage in some official capacity, she was seated in the Presidential box with just a few people, including Laura Bush. For some reason, the President himself decided to pop in, and he chatted in his friendly way with the people there. Politicians are glad-handers— Bush is a good example — they like people, they remember them.

So now I know someone who “knows” Bush. From there it wouldn’t be too difficult to connect me with anyone in the country, maybe anyone on the planet. (We’re talking about “knowing” and “connections,” not liking or agreeing with.) And if you are acquainted with me, then you yourself are only three degrees from Bush.