Reception and Adaptation: Magic Tricks, Mysteries, Con Games

293 Pages·2014·7.42 MB·English

Reception and Adaptation: Magic Tricks, Mysteries, Con
Games
by
Joseph Daniel Culpepper
A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements
for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Centre for Comparative Literature
University of Toronto
© Copyright by Joseph Daniel Culpepper 2014
Reception and Adaptation: Magic Tricks, Mysteries, Con Games
Joseph Daniel Culpepper
Doctor of Philosophy
Centre for Comparative Literature
University of Toronto
2014
Abstract
This study of the reception and adaptation of magic tricks, murder mysteries, and con games
calls for magic adaptations that create critical imaginative geographies (Said) and writerly
(Barthes) spectators. Its argument begins in the cave of the magician, Alicandre, where a
mystical incantation is heard: "Not in this life, but in the next." These words, and the scene from
which they come in Tony Kushner's The Illusion, provide the guiding metaphor for the
conceptual journey of this dissertation: the process of reincarnation. The first chapter investigates
the deaths of powerful concepts in reader-response theory, rediscovers their existence in other
fields such as speech-act theory, and then applies them in modified forms to the emergent field of
performance studies. Chapter two analyzes the author as a magician who employs principles of
deception by reading vertiginous short stories written by Jorge Luis Borges. I argue that his
techniques for manipulating the willing suspension of disbelief (Coleridge) and for creating
ineffable oggetti mediatori (impossible objects of proof) suggest that fantastic literature (not
magical realism) is the nearest literary equivalent to experiencing magic performed live. With
this Borgesian quality of magic's reality-slippage in mind, cross-cultural and cross-media
comparisons of murder mysteries and con games are made in chapter three. Crime adaptations by
Roald Dahl, Alfred Hitchcock, Pedro Almodóvar, David Mamet and Ricky Jay are analyzed as
different incarnations of specific source texts to compare techniques of deception across multiple
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media and to gauge whether these stories produce critical readers/spectators or naive ones.
Chapter four accepts the challenge of performing magic that produces writerly spectators by
physically reconstructing, narratively adapting and socio-historically questioning a nineteenth-
century stage illusion through practice-based research. The scholarly praxis of magic as a
performing art is further articulated in the experimental manifesto with which this dissertation
concludes.

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Acknowledgments
This dissertation is the result of an intense period of growth and change in my life that occurred
thanks to the love, support, and inspiration channeled into its pages by various communities. All
of them have contributed in their own ways to who I am and what you are about to read.
The seeds of this work were sown in my hometown of Sacramento, California. I thank
my mother, my father, my sister, and my grandmother for teaching me perseverance, discipline,
and the ability to overcome seemingly impossible obstacles. I thank Nathan Livni who showed
me my first real card trick, became my first performance partner, and has been my best friend
ever since. I am grateful to Steve, Don, and Leora Johnson who generously gave me my first job
at their wonder-filled magic shop — Grand Illusions. It was there where I began to see the world
through the eyes of a magician.
These shimmering roots spread to the coastal redwoods of UC Santa Cruz, where Kasey
Mohammed, Peter Gizi and Gildas Hamel helped me realize that some poems are magic spells.
Hervé le Mansec first taught me to truly speak and think in another language. This allowed me to
escape the straightjacket of my native English and fundamentally changed my understanding of
how language shapes our subjective realities. I was also lucky, as an undergraduate student in a
graduate seminar, to have Harry Berger Jr. teach me how to apply philosophical concepts to the
study of literature. It was his suggestion to apply to the Centre for Comparative Literature at the
University of Toronto for my MA and PhD.
The Centre is where writing a dissertation on magic and storytelling suddenly became a
viable, living project. This would have been impossible without the patient guidance and wisdom
of my PhD committee. Eva-Lynn Jagoe, with whom I first savored the mystifying stories written
by Jorge Luis Borges, supervised the dissertation with grace, steel and affection. She has
consistently taught me how to be an honest critic of my work. Linda Hutcheon, through her
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insightful, thorough and challenging feedback, strengthened nearly every aspect of this
manuscript from start to finish. She has also modeled for me, and many others, how to be a
consummate professional. Stephen Johnson saved me and this project in a number of ways.
Without his expertise as a performance studies scholar and his enthusiastic support of my
practice-based magic research, my study of “The Sphinx” and other illusions would have
remained purely theoretical. Many thoughtful mentors and colleagues helped me to read and edit
partial or complete chapters as they were produced: Neil ten Kortenaar, Charlie Keil, James
Cahill, Martin Zeilinger, Keavy Martin, Baryon Posadas, Joshua Nichols, Ronald Ng, Sarah
O’Brien, Rachel Stapleton, Daniel Brielmaier, Adleen Crappo, Kate Sedon, Lauren Beard,
Matteo Scardellato, Dylan Gordon, Catherine Schwartz, John Mayberry, Jane Freeman, Sasha
Kovacs, Natalie Mathieson, and others all contributed. Will Straw’s external report and lively
comments during my defense gave the dissertation the final intellectual push it needed for me to
consider it done.
John Fraser, master of Massey College, and David Ben, artistic director of Magicana,
each provided me with places to live and libraries to study in over the years. These gentlemen
also invited me and my work into their respective communities. John introduced me to many
brilliant Junior and Senior Fellows at Massey who improved my understanding of this project by
listening to it and comparing it to similarities in their work. A few who come to mind now are
Marcin Kedzior, Dylan Cantwell-Smith, Cara Mckibbin, Anna Shamaeva, Donna Vakalis,
Patrick Boyle, Paul Furgale, Claire Battershill, Cillian O’Hogan, Jordan Guthrie, Olivier Sorin,
Davin Lengyel, Katie Mullins, Hanah Chapman, Tim Barrett, Josh Elcombe, Brys Stafford,
Heather Jessup, Geoffrey Little, Jessica Duffin Wolfe, Heather Sheridan, Michael Valpy, and
Val Ross. I am proud to call all of these talented individuals, and many others, friends.
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Many magicians have contributed knowledge and feedback that helped to shape the
contents of this dissertation. I sincerely thank Jim Steinmeyer, Edwin Dawes, Peter Lane, Bill
Goodwin, Gabe Fajuri, Julie Eng, Bill Kalush, Ricky Smith, Noah Levine, Nathan Kranzo,
Christian Cagigal, Will Houstoun, Lee Asher, Aaron Fisher, and Alex Slemmer from the North
American and English magic communities. Travel grants from Massey College and U of T’s
School of Graduate Studies funded my research in Buenos Aires where the second chapter was
written. Roberto Mansilla and Pablo Zanatta introduced me to the vibrant history of Argentina’s
magic during that visit. In Barcelona, Gabi Pareras and Joaquin Matas welcomed me into their
local scene like a long lost brother. Gabi’s approach to combining critical theory, literature and
the performance of magic gave me a strong sense of solidarity at a time when I felt very alone.
I wish to thank the performance studies scholars, arts organizations and variety
performers whose support made the final transformation of this dissertation (and my career)
possible. I have become a praxis-based scholar thanks to Antje Budde, Nik Cesare, my dear Ars
Mechanica co-founders (Vojin, Natalie, Sasha, and Myrto), Bruce Barton, Moynan King, Shelley
Liebembuk, Paul Babiak, Paul Stoesser, Sarah Kriger, members of the Accademia dell’Arte (in
Arezzo, Italy), The Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council, Performance Studies
International, the Digital Dramaturgy Lab, New Gendai Workstation, the Circus Academy, and
the Toronto Juggling club. Finally, I thank Jessamine Trueman — the circus artist whose love
made the final pages of this particular chapter in my life fly by.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments .......................................................................................................................... iv
Table of Contents .......................................................................................................................... vii
List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ ix
Prologue Reincarnated Texts and Concepts: Towards Faithful and Free Adaptations ........ x
Chapter 1 Deaths and Reincarnations of Reception Theory .................................................... 1
1 A Genealogy of Rebirths: From Theories of Reception to Theories of Adaptation ................. 7
1.1 Rezeptionsästhetik: Origins, Critiques and International Travels ................................................... 8
1.2 Deaths — Post-Structuralism, Polemics and Passing Away ......................................................... 12
2 Reincarnations — Intertextuality, Semiotics and Performance Studies ................................. 15
2.1 Barthes, Inter-texte-ualité, and the Scriptible/Lisible in S/Z ......................................................... 20
2.2 Eco’s Open Text, the Model Reader, and the Double-Model Reader ........................................... 30
2.3 Performance Studies I: Disbelief, Dénégation and Defamiliarization .......................................... 36
2.4 Performance Studies II: Performative Language and Interpretive Communities ......................... 55
3 From Theoretical Underpinnings to a Practice of Fantastic Literature .................................. 72
Chapter 2 Borges: The Author as Magician, the Reader as Spectator .................................. 78
1 Dazzling the Reader: Suspension of Disbelief in Fantastic Literature and “El Aleph” (“The
Aleph”) ................................................................................................................................... 83
2 Exploding Todorov's Model: “La muerte y la brújula” (“Death and the Compass”) and "El
disco" (“The Disk”) ................................................................................................................ 94
3 Conjuring Objects of Proof: “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” .................................................. 103
4 Playing God: The Detective Story, Smoke and Political Trickery ....................................... 111
5 From Authenticity to Legitimacy ......................................................................................... 119
Chapter 3 Criminal Adaptations: Hidden Intertexts in the Murder Mystery and the Con
Game .............................................................................................................................. 124
1 Free Adaptations: Successful Aesthetic and Cultural Infidelities ........................................ 126
1.1 Various Incarnations of Dahl's “Lamb to the Slaughter” ............................................................ 128
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1.2 Sleight-of-Screen vs. Sleight-of-Pen as Sleight-of-Hand ............................................................ 132
1.3 Cross-cultural and Cross-media Adaptation and Reception ........................................................ 139
1.4 Is an Ethics of Adaptation and Citation Possible? ...................................................................... 143
2 Ethical and Unethical Adaptations — Mamet, Jay and the Con Game ................................ 146
2.1 Putting the ‘Con’ in ‘Lexicon’: Jay and Mamet .......................................................................... 153
2.2 The Spectator as Victim: Mark-focused Reception Theory ........................................................ 163
2.3 Adapting Psychological Principles of the Con Game to Film ..................................................... 169
3 Seeing Like Criminals, Seeing Like Victims, Seeing Like Magicians ................................ 175
Chapter 4 “The Sphinx” and “The Sage”: Reception and Adaptation in Practice ............ 180
1 “The Sphinx”: Written and Embodied Research .................................................................. 184
2 Egyptian Hall: Imaginative Geographies, Colonialist Collectors and Reality-Slippage ...... 201
3 “The Sage Duban”: Narrative Adaptation as Critical and Aesthetic Response ................... 232
4 Thoughts on Magic Adaptation: A Call for Critical Imaginative Geographies and Writerly
Spectators .............................................................................................................................. 243
Epilogue and Manifesto ............................................................................................................ 245
Works Consulted ....................................................................................................................... 260

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List of Figures
Fig. 1. Todorov’s categaories of the fantastic. .............................................................................. 85

Fig. 2. Adapted model of Todorov’s classifications. .................................................................... 98

Fig. 3. Adaptations and Migrations of "Lamb to the Slaughter". ............................................... 130

Fig. 4. Woodcut illustration from London’s Illustrated Times, 18 October 1865. ..................... 187

Fig. 5. Portrait of Joseph Stoddart as Colonel Stodare. .............................................................. 188

Fig. 6. Frontispiece of Hoffmann’s Modern Magic (1877, second edition). .............................. 189

Fig. 7. Miniature model of the optical illusion used in Stodare’s “The Sphinx” ........................ 191

Fig. 8. Photograph of table from “The Sage Duban”. ................................................................. 192

Fig. 9. Aquatint of the facade of Bullock’s Museum. ................................................................. 206

Fig. 10. Bust of Ramses II in the British Museum. ..................................................................... 217

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Prologue
Reincarnated Texts and Concepts: Towards Faithful and Free
Adaptations
Yet if the only form of tradition, of handing down, consisted in following the
ways of the immediate generation before us in a blind or timid adherence to its
successes, “tradition” should positively be discouraged.
— T.S. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent”
“Not in this life, but in the next” is the final line of Tony Kushner’s 1988 adaptation of
Pierre Corneille’s seventeenth-century play L’Illusion comique (83). This proclamation of rebirth
is spoken by the Amanuensis, who is the servant of Alicandre — the play’s magician. The cycle
to which it refers is one of reincarnation, performance and adaptation. Therefore, it is an ideal
incantation with which to begin a study of how magic, in particular, and other deceitful
performances, in general, are adapted to various storytelling media through which they are then
received by readers as well as spectators. The Amaneunsis makes his statement after a man
named Pridamant has engaged Alicandre’s otherworldly powers to locate his long-lost son,
Clindor. After the magician consults his version of a crystal ball, in this case a crystal pool of
water, eerily life-like figures appear revealing Clindor’s adventures, misadventures and,
ultimately, his violent murder. Pridamant, convinced that these visions are real, woefully mourns
the death of his son.
Pridamant and the audience then learn that Clindor is not actually dead. He is an actor.
Clindor is a professional deceiver, or what Oscar Wilde would call a “perfectly magnificent liar”
(Wilde 10-11), and we the audience have been watching his various performances along with
Pridamant as if they were real events. The sorcerer Alicandre turns out to be the biggest deceiver
of all in The Illusion. He is the one who consciously presents Clindor’s theatrically framed
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