Has David Blaine Peaked?

If you go to YouTube.com and type in David Blaine you will find more parodies of Blaine than you will of Blaine himself. In the magic journals they were highly critical of his last stunt, or I should say his second to the last stunt, namely the underwater "holding-your-breath" stunt. Many were saying that he is not a magician at all but a stunt man. But I think we would be careful not to criticize so quickly.

I will grant you that before Blaine was known, he sought out his own niche in magic. His dead-pan, "stoner" hip street magic guy persona radically changed the face of magic in the public eye. He started the "walk-up-to-a-person" MTV type of magic and if you will notice, most of the DVD's for magicians today have this kind of flavor. Those of you who were around back in the 60's remember how Don Alan changed close-up magic, as well as Channing Pollock setting the stereo-type for dove magicians. Then came Henning, and everyone was doing Henning. Then came Copperfield with his open collar and hairy chest. Then Lance Burton came along- everyone now seems to be throwing doves from his sleeves. I think it is just that certain magicians find their niche and find it successful so they attempt to duplicate it. It happened with Houdin and will happen again in the future. And it happens in literature as well. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown went off the charts and suddenly publishers were putting out books all with anti-Catholic church, anti-orthodox material. It's nothing new.

In the clip below, watch David do his version of the watch steal. It is a bit on the lower end of the technical side (Chappy Brazil's video- available from me at Magicetc@comcast.net is much better). The shaking of the hands hides the feel of the steal. I personally don't think you have to do it that much but he succeeds.