
Dialectics of Darkness: On “The Myth of Disenchantment” - apollinaire
https://inference-review.com/article/dialectics-of-darkness
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empath75
I think this sort of thing happens on a personal level as well as a societal
level. There’s always a point in your life when you realize that Santa Claus
isn’t real or that there’s no such thing as ‘true love’ and a little bit of
magic just disappears from the world.

What I find interesting is how one continues to enjoy something which has been
disenchanted — like adults who still follow pro wrestling, or people who watch
magicians even if they know how the tricks are performed.

I think one way to continue to entrance people who know how the sausage gets
made is breaking the fourth wall and going meta — Penn and Teller’s cup and
balls routine, for example.

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bena
To speak to your two examples I will say that with pro wrestling, it's still
physically demanding and impressive. More so impressive when you realize that
they're doing everything to not seriously injure each other. If you see it
less as an athletic competition and more like a stuntman exhibition, it
becomes "enchanted" again. I mean, it takes skill, timing, and work to be able
to jump off a turnbuckle, wrap your legs around someone'e head, spin around
with them, and hit the ground without killing one or both of you.

Similar thing with magic. Knowing there are false shuffles, pockets, forces,
double-lifts, etc makes it more impressive when you still can't see it
happening. It's the execution that becomes impressive rather than the result.

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nestorD
Which gets us to this very good article in the Journal of performance magic
(an academic journal published by the university of Huddersfield that offers
some really good reflections on the subject) :
[http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/id/eprint/34495/](http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/id/eprint/34495/)

