Like Magic Only Less So!

Above The Below. The name of David Blaine’s latest wheeze is probably the most fascinating thing about it. Mysterious. Intriguing. Enigmatic. It arouses an idle curiosity within us that would probably remain dormant if he’d gone for a less subtle option. Twat In A Box, perhaps. Or Well Hung.

The constraints of deadlines mean that at the time of writing, the creepy young magician has yet to embark on his attention-grabbing stunt. However, all going well, by the time you are reading this he will have spent several days without food suspended from a crane in a Perspex box high over London. For kicks.
From what I can gather from the pretentious, semi-coherent, quasi-mystical ramblings that comprise the promo clips for Above The Below, Blaine intends to spend 44 days and 44 nights dangling over London incarcerated in his seven feet by seven feet by three feet see-through cell. He will have no food, no communication and no distractions. He will have one tube for urination and one for water. Water and will, as he says himself. Water and will and a box of Pampers.
And seeing as the only conceivably interesting thing I can envisage happening during this celebration of deprivation is that Blaine will at some point forget which tube is which and end up with a mouthful of his own feculence, it is astonishing that the rights to Above The Below have been snapped up by both Channel 4 and Sky. It would appear that television has finally eaten itself, a process Blaine’s ravenous body will also, coincidentally enough, begin after – experts say – just three days.
Aged 30, Blaine made his name by performing close-up magic for people like Jack Nicholson at showbiz parties, all of which sleight of hand led to him being offered a couple of TV specials which he promoted amid a welter of publicity by being buried alive on one occasion, and frozen in a big block of ice on another. What with him being a magician by trade, you could be forgiven for assuming that he’d have bamboozled us with miraculous escapes on both occasions, but no, the lazy bastard didn’t even try. Despite this, a global celebrity was born.
Now call me picky, but I expect more from a magician. Imagine, if you will, an escape artist being blindfolded, tied up in a strait jacket and manacled to a chair, only to sit there until such time as he decides he’s bored and asks to be released. That’s no escape artist. Hell, it’s not even an artist. It’s just a bloke chained to a chair. It’s Brian Keenan or Terry Waite in Beirut. Or an IRA informer who, for our next trick, will disappear.
But despite being not so much Harry Houdini as Harry Who, Blaine roams the streets with his coins and his deck of cards, mesmerising passers-by with his seductive patter and his repertoire of ancient conjuring tricks. Admittedly, they’re impressive, but not so astonishing that you couldn’t learn how to master the lot by typing the phrases “David Blaine” and “how the fuck?” into Google.
“We are all capable of infinitely more than we believe,” says Blaine by way of promoting Above The Below, seemingly oblivious to the fact that a man blessed with his apparent ability to levitate
at will should have no need for either a crane or
a Perspex box to help him hover above London for
a month-and-a-half. “We are stronger and more resourceful than we know, and we can endure much more than we think we can. I will have no food, no sex, no phones, no books, no music, no television and no privacy. Above The Below will
be the most extreme exercise in isolation and
physical deprivation ever attempted.”
That subterranean rattle-whirr-rattle-whirr noise you can hear is Bobby Sands turning in his grave.
I suppose to be fair, I have no real problem with any man who wants to live in a box and be suspended over a major European city for any length of time. After all, simply being blessed with the free will to embark on such hare-brained schemes is what separates us from the beasts in the field. What I do find objectionable, however, is the fact that David Blaine can hawk his idea around assorted television networks, safe in the knowledge that he will be paid handsomely to do it for the cameras, even though it is likely to be as entertaining as watching stubble grow. Let’s face it, if you or I suggested it we’d be sectioned.
But who can blame him? With human nature being what it is, the If You Build It They Will Come law of returns will soon kick in and everyone will probably tune in for a look. The cynical among us will wonder what trickery is involved, while the patient among us will explain that there’s no
trickery involved at all. It’s just David Blaine
doing what he does best – impressing us by
turning a non-trick into a trick. He’s not going to be sawn in half, he’s not going to disappear in a puff of smoke (unless somebody starts pelting him with mortars) and at no point will a sheet be whipped off the box to reveal that he has been magically turned into glamorous magician’s
assistant Debbie McGee. Boring.
Having said that, Blaine’s trick does sound extraordinary in theory: “Tonight ladeez and
gennelmen, I will step into this transparent box. Once safely ensconced, I will be raised hundreds
of feet in the air by a crane, at which point
before your very eyes, I will lose half my bodyweight, grow a very long beard and quite
possibly die. Impressive, eh?”
Yes, very. If you could pull it off before
October. Let’s face it, Blaine’s namesake David Copperfield may be a smarmy, ruffle-shirted, leather-trousered block of Kilmeaden in human form, but at least when he walked through the Great Wall Of China he didn’t use a pickaxe and
a shovel.
The campaign to leave David Blaine up there
forever starts here.