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If you lived the explosion of the private ones at the end of the 20th century, you lived the success of ‘Magic without secrets’, a program of Antena 3 in which A masked wizard executed classic illusionism on stage And then it meticulously revealed how he had done them. A broken taboo in front of the cameras that beat its responsible, Val Valentino, mortal enemies within the entertainment world.
However, over time, the masked magician has found unexpected disciples: on the Internet, dozens of magicians They reveal without stopping The great secrets of magic. If illusionism has always interested, it has not stopped interesting that they tell us “how it is done.” And the masked wizard was the first to do it with a mass audience attached to the TV.
Revealed magic
In the 1990s, stage magic was … one thing. The scenario magicians were in the zenith of their success, with television specials that, from the eighties, They showed challenges to the laws of logic that fascinated the audiences. Were the times when David Copperfield The statue of freedom flew or disappeared, in which Siegfried & Roy -There are a tragic accident with a white tiger that would withdraw them from the stages in 2003- signed millionaire contracts in Las Vegas and in which even people like David BlaineAt the end of the decade, I was about to carry magic in an entirely new direction with its ‘Street Magic’.
In that context, ‘magic without secrets’ came, a series of four specials of 1997 that in Spain issued Antena 3 and that did the unthinkable: explain how the apparently impossible classic tricks of illusionism were carried out. In them, a masked magician accompanied by the inevitable female assistants reviewed the entire repertoire of the magicians. As TV was what it was for those times, special attention was paid to the apparently more dangerous numbers: the magician was sawn in two, crossed with swords, swallowed fire, was shot and buried alive. Everything had a trick, of course, and explained.
Double backgrounds, trucades, fire bullets, pussy sabers … The program did not leave triquiñuela without revealingbut the spectator had the feeling that he was accessing knowledge prohibited for a simple reason: the magician hid his features with a mask that remembered those of wrestling. The program was responsible for reminding us the code of the magicians to which the original title of the specials referred: ‘Breaking The Magician’s Code: Magic’s Biggest Secrets Finally Reveled’. Any wizard that broke it would immediately enter a black list of the guild, and would not work again.
Black lists
This detail is not necessarily true: much more prestigious magicians than this masking, such as the magnificent Penn & Teller, who in that decade were also overly unknown media figures, based on their numbers on revealing classic tricks … to take the enigma much further. They had also been controversial in the guild for playing the three balls and vessels With plastic containersallowing the secret to be seen, 0 revealing the Seven principles of magicand had unleashed a controversy that Even today it is between fans and professionals About whether to reveal the tricks power or fulminates magic.
But although Total classics like Paul Daniels They had previously revealed tricks as part of their shows, no one had the media impact of the masked magician. Behind the program was Nash Entertainment, a producer of doccu-realities with titles such as ‘The World’s Deadliest Volcanoes’, ‘World’s Most Dary Dad Rescues’, ‘World’s Scariest Police Shootouts’, ‘When Good Pets Go Bad’ or ‘Prisoners out of control’. ‘Magic without secrets’ became one of his greatest successes: In 1997, the first program was the most watched special in Fox’s history.
But … who was the masked wizard? His identity was revealed in the fourth and last special and as expected, it was not a first -class wizard but rather the opposite. Its history seems the secret origin of what ended up being: a comic supervillain between magicians. Val Valentino had been fond of magic since childhood and when he was a teenager he made a number in an exchange program with schools around the world that gave him a considerable audience among the kids of his age. There he played to reveal the tricks as a way to surprise and enhance the effects. And he discovered that no magic game could compete with revealing the secret.
In the eighties and nineties he had a moderately successful career as a magician, appearing on television specials and acting, of course, in Las Vegas. When the opportunity arose to shoot the specials for Nash recalled the impact their children’s revelations had and decided to use it in their favor: success was considerable, and although Much of the controversy that the programs were awakened was prefabricated by Fox (There was no “threat of death by secret groups of magicians”), there was some demand for scenario magicians such as Andre Kole or Kevin Spencer. They claimed that the masked wizard had made them lose hundreds of thousands of dollars with their revelations.
The courts gave the reason to Valentino, since the secrets of the tricks are not protected by the laws of intellectual property, much less those who had been part of the magical public domain. Although the new century has already entered the show tried to be relaunched with new secrets and new magicians, it did not enjoy the popularity of the four original specials. And in fact, magic, thanks to the Internet, enjoys better health than ever. So no, Val Valentino did not kill magic.
In fact, in social networks like Tiktok there are accounts that are dedicated to revealing without rest Small magic gameswhich has given them an unprecedented scope. As Valentino predicted (and Penn & Teller already knew), knowing the secrets does not ruin anything, because what counts is the execution and ingenuity. The Supervillain at the end was a hero, even in that he looked like a comic character.
Header | Nash Productions
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