{"id":1630,"date":"2017-10-16T11:47:22","date_gmt":"2017-10-16T15:47:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/?p=1630"},"modified":"2022-02-08T09:53:18","modified_gmt":"2022-02-08T14:53:18","slug":"this-is-a-kinda-rapey-application-of-steve-shaws-psychokinetic-touches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/2017\/10\/this-is-a-kinda-rapey-application-of-steve-shaws-psychokinetic-touches\/","title":{"rendered":"This is a Kinda Rapey Application of Steve Shaw&#8217;s &#8220;Psychokinetic Touches&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\">OK, at first blush, this seems like nothing more than a mildly sexist\u2014but still basically harmless\u2014&#8221;invisible touches&#8221; routine: Magician has a volunteer stand with her eyes closed as she pays super-duper sensitive attention to any physical contact she might perceive.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>He then steps well away\u2014way, way too far to have any direct or indirect (e.g., creating a draft, blowing on her, tickling her with threads) contact.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>As witnesses watch (confirming that Magician never makes contact), he is able to make the subject believe she&#8217;s been touched (in this case, that her boobs have been squeezed)\u2014<i>simply by the power of his psychical abilities!<\/i><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><b><i>Tada!<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/DPeSf5tkbKo\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">(Here&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=9fdNcv-q9N0\">another vid of the same dude<\/a>.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>Note that he puts in our heads the notion of an unambiguous boob <b><i>squeeze<\/i><\/b>, but that his volunteers consistently describe a <b><i>tap<\/i><\/b> high on the chest.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>That gap\u2014between his implication that he&#8217;s <b>honking<\/b> their boobs contrasted to the women&#8217;s implication that this is more of a light <b>tap<\/b>\u2014is the tell.)<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Yes, this dude is a creep, and his impinging on women&#8217;s time and space and totally leveraging huge cultural forces that oblige them to smile through bullshit like this.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">But it&#8217;s still basically harmless, right?<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>I mean, he isn&#8217;t <i>actually<\/i> touching their boobs while they are defenseless and non-consenting, right?<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>It&#8217;s just a trick.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Accept for the thing is, he is for real and with his actual physical flesh-and-blood hands, touching these women&#8217;s breasts without their prior consent, and only getting away with it because he&#8217;s manipulating the situation owing to an information (and thus power) imbalance.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>And, in a move that&#8217;s both cheap from a magic performance perspective and indicative of a guilty conscious on the part of an assailant, he mostly cuts from the video the part where he does the touching.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Because he is indeed a fucking creep of the first degree.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"p1\">&#8220;Psychokinetic Touches&#8221; Background<\/h2>\n<p class=\"p1\">Back in the mid-1990s a guy named Steve Shaw was selling an effect called &#8220;Psychokinetic Touches.&#8221;<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>Shaw himself is a really, really interesting guy (as is the pre-Internet\u2014and even current\u2014market in cheaply printed pro-grade performance techniques like these).<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>Shaw he designed Penn &amp; Teller&#8217;s famous bullet catch, although I myself first got wind of him in the 1980s, when I was a kid and he was a teen working with James Randi to <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Project_Alpha\">fool some ESP researchers<\/a>; Shaw caught my imagination then because of how straightforward and cunning his techniques were.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">None of that is really germane, accept for the fact that if you maybe spend some time googling &#8220;Steve Shaw&#8221; and &#8220;Psychokinetic Touches&#8221;, you&#8217;ll dig up a blurry PDF of the old comb-bound booklet explaining his technique (which is marked by the straightforward cunning of Shaw&#8217;s work).<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>If you do so, you&#8217;ll note that in the introduction to that work Shaw explains his inspiration: a routine from the early 1900s that is the totally obvious inspiration for the YouTube creepers stunt.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">I.e., not only is dude a creepy perv, but he&#8217;s also an <i>unoriginal<\/i> creepy perv.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span><i>*sighs*<\/i><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">(I myself got acquainted with Shaw&#8217;s PK Touches after seeing this Peter Boi work it into his bit on Penn &amp; Teller&#8217;s <i>Fool Us<\/i>, which is basically 100% textbook Shaw, and an overall better effect and performance.)<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">At any rate, here&#8217;s an overview of Shaw&#8217;s &#8220;<em><strong>Psychokinetic Touches<\/strong><\/em>&#8221; routine:<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"p1\">Effect<\/h2>\n<p class=\"p1\">The performer selects a volunteer from the audience, and explains that <i>blah-blah<\/i> psychic <i>blah-blah<\/i> ghosts <i>blah-blah<\/i> From Beyond\u2014and for that reason, he is able to <i>physically touch<\/i> a receptive individual with nothing more than his mind.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>He then makes some gestures to &#8220;clear the volunteer&#8217;s aura&#8221; (or whatever) and steps far away.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>Now, standing much too far away to conceivably physical reach the volunteer, and in full view of an audience (who can be surrounding the pair on all sides), the performer makes his cooky touch-touch gestures\u2014and <i>low and behold!<\/i>, the astonished volunteer can confirm <b><i>that she has been touched(!!!)<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<h2 class=\"p1\">Technique<\/h2>\n<p class=\"p1\">I won&#8217;t spoil the whole thing, but <b><i>SPOILER ALERT!!! <\/i><\/b>[1]: Dude is not a psychic or ghost wrangler or whatever.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>Here&#8217;s the basic schtick:<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>The performer gives his little spiel, then <i>has the volunteer close her eyes<\/i>.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>At this stage he explains a few more things\u2014reminding her to be &#8220;psychically receptive&#8221; and super attentive to even the lightest contact.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>He shuts up, does his little &#8220;aura cleansing,&#8221; and steps away to do his mambo-jahambo magical passes and psychic touching, singling out certain parts of the body (the right shoulder, the left elbow\u2014whatever).<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>N.B.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span><b><i>Everything he&#8217;s done since advising her to be super attentive and receptive has happened in absolute silence<\/i><\/b><i>.<\/i><span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>The next time he speaks is to ask &#8220;Have you felt any contact?&#8221;<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>He than has her indicate where that contact was on her body.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>Lo and behold, she reports being touched in all the right places.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span><i>OMFG!<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>How did he do it?!<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>And <\/i>here comes the spoiler:<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><b>HE TOUCHED HER DURING THE &#8220;AURA CLEANING<\/b>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">From the audience&#8217;s perspective, this isn&#8217;t part of the trick yet, so they are <i>not<\/i> being super diligent; he has an easy pass to brush her gently.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>But remember, he&#8217;s fallen silent and the volunteer&#8217;s eyes are closed: She has no frame of reference for what&#8217;s going on, and thus from her perspective everything from when he stops talking on is part of the trick.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>Her perceptions are temporally out-of-synch with the audiences&#8217;, and they have no easy way to rectify that, even after the fact.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=pk-oPfCjyhE\">Here is a more benign version of PK Touches<\/a>, again performed by Peter Boie, but with a slightly disadvantageous (to him) camera angle. Now the tell is more obvious. Watch carefully at 0:49 and 0:52: when the performer waves his hands around to clear the aura he surreptitiously uses his right hand to tap the back of her left shoulder.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>This is largely obscured owing to how he&#8217;s positioned the volunteer relative to the audience and cameras\u2014blocking Shaw suggests in his <i>PK Touches<\/i>.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>The waving-arms misdirect is also straight out of Shaw&#8217;s <i>PK Touch<\/i>.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> (Wondering how Boie pulls off the second PK touch, where the male volunteer feels the ghostly strokes on his nose? You can slow that video down to 1\/4 speed on YouTube, and you&#8217;ll clear see that Boie never touches the dude&#8217;s nose with his hand&#8211;because he doesn&#8217;t. Put the video in slow-mo and watch the performers hands starting at around 1:44, before he approaches the volunteer. When he parts his hands and spreads them far apart, he&#8217;s extended a loop of thread between them, which is what he clearly strokes down the man&#8217;s nose. As I recall, this is <em>not<\/em> part of Shaw&#8217;s original PK Touches. I&#8217;ve read somewhere of something similar done to simulate a touch running down a volunteer&#8217;s arm, but I really like it used here in this way. Excellent misdirection to create a similar effect&#8211;the PK Touch&#8211;in two totally different ways, one of which would seem to eliminate the obvious explanation for the other. <em>Bravo!<\/em>)<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Once you know what to look for, it&#8217;s pretty easy to spot the Creep-o-Perv Magician moving into the &#8220;magic passes&#8221;(\/secret boobie poke) portion of his routine around the 0:34 mark in the video embedded above, when he squares up the girl&#8217;s shoulders.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"p1\">Bad Touches and Bad Jokes<\/h2>\n<p class=\"p1\">And I&#8217;m gonna come correct right here: I don&#8217;t know what annoys me more:<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>A skeevy dude using a decades-old store-bought routine to non-consensually poke girls&#8217; in the bust, or the fact that he has so little respect for his craft that he resorts to cheap &#8220;camera tricks&#8221; to pull it off.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Naw, I take it back:<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>What annoys me most is using a third-rate performance of a first-rate effect to make a jokey pantomime of sexual assault in order to cover up the actual sexual assault you just perpetrated, &#8217;cause it so clearly gets to the heart of what enrages me about the &#8220;Lighten up; it&#8217;s just a joke!&#8221; attitude toward minimizing the crazy-making reality of <a href=\"http:\/\/annarborchronicle.com\/2013\/12\/19\/in-it-for-the-money-happy-holidays\/index.html\">microagressions<\/a>:<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span><i>The problem isn&#8217;t the stupid joke, but the very real assaults the jokes conceal.<\/i><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><!--more--><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">[1] Penn Jillette has this aphorism in one of his books, to the effect of: <b><i>There is an inverse relationship to how impressive an effect is and how fun knowing the secret is.<\/i><\/b><span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>For example, effects that rely on an Elmsley count or Three-of-Clubs Card Force are sorta neat, and if someone shows you how it really works you think &#8220;Oh, that&#8217;s actually pretty clever.&#8221;<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>Meanwhile, when I was a kid David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear on live TV, broadcast nationwide.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>That effect was fucking incredible.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>I was 6 at the time, and my mind was fucking blown.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>My folks&#8217; minds were blown.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>Everyone&#8217;s minds&#8217; were blown.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span><i>Amazing<\/i>.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>The secret to that trick is so fantastically lame\u2014even though it is sort of impressive, simply as a construction project\u2014that you feel cheated knowing it.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>EDIT: Since I started drafting this lil essay, NPR&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thisamericanlife.org\/radio-archives\/episode\/619\/the-magic-show\"><i>This American Life<\/i> has done a show about magic tricks<\/a>, and this specific trick, which more fully illustrates the sad lameness of knowing the gimmick.<\/p>\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>OK, at first blush, this seems like nothing more than a mildly sexist\u2014but still basically harmless\u2014&#8221;invisible touches&#8221; routine: Magician has a volunteer stand with her eyes closed as she pays super-duper sensitive attention to any physical contact she might perceive.\u00a0 He then steps well away\u2014way, way too far to have any direct or indirect (e.g., &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/2017\/10\/this-is-a-kinda-rapey-application-of-steve-shaws-psychokinetic-touches\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;This is a Kinda Rapey Application of Steve Shaw&#8217;s &#8220;Psychokinetic Touches&#8221;&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_share_on_mastodon":"1"},"categories":[11,3],"tags":[107,77,121,53,168,167,169],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1630"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1630"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2955,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1630\/revisions\/2955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}