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Brown’s work shows a commitment to ‘debunking’ the claims made by individuals and groups to substantiate esoteric and paranormal abilities such as clairvoyance, mediumship, and faith healing. Brown positions himself as a sceptic, on the side of rationality and truth- that is, on the audience’s side, vigilant against the predation of professional deceivers. In Séance, a live broadcast television special, Brown selected twelve applicants, all students, to undertake a séance in an abandoned university building in London. He supplies them with a supernatural story about a group of students who died in a suicide pact in the building during the 1970s, informing them that inexplicable paranormal activity has subsequently been observed at the site. Throughout the programme, the participants reenact spiritualist practices that were popular in the Victorian era, communicating with one of the deceased, named ‘Jane’, through a Ouija board, and even through the body of one of the participants who acts as a medium. As with The Heist, Séance is concerned with reenactment as a way of producing desire for knowledge in the present, this time regarding the ways in which evidence of supernatural abilities can be convincingly faked, also making visible

Brown’s affinity with the theatrical past of performance magic.

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claim to supernatural abilities. The development of spiritualism and esoteric belief during the 1860s and 1870s was an especially fertile period for a mutually dependent, if outwardly antagonistic relationship between stage magicians and psychics. This history has been extensively chronicled elsewhere (Kasson 2001; Steinmeyer 2003; Natale 2016). Magicians with a pro-

‘rationalist’ agenda often turned to performance, showing that manifestations of such abilities could be faked by using conjuring methods to produce the same, convincing effects as the so- called charlatans. In Steinmeyer’s account of performance magic’s Victorian and early twentieth century Golden Age, the brothers William and Ira Davenport claimed that their 'Spirit Cabinet' act enlisted the help of supernatural entities to throw flour and play instruments, while their hands and feet were securely bound. Several magicians copied their act and claimed to show the mundane truths behind the supposedly paranormal feats, some of whom had worked with the brothers, like Harry Kellar and William Fay (Steinmeyer 65). More recently, James Randi’s

debunking efforts have notoriously targeted self-proclaimed psychic Uri Gellar, reproducing Gellar's metal-bending abilities on American television using conjuring techniques to demonstrate this particular feat does not require paranormal powers (Exposed: Magicians, Psychics, and Frauds). Brown, too, uses performances to debunk both Victorian-era spiritualist practices and more contemporary paranormal phenomena.

Such restagings are often framed in Brown’s work as experiments before the audience, decontextualising them from their initial performance circumstances or creating a fictional history for them. The use of a mind-reading automaton in the theatrical performance Svengali (2012) refers indirectly to the mechanical puppet Psycho conceived by Golden Era magicians John Nevil Maskelyne, author of Our Magic, and John Algernon Clarke. However, Brown does not acknowledge this debt to the past, so that an audience without prior knowledge of this particular episode in performance magic’s history would experience it only as referring to the present moment. In 2009, Brown also performed a routine he named the 'Oracle' act and presented it as a resurrection of a Golden Era routine, that is in fact a variation of a contemporary staple mentalist act known broadly as ‘Q&A’ (An Evening of Wonders). Here, a fictional history is employed as a narrative device that invites the audience to view the performance as a type of historical artefact being demonstrated before them, so causing the past to rupture into the present. Through the frame of experiment and demonstration, a slippage in time takes place where Brown becomes an intermediary between past and present, creating an ambiguity regarding the reality status of the spectacle. Brown opens Séance with a short piece to camera which includes the lines, ‘I don’t

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believe in spiritualism, personally I find it quite ugly. But I am interested in the sorts of techniques

used by fraudulent Victorian mediums and I’m interested to see whether these techniques can be

used to affect a modern, sceptical audience’. This opens up the potential for a range of engagements, including scepticism. However, it also uses the visceral, sensational mode of spectacle that Tom Gunning characterises as the aesthetic of attraction (‘An Aesthetic of Astonishment’ 84). In Séance,the dead make their presence felt in more ways than one, in the restaging of past performance practices, and in soliciting an affective response from viewers and participants that unsettles the apparent reality status of the performance as ‘only’ demonstration

or experiment.

Although Brown confirms that no supernatural activity is taking place, the show’s

construction nevertheless creates uncertainty about this. This happens especially when participants seem to know things about ‘Jane’ that seem too specific to be guesses, for example

an automatic writing exercise that reveals the city where she lived, and moments when their screams, shudders, and jumps seem to express real fear. In one particularly charged moment, Brown and the group ‘discover’ that the room in which one of their number has been isolated, although connected through radio and CCTV, used to be ‘Jane’s’ room. Brown expresses concern

for the isolated individual, Sally, and tries to resume radio contact with her. This measure understandably raises the participants’ levels of fear and anxiety. They beg Brown, ‘Don’t tell her’,

asking him to avoid scaring her by disclosing that the room she is occupying was ‘Jane’s’ room. A

sequence of events follows that draws attention to the mediating apparatus of the radio and

television monitor; initially, Sally does not seem to hear Brown’s voice over the radio, causing the

participants further dismay, then a sharp screech from the equipment makes the participants (perhaps the viewer included) jump and scream in shock, before audio contact is resumed. Brown informs Sally that someone is coming to fetch her from the room, but does not tell her why. She seems relieved and agrees, then screams without warning, seemingly recoiling from something, and clasps her hands over her ears. She pleads with Brown, ‘Will you just come quick?’ and ‘Don’t let anything happen to me’. The sequence invites a direct empathic connection between the viewer and participants in a shared affective moment of shock and concern, while the layers of mediation draw attention to the constructed nature of the scenario, reminding the viewer it does not represent an unmediated reality.

To add to this uncertainty, viewers are also invited to participate at home with the

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creating their own Ouija boards, and phone in to report any strange occurrences. Messages from viewers played after ad breaks report visions of deceased loved ones, feeling touches by invisible hands, witnessing objects moving on their own in their homes, and receiving the same results of

the ‘experiments’ as do the participants. These suggest that at least some viewers are identifying with the participants in the show. In soliciting their participation and identification in this way, the show goes beyond enjoying the spectacle of the fear of others and the paranormal reenactment. Viewers are encouraged to feel that they, too, are a part of Séance.

How does the purpose claimed for Séance, of debunking paranormal phenomena, align with this mode of engagement, which seems to suggest that such phenomena could be real? The apparent misalignment between magicians’ investment in illusion and their commitment to debunking provoked a Guardian writer to remark,

there's something paradoxical about stage magic as a vehicle for campaigning rationalism. Because the currency of this art form isn't reason, it's wonder... If they succeeded in curing us all of credulousness, after all, none of them would ever work again. (Logan)

The tactic of using performance as a method of debunking pulls viewers into the uncertain territory of the 'magic assemblage', During’s notion of 'the medley of entertainments routinely associated with magic in the space or the business of production', associated 'less by virtue of any formal or abstract features that they have in common than by their contiguity to one another in day-to-day commercial show business' (69; 66). The 'magic assemblage' can include attractions that are 'fictive and non-fictive, mimetic and non-mimetic, active or passive, visceral or intellectual', ranging from rollercoasters to mind-reading, ghost-raising to scientific demonstrations, but always gathered around a 'core' of conjuring practices (During 66-7). According to During, all these entertainments are part of the same commercial matrix, in close spatial and conceptual proximity to each other. For Simone Natale, too, nineteenth-century spiritualism’s prominence should be understood in terms of its inclusion ‘in a growing market for leisure activities and spectacular attractions’, in which the theatrical character of séances and sittings and the business practices of spiritualists were indistinct from other types of spectacle (2):

‘that séances were presented as authentic manifestations of spirit agency, therefore, does not distinguish them from spectacular attractions’, but rather shows ‘they were inserted within a broader array of shows and exhibits that played with the blurring distinctions between

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spiritualists differed, ‘through an unending interplay of exposures and counter-exposures, stage magicians and spiritualists created not two contrasting discourses but rather a fundamentally

coherent one that mutually reinforced their public visibility’ (Natale 79). From this perspective, it makes sense that the reenactment of paranormal phenomena performed by Kellar and Fay did not suffocate the Davenports’ 'Spirit Cabinet' or the assemblage of spiritualist performances associated with it. Rather, these reenactments gave the ‘Spirit Cabinet’ the oxygen it needed to become a part of magicians' repertoire at the time. These debunking performances could be understood as part of the same spectacular entertainment culture as psychics and mediums, rather than forming an opposing one, thereby resolving the ‘paradox’ that Logan describes.

Although During and Natale are concerned with the mutual visibility and creative influence of nineteenth-century paranormal spectacles and the ‘magic assemblage’, it is a useful model to apply to Brown’s works in the present. While Séance promises to debunk spiritualist practices by reenacting them, thereby producing knowledge of how supernatural events can be falsified, the programme seems ultimately to offer a different form of mystery and wonder by

affirming Brown’s capacity to manipulate people’s experiences of reality. At the end of Séance, Brown finally reminds the assembled group- and the watching viewers- that no paranormal events have really been taking place. Instead, he informs them that he has been giving the group subtle cues about what to expect from their experience and how to respond to it, which have influenced their reactions and interpretations. The final image of the episode is of the actor who plays ‘Jane’

being escorted by Brown inside the building to meet the group, so they can verify for themselves that the story is fictional. It ends with the following coda appearing as text on screen: ‘[b]oth Derren and the production team ensured that all of the participants were well cared for and comfortable when filming was over. They left exhilarated and pleased to have taken part, fully

understanding the nature of the experiment’. What seems to be truly astonishing about the programme is that Brown was able to generate this range of affective states among the group of participants, despite repeated assertions that whatever paranormal events they experienced were not real. However, this does not account for viewers’ own reports of paranormal events

witnessed during the show. Were these reports also staged? If not, can they too be explained

through Brown’s influence? If not, what is the alternative? In leaving such questions open, Séance

could be considered to enrich the magic assemblage, giving audiences a way into the revolving door of belief and scepticism (Hill 75). Debunking performances show, rather than tell, creating

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that stimulates curiosity and wonder in believers and nonbelievers alike’ (Natale 171).

Moreover, debunking performances demonstrate that paranormal abilities and events

can be faked, not that they all are faked. This allows Brown himself to adopt an open-minded stance with regard to paranormal phenomena. In a 2010 documentary in which he shadows the medium Joe Power, he states that 'the claims that [Power] makes are quite big, quite serious. [I] would love it to be true, would love to be blown away by what he does, and I'm really hoping that I'll see and hear stuff that I can't explain' (Derren Brown Investigates). Here, Brown emphasises his own position as open-minded and even keen to see evidence of supernatural abilities. He does not comment on the existence of paranormal phenomena in general, but on the specific claims of individuals and exploitative industrial practices. In Séance, people are invited to witness spiritualist practices for themselves, framed as reenactments independent of their original Victorian performance context, and offered knowledge about how such events can be convincingly faked to form their own future judgements. Brown also does not have to acknowledge his complicity in this world of illusion, as he is framing these performances as opportunities for knowledge production. In other words, he and other magicians who perform debunking appear to offer audiences the knowledge to navigate the matrix of fiction and reality while enhancing the magic assemblage further, condemning individual practices or practitioners without ruling out the possibility that all such practices are fraudulent.

The notions of participation introduced here need to be explored more closely in order to more fully understand the implications of using ‘ordinary people’ in Brown’s work. The texts to be discussed in the remainder of this chapter consist of intricately plotted fictional scenarios staged for a single, unsuspecting participant. To acknowledge this, the language of the rest of this

chapter shifts once more from discussing ‘participants’ to ‘protagonists’, as these audience

members are unknowingly recruited to take the leads in stories that are scripted for them. Ironically, considering the degree to which they are managed and monitored, these programmes play a pedagogic role of teaching protagonists and viewers about the importance of

empowerment and taking control over one’s life. They seem thus to carry the logic of reaction- seeking street magic to an extreme, their interventions seeking a permanent transformation rather than a moment of shock or astonishment. The following section discusses the intertextual strategies used to contextualise and shape these scenarios, so that Brown’s work can be situated

within a broader frame of media references as well as signalling a commitment to the staged fictions of performance magic.

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