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Magic, Modernity, and Orientalism: Conjuring representations of Asia*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2014

CHRISTOPHER GOTO-JONES
CHRISTOPHER GOTO-JONES*
Affiliation:
Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article inquires into the cultural and political nexus of secular (stage) magic, modernity, and Orientalism at the turn of the twentieth century. It argues that these three arenas interacted in important and special ways to both shape and reflect the politics of knowledge of the period. In doing so, it draws attention to the ways in which secular magic has been overlooked as a historical phenomenon and highlights its utility in furthering our understanding of the great problematics of modernity and Orientalism; in particular, it suggests that magic actually provides an unusually vibrant and clear lens through which to view the politics of the Other and through which to explore issues of tradition and the modern.

Focusing on two historical cases—the ‘Indian Rope Trick’ challenge issued by the Magic Circle in the 1930s and the astonishing ‘duel’ between the ‘Chinese’ magicians Chung Ling Soo and Ching Ling Foo in 1905—this article considers the ways in which discourses of origination, popular ideas about esotericism and the ‘mystic East’, and questions of technical competence interacted and competed in the culture politics of the early twentieth century.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 48 , Issue 6 , November 2014 , pp. 1451 - 1476
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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Footnotes

*

The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) for awarding the ‘VICI’ grant that has made the research for this article possible, in the context of the overall project: ‘Beyond Utopia—New Politics, the Politics of Knowledge, and the Science Fictional Field of Japan’.

References

1 There is a wide and interesting literature on this question. Arguably the field begins with the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, whose influential 1925 essay, ‘Magic, Science, and Religion’ is a landmark. (Reprinted in Malinowski, B. (1992). Magic, Science, and Religion, and Other Essays, Waveland Press, IllinoisGoogle Scholar). Two influential, recent texts from a more historical perspective have been: Styers, R. (2004). Making Magic: Religion, Magic, & Science in the Modern World, Oxford University Press, OxfordCrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tambiah, S. (1990). Magic, Science and Religion and the Scope of Rationality, Cambridge University Press, CambridgeGoogle Scholar.

2 It has always been the case that certain esoteric traditions and sects within Christianity (and other religions) have been exceptions to this principle. In general these have been represented as heterodox schools.

3 The classic study in this area, now rather dated, is Thomas, K. (1971). Religion and the Decline of Magic, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, LondonGoogle Scholar. An excellent and recent general introduction is Goodrick-Clarke, N. (2008). The Western Esoteric Traditions: A Historical Introduction, Oxford University Press, OxfordCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Such debates are the substance of recent work, such as that by McWilliams, S. (2012). Magical Thinking: History, Possibility, and the Idea of the Occult, Continuum, London and New YorkGoogle Scholar; Lehrich, C. (2007). The Occult Mind: Magic in Theory and Practice, Cornell University Press, Ithaca and LondonGoogle Scholar. Bell, K. (2012). The Magical Imagination: Magic and Modernity in Urban England, 1780–1914, Cambridge University Press, CambridgeCrossRefGoogle Scholar, explores the empowerment of urbanites through the ‘magical imagination’.

5 In fact, this tendency is not unique to the modern period. In his account of the Persian wars, Herodotus attributed to the Persian Magi magical powers, while calling on the Greeks to embrace reason. The apparent Orientalism of Herodotus is later picked up by the twentieth century anthropologist Malinowski, whose Argonauts are a clear reference to the Greek adventurers and bearers of rationality who discover the magical beyond the margins of civilization. Malinowski, B. (1922; reprinted 1978). Argonauts of the Western Pacific, Routledge, London and New YorkGoogle Scholar.

6 During, S. (2002). Modern Enchantments: The Cultural Power of Secular Magic, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, p. 39Google Scholar.

7 The association of women with the Orient and the Orient with the feminine has been central to the discourse. In recent years, new perspectives on this issue have been presented by thinkers such as Lewis, R. (1995). Gendering Orientalism: Race, Femininity and Representation, Routledge, London and New YorkGoogle Scholar.

8 For the influential theorist and performer Coco Fusco, the colonial practice of bringing back to Europe various ‘specimen’ for display and entertainment rendered the fringes of empire into ‘living expressions of colonial fantasies’, fuelling a contorted image of the non-Western world in the popular imagination of Europeans and Americans. Fusco, C. (1994). The Other History of Intercultural Performance, TDR: The Drama Review, 38:1, p. 149CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Said, E. (1978). Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London and New YorkGoogle Scholar.

10 From the early seventeenth century until 1853, Japan remained under a formal policy of sakoku (closed country). It was only after the forcible opening of its borders that open trade and communication from Japan recommenced in the mid-nineteenth century, although evidence also suggests that sakoku was neither perfectly nor uniformly observed prior to that point.

11 In recent years, the power of self-Orientalism is often associated with the imperatives of the tourist industry. It is also visible in the cinema and other commercial activities, where the importance of being recognizably (that is, stereotypically) from a particular country or tradition is a market asset. Famous examples would include the explosion of ‘Chinese’ films modelled after Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, 2002.

12 See, for instance, Frazer, J. (1890, 2 volumes; reprinted 1911–15, 12 volumes). The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, Macmillan, LondonGoogle Scholar; Malinowski, ‘Magic, Science, and Religion’, reprinted in Malinowski, Magic, Science, and Religion, and Other Essays; Mauss, M. (1902; reprinted 2001). A General Theory of Magic, Routledge, London and New YorkGoogle Scholar.

Provocative work in this kind of direction was done by the great philosopher Walter Benjamin, who was fascinated by the ways in which the processes of modernity and modernization generated opportunities and sites for the surfacing of the so-called ‘primitive’ within modernity itself. As Christopher Stahl puts it, ‘Benjamin believed that the modern imitative technologies staged fantastic images of the Other, drawn from the recesses of the cultural imagination, which had material and political effect.’ Stahl, C. (2008). ‘Outdoing Ching Ling Foo’, in Coppa, F., Hass, L. and Peck, J. (eds), Performing Magic on the Western Stage, Palgrave, New York, p. 154Google Scholar.

13 This climate provided an enabling condition for contemporaneous commentators to wonder whether the stage performances of ‘Chinese’ magicians were really tricks, or whether they were authentic cases of ‘real magic’. David Abbott, for instance, who witnessed a performance of the torn and restored paper trick by the (authentically) Chinese Ching Ling Foo in 1909, reported for the April issue of the magazine The Sphinx that he was unsure whether it was really a trick, or whether it was made possible by ‘some queer Chinese substance that he could fuse together’ (p. 9). With thanks to Christopher Stahl (ibid) for finding this quotation.

14 The fascinating connections between technological advancements and magical innovation are entertainingly documented in Dawes, E. (1984). The Great Illusionists, David & Charles, New JerseyGoogle Scholar.

15 Further evidence of the association of magic with science in this period is provided by the fact that the eminent science journal Scientific American carried regular articles detailing the technology of magic and famous stage illusions. Many of the pieces were later collected into an edited volume by Hopkins, A. (1897). Magic, Stage Illusions, and Scientific Diversions, including Trick Photography, Munn & Co., New YorkGoogle Scholar. Hopkins acknowledges the contributions made by Robinson to the articles, and Robinson himself had written previously under his own name in the same journal. Both the articles and the book caused something of stir within the magic community; Steinmeyer notes the irritation of Harry Kellar, for instance, who felt that Robinson had betrayed his tricks to Hopkins (Steinmeyer, J. (2005). The Glorious Deception: The Double Life of Chung Ling Soo, Carroll & Graff, New York, p. 173)Google Scholar.

16 The stereotype associated with this being the witch from European and American history or, combining these categories to some extent, the gypsy in the contemporary period. As Simon During notes in his excellent monograph, ‘One reason why entertainment magic came into the hands of white men during this period of expansion was that belief in real magic was still ascribed to those at the margins.’ During, Modern Enchantments, p. 107.

17 This tension between the disenchantment and the counter re-enchantment of modernity is captured well in Landy, J. and Saler, M. (eds) (2009). The Re-Enchantment of the World: Secular Magic in a Rational Age, Stanford University Press, StanfordCrossRefGoogle Scholar. An impressive intervention on the side of enchantment is During, Modern Enchantments.

18 Houdini appears to have started his crusade while still president of the Society of American Magicians (whose cardinal rule was: Do Not Expose!), when he published an article exposing some of the practices of so-called spirit-mediums in 1922. Silverman, K. (1997). Houdini: The Career of Ehrich Weiss, HarperPerennial, New York, p. 285Google Scholar. His campaign took him all the way to the White House, where his proposed bill (to criminalize fraudulent spiritualism) was eventually defeated, apparently because of the number of politicians involved in the spiritualist movement.

19 In his early years, even Houdini participated in this practice, appearing as a ‘Hindu fakir’ in a turban to perform ‘Indian magic’ at the 1893 Chicago Fair. However, three more substantial and famous examples would be: Ben Ali Bey, who was really the German actor and magician Max Auzinger (1839–1928). His stage name was adopted after a brief alliance with the unsuccessful ‘Orientalization’ of his real name, as Maxitan A-Uzin-Ger. Auzinger was a pioneer of the ‘Black Art’ that became very influential at the end of the nineteenth century, in which a carefully front-lit (but otherwise dark) stage enabled anything covered in black fabric to remain invisible to the audience (including the magician's assistant). Sometimes, this effect is amplified by directing a light into the eyes of the audience, giving them the impression that the stage was brightly lit and simultaneously making it difficult for their eyes to adjust to the darkness there.

At about the same time, the English magician and juggler William Peppercorn (1847–1891) performed under the (Italian) name D’Alvini but in the guise of a Japanese magician. The Italian name was a connection to his famous cousin, the Italian clown Governelli. D’Alvini claimed to have travelled and performed in Japan in 1866; his ‘Tycoon Troupe’ (presumably named after the anachronistic translation of Shōgun as Tycoon) did include a number of Japanese jugglers when he toured Europe and the United States.

D’Alvini's connections with Japan are not well substantiated, despite his claim to being the ‘Jap of Japs’. The real pioneers of Japanese magic in Europe were the Andersons. The daughter of the family, Lizzie, was performing the famous Japanese Butterfly Trick as early as 1867. The first recorded Japanese magicians in Europe were part of ‘The Japanese Troupe’ and the ‘Imperial Japanese Troupe’, who performed at the 1867 Exposition Universelle in Paris, where the Butterfly Trick was also performed.

Perhaps the most intriguing personality (foreshadowing the case of Ching Ling Soo, which we will consider later) was Soto Sunetarō (1858–1910), who passed as authentically Japanese in many circles until he died in New York. Even his death certificate carried the name Soto Sunetarō until it was (quickly) corrected to read Wellington King Tobias, son of John and Maria King Tobias.

20 Classic works of magical theory from this period, especially those in the tradition of Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin, the so-called father of modern magic, invariably emphasized the importance of a magician giving the impression that his/her tricks might be achieved through genuinely magical means (or, at least, the importance of not contradicting this impression).

21 Mahatma (the Hindi and Sanskrit title of honour given to a ‘great soul’) was published in New York City from March 1895 until February 1906.

22 Most histories of magic agree on this. See for instance, Clarke, S. (2001). The Annals of Conjuring, The Miracle Factory, Seattle, especially Chapter 13, ‘Oriental Conjuring’.

23 The earliest account is usually ascribed to the great explorer, the Moroccan Berber Ibn Baṭūṭah, who travelled to China in the fourteenth century and records witnessing something similar involving a chain rather than a rope in 1346. Ibn Baṭūṭah was an approximate contemporary of Marco Polo. He travelled even more extensively than the European hero, who is also sometimes cited as an early witness of the Indian Rope Trick, although he makes no mention of it in his accounts. Hence it is presumed that Polo has been conflated with the ‘Moroccan Marco Polo’. A later account, also often cited, is that by the Chinese author Pu Songling, who includes an account of a similar effect in his collection of supernatural stories, Strange Tales of Liaozhai, which first appeared in 1740. Pu Songling appears to have claimed that his was an eye-witness account. In the context of our interest in the turn of the twentieth century, it is worthwhile to note that his book was translated into English for the first time in 1880, and that it was a frequent source cited by Western scholars and journalists in accounts of the White Lotus Society and the Boxer Rebellion, which both did much to corroborate the notion that China was a centre of ‘real magic’ even in the modern age of empires. Indeed, it is worth noting that all of these old sightings of the Indian Rope Trick supposedly took place in China.

24 An excellent (and influential) example in the history of magic would be Burlingame, H. (1891). Around the World with a Magician and a Juggler, Clyde Publishing Co., ChicagoGoogle Scholar.

25 The challenge stated that the rope had be thrown up into the air and defy the force of gravity while someone climbed it and then disappeared.

26 See Lamont, P. (2004). The Rise of the Indian Rope Trick, Little, Brown, London, p. 137Google Scholar.

27 A full and interesting account is given in Lamont, The Rise of the Indian Rope Trick, especially Chapter 7. This book builds on important earlier work by Lamont: Wiseman, R. and Lamont, P. (1996). Unravelling the Indian Rope-Trick, Nature, 383, pp. 212–213Google Scholar; Lamont, P. and Wiseman, R. (2001). The Rise and Fall of the Indian Rope Trick, Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 65, pp. 175–193Google Scholar. The article in Nature was a landmark in the contemporary discussion of the Indian Rope Trick as a hoax.

28 It should be recalled that scepticism about industrial modernity and the embrace of the apparently romantic power of the occult was asserted forcefully by a number of (sub)cultural movements in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, both within the United Kingdom, the United States, and elsewhere. By the 1930s, parts of the Nazi party were invested in the exploration of occult powers and sometimes the relationship between the occult and the Orient. A formative and influential discussion is Goodrich-Clarke, N. (1985). The Occult Roots of Nazism, Aquarian Press, WellingboroughGoogle Scholar. A detailed treatment of Orientalism in the Nazi's orientation towards the occult is beyond the ambitions of this article.

29 This convention is wonderfully subverted in the Christopher Priest novel, The Prestige (1995), which was made into a film of the same name by Christopher Nolan (2006).

30 Indeed, for some members of the Magic Circle, it seems that the Occult Committee's agenda was too aggressive in these terms, seeking as it did to place the mystery of the Orient itself on trial. Lamont quotes the melancholy of one member's response to the Committee's challenge: ‘Why must we have our dreams shattered? The world would be dull, miserable and intolerable if we believed only what our step-mother Science would have us believe … Science is already robbing us of our Romance … We all love mystery and many of us would like to possess the mysterious reputation of the fakir, but [instead] we are always trying to expose him as a fraud.’ Quoted in Lamont, The Rise of the Indian Rope Trick, p. 125.

31 As late as 1923, somewhat in the wake of the Chung Ling Soo episode, practitioners of magic were visibly wrestling with these problems. James Elliot and Houdini even went so far as to raise the question of whether ‘Caucassian [sic]’ magicians made Oriental magic better, by ‘Occidentalizing’ and ‘Modernizing’ what they called ‘Asiatic modes of thought’. For them, this was a matter of technical (and technological) development and excellence, having nothing to do with esoteric or mystical powers (on the topic of which Houdini was an outspoken detractor). In other words, the question was whether Oriental magic could be improved by moving it into modernity, rather than leaving it ‘closely wedded to mediaeval interpretations’. Such a question might have been a paraphrasing of the Magic Circle's challenge a decade later. Elliot, J. (1923) (Houdini, ed.). Elliot's Last Legacy: Secrets of the King of all Kard Kings, Adams Press Print, New York, pp. 43–49Google Scholar.

32 Steinmeyer, The Glorious Deception. Other influential resources (from which much of the historical data in this section are drawn) include: Karr, T. (ed.) (2001). The Silence of Chung Ling Soo, The Miracle Factory, SeattleGoogle Scholar; and Dexter, W. (1955). The Riddle of Chung Ling Soo, Arco Publishers, LondonGoogle Scholar.

33 Steinmeyer, The Glorious Deception, p. 213.

34 It is not clear whether Kellar or Robinson were aware that Nana Sahib was a famous rebel leader who played an important role in the Indian Rebellion of 1857, mysteriously vanishing without a trace after inflicting two bloody defeats on the British and then suffering a complete defeat himself. However, in 1880 Jules Verne published his novel, La maison à vapeur (The House of Steam), which features Nana Sahib (indeed, one of its alternative titles is ‘The End of Nana Sahib’), and it seems plausible (given their interests in automata and mystery) that Kellar and Robinson would have been familiar with the novel's representation of a steam-powered, mechanical elephant carrying a house around India and with its romanticization of the mysterious adventures of Nana Sahib.

35 Steinmeyer, The Glorious Deception, p. 92.

36 Steinmeyer, The Glorious Deception, p. 118.

37 Of these effects, perhaps the least well known today is probably the Butterfly Trick, which is no longer very fashionable, despite its aesthetic beauty. The effect, which has been documented from as early as 1696 in Japan, sees the performer bring a cloud of paper butterflies to life with a fan—it was often the finale of a show. It was one of the first distinctly ‘Japanese’ illusions to find its way to the Western stage after the opening up of Japan in the mid-nineteenth century; a number of European magicians (including ‘Professor and Miss Anderson’ in Hull and ‘Dr Lynn’ in Edinburgh) were performing the effect in the 1860s and 1870s. In his memoirs, The Adventures of a Strange Man, with a supplement showing how it's done (Edward Lamb, 1873), Dr Lynn (John Wesley Simmons) claims to have learned the trick during an official visit to Japan in the early 1860s, but as with much literature in this genre his claims seem rather far-fetched and seems simply to have been an attempt to participate in the magic of Orientalism.

Intriguingly, the practice of attributing an Oriental appellation to a trick (with sometimes only dubious Oriental provenance) was also rather common in this period, presumably in order to add a greater air of mystery and the fantastic to the effect. Before about 1914, for instance, Houdini performed his famous escape from the Water Torture Cell, but thereafter he renamed it the Chinese Water Torture Cell; likewise, his needle-swallowing trick became re-billed as the East Indian Needle Trick at about the same time.

38 In fact, the name Chung Ling Soo is meaningless gibberish in Chinese.

39 Later on, Ching Ling Foo would point to the ludicrousness of Robinson's costume as evidence that he could not possibly be Chinese, noting (correctly) that nobody from China would ever dress like that. By that time, however, the authenticity of Robinson's Chinese-ness was no longer tied to the question of whether he was really Chinese.

40 Later he also added the ‘Chinese Linking Rings’ to his routine, despite the evident disdain for this effect exhibited by Ching Ling Foo, presumably because his audiences associated it with China.

41 The Mikado; or, The Town of Titipu is a comic operetta by Arthur Sullivan and W. S. Gilbert, which opened in London in 1885. It ran at the Savoy for 672 performances and immediately spread around Europe and the United States with more than 150 troupes performing it before the end of the year.

42 The bullet catch is closely associated with Robinson, not least because he died during its performance at the Wood Green Empire in London on 23 March 1918.

43 I have not been able to locate this book, although a 1910 advertising flyer shows a full-length portrait of Soo on the verso, with a seated Soo under the title ‘Chinese Fairy Tales—Compliments of Chung Ling Soo’.

44 The spectacular costumes of Chung Ling Soo were still attracting attention and setting a particular kind of standard for magicians into the 1950s and beyond. In his survey of appropriate magical costuming, John McArdle notes approvingly that because of their ‘association with the mysterious East, Chinese costumes have long been popular with magicians’. However, he goes on to point out that many Western performers adopting the role of a Chinese magician prefer the flamboyance of clothing reserved for Mandarins, while authentic Chinese performers tend to wear the typically less flamboyant clothes permitted to their station. McArdle, J. (1951). Costumes to Conjure With, The Linking Ring, 31:7, p. 13Google Scholar.

45 In an editorial note added to James Elliot's 1923 book, Houdini explains the fear of his friend William Robinson that his identity as a ‘Caucassian’ could be revealed in this way, and that the public was largely unaware of this fact. Never one to miss as opportunity for self-promotion, Houdini goes on to explain how Robinson asked him to come down to London to teach him the Needle Trick (which he thought Foo might perform as part of the challenge), apparently because Houdini's method for the trick was superior to that of Foo. Elliot, Elliot's Last Legacy, p. 44.

46 Steinmeyer, The Glorious Deception, p. 257.

47 Quoted in Steinmeyer, The Glorious Deception, p. 258.

48 Indeed, the obituary of Chung Ling Soo published in the monthly Magical Bulletin (Volume 6, 1918, p. 41) makes it clear: ‘Chung Lung Soo [sic], whose real name was William E. Robinson, the famous magician, who had impersonated Ching Ling Foo all over the world … was accidentally shot on the stage in London, England, a few nights ago and died in hospital the next morning.’

49 The simulacrum is a simulation that has established a reality of its own. As Jean Baudrillard himself puts it (citing Ecclesiastes), ‘The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth—it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true.’ Baudrillard, J. ‘Simulacra and Simulation’, in Poster, M. (ed.) (1998). Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings, Stanford University Press, Stanford, p. 166Google Scholar.

50 So effective was this illusion that confusion persisted for many years about who was who, when it came to Chung Ling Soo and Ching Ling Foo. In 1940, the periodical Genii made a list of ‘Ten Questions You Should Be Able To Answer’, number five of which was: ‘Which was the real Oriental, Chung Lung Soo, or Ching Ling Foo?’ (Stratton, F. (March 1940). Ten Questions You Should Be Able To Answer, Genii, 4:7, p. 218). It should be noted that Genii got Chung Ling Soo's name slightly wrong, reflecting exactly the kind of confusion that Robinson had aimed for from the start. In 1905 the leading magic journal, The Sphinx, carried a short poem in the centre of its front cover, apparently etched into a stone monument between the figure of the devil, an English gentleman-magician, and beneath the sphinx itself. The poem confused nearly all the syllables of the two ‘Chinese’ names, but it didn't seem to matter:

THE MAGICIAN.

The magician's a man who wonders does work;

He's sometimes an Englishman, sometimes a Turk,

But always with wand and magic words, too.

He produces enjoyment for me and for you.

There's Ching Ling Soo and Chung Lung Foo,

Both produce fire and water for you.

There's Houdini, who from handcuffs escapes,

And Ten Ichi, who gets out of tapes.

There's Downs and Thurston and others galore

Who have puzzled many and will more.

But on the top, there stands by far

The king of magicians, Harry Kellar.

By Roche, F. (1905). The Magician, The Sphinx, 4:6, cover

51 Superstars who demonstrate this tendency include David Blaine in the United States (from Brooklyn) and, more recently, Dynamo in the United Kingdom (from Bradford).

52 The idea of techno-Orientalism emerged in the 1990s in tandem with the notion of ‘Cool Japan’, which was sustained partly by the Japanese government itself as a kind of self-techno-Orientalism. An influential account is in Morley, D. and Robins, K. (1995). Spaces of Identity: Global Media, Electronic Landscapes and Cultural Boundaries, Routledge, London and New York, Chapter 8. The phrase has also become associated with the cultural critic Toshiya Ueno.CrossRefGoogle Scholar