Impish Ambition

I have a love/hate relationship with the Ambitious Card routine. It's the one where the magician puts a card somewhere in the middle of the deck, and it magically jumps back to the top of the deck. Then he puts it back in the middle of the deck, and it jumps back on top. And then again, and then again, and then again, etc.

The plot goes like "This card is ambitious. It always climbs to the top. Despite, or in spite of all my efforts to subjugate it, it manages to climb the ladder of success. It cannot be defeated."

While the actual tricks themselves utilized to get the card back on top of the deck are visual and stunning, this approach to the plot is little more than Horse Manure. It's a great routine. It's a lame story. It's lame because it doesn't contain any real theatrical conflict. In fact, this approach to the story is nothing more than the magician saying, "Lookee what I can do in umpteen different ways." It's just showing off. The magician sets the conditions and then solves them with the greatest of ease. Where's the mountain to climb? Where's the challenge? Where's the magic?

I believe that every trick has its own story to tell. In every trick, something is happening that can relate to us on a conscious and a subconscious level. It's this subconscious story that the trick wants to tell. That's the story that will ring true to the listener. That's the story that will catch them by the short hairs and not let them go until it's over.

The hardest part of being a magician is figuring out what that subconscious story, the subtext of the magic trick, and then figuring out a way to let the character entertainingly reveal that story to the listeners. Subconscious stories can tell themselves if they are liberated and allowed to do so. The reason this can be so difficult to do is that it's much easier to simply contrive any old story to go along with any old certain trick. It's much easier to just write the story to suit what appears on the surface/conscious level, the superficial, and then mash the two together and call it magic, as I believe has always been the case for the standard Ambitious Card routine.

Putting a card in the middle of the deck, and then seeing that the card has risen to the top, doesn't mean that the card is ambitious. What it means that the card is impish and mischievious. Imagine a non-magician doing the same thing, and you'll get the idea. They put the card in the middle and then find it on top. "Hey, WTF? That's not supposed to be." So they put it back in the middle, and off it goes again. So they put it back in the middle of the deck and then tie a rope around the deck, and the card mischieviously finds it way back to the top. Imagine how flabbergasting that would be to the poor non-magician. Imagine how much cognative dissonance that would cause in their tired and confused brain.

Now put yourself in the place of the poor, tired, confused, and flabbergasted non-magician.