NEW YORK (9 May 2006) -- The title exuded a certain pessimism: "David Blaine: Drowned Alive." On a live television special last night, Mr. Blaine, the obscurity-averse practitioner of spectacle, ended a weeklong submersion in 2,000 gallons of 96-degree saltwater, providing as the finale an attempt to break through chains while holding his breath for nine minutes. Would he survive, or would the world, as he put it in an interview before diving in, "see something pretty insane?" Mr. Blaine, who had set up his human aquarium outside Lincoln Center, did not drown alive. Nor did he set the world record for holding his breath, as he had hoped — a record set at 8 minutes and 58 seconds. Instead, he emerged from the tank, requiring oxygen after 7 minutes and 8 seconds, and told the crowd that had gathered that he had had a difficult week and that "I love you all." This, of course, was not the desired outcome for someone whose preparation included training with the Navy Seals and losing 40 pounds to decrease his body mass and make breathlessness easier. Yet, the absurd seriousness with which Mr. Blaine approaches his public stunts leaves you with a certain glee at his failure. It is a sign of the pumped-up intensity around his whole enterprise that "David Blaine: Drowned Alive" commanded two hours on ABC. One way to fill 120 minutes of airtime with programming that promises at most nine minutes of actual suspense is to offer dire warnings about what is taking place — should anyone in the audience have been left with the impression that seven uninterrupted days in a water-filled tank would put you at risk of little more than a sinus infection. "I ask that you not try this yourself," Mr. Blaine told the audience last night before his attempt in his characteristic monotone. "This is a deadly, trying test of endurance." So trying and potentially deadly that the host, Stuart Scott, had to interview seemingly every physician on the Eastern Seaboard. Dr. Murat Gunel, head of neurovascular surgery at Yale, was worried about the possibility of a stroke. "After this show," Dr. Gunel said of Mr. Blaine, "he could become a very different person." | | Worried that David Blaine did not look stressed enough after eight days in the fishbowl, did fellow stuntman Kirk Krack cover his face with white makeup before the world record breath-holding attempt? Though Mr. Blaine had covered his hands with petroleum jelly and worn gloves to provide his hands with some small measure of protection, Dr. Gunel was concerned about swelling and dangerously chafed skin. This, Mr. Scott felt, required his own additional explication: "You know what it's like to be in a bathtub for an hour?" he said, "Well try that 175 times." Dr. Ronald Ruden, one of Mr. Blaine's own doctors, simply said he had been against the whole idea. To the matter of Mr. Blaine's unusual choice of vocation, one always wants to ask: What would have been so bad about law school? Before the water tank immersion, Mr. Blaine famously spent seven days in a glass coffin and locked himself in a closet of ice in the middle of Times Square. In dreamy montages last night, Mr. Blaine explained that these exercises are all part of his "journey," that they "make people think." Magic, he said, "brings people together who might not come together." Well, so does the airport. The beauty of old-school thrill seekers like Evel Knievel, whose interview with Mr. Blaine ran during the show, is that they did not seek to intellectualize their gamesmanship. When Mr. Blaine looks for insight into why he does what he does, Mr. Knievel responds without any effort at introspection: "You're a daredevil," he says. "You can't help it." |
