Acts of Violet(92)

Let’s begin, shall we?

First of all, credit where credit is due: Volk is a skilled magician. There, that’s out of the way.

Did Volk excel in a field dominated by men? Sure. But for all her complaining about the misogyny she encountered, what did she do to change anything? Did she take any major steps, like naming the magician who sexually assaulted her to prevent him from harming others? Nope. (To be fair, that’s something deeply personal, and not every survivor is comfortable confronting their abuser. But still.) Did she take any minor steps to combat misogyny, like petition the Global Magician Brotherhood to change their name to something more inclusive? Nope, not even after the GMB named her Magician of the Decade in late 1999.

Of course, there are other ways Volk could’ve helped make the magic industry more hospitable for women, such as encouraging female up-and-comers by inviting them to perform with her, either as assistants or opening acts. Except she didn’t do either. In fact, all her assistants were male, because she “wanted to flip the script on traditional stage magic gender roles.” While she was busy doing that, she forgot something important: a number of magicians start out as assistants, particularly females. As a result, she denied women the opportunity to learn the craft by working alongside her. Oops!

To this day, for all the so-called trailblazing she did, you won’t find a single woman in the magic community who would consider her a mentor or even a friend.

I’m not saying role models can’t be flawed people. It just helps if they’re not utter hypocrites. Volk often touted that women shouldn’t use their bodies to get ahead in life, yet she spent her early years working as a stripper—correction, burlesque dancer. However you try to class it up, if you’re taking off your clothes for money, even if they’re vintage duds, let’s call it what it is: stripping. Which isn’t to say burlesque and other forms of exotic dancing can’t be art forms or serve to empower women. It’s possible. But typically and traditionally, nudity for pay is about women serving the male gaze. When Volk was discovered by Jackson Cleo at a burlesque club, he was there as a bachelor party guest. He wasn’t there to appreciate female empowerment via vintage performance art; he was there to watch women shake their tits and asses.

If you think about it, Violet might not have had her big break if it wasn’t for the male gaze of Jackson Cleo.

Of course, Jackson Cleo might not have had his big divorce if it wasn’t for Violet exchanging female gazes (and more) with his wife, but that’s a sordid tale for another day.

Let’s talk about Volk’s pivot from magician to self-help guru. Remember how she boasted about living her best life in You Are Magic? More lies. The whole reason she wrote that book is because her life was in pieces and she needed a big payday.

We’re going back to 2001, just after Violet’s life has turned into a dumpster fire. While she claimed she ended her Vegas show to “focus on new projects,” she also had no choice, since the Kintana refused to renew her contract. She approached other Vegas venues, but between her reputation for being difficult to work with and the high cost of insuring her productions, due to multiple injuries and a tragic fatality, her credibility took a big hit and nobody wanted to take a chance on her. Romantically, things were even worse: 2001 marked the end of Volk’s marriage to Benjamin Martinez and the implosion of her longtime on-again-off-again affair with Mayuree Sakda. Womp womp.

At least she had her family, right? You know, the one that she’d frequently ignored and/or mistreated during her rise to fame. Some examples. She ran off to pursue her stardom dreams in NYC right after her mother was diagnosed with MS and left her sister to foot the medical bills. She got her uncle maimed at a backroom poker game. (Who’s got two thumbs and likes to gamble? Not Uncle Slava after that night!) She missed the chance to say goodbye to her father before he died because she didn’t want to fly on Friday the thirteenth. She even had to be coaxed into attending her own sister’s wedding by Sasha’s husband, Gabriel, who spent years playing the peacekeeper between the two (speaking of Gabriel, does anybody else find it creepy how Violet modeled her own husband to resemble her sister’s? No way that’s a coincidence).

And then, of course, there’s what Violet did to her niece.

Remember how Violet never performed with any female assistants? There was one exception to that: her seven-year-old niece, Quinn Dwyer. Let’s set aside whether this was nepotism or mere hypocrisy and get right into the illusion. Quinn was a little girl who loved angels and mermaids, who dreamed of being both. Volk was the fairy godmother who’d turn her into one and then the other, making both her dreams come true right there on that stage.

You know what little kids generally don’t love? Being suspended from a great height before they’re dropped into a tank of water and nearly drowned. That’s a good recipe for traumatizing a kid right there. Take another look at that LateFridayLive performance. When Violet rushes to the tank in a panic, that isn’t her acting—that’s a deep-down dread that yet another person has fallen victim to one of her dangerous illusions—this time, a family member.

Is it any wonder that the sisters have been estranged ever since?

Maybe it’s just me, but I find it ironic that someone who’s been hailed as a feminist icon treated the females closest to her with such disregard.

But what about how brave she was being openly bisexual? There’s no denying that took guts during a time when the LGBT community wasn’t as readily accepted and fought for certain basic civil rights (a fight that continues to this day). You’d think Volk would’ve made a bigger contribution as a member of this community. Yet she barely showed up. She didn’t speak up for legal rights, social acceptance—hell, she couldn’t even be bothered to attend a single pride parade. She was far from resembling anything close to an activist.