This past weekend, I watch The Music Man for the first time in many years. This musical is about a scam artist by the name of Harold Hill, who poses as a traveling salesman. He claims that he is a professor of music and that he will direct a boys band for the towns he visits. In the movie, he visits a particular town in Iowa that is very behind in their 1920s modern culture. He does use the method of finding their pain and helping them to see that his product will solve their problem, but he creates a pain that is not originally there. This town had never before seen a pool table, and they had just got their first pool table imported. Professor Hill tells all the parents in the town that this pool table would turn their boys into bums, and they needed something to save their sons and mature them. The solution of course was a boys band. There are numerous scenes throughout the film where he is selling to different parents and convincing them to sign their sons up for his boys band. His plan is that once the uniforms arrive he will hop on the next train and leave the town forever. While he did identify a need and a solution for his costumers, that need was manufactured to serve his purpose and his solution was fake.
BoweryJE22
I love this movie! Yes the pool table. What I find most interesting is that he didn’t identify the pain point in the case of the pool table, he makes the pain point. This manufactured pain point leads the parents to believe that their boys need to be musicians. The music man does a great job of not only scamming the parents but also scamming the pain point.
This is really interesting because even “manufactured pain,” to borrow your term, does come from a real source. Oftentimes entertainment solves the pain of boredom. Part of the manipulation here was a false promise that pool leads to bad things and that boy bands are the ONLY answer. It’s a good lesson to be honest here.