![]() The child holds out their hand, angrily demanding satisfaction for their lost capital, and one of the musicians is obliged to give the child a violin. Suddenly, the film switches to compensation culture. Eventually they shake the coin out of the child’s hand and it rolls into a grate. The customer is configured as artless, fickle, biddable, and the competing sellers quickly enter into aggressive marketplace tactics, getting up in each other’s face and nearly attacking one another, eventually terrifying their potential customer.Ĭapitalism contains within it its own destruction. Very quickly, the question of music disappears from the equation – it’s about making noise and attracting attention, while the child represents the inattentive consumer who can’t concentrate on anything for more than a few moments. And so begins a see-saw as the two musicians continue pulling out the stops with ever-more-elaborate trick gadgets, extra violins emerging, acrobatic tricks and more, all designed to entrance the paying customer and make sure the coin arrives with them.Īs capitalism gone wild played out in miniature, it’s pretty damning. But then, another one-man band appears on the other side of the square, with a different set of instruments and a new, shinier melody. The drama of the short comes as the child is wooed over to the one-man band, and prepares to give the musician their coin. And so, when a single potential customer emerges, a child taking their single coin to a wishing well, the musician gives it his own to make sure he gets that coin. ![]() He gives it his all, but this isn’t about the art – he needs the money. There is some fun as we hear what sounds like a whole orchestra tuning up, before the single musician emerges. In an empty town square in a Disney-style olde worlde town, a one-man band opens a curtain to begin playing to an audience of nobody.
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