The Snake Oil Peddler by Christopher Coleman, HK

The Snake Oil Peddler

Medicine shows traveled around small-town America though the 1800’s and even into the early 1900’s. These were often elaborate affairs with several different musical acts, perhaps a juggler or magician or comedian, and culminating in the presentation of a miracle elixir--for sale for a limited time only!--said to cure everything from baldness to death of less than two weeks. The entertainments were masterpieces of marketing psychology, preying on the fears and ignorance of the uneducated crowds to peddle what was usually nothing more than flavored and tinted alcohol. Often a shill would be planted in the crowd to testify to the miraculous efficaciousness of these tonics, which came to be known as ‘snake oil’.
It has seemed to me that all too often our politicians hark back to this dark version of the American Dream: selling the fraudulent to the ignorant. It was while claims of hidden weapons of mass destruction were being sold to the American public and the world at large that I was first inspired to write The Snake Oil Peddler. The piece begins with an utterly banal theme--a depiction of the road-weary caravan trudging slowly into town. As the crowds gather, the medicine show gets underway. The theme undergoes constant and eventually tortuous transformations, building to a fever pitch of excitement as the Snake Oil Peddler weaves his malignant spell.