£1 Fish Man ?
One Pound Fish

The story is well-known, even to the stones. If you happen to be one of the twenty-five people who haven't come across him yet, I suggest you nod your head in agreement regardless (oh, yes... One Pound Fish!) because admitting you don't know him makes you look like an insufferable hipster. Well, if that makes you happy...

So, this guy is one of the many desperate individuals who daily head to the West to make ends meet. In this regard, let's not forget that usually only the best and most enterprising individuals take the path of immigration, while the others stay home watching the goats, in the company of subnormal individuals and the dying (Viecchie, mugliere, muorte e criaturi; o' solito scèm', o zuopp' e o sciancat, o' cane rugnuso ch' e'ccostole afora).
Muhammad Shahid Nazir aka One Pound Fish Man is an immigrant who traveled from Pakistan to the United Kingdom and after some adventures, found work as a fish vendor at Queen's Market, apparently a famous street market in London.
Here the individual, to sell his goods, resorts to a rather common trick: he comes up with a sung or chanted call; a simple and recognizable oriental-style chant with which he praises and advertises his one-pound fish each. It's a primitive and ancient way to create a brand in the absence of other means and to build a loyal customer base.

It's from this point onwards that the story becomes - at least in my eyes - decidedly interesting. Someone films the vendor and uploads the video online, which quickly becomes famous, so much so that some cunning executive at Warner Music signs the Pakistani to release a video clip and the related single, which, needless to say, became an international hit.
The event itself is absolutely ordinary; a centuries-old habit still widespread in the global South and widely remembered by the elderly in our regions, which is sporadically found even at these latitudes. Personally, I remember at the local market near Piazza Nazionale in Naples, you could hear musically more captivating and lyrically clever performances.
However, what for an old Calabrian peasant or a third-world immigrant is absolutely devoid of any appeal, becomes a novelty, a "strange" thing, something to do with creativity that immediately hooks the senses and interest of the savvy and post-modern western citizen equipped with an i-phone.

Now, since I don't want to believe that the notoriety of this catchy tune is due to its musical aesthetics, it remains more than plausible that its success is attributable precisely to the peculiar genesis of the jingle, the curiosity to see this supposed novelty, this extravagance picked from a market, which is bounced around on social networks, shared as a curiosity and almost-news by newspapers, exalted by out-of-control ringtones.
It's a shame that in a singing street vendor there is nothing extraordinary, so the interest that an average person (therefore, in absolute terms, very little) should have in this video clip should be equivalent to that for a silent Super 8 film depicting a math lesson in a differential class.

Asking the average listener for this simple logical step is like expecting the house cat, especially a neutered one, to effortlessly survive in the equatorial jungle.

But there's worse.
The story, crowned by immediate success (the video was released in mid-December 2012), revives a classic of modern mythology which, despite our post-modernity, we continue to fall for: the self-made man or worse, the American Dream.
I'm not inclined to support cheap egalitarianism; there are men with more abilities and qualities who inevitably prevail over the crowd of life's beggars, yet there are at least a couple of considerations that render the hope of social ascent a rear-guard myth and a tool of normalization and control.

A rear-guard myth?
The American Dream must be contextualized: it only makes sense when referring to pioneering times and lands to colonize, thus in a condition of "perfect market" according to traditional theories, where opportunities are homogeneous and there are no disruptive elements or rules affecting the relationships between contenders. While in these terms, it might dangerously resemble the law of the jungle, it remains an appealing reality and a lever for potential development and prosperity.
But today? Do we really believe that conditions exist to emerge through one's own strengths?
I will not launch into boring and banal indictments against the lethal mix constituted by turbo-capitalism elevated to the Only Religion combined with amoral familism which from Italy we have exported more than good wine.

Established statistics will suffice to inform us that it is precisely the most disadvantaged, the new proletariat convinced by government marketing to be "middle class," who are the best candidates for slipping into true poverty, due to the lack of opportunities, class A and class B schooling, which today does more harm than pre-reform caste school of 1969, the absence of shared models and "protected" spaces for the young... ... one could continue.

And why a tool of normalization and control?
The spurious myth of social ascent now survives only with sensational cases (athletes from the slums or introverted nerds who start companies from their home garage), and from the viewpoint of these fortunate exceptions, it remains a formidable engine.

But for everyone else, for the mass of the dispossessed who will continue to answer strangers' phones or serve soft drinks with a degree in hand, the hope of a social and economic "boom" becomes a mirage that makes them lose sight of all the contingent and structural conditions that will actually exclude them forever not only from social ascent but also from even just a dignified maturity and old age.
The continuous call to the American myth operated by successful tune-makers, company captains with uncle's money, variety shows disguised as talk shows, will tend to make us forget the superstructure (in the Marxian sense) that sets the rules, obvious and hidden, that condition our lives and to exclude from one's worldview any element of social criticism, in an uncritical and suicidal acceptance of a denied future that others even have the courage to call destiny.