Salesman chronicles the mission that four men are to undertake: travel long distances and sell Bibles on a door-to-door basis. It may seem uncanny to know of, but there existed such venture decades ago. The company where the salesmen work for hopes that citizens get to be “evangelized” for each purchase of the Bible from their traveling salesmen.
This documentary somehow shows the viewers about the church’s involvement in the enterprise of selling such holy articles which the church aims to “spread God’s word” to their customers while earning money from bible sales. While there is not any wrong intention here, what’s concerning is that people shouldn’t just be forced to buy such item especially if such person isn’t aligned with the religion or just doesn’t show any interest at all, and for the salespersons’ part, they should also not urge customers who don’t want to buy such item unless they want to, which should explain why Paul Brennan, the star of the show, gets so frustrated in his poor sales because most of his customers don’t buy. He, along with his other colleagues, start optimistic but as the flow of the story goes, poor sales performance abounds, especially on Paul’s side. He particularly vents out his frustrations near the end of the film where he seems to give up of the venture by briskly walking to his car, angrily removing his blazer and putting it, along with the bag, inside the car, and quickly driving off.
The general theme of the film portrays how very driven to capitalism Americans are, to the point of a company dedicated to bible-selling. But the catch is that there are chances that bibles don’t sell well as expected; for one, in the case of what’s shown in the film, the bibles were expensive—like a luxurious item of some sort. The high price tags of the bibles alone can be one factor of sales to not perform well. Unless their target market were high-class religious Christians, it did not turn out to be the case. Most of the places where the salesmen have been selling those books of books house-to-house were comprised of low-to-middle class people, another factor for poor sales. Some people do not identify themselves as Christians, some just simply decline and are not interested, yet another driving factor.
Roughly in the first half of the film, at a Chicago sales meeting wherein God’s name was invoked and the salesmen were being told that it was their fault if the sales turned out to be a flop, the blame shouldn’t entirely be put onto them considering the factors stated above, and for some other reasons. After all, the “Father’s business” of selling Bibles remains strong, as Paul states in the beginning of the film that such piece of literature is the world’s best-selling book.
Some five decades on, and it is apparent that door-to-door salesmen have gone for so, so long, especially those who sell bibles. As it should be. If a truly religious person wants to evangelize and is willing to purchase one, it’s his/her free will. After all, Bible applications for smartphones and other electronic gadgets are available for download online, and the best part is that it’s free. One would wonder why the occupation of a bible salesman would still be up for grabs if it still were to exist in this day and age.
Indeed, the occupation that Paul and his colleagues undertook back in the 1960s may seem “easy” on paper, unless one gets to deeply know the struggles that bible salesmen of the past had to face, again considering numerous factors. That was their way of living. “Pangkabuhayan”, in Filipino terms. Their job was risky. Risky in the sense that it was akin to winning a casino bet: it felt like by chance. It was a feeling of satisfaction on their side when they were able to sell a luxuriously-priced consumer-level religious item since it added up to the quota that they had to achieve in a specific amount of time.
A big congratulations to Paul the Badger, Charles the Gipper, James the Rabbit, and Raymond the Bull for enduring the struggles brought by their source of income during that time.
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