A Response to the “Pioneers! O Pioneers!” Handout

The first time I saw the Levi’s commercial that used Walt Whitman’s “Pioneers! O Pioneers!” poem as a theme I was quite taken aback. It seemed to be such an odd pairing even though the Levi’s brand and Whitman are of an era. The message the advertising company was attempting to convey was totally lost on me. I just could not reconcile the poem with the imagery and that overshadowed everything else.

I like the poem itself. I like the grittiness and enthusiasm of it. I like the symbolism Whitman has incorporated into it contrasting the western expansionists with the old world Europeans. It is a youthful poem for, at the time it was written, a youthful country.

What I don’t like is the imagery chosen to go with it. It seems disconnected from the poem. It’s also a bit jarring with the quick switches from unrelated scene to unrelated scene. I understand that Levi’s is trying to draw a parallel between the youth in the poem and the youth in the commercial’s imagery but it misses the mark because the two types of youths are not similar. The youth in the imagery are just that, young people. On the other hand, the youth the poem is referring to are not actual young people but the youthfulness of an entire country, America. When the poem was written America was considered youthful when compared to older, long-established European countries. The two do not equate at all. In fact, they are two very different concepts.

I accept that I am not in the intended demographic for this commercial. That could be why I dislike it, it wasn’t made to appeal to me. I do think that with a change of imagery the commercial could appeal to a wider demographic than first intended. Whitman is classic, for a commercial that uses his poetry to be anything less is disappointing.

Credit where credit is due:
Whitman, Walt. (1891). Leaves of Grass. The walt whitman archive. Retrieved May 11, 2011, from http://www.whitmanarchive.org/published/LG/1891/poems/99

Blash, M. for Levi Strauss & Co. (Producer). (2009). Levi's – o pioneers! (go forth) commercial. [Web]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HG8tqEUTlvs