Levi's and Whitman

When I watched the Levi ad’s I would have never guessed that it was Walt Whitman’s voice. It’s interesting to me that there are people who would recognize a dead man’s voice. The ad’s are kind of entertaining. I can see how they relate with what Walt Whitman is saying in his poetry, but again I would never have noticed that unless someone pointed it out to me.

McCracken says that advertising has taken the job of what Whitman thought was the poets, he says, “Whitman redefines the poet’s relationship to the reader in much the same way that early advertisers invented a relation between consumers and products. . . . What gave advertising such a strong position in antebellum culture is that it began to define its audience as subjects who occupied a unique position in regard to it. People were no longer pedestrians or readers; they were spectators, consumers, witnesses, and bodies in need of healing.”

If you think of it in the way that McCracken describes it then I would say that Levi’s campaign is celebrating Walt Whitman’s project. What they’re advertising is the self and America and being an individual and respecting and appreciating nature, which is what is portrayed in Whitman’s text as well as the Levi’s ads.

Levi’s wants their country to absorb them just like Whitman says that the poet should be absorbed by his country. Through this campaign they are able to do this.
Whitman’s texts and Levi’s jeans’ promises both guarantee “self-fulfillment, independence, and the kind of charismatic individuality that will make us the center of every crowd”. Although I think that this is a stretch and a matter of personal opinion on both parts I think that it works. They are celebrating Whitman because they are using his ideas to enhance not only their business and their profits but individualism and having pride in being an American as well.

I think that McCracken’s idea of advertisers playing the cultural roles that poets played in earlier eras is interesting to think about. I don’t know if I necessarily agree with that statement completely, but they do play a huge role on influencing people and persuading them to make a decision one way or the other.