Interesting post by William Easterly on AID Watch today…
Levi’s has a new ad campaign that suggests American liberty is still a work in progress. One of its new videos has a voiceover reciting the Walt Whitman poem “O Pioneers” with youths dancing around a fire wearing Levi’s. [Watch video here: Levi’s Commercial.] The recitation includes lines like get your weapons ready; Have you your pistols? … We, the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend… Fresh and strong the world we seize.
Against whom are our weapons supposed to be used? Whose world are we seizing? Any 3rd grader could tell you: Whitman is referring to the war against Native Americans by westward-bound settlers and the US army.
Does Levi’s want to celebrate that? Well, try to see it from Levi’s point of view: their company wouldn’t even exist if we hadn’t wiped out the Indians.
OK, trying to be a little more serious, Levi’s running this ad shows how we still don’t take seriously enough our Euro-American historical crimes. I know many people are tired of this topic. This is also a constant bone of contention between the Left and the Right, with the Right blaming the Left for apologizing too much and overlooking the great accomplishments of Western Civilization, like Individual Rights.
There is a middle ground: those of us of Euro-American heritage would be a lot more convincing on Individual Rights by acknowledging that we have had as much trouble applying them as anybody else. We were pioneers in applying them to our own ethnic group, but we kept handing out free passes to kill other people’s rights.
So no more holier-than-thou preaching about individual rights. At least, we have made progress on eroding some Double Standards: Jew and Gentile, White and Black, Man and Woman. Probably the worst Double Standard left is between rich and poor societies – we believe in Democracy in the former but not in the latter. So let’s acknowledge how hard it has been, but keep striving for Liberty for All.
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December 28, 2009 at 12:04 pm
Virgilio
Have you met many people who have also seen in this ad what you have seen in this ad?
I like the links and connections; the flow of the post: Levi’s>Walt Whitman> Genocide> History> Politics> Rights> Rich/Poor> Democracy.
I’ve seen the ad once and it is quite odd, in fact, for a jeans commercial, but then nowadays nobody knows what meaning the ads intend (or even back when David Lynch made that fiery commercial). But as for this one, in context, wouldn’t you say it is representing youthful passion for one (enough passion to pick up arms) possibly appealing to that kind of revolutionary passion of the 1960s and 70s, but might more subtly be referencing the war in the middle east, subtly pushing that goshdarn’d abstract cookie of a word ‘liberty’, slightly agreeing with the gun right, slightly selling the jeans to the Right?
See, I don’t think nor do I feel that most would catch the reference to Walt Whitman, nor would delve into the poem to help them decide whether to buy jeans; therefore I wouldn’t place the historical guilt idea to heavily on the plate of what the ad intended.
December 28, 2009 at 8:30 pm
Sarah Frazer
Hi Virgilio! Thanks as always for sharing your thoughts. I see your logic, but fear that advertising (and other forms of pop culture, such as crappy radio) have a greater impact on our interpretation of the world than we might like to think. Even when we process information subconsciously, it can and often does impact our conscious decision-making.
December 29, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Virgilio
Completely agree with you with the idea: anything that enters our perception affects our perception. Our minds were once as the American Continent once stood, and have changed through the years as the continent has changed through the centuries.