Go Forth, Youth in Denim

The Levi’s campaign celebrates Whitman’s poetic project by giving visual life and perspective to his words. The imagery they chose to tie his words to the symbols of American life set his ideas into a form that gave us a specific use for them. By comparing his perspective to go forth and set up a nation with the wild will of youth and raw beauty limits what Whitman was calling us to do.
My reaction to these ads was inspired. In my opinion they did a great job at capturing the power of Whitman’s words and using people in a naturalistic and real way to excite the innate passion for triumph and progression of our society. They use imagery of friendship, love, pride and glory to speak to those places in each of us that hold onto these ideals, and by that they definitely spoke to the masses. I think it was a great way to tie notions of the past, Whitman’s political poetry, with desires and stagnation of our current generation. A call to “Go Forth” to an otherwise apathetic generation using sensual and pure imagery I think succeeded in just that. Even if the excitement to act only lasts as long as the commercial.
The themes of consumption and promotion obviously are prompted in the product display of the Levi’s jeans on almost each character. Other than their product placement, the remainder of the environment is vastly nature, in which there is no other source of advertising.
As far as the claim that advertisers play the role of poets in our society, I could be easily swayed to believe exactly this. They have gained the place in our culture of providing quick yet rich and deep messages to vast numbers of people, in all walks of life. Whether it be a one liner on a billboard or a 15 second commercial, they have the ability to not only use words, but images and music to invoke emotion and ideals into their observers. This in itself is far more than simple poetry could do even 100 years ago. So yes, I think they have taken that place in a large way, but it has also been revamped and supercharged.