Speaking of America and advertising…

I really like the commercial I saw the other day for the new Levi’s campaign, called “Go Forth.” The clip was essentially just some images of youthful abandon, half dressed, cavorting around with fireworks and in jeans, and was directed by Cary Fukunaga with an interesting visual flair. You can see it here:

The dialogue comes from an old wax sound recording of Walt Whitman reading four lines from his poem, “America.” Whitman has no problem singing the body electric with the young folks of today, it seems.

There’s another commercial from the from same campaign, entitled “O Pioneers!” It’s not as striking, but it’s still got a good visual style, courtesy of director M. Blash. I don’t know much about Blash, other than the trailer for his upcoming Chloë Sevigny/Jena Malone/Leelee Sobieski-starring indie film, Lying, which both bores and fascinates me, and features a great Joy Division-esque song by John Maus. Here’s Blash’s commerical:

The print aspects of the new campaign, and pretty much all of it except for that single commercial, don’t really interest me. Jeans are jeans and this is America – thanks for reminding me, Levi’s/Walt Whitman – not Russia, and I wonder again and again: How hard do you really have to advertise jeans? The same, I would think, could be said for beer, sodas, and potato chips, right? Whatever, I’m not a marketing major.

That said, I do give Levi’s a little more credit at the advertising game just because they seem to continuously go with a more interesting visual in their commercials. Their ad people keep it hip, keep it interesting. Though it aired easily ten years ago or more, to this day I still remember the levi’s commercial featuring Gael Garcia Bernal and “Playground Love” by Air. Good stuff.

Anyway, this new campaign for Levi’s comes from a firm apparently called Wieden & Kennedy. It’s funny, with all the absorbing of Mad Men and Don Draper speak I’ve been doing lately, I feel like I’m less amazed and blown away by the continuous “indomitable spirit” of this fine country and more by our want and desire to be wined and dined, to be performed to and for, to be good and properly sold on a thing. Our dominion, I’m starting to think, is the desire to conquer not new lands, but not ideals, and to think that we possess them.