An Unlikely Place For Art

I normally hate TV commercials. Except stuff like Sportcenter commercials. Otherwise, the stuff people claim is "cute," "amusing," or "artistic" just doesn't seem any of those things to me.

One commercial has totally gripped me recently, however. I'm almost ashamed to admit that I love the Levi's Go Forth commercial featuring a recording of Walt Whitman reading his poem, Pioneers! O Pioneers!.

The imagery isn't much. It certainly doesn't inspire me to buy Levi's. And it melts into a rapid-fire series of shots of vapid Ck-esque nudity. I think there's even an obigatory shot of homosexuality (see? Levi's is H-I-P hip. How insulting to the gay community).

But somehow, likely because the images move too quickly, and certainly because his voice is absolutely mesmerizing, Whitman's words overpower the visual input. All I can hear is him, appealing to his audience with an aged sense of urgency. And the residue of the video - the vauge impression that perhaps the Pioneers are the youth, carving something out of the wilderness of their lives. Damn, it just kicks me in the face.

I'd be angry with a commercial for moving me emotionally, if it weren't really Walt Whitman doing so. All the same, kudos to the whizzes at Wieden & Kennedy Portland for framing ol' Walt so beautifully.