Pioneers, Oh Pioneers. Levi's Commercial (video)

Before I get to the commercial, to whomever it was who said Levi's weren't even around when Whitman wrote Pioneers, Oh Pioneers, you're dead wrong. Levi Strauss invented what we know as Levi's Jeans in San Francisco in 1850 to provide the gold miners with sturdy work pants. The jeans became popular with most outdoor workers including ranchers, cowboys, drovers, wranglers, miners and, yes, pioneers crossing the country.

The poem uses the expansion into the Western Territories as its basis and makes references to experiences Whitman had while serving on the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The obvious analogy to the Levi's commercial is that many of the pioneers and expansionists would have been wearing Levi's while trekking across country, but there is a deeper meaning. In the poem he mentions the “elder races .' This is a reference to the established European and Eastern nations and cultures and in his mention he compares the US to being “youths, western youths, So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship.” The video clips have nothing to do with hippies, it is modern day symbolism of what Whitman described in the poem as the country being youthful in comparison to the millennium old countries of Europe. If you look at the video clips you will see a lot of them are young people in their late teens or early twenties out of doors, just as the pioneers would have been.

Do I like the commercial? Not particularly, but I do understand the references and symbolism in it.