From: Shelly Silver (email suppressed)
Date: Sun Dec 20 2009 - 14:53:05 PST
o pioneers ad directed by indie director cary fukanaga (sin nombre)
i found imagery also had much in common w/photographer ryan mcginley
below an article from slade
http://www.slate.com/id/2233597/
oh levis
On Dec 20, 2009, at 10:59 AM, David Tetzlaff wrote:
> Jeff wrote:
>
>> This is very different than the arty B&W one -- this one includes
>> a =
>> Nazi salute (that's how I read it)
>
> It's a young woman standing in front of statue of some sort of
> mythological figure, mimicing the pose of the figure. I think this
> is not a salute to anything, but an imperative to 'go forth' (the
> theme of the ad). It reminds me of 'Forward' the statue on top of
> the state capitol building in Madion, WI.
>
> This add has gotten a lot of positive press for showing two young
> men in a romantic/tender embrace (at :28) in addition to the usual
> post-Benneton multi-ethnic cast of cuties.
>
> The reading of Whitman is credited to "Will Greer" which may
> actually be Will Geer, even though the voice doesn't sound like
> Grandpa Walton to me. (The recording does come from Folkways, and
> Geer did a Folkways album with Woodie Guthrie around that time.)
> Geer was in the CP back in the day, and remained a lifelong lefty.
>
> So this ad is kind of a textbook example of capitalist cultural
> politics. It incorporates all sorts of progressive social ideas and
> avant garde aesthetic devices, into a celebration of commodities on
> one hand and normative youthful beauty on the other. Levis jeans, of
> course, are one of the archetypal symbols of consumerism (see Dick
> Hebdige's great essay 'The Bottom Line on Planet One' in Hiding in
> the Light. http://books.google.com/books?id=ZKAOAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Dick+Hebdige&cd=4#v
> =onepage&q=&f=false pp. 167-168).
>
> Now, you can take a Lukacsian / Frankfurt School view of this and
> bemoan the superficial reductionism, repressive tolerance, etc. or a
> Birmingham School view that sees this all as a 'site of struggle' in
> which capitalism can never totally smother it's Other, and in
> needing to let it out from time to time, however controlled, keeps
> it alive.
>
> The blogosphere reaction to the "O Pioneers" ad is pretty
> interesting, as posters actually discuss the contradictions involved
> in the ad, and several posts say 'I never would have discovered Walt
> Whitman except for this ad.'
> Check out this thread if you're interested:
> http://gentribune.wordpress.com/2009/08/11/pioneers-oh-pioneers-levis-go-forth/
>
>
>> and a lot of young model types -- can =
>> people actually afford real Levis these days?
>
> if they work for health insurance companies, or pharma companies, or
> wall street...
> i doubt Frameworkers are the target market :-)
>
>
> __________________________________________________________________
> For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.
__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.