john guzlowski

john guzlowski
Location
Danville, Virginia, USA
Birthday
June 22
Bio
I was born in a refugee camp in Germany after World War II, and came with my parents Jan and Tekla and my sister Donna to the United States as Displaced Persons in 1951. My parents had been slave laborers in Nazi Germany. Growing up in the immigrant and DP neighborhoods around Humboldt Park in Chicago, I met Jewish hardware store clerks with Auschwitz tattoos on their wrists, Polish cavalry officers who still mourned for their dead horses, and women who walked from Siberia to Iran to escape the Russians. I write about these people.

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OCTOBER 28, 2009 10:45AM

Walt Whitman Sells Pants

Rate: 3 Flag

Yes, he does. And he does a great job at it.

Levi's -- the jeans company -- is doing a series of ads using Whitman's poems.

Here's an ad using lines from "O Pioneers":


Here's an ad using some of "America":



Slate.com has an article about this amazing development in literary history.

 

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I feel sort of sad that the power of those words could be so blandly denuded by a few art directors. And the narration was either a vintage recording of Carl Sandburg, or one of his great contemporaries....
Gary Justis
October 28, 2009 11:20 AM
It obscene that they use "America" in their ads after shutting down their last American factories last year and moving their production to Mexico and overseas.

Of course, my outrage is hypocritical, I'm wearing Levi's as I type this. (In my defense, I ordered them from an online retailer that said they were from stock that actually was made in America.) If the cost-threshold of my outrage was lower, I'd throw them out or donate them.
cobalt-ic
October 28, 2009 11:20 AM
I am in strange awe of these commercials . . . they evoke something I haven't felt in a long time, probably because the poetry itself is powerful, and the images so artfully melded to the words. And I'm not sure what to call what I am feeling, only that it felt good.
Owl_Says_Who
October 28, 2009 11:26 AM
Cobalt-ic,

For me, the wonder of Whitman is that he was full of wonder. He was always amazed at the possibility of America.

Reading him today, in the current economic climate, a climate where as you suggest much of what we dream about as Americans is becoming unattainable, I think about the distance between what we were and what we are.
john guzlowski
October 28, 2009 11:26 AM
Gary, I think I'm with Owl Says Who on this. The ads really grab me in the way Whitman grabbed me when I first read him in college.

I want to discover America and be 19 and wander around town with my shirt off dreaming and dreaming and dreaming.
john guzlowski
October 28, 2009 11:29 AM
The first time I saw one of these ads, I was in the locker room at my health club, getting dressed after a work-out. I was not really paying attention to the television, but when this ad came on I was strangely drawn to it and I stopped, mid-dressing, and stared at the screen for the remainder of the ad. I did not know that it was Whitman's poetry. I just knew that it was something powerful. Thanks for posting, John.
Ranjit Souri
October 28, 2009 11:31 AM
When I saw the first one, it grabbed me - as Whitman tends to do. The words and imagery are powerful in the ads. But, I agree that using America made me a little uneasy for the reason cobalt stated. It somehow cheapens Whitman. (Okay, that may be a bit much.) The only thing Levi's really supports is Americans buying their products, not so much helping them attain that sense of safety and wonder.

On a side: I really hate the cynical bitch I'm turning into. I wish I could just look at that and see the art for what it is. :(
Julie Tarp
October 28, 2009 11:42 AM
I'm glad someone is reading poetry to our children and the images are perfectly in synch and evocative.

there's a part of me that's sad what's happening here is corporate advertisers, hawking clothing. but okay. they're gonna do it anyway and it's better than apple'd asses stuck out at the screen begging to be buggared.

perhaps feeling something a child might look for a book of whitman at the library and look through it. that's good enough for me.
nofrills chunky monkey
October 28, 2009 11:48 AM
Julie, cynical? Don't be so harsh, please. Maybe read a little bit more of Whitman. When I was a kid, I walked around with a pocket copy of song of myself. Now that I'm -- not a kid, I still read him. About once a year, I go through song of myself. He's got enough optimism for all of us.
john guzlowski
October 28, 2009 11:49 AM
With or without pants, I think Mr. Whitman attracts good attention. The fact is, some people might be drawn to Whitman's poems because of these ads (Not everyone---amazingly---knows about Whitman's poetry.) So that's the good effect of a national ad campaign using good poetry.

It's no real surprise. I have heard Bach's Unaccompanied Cello Suites used to sell dog food. ( I enjoyed those ads more than most ads on tv.)
berrycomposer
October 28, 2009 02:21 PM