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Walt Whitman & Levi’s Jeans

Can you imagine that? A TV commercial for Levi’s Jeans starring. . . . Walt Whitman!

The voice heard in the commercial is from a 36-second wax cylinder recording of what is thought to be Whitman’s voice reading four lines from the poem America. When I watch this commercial, am I supposed to internalize the poem’s message that I am the mistress of my own fate? I’m just not sure if it’s okay to sell jeans using the voice of a man who spent his entire life eschewing commercialism. Sure, Whitman wore jeans, but he wore them because they were the clothes of the rebellious, not because the beautiful people wore them.

Look, I’m all for contemporary reworkings of public domain texts, images, and audio, but perhaps it would be better if the people who typically use this kind material did so outside the realm of crass commercialism. That way we won’t have to guess at hidden agendas. What’s up next? F. Scott Fitzgerald selling vodka?

For more information on this recording, see Ed Folsom, “The Whitman Recording,” Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, 9 (Spring 1992), 214-16.

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