On Trucks and Cows

So, one thing that happened is that Dodge blew off the atheist truck market, and ran an advertisement using an old Paul Harvey monologue that begins:

"And on the 8th day God looked down on his planned paradise and said, "I need a caretaker!" So, God made a farmer! God said I need somebody to get up before dawn and milk cows and work all day in the fields, milk cows again, eat supper and then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board. So, God made a farmer!

Two minutes of this over pictures of farms and farmers, and then a discreet Dodge Ram pickup at the and. It has been getting what they call buzz, in part b/c it's, urm, recycled. I am not that concerned about the originality of the advertisement, but I am interested in its premise. At the end of the commercial, we see the tagline "To the Farmer in All of Us." Doubtless, the farmer in some of us is at the Dodge dealership this morning, seeing about trading that minivan for a truck, now that the kids are grown. It's an expensive proposition, as they start north of twenty grand and get much more expensive very quickly. 

We begin to arrive at a question, which is how do small farmers, of the sort valorized in the commercial, afford shiny new pickup trucks? Anecdotally, they answer is that the cannot afford to, or they prefer to spend their disposable incomes on things like mortgage payments and fixing holes in roofs. The last time I visited a farm, I happened to take a picture of a Dodge truck. It belongs to my Randy and Lisa Robar, neighbors in VT who run Kiss the Cow Farm (for some reason, they don't have a website, so no link). Here is a picture of their Dodge truck:

I was actually focused on the cows at the time, but you can see enough of the truck to notice that it is 1) old enough for an AARP card and 2) full of cow manure. You cannot see that it takes considerable tinkering and TLC to get it to start. When the farmer in all of us is at the dealer's, mulling over $395 for chrome steel bedrails, Randy and Lisa Robar, and others like them, are shoveling shit into vehicles that rolled off the assembly line when Ted Williams was still a fighter pilot, and spraying ether into air intakes in an effort to get them to start.  

The farmer in all of us, 99+% of the time, is not a farmer. Farming is hard work, and it pays poorly. The Robars took over the farm from a farmer who died on his own farm in a farming accident. "The farmer in all of us" is a nice, truck-selling way to refer to an inclination that Americans have to like the idea of farming. The valorization of farmers by non-farmers goes back at least to Thomas Jefferson:

"Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue." 

Ironically, had Jefferson been in office in 2008, he most definitely would have voted against bailing out Detroit: 

While we have land to labour then, let us never wish to see our citizens occupied at a work-bench, or twirling a distaff. Carpenters, masons, smiths, are wanting in husbandry: but, for the general operations of manufacture, let our work-shops remain in Europe. It is better to carry provisions and materials to workmen there, than bring them to the provisions and materials, and with them their manners and principles. The loss by the transportation of commodities across the Atlantic will be made up in happiness and permanence of government. The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government, as sores do to the strength of the human body.

If you like Enlightenment-era aestheticization of farming, you might also enjoy J. Hector St. John De Crevecoeur's Letters From an American Farmer, the Rocket 88 of the dilletante farmer genre. All of which is to say that the Dodge Truck commercial taps into a deep vein of US sentiment that likes the idea of farming more than actual farming. It is, in its way, not that different from Marie Antionette dressing up like a milkmaid, sexy Bo-Peep costumes, or dropping $1,300 on a chicken coop from Williams-Sonoma. 

I'd suggest, just as a conversation starter, that the average American's deep-seated fondness for the idea of farming, coupled with a preference for easier, safer, and more lucrative work, creates exactly the kind of environment where terribile industrial farming can flourish. As a nation, we are seduced by pictures like the ones in the Dodge commercial, and meanwhile the heirs of Earl Butz are busy making anaerobic pigshit lagoons. 

Comments

[Marco Romano]

Well put. The pastoral image of the farmer vs. the reality of making a living on the farm. Corporate agribiz has done well by Butz's legacy and continues to desecrate the land the extent of which is only beginning to come to light.
But ole Earl King Corn Butz was a great joke teller as we all know now.

[Brad Wilson]

Yes it's a self serving ad, obviously. But in fact, the presentation is nothing at all like "Marie Antionette dressing up like a milkmaid," an urban wannabe farm, or "sexy Bo Peep costumes." That's just a projection by the author, and a far fetched one at that. Instead, Dodge advertisers expressed a serious, factual sociological and dramatical point about family farm culture. And that was very surprising! Since the rise of farm advertising by agribusiness in the 1960s, there have been tons of fake ads of varying degrees. This is a radical choice by Dodge. It's also radically different with many other superbowl media phenomena, which are sophisticatedly urbane, sensational and shocking. This kind of message is dramatic by it's stark contrast to that.

But then, this does NOT contrast with, (as claimed here,) "the average American's deep-seated fondness for the idea of farming," or the "coupled with a preference for easier, safer, and more lucrative work." It contrasts with massive, severe, ill-informed farmer-bashing (about farm subsidies, etc.) all across the mainstream media. But then it appeals to a desire to overcome urban alienation and again experience an authentic culture food and a "sense of tragedy," (of the preciousness of life, cf. Rollo May), and that very "easier, safer," life. So that's just an opposite and otherwise very different analysis.

[Adrian Luca]

Hmm...all Jefferson's lyrical waxing about "those who labour in the earth" being "the chosen people of God" makes me wonder who was farming his land, and how happy they were about being chosen for this noble task.

[The Gurgling Cod]

Here are some other takes Mr. Wilson may enjoy:
http://www.theawl.com/2013/02/so-god-made-a-farmer
http://www.rachellaudan.com/2013/02/god-made-a-farmer-oh-really.html
Also, as to the claim that "Dodge advertisers expressed a serious, factual sociological and dramatical point about family farm culture.
This is worth a look:
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/02/the-whitewashing-of-the-american-farmer-dodge-ram-super-bowl-ad-edition/272825/

[Jsacul2012]

You actually bring up some good points. I'd be curious to talk to a Dodge dealer here in MA (e.g., http://www.goodbrothersdodge.net/index.htm) in a few months to see what kind of effect, if any, this ad has had on consumer perceptions of the Dodge brand.