Short Essay: "God Made a Farmer" Superbowl Commercial

When this commercial aired during the Superbowl just last week, it sparked a whole bunch of controversy. Some people have heralded this as one of the greatest Superbowl commercials of all time (or at least for this year) and others think it is so grossly offensive it should be banned. In fact there have already been 'fan'-submitted revisions of the ad put up on youtube that fix some of the glaring issues of race. I'd like to take a quick glance at both sides of the argument. Why is this ad effective? Why is it inaccurate or offensive? 

The whole commercial is framed by Paul Harvey’s speech to the 1979 Future Farmers of America convention. Most of the power of the commercial comes from this powerful speech. The speech appears to be a continuation of the opening to the Christian book of Genesis as if to say “on the 8^th day, God made a Farmer.” While I don’t subscribe to religion, especially not any sect of Christianity, a huge portion of this country does. To me the god talk was off putting, but it is appealing to the ad’s target audience. Additionally, regardless of religious inclination, there is no doubt that Harvey’s speech is well written and demonstrates a firm grasp of the power of variant repetition: by repeating the phrase, “so God made a farmer,” Harvey uses an old and tested tactic that grabs the audiences attention and molds the content into a rhythmic pattern. Rhythm and pattern are always effective for holding attention because the typical audience member knows what to expect and can immediately and effortlessly gain a sense of agency in the speech – the listener will actively fill in the blanks as he/she is prompted to.

This sense of agency is magnified in this ad by the fact that this is a very tribal ad. By tribal, I mean there is a strong sense of “us” and “we” that is inclusive and ropes the audience member into believing him or herself to be part of that “we.” This is seen in tons of ads and almost political speech – America is usually referred to tribally. Whenever it is ‘us’ against ‘them’ or some variation the listener will attempt to identify as part of that tribe. Think of any and every speech regarding terrorists for example: ‘they’ are the other, the outsiders, attacking ‘us.’ This is a prime example of tribal speech behavior.

In this case the tribe is actually the FFA and the strong American imagery extrapolates the FFA into being a metonym for America. This is interesting and is what has caused controversy: America is not full of farmers. The idea of the American farmer is ultra-romanticized to be the ideal southwestern, rural, local farmer. The problem is that this is a tiny portion of farmers, most being big company farmers, and farmers in general are a very small minority in America. There is a good chance that the average viewer has never even met a farmer or, at most, could count the number of farmers they know on one hand. The actual visual content is absurd in reality – but that romantic image of the hard-working blue-collar American is still so strong, especially in our state of recession, so that we want them to succeed. These people come off as the last romantic heroes that America can clutch onto and this is bolstered by a fantastic speech and clear audience identification. Everyone watching the Superbowl wanted an American team to succeed so there is a small gap to bridge before wanting America to succeed via farmers. The overall message: if this truck is good enough for the hard-working American hero, it’s more than good enough for you.

            However, to be critical, this is only effective to the target Christian American blue-collar audience that won’t think too hard about commercial ethics. This ad is outdated and false. 50 years ago, this would have been brilliant across the board, now it seems dis-genuine to me. Most American farmers are incorporated, use massive equipment and automated processes, and are FAR removed from the farmers portrayed. Also, most American farmers are not white  - everyone in the ad was white. The fact is that most of our American farmers are South American immigrants and furthermore a huge amount of our farmed goods are imported from South America. Do you honestly think that coffee you drank this morning was grown by one of those small working-man white Americans from the ad? No, those coffee beans were much more likely picked by a Latino teenager who is skipping school to work and earn as much money as possible for his family. I don’t mean to sound preachy, but the ad is simply unrealistic and portrays an outdated and overly romanticized version of the American dream that falsely represents the great American tribe.