"It wasn’t about anybody specific,” admits Mick Jones, the lead guitarist of The Clash. When discussing the band’s classic hit “Should I Stay or Should I Go,” Jones assures, “it was just a good rockin’ song, our attempt at writing a classic.” Released on the 1982 album Combat Rock, the track received mixed reviews. Diehard fans of the band criticized the song’s ambiguity for violating the founding principles of punk, both foretelling the band’s fatal demise and reflecting a deeper social paradox.

Formed in 1976, The Clash was revered in punk music for political anthems that criticized the corporate dynamic of Western society and were infused with melodies full of rhythmic chaos. In 1991, however, the band signed over the rights to “Should I Stay or Should I Go” so it could be featured in the televised “Pool Hall” commercial for Levi Strauss & Co. Regardless of Jones’ claims, which took the form of unusually vague lyrics embedded between definitively staunch chords, the subculture’s fate seemingly hinged on “the only punk band that mattered” and one of America’s foundational corporations.

Throughout human history, the art of storytelling has been valued for its ability to both entertain and educate. Within the role of storyteller, typically reserved for society’s most honored members, exclusivity afforded the craft uniform credibility that extended beyond literal truth. From real events to awe-inspiring myths, legends, and fables, storytellers had the unadulterated power to shape and preserve cultural behavior, values, and tradition.

In contrast, the contemporary art of commodifying stories for profit is uniquely American. Otherwise known as advertising, such skills and knowledge are ceaselessly refined by educational institutions and made accessible to millions of students willing and able to pay tuition. While the effort certainly comes with its own advantages — like democratized modern convenience — what does a culture sustained by perpetually idealized stories mean for the broader story of humanity?

Additionally, thanks to recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI), conversations about authenticity and ethics have been circulating the internet. Discussions are often sparked in response to the actions taken by some large corporations that are integrating the technology into their business models, such as when Levi’s announced its partnership with Lalaland.ai in March of 2023. Levi’s claimed that replacing human models with avatars would enable the company to “[increase] the number and diversity of our models for our products in a sustainable way.”

At 170 years old, the heritage brand is still intimately woven into the image and narrative of the American rebel. However, Levi’s branded messaging continually fails to acknowledge the systemic changes that are made to retain such relevancy, a practice social media users have become increasingly adept at identifying and challenging. In the case of the Lalaland.ai announcement, after an immediate backlash erupted across the internet that cited concerns like cultural appropriation, an editor’s note was added to the press release, stating that  “authentic storytelling has always been part of how we've connected with our fans.”

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The choice of language in Levi’s response frames the consumer dynamic as one of enchantment and admiration rather than something transactional. This framing suggests a company-wide initiative to redefine the label beyond goods, services, and branded imagery, and, instead, to appoint itself to the role of cultural narrator. If successful, Levi’s could override its own problematic story of conformity and replace it with one of aspirational, albeit hollow, rebellion.

Today’s media and marketing efforts have overwhelmingly decided an aspirational life is one of leisure. But, interestingly, the British sect of punk culture shares a common thread with the denim brand: mining. With success in international trade and a robust population, 18th-century Britain experienced what NYU Professor of Economics Robert C. Allen calls a “high wage, cheap energy” economy. Allen argues that such conditions created “a demand for technology that substituted capital and energy for labour,” positioning Great Britain to launch the Industrial Revolution at the expense of the coal trade.

Coal miners went on to supply the nation with the world’s cheapest energy well into the 20th century. However, the unique irony under which the trade was conceived, plus the mines’ historically harsh working conditions, made the industry inherently prone to labor strikes. Unable to rely on government agencies to support a certain degree of general well-being, colliery communities established their own DIY customs outside of the mainstream.

As for Levi’s, the world’s first prototype of jeans was designed and produced for miners of California’s gold rush by Jacob Davis, a tailor from Reno, Nevada. Unable to keep up with demand, Davis wrote to his fabric supplier in San Francisco, dry-goods business owner Levi Strauss, and proposed that he and Strauss could become business partners if Strauss covered the $68 patent fee. Strauss complied, purchasing the first patent for riveted pants in 1873. Consumers went on to appoint denim jeans as the symbol of working-class American culture, making Strauss one of the wealthiest men in California.

Later featured in Hollywood films such as Rebel Without a Cause, Levi’s jeans evolved from the uniform of blue-collar workers to a symbol of romanticized rebellion. Inarguably modest, practical, and accessible, the style was seen as a statement against cultural norms and gender roles of the American middle class. In 1967, the slim-cut 505C was introduced and later became a beloved wardrobe staple among punk rockers, including the Ramones and Debby Harry.

Despite union strikes not always being successful, the workers’ efforts projected a sense of fantasy to onlookers. In 1972, however, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) found itself in ongoing wage disputes with the government’s National Coal Board (NCB). Antagonized by Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath’s administration, NUM leader Arthur Scargill eventually called for a strike. Miners stood in solidarity with railway and power station workers who refused to transport or handle coal. Disastrous nationwide power shortages ensued, and public opinion of Heath deteriorated with each passing day, resulting in higher pay for miners in just three weeks.

For young Brits, the strike offered a lived example of the value of anger and the power of creating mass chaos. Teens began integrating that ideology into their own youth culture, resulting in distressed fashion trends that embraced bondage and shocking T-shirt graphics embellished with safety pins. Meanwhile, musicians explored a new sound of rock with quick and catchy tempos, abrasive vocals, and political lyrics. One of the figures most often credited for bridging the gap between punk and commercial culture is fashion designer Vivienne Westwood thanks to her relationship with the infamous Sex Pistols.

After Strauss’ death in San Francisco, his blood-relative successors were asked to actively uphold the company’s philanthropic efforts. In the 1970s, third-generation Walter Haas Jr. hired a religious ethicist to advise executives on how to better conduct responsible business. Recognizing issues of widespread political corruption, the company famously pulled its production from Indonesia and refused to enter the South African market due to the government’s racist Apartheid policies.

Amidst the AIDS epidemic a decade later, Levi’s was one of the first companies to draw up corporate standards to support HIV-positive employees. Soon after, Bob Haas, the son of Walter Haas Jr. and a former Peace Corps volunteer, took over the company and led with a firm belief that “a company’s values — what it stands for, what its people believe in — are crucial to competitive success.” In the meantime, American consumers continued to embrace the image of labor and rebellion, although physically taking part in either was becoming more costly as the United States progressed into President Ronald Reagan’s economic era.

In 1979, U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher took office, determined to reaffirm the administration’s public image and the country’s stability. Furthermore, the relationship between NUM and the NCB demonstrated an example of how nationalism contradicted her views on how industry should operate. After the mistakes of her predecessor, and because she was well aware of the shifting attitudes towards fossil fuels amidst a growing environmental movement, Thatcher led a definitive effort to dismantle the union. Among other tactics, she immediately established alliances, quietly conserved an emergency stash of coal, and increased power stations’ capacity by switching from coal to oil.

Prime Minister Thatcher went on to appoint conservative Willie Whitelaw as Deputy Party Leader. According to Whitelaw, it was in the administration’s best interest if the next strike was “over pit closures — which tended to divide the union — rather than over pay, which tended to unite them.” Thatcher proceeded to orchestrate the closure of the industry’s least-profitable pits, provoking Scargill to once again call for a nationwide strike in 1984. As predicted, NUM lacked support, resulting in a year-long calamitous effort, which fractured the colliery community beyond repair.

Across the pond, Levi’s couldn’t compete with trendy new labels like Gap and Tommy Hilfiger, let alone the sex appeal of Calvin Klein jeans. As revenue plummeted, so did company values. In 1997, three years after President Bill Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Levi’s cut 43% of its global workforce, including that of domestic factories and facilities in Canada and Europe. Citing high labor costs and denying any outsourcing of work to third-party offshore factories, President and Chief Executive of Pepsi-Cola North America Philip Marineau was hired as Levi’s new CEO. Believing that the businesses of soft drinks and fashion were one and the same, Marineau claimed Levi’s “had to go from a company that was a self-manufacturer to a creator, marketer, and distributor of apparel.”

The world in which the coal and garment industries originated held fundamentally different values than the dominant culture of the late 20th century. In the 1880s and 1890s, trade and business theoretically operated by fixed religious and philosophical values. However, once exposed to the unfathomable abundances of industry, first- and second-generation American economists genuinely believed the United States was immune to scarcity. Famine, disease, and unemployment, which was a common plague throughout history, seemingly dissolved on a mass scale within decades — a feat no other culture had accomplished.

Third-generation American economist Simon Patten devoted his teaching career at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School to studying these pivoting American cultural values and to better accommodate large-scale businesses. As the son of a farmer and a descendant of pilgrims, Patten was all too familiar with manual labor under the notion that physical pain, suffering, and sacrifice are purposeful experiences in the worship and embodiment of God. Yet Patten remained unfulfilled by religion; he thought such a life was isolating and therefore conducive to selfishness. Instead, he preferred hedonism fueled by the collective pursuit of “standardized” consumption. In lieu of traditional values, Patten argued it was time to place “business-minded people” in positions of power in order to establish the unprecedented “morality of industrial society.”

In his book Land of Desire: Merchants, Power and the Rise of a New American Culture, William Leach describes how Patten’s work captured the interest of advisors to President Theodore Roosevelt’s administration and shaped the public programs, projects, and financial reforms of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. Although Patten was criticized by his contemporaries at the time, most prominently Thorstein Veblen, Leach argues that Patten’s teachings and writings established the notion that society’s most upstanding citizens are those who participate in regular and frequent consumption.

Today, the effects of such thoughts continue to embolden corporations as the moral entities of Western culture. Whether they are willing or not, individuals are born into the original sin of perpetual expenditure under long-standing corporate terms. Thanks to the connective and informative tissues of the internet, we are continually conflicted by our own consumption, political views, and personal well-being.

Because he was the principal creator of “Should I Stay or Should I Go,”  Mick Jones’ ex-bandmates gave him the rights to the hit after The Clash broke up in 1986. Despite notoriously rejecting offers from Dr. Pepper and British Telecom, Jones ultimately decided to sell the rights to Levi’s, opening the gateway to corporate association with punk culture. At the time, Jones was an aging musician with presumably limited financial pension — therefore, his decision is one most people can empathize with these days.

Because of the company’s international reputation as a representative of the rebellious and the oppressed, the marketed tale of Levi’s as an impenetrable, all-American manufacturer distracts from the company’s waning tangibility. Behind a vast team of institutionally trained professionals hired to discreetly mitigate news headlines, there is mounting evidence of a type of modern slavery which includes ongoing wage theft, neglected human rights policies, and numerous fatal garment factory tragedies. But with consistent endorsements of countless celebrities and leaders from various countercultures, including punk, Levi Strauss & Co. continues to relish the narrative of its grassroots heritage.

According to Patten, “We look at culture as the final product of civilization and not as one of its elements. Yet, if we look at the facts, culture is a sign of activity, not of ancestral tradition and opinion.” Patten’s teachings instilled irrevocable power within the activity of consumption making it imperative that we recognize and account for ourselves as consumers. Though countless stories and narratives have been lost, the anger and chaos of punk remains more relevant than ever.