In 2011, Chrysler released their two-minute-long "Born of Fire" commercial during the Super Bowl. The following is the script.
Narrator: I got a question for you.
What does this city know about luxury, hm?
What does a town that’s been to hell and back know about the finer things in life?
Well I’ll tell you.
More than most.
You see, it’s the hottest fires that make the hardest steel.
Add hard work and conviction.
And a know how that runs generations deep in every last one of us.
That’s who we are.
That’s our story.
Now it’s probably not the one you’ve been reading in the papers.
The one being written by folks who have never even been here.
Don’t know what we’re capable of.
Because when it comes to luxury, it’s as much about where it’s from as who it’s for.
Now we’re from America—but this isn’t New York City, or the Windy City, or Sin City, and we’re certainly no one’s Emerald City.
Eminem : This is the motor city—and this is what we do.
The commercial was ranked as one of the top Super Bowl commercials of all time, and it is very similar to Sanburg's "Chicago" poem. Both the poem and the commercial are unapologetic about the rough sides of their respective cities. Sandburg doesn't even try to hide the fact that Chicago is full of corrupt behaviors and practices.
They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.
But that is exactly Sandburg's point. Yes, Chicago has all kinds of rough edges, but it is those rough edges that make Chicago great. It is a city that doesn't posture and try to be something that it isn't. The city itself is strong because of the hard working, blue-collar people that live there. The city is made stronger because it has gone through rough patches, and it wasn't killed because of them. Chicago, like Eminem's Detroit, has been through the hottest fires and has been made harder and stronger because of that. Sandburg even goes so far as to insult other cities by calling them "soft."
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities . . .
In the second stanza of "Chicago," Sandburg lists the insults that have been aimed at Chicago, including that it is wicked, crooked, and brutal. While he admits that these qualities are true of Chicago, he defends the city by saying that it is also vital, clever, and strong. He refers to Chicago as a "tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities." It is a city that is constantly building and rebuilding, and it has the kind of liveliness and energy that the smaller cities around it don't have. The city is like a callow youth that laughs. As Sandburg writes, Chicago is "laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle." It has a kind of brashness because the city is proud to offer so much to the rest of the country. As Sandburg writes, Chicago plays many roles, including those of "Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation." So, while what people say to vilify the city might be true, Chicago is also a proud producer of many goods and services that the rest of the nation needs.
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