My wife, Renate, recently submitted the entry above to Wired magazine‘s latest “Found: Artifacts from the Future” contest, which asks readers to predict the future of chewing gum with photoshopped gumpacks.
Also on the site is Octuplemint — a parody of the most popular of uncanny of gums, Doublemint.
For me, gum is an interesting product to study, because it is a very cheap consumer good that is not exactly consumed: it is chewed, yes, but it is also (usually) spit out, and replaced by another one. Thus it is a potent icon of the essential “empty” value of a commodity. And because its benefits are really nothing more than flavored saliva, its appeal is almost solely a result of highly manipulative advertising, which promises so much more than the item can really deliver. “Eclipse” gum might promise to “hide” one’s bad breath — and perhaps it does so effectively — but its very name and “space age”-looking package taps into our cultural awe (and primitive fear, perhaps) of the sublime lunar eclipse.
Big Red’s catchy jingle [“Kiss a little longer, hold hands a little longer, hold tight a little longer. Longer with Big Red…”] seems to promise not only fresh breath but an enhanced level of intimacy (reminiscent of a product pitch like the one done by Viagra!). But even more fundamentally, what the jingle and package is really suggesting is that a stick of gum can magically extend time itself: “make it last a little longer.” This is not simply the employment of a “weasel word” (“longer” — longer than WHAT?). This supernatural promise of advertising (see Raymond Williams’ “The Magic System”) is also the sort of incantation that summons the uncanny in so many popular consumer goods that we no longer even see them critically; instead, we playfully sing along.
Thus, Renate’s “stem cell” enhanced cancer-fighting gum — which sounds like something out of a science-fiction novel — is right on the mark: “Live a little longer…with Big Med.” This is what “Big Pharma” incessantly promises, too, in its myriad campaigns for the latest pill or patch or implant. While it is true enough that medicine can indeed support a healthy, longer lasting body — and possibly one day even offer a cure for cancer like Big Med — the truth is that consumer goods always promise more than just long-lasting experience. They promise everlasting life, for a price. This is the heresy of the commodity fetish. Don’t swallow it.
