John Lennon’s shaved chin moved strangely between verses. Instead of saving his breath for the next line, he slowly rotated his jaw from side to side. With these jaw movements, John completed his iconic glasses, mane, biting irony, and uniform that expressed his stance toward the war madness in Vietnam.
These were strange circular motions you don’t see under spotlights anymore. The empty jaw movement had the same meaning as rock and roll itself. It was even older and even more America. It was with us until the early nineties, then suddenly vanished along with standing ashtrays in hallways. John Lennon was chewing gum during his performance.
Chewing gum belonged to the American dream as much as the Statue of Liberty. With gum, you stuck your chin out at the old world. Chewing was rock and roll, but also the determination to take life into your own hands. What customers did with Wrigley Spearmint was small-scale aspirational jaw-working. Even in the ’90s, Wrigley ads sold us the American dream: sunny California beach, Beach Boys music, real American mint. Simply breathe freely. Then someone had the idea that gum could help maintain healthy mouths. The American dream was replaced by pH decline curves in your saliva. The scent of freedom was replaced by fears of periodontal disease. Chewing gum became a medical device, and that was the end of its youth.
Cigarettes took a similar path of death-by-health. The rechargeable box is just a nicotine prosthetic next to hand-rolled tobacco. Instead of a chin brazenly thrust at life and death, healthy smoking offers at most a little extra time for an actively spent retirement. Cigarettes themselves embarked on a path of demortalization that will be their death.