ABSTRACT
The architect Frank Lloyd Wright once said that television was ‘chew-ing gum for the eyes’. It is an evocative phrase, conjuring up a particularly unpleasant image of the zombified television viewer, endlessly, unthinkingly, masticating. But this insignificant sugary commodity has more qualities than simple chewy blandness: it has a nationality. Wherever it is actually manufactured, chewing gum is a symbol of Americana. To those who despise it, it is an incarnation of every unnecessary, disposable and dangerous aspect of the American way of life.
