“A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down
The medicine go down-wown
The medicine go down
Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down
In a most delightful way”

“A Spoonful of Sugar” Mary Poppins

Time is cruel and ruthless. Mary Poppins, the perfect babysitter conceived in 1933 by the Australian writer Pamela Lyndon Travers (1899-1996) and famously adapted for the big screen by Walt Disney in the 60´s, now gives its name to a psychological syndrome.
The ideal of female perfection that, according with time, built (mostly) Disney [1] and that was performed in a brilliant way by Julie Andrews, has now become a heavily social weight for the female gender: a female roll, a demand, an etiquette, a way of being. We are talking about a model that could seem obsolete when observed from the present but still lives on, maybe in a more sibylline way, through gestures or lines that this character repeated, generally singing. We will find in many of them automatisms that we have acquired regarding different domestic situations or social behavior, even observed in a critical way, we will find in them rules and social guidelines that still live on our contemporary societies.

If the saying declares “spare the rod and spoil the child”, in the case of Poppins that rod would be the music, the easy[2], catchy[3] tune, sweetened with the perfect amount of sugar that, as the initial quote states, it helps the medicine go down.

To track the origin of effervescence or, in particular, every carbonated water isn´t easy. It´s natural origin and its immateriality make it impossible[4] to define just one origin for the same task, the same way it happens with sounds. We know, through different testimonies, that some centuries before the company Alka Seltzer presented in society his famous effervescent pill[5] , creating in that way a fashion that endures nowadays, there were other attempts to design effervescent medicines[6] , always pursuing the objective of accelerating the water dissolution in order to be consumed by people that had swallowing or digestive problems. Curiously, in the first industrial pharmacologic tests, the effervescent sound, so recognizable by everyone nowadays, was, in fact, a problem, a sort of necessary nuisance to achieve an aim that, beforehand needed a silent seriousness, or nonetheless discreet.

It is at the end of the XIX century when these medical effervescence tests are curiously mixed with the history of soft waters, that although they also had, almost by chance[7], a very similar medical origin, they were soon acquired as a distinctive of playtime soft drinks, or what we know today as sodas. This little coincidence has confused, maybe for an interest, the necessity of a quick digestive absorption with contemporary lifestyles, but always keeping and stressing a particular characteristic: the sound design.

The sound design is nowadays one of the most important factors when it comes to projecting any billing of industrial objects in sights of its commercialization. It plays as an invisible brand but indelible, as an unconscious claim that, in a similar as the use that Mary Poppins made of the songs, besides standing out from the beginning, it appeals to a series of feelings intimately related with well being, for both calming thirst and relaxing the body or placate some pains.

Therefore, it wouldn´t be exaggerate to talk about a sound design of the sparkly and of the analgesic effect, not only thanks to its possible conditions, but for the intense sonority that emanates from it. Multinationals as Coca-Cola have made a real a advocacy of the virtues of this sound[8], to the point that it has become una of the most iconic sound design of the XX century. We could even assert, if we stick to the mediatic politics, that if the lifestyles that derivate from the capitalist system sounded in an specific way, they should sound as effervescent bubbling[9].

All in all, the sound of the chemical bubbling (being this natural or artificial) carries with itself the meaning of a medicalized society, of a body surrendered to chemical intervention, but also of a particular social status.

Just as it happens with most of the globalized sound designs (the sound of clothes, the infinite variety of electronic beeps, the public tritone, the pieces of automobiles, etc.) the capacity of cultural absorption of these sounds-whistles-rings reaches unimaginable milestones, forming part not only of a globalized tradition but also of certain lifestyles and, for that matter of a globalized cultural identity.

Paradoxically, this carbonated sound, distinctive of the great bourgeoisie in the first half of the XX century[10] is now considered, having been déclassé y turned into an industrialized sugary drink, a poison for lower social statuses. In a time where health conditions is turning into one of the most important social obsessions, the exclusivity in terms of consumption of non-alcoholic drinks seems to lie in natural bottled water. The primal fantasy of the bubble has become a symbol of the over-sweetened, of obesity and, for that matter, of possible social problems. The cheapest modern drug sounds as a bubble.

That fssshhhhhh that meant lightness and elegance id beginning to sound as heaviness and ordinary.

Ultimately, Mary Poppins was always right, Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, In a most delightful way.

Xabier Erkizia

[1] The creative differences of Travers´ play adaptation are well known, to the point that he didn´t made any other adaptation for the cinema. The main complaint of the writer lived on the excessively corny tone that the north American company wanted to introduce into the original play.

[2] The easy, catchy tunes that reach high popularity through uncountable repetitions are called earworms. This Anglo-Saxon word has its origin in the German term Ohrwurm, that although nowadays it is used with the same meaning as in English, originally it made a literal reference to the medical use of insects of the order of Dermaptera to treat pathologies or ear afflictions.

[3] As in Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

[4] At the end of the XVII century, the Champagne producers, worried about a better way to preserve and carry their wines, began to use bottles instead of barrels. In that way the effervescence trapped into the bottles revealed itself in the glasses. It was an immediate success. https://www.champagne.fr/es/vid-vino/qu%C3%A9-es/efervescencia/historia-de-la- efervescencia. Consulted on July 21, 2020.

[5] The alka Seltzer pills were released in1931 by Miles Laboratories (bought by Bayer in 1979), https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/culture-magazines/alka-seltzer. Consulted on July 2020

[6] Since Roman times there are evidences of experiments done with different salts that would later turn into fruit salts.

[7] https://archive.org/details/b30364978. Consulted on July 1, 2020.

[8] It is worth remembering one of the most famous mottos used by this multinational company and that give cause to the title of this article: “The spark of life”.

[9] In the atrocious portrait of the late-capitalist system proposed by the cinema director Darren Aronofosky in his film Requiem for a dream (2000), the effervescent sound turns into a sound brand.

[10] The carbonated waters were commercialized all around Europe as medicinal waters exclusive for certain social statuses and was widely adopted by bourgeoisie as a distinctive and elegant drink, just as is now happens with tonic waters.