Life Imitates Art, Badly

Posted by Jennine Lanouette on Friday, October 9th, 2009

There I was Friday morning getting ready to leave for my Intro to Story Structure class in which I planned to screen the 1956 children’s classic The Red Balloon, about a six-year-old boy who makes friends with a big red balloon and, ultimately, is carried off by a massive cluster of big multi-colored balloons, when I got the urge to check the headlines on the internet. “No, no, no,” another voice inside me said, “you need to stay focused on getting out of here or you’ll be late!” “Oh, I’ll just take a look, I promise,” said the diversionary impulse. “Who knows, maybe there’ll be something worth knowing about.” “Yeah, right,” the task master said. “Don’t blame me when you’re rushing around to get out the door.”

So I went online and was immediately confronted with a story about a six-year-old boy being carried off by a big silver balloon, or so they thought for long enough to cause a national media sensation. “Well, that was certainly worth knowing about before walking into class,” conceded the clock watcher.

Now, it seems, the authorities are pretty well convinced the whole thing was a hoax cooked up by the boy’s ambitious, eccentric, publicity seeking father. And here is where the parallels between the film and the media event intersect even further only to diverge in an unfortunate way. Because, you see, director Albert Lamorisse also “used” his six-year-old son in an elaborate scheme to capture people’s attention, but the sort of fiction he cooked up is what we commonly think of as “art.” And the boy, Pascal, now a man in his 50s, was able to honor his father post-humously three years ago with a 50th anniversary re-release of the film. Young Falcon, on the other hand, may see his father go to prison.

I can’t help having an “I told you so” feeling about this whole thing. Not that I ever told anything to anyone. But to the degree that I am a proponent of art and drama and metaphor as the highest form of human communication, and therefore have never put much stock in “reality” entertainment, this very sad incident makes me feel validated in the work I do. Look what happens when the ambition towards reality TV careens out of control. A family in ruins.

But, you know what? Making up original stories with rich thematic meaning is hard, hard work. It’s a lot easier to hide your kid in the attic, cut loose a balloon and then call the local TV station to get attention. But do you want 15 minutes of fame? Or would you rather capture the attention of generations of children for 50 years and counting?