Red Balloon: Second Thoughts

A late return to The Red Balloon after a trip to NYC for a couple days to play tourist. It's funny how things follow you; check out what I found in The Strand bookstore (where, by the way, I could wander for years).

A children's book copy of "The Red Balloon"

This copy was published in 1956, at the same time the film was released. Inside is essentially a children's lit version of the film, accompanied by black and white photographs of Pascal (surprise! The boy has a name!) and his balloon.

Meanwhile, class conversation seems to be meandering over a few different things: the individual versus authority, the child versus the adult, as well as broader thoughts like childhood, conformity, and innocence, and where these ideals come from.

I'm starting to think that, instead of being a purely independent entity, Pascal's balloon is a projection of him. Partially this is me trying to rationalize. I don't want to label the balloon as purely an imaginary friend and be done with it, but i'd like to add that idea to what Alexandria and others were writing about: the balloon representing Pascal's innocence, or the essence of his childhood. Childhood has a tendency to be bright, curious, teasing, and innocently rebellious by turns, which the balloon is, and Pascal is not. Pascal goes to school, takes the bus, goes to church. The balloon merely follows, remaining outside. 

Perhaps the outside setting represents the only space where the balloon can exist: as soon as it goes inside, the schoolboys riot and the mother throws it out the window. Can childhood exist inside an institution, inside a rigid post-war society? Evidently not, if the balloon is an indication.

Somehow I think the setting really gets at the culture of Parisian city life that would be spoiled by a shot of the Eiffel Tower or L'Arc de Triomphe. I can't exactly put my finger on why. Is it because the film is concerned with everyday people and humanity, not France or any other nation as a whole? Is it because children aren't concerned with these symbols of authority, of politics? Is that why children are "dangerous"? Maybe the society of adults in The Red Balloon are trying to create order in a world where order is hard to find, where chaos is frightening, where the future is in the promise of ordered children, so orderly children is what they must have. Compressing ideals and habits and ambitions into young minds seems to be a good place to start, to build the foundation of a safe, orderly (if grey) world. Is that why the balloon is a threat? To be different, bright, curious, and playful would be a nuisance to the mission.

But the balloon's death isn't brought about by the institution, is it? Rather, it is destroyed by fellow children. You could say that the boys are a product of society, and therefore society is the one to blame, but I'm leaning more towards the destructive tendencies of humans as a species, the ability we have to crush each other's dreams without even knowing why. Are mavericks so threatening? Is the individual that powerful?

I ended up with more questions than answers, but after two days of being swallowed up by New York City crowds, I think they were the right ones.