Getting Carried Away: Lessons Learned from “Balloon Boy”
It’s no secret that Americans will go to irrational lengths for the sake of entertainment, but the past decade has witnessed many cases where people have deserted ethics in lieu of cheap thrills, sought enjoyment from the televised misfortunes of others, or taken the notion of “15 Minutes of Fame” to an unwarranted extreme. So much of what gets billed as “entertainment” today is simply trash culture, and we eat it up. As if that weren’t bad enough, so much of it masquerades as “reality” that it begins to blur the line between our society’s perception of “real life” and “imitations of life”, until the difference is lost on us or we simply don’t care anymore that a difference exists. Our idea of romance and relationships gets influenced by shows like “The Bachelor/Bachelorette” or “Flavor of Love,” where it takes 5 months to watch the development of a partnership that ultimately lasts 5 weeks. We get updates on the political climate from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert – God bless ‘em for doing what they do, but they’re comedians, not newsmen. Only in the American media would Perez Hilton or TMZ be considered a credible source of information. Only in the American media could Asher Roth pretend to know anything about what it’s like to be a college student.
So with the line between entertainment and reality having been constantly chipped-away for the better part of a decade, it’s no surprise that we get a stunt like the “Balloon Boy” fiasco. A recap: Richard and Mayumi Heene of Fort Collins, CO contact the authorities, afraid that their six-year-old son is trapped inside a saucer-like balloon that lifted off from their backyard. The
National Guard follows the balloon for about 50 miles before it lands north of Denver. The cops recover the balloon to find nobody inside, leading the police and the now-frenzied news outlets alike to suspect the boy fell out during flight. This goes on for awhile before the parents call the cops again to say that they found the boy hiding in a cardboard box in the attic over their garage. So the Heenes milk their 15 minutes of fame for a few more hours until the kid lets it slip during an interview that “you guys said… we did this for the show,” eliciting groans from Dad and enlightening the world that this whole incident was orchestrated for publicity and amounted only to 3 hours of wasted time for everyone from the National Guard to CNN. Colorado police announced two days later that the incident was indeed a hoax, and that charges would be pressed against the Heenes.I first heard about the situation on (of all places) Facebook, while studying in the library. I looked up the story on CNN and was immediately amused by its absurdity, as were many other college students posting status updates. As the situation grew more and more absurd, I became more and more drawn into it. I was amused by the mental image of a child standing in an airborne balloon, grinning stupidly as he is followed by military helicopters. When the balloon was found empty, I groaned at the possibility of none of that being real. When the boy was found in his attic, I laughed at the idea of a 6-year-old sending the police on a wild-goose-chase. And then I found out that the whole situation, absurd as it seemed, was not absurd at all. It did exactly what it was set out to do – entertain heartless Americans like myself, who can’t look past their own amusement long enough to realize that a six-year-old child might have just died, violently, accidentally, 50 miles from home.
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Yet people were still shocked to hear that this was all arranged for a possible reality television show (something the Heenes, who are Wife-Swap-alums, have experienced before). It’s shocking that these parents would go so far as to apparently fake a child’s death in order to attract the eyes of the nation; it’s no shock at all that it worked. For while there were plenty of people like me who were laughing the whole time, there were others (most likely parents) who were watching the story unfold in grim anticipation of a tragedy – but both watched. You see, folks, this kind of “entertainment” doesn’t discriminate – it takes whatever suckers it can get.
But the reason the story is so terrible is not only that Richard Heene believed that he could spin a popular reality show out of his son’s apparent death, but that he effectively did. If it’s one thing that American viewers can’t get enough of, it’s a tragedy - and the string-pullers in the media know it. That’s why James Brown goes a posthumous tour of the U.S. and Michael Jackson’s funeral is held in the Staples Center for 31.3 million Americans to watch – it’s all set up by organizers who know it’ll be entertainment. I’m reminded of the movie Network, where down-and-out newscaster Howard Beale is assassinated on air by an urban terrorist, hired by television executives conspiring to improve their ratings. While this is a grotesque example, we have a real-life parallel in Richard Heene – a man who, instead of merely fabricating reality television, hijacks the news in a selfish attempt to entertain, using an endangered boy in a balloon as a prop.
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