A Red Balloon Died
How emotions do not always have a history. On Desperate Housewives first broadcast November 20, 2005
Geoffrey Hamilton
November 22, 2005
The episode of Desperate Housewives first broadcast November 20, 2005 has a scene where
"shallow" Gabrielle
is confronted by an unconventional therapist who tells her that a red balloon he gives to her
is going to represent her miscarried baby, and she is supposed to let it soar into the sky.
Often Gabrielle has denied that she is grieving for the baby, but now the mere
presentation of this game to her has
made her think of the balloon as her unborn child. This will now be a symbolic way to say goodbye.
As she struggles to let the balloon go she cries.
Ostensively she cries about the baby which seems to be the writer's point.
But this is
a thought experiment who cares what the writer thinks.
A game, like this red balloon, will always create emotions whether a person, like Gabrielle, has
outstanding issues or not, so her outburst does not imply a prior problem.
Like Hamlet who remarks that a tragedy, whether real or a fiction, will create
indistinguishable tears, we cannot easily say why she cries or what created these tears.
She was
given a situation and because of the game gene which causes
everyone to be inclined to play a game (if they understand it
and have no objections to a game). She quickly
knew she was expected to grieve
in order to reach the goal of the red balloon game -- but it was a prior game that told her
she must want to get to that goal.
This prior game is a social one, coming into play at the same time. In this other game she is
trying to maintain her place in society. Usually Gabrielle acts as though
she is playing against society's rules, but it is actually a faux rebellion and everyone
around her knows she wants to rise in the society game. That game always had first priority for her
so she played the red balloon in public for all it was worth.
Now that she could see the goal and that there was no quitting, she also decided
that there might be something worth bringing out the requisite tears for.
It is the same as the acting in Hamlet's tragedy: she asks "who is the baby to me? or me to the baby?
that I need to cry." She digs into her memory and remembers all the effort she put into
fulfilling her expected responsibilities -- like buying baby clothes. This effort
was a game that she was pressured into accepting. But like Stockholm syndrome where
kidnap victims eventually feel affection for their kidnapper, Gabrielle feels the
investment in this unwanted baby was wasted and all the
false expectations will now not come true.
She can now feel sad for herself, which is all grieving is.
Funny enough, we, the
audience of this TV show, feel the same
real feelings for the same kind of faux situation that Gabrielle is really
feeling for her red balloon. (Some call it identifying with a character.)
And all these feeling are just as irrelevant to the past and as newly created as hers.
The therapy is bogus. It created the problem.
Just think of how anyone who has lost a loved one - they will not cry continually, but
only when telling the story of their loss to others or just to themselves.
And they get emotional usually only when the most touching
moment arrives in the tale. Grieving amounts to a tale - a game - and only a moment in
that tale. We even realize it when we avoid reminding people of their loss. If
catharsis has any place in therapy it is definitely in a social setting to get
busybodies and psycho therapists to shut up so you can move on.
Geoffrey Hamilton,
November 24, 2005
