In tribute to this weekend’s release of Up, the latest sure-fire hit from Pixar, we’ve asked our Think Tankers about one of the modern world’s most enduring and picturesque fantasies:
“What is your favorite instance of somebody or bodies getting carried away by a balloon or balloons?”
And they have been, dare I say it, Up to the task. Make sure you weigh in with your choice in our poll or the comments — careful, not too much!
Hey! 5th Dimension! Play us to the article!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAQf1uAHaXM&feature=related
The Chipmunk Adventure, by Mlawski.
Los Angeles, California: 1987.
Ross Bagdasarian: Okay, Janice. It’s 1987, and the Chipmunks are HUGE right now. We need to release a Chipmunk movie, ASAP.
Janice Karman: You’re right, Ross. What America needs right now is a huge, epic, sprawling musical.
RB: It’ll have action.
JK: Adventure!
RB: Drug smuggling!
JK: Drug smugg– wait, what?
RB: I know it sounds crazy, Janice, but hear me out. We want an epic musical, right? What better way to make an epic than to have the Chipmunks and the Chipettes travel around the world?
JK (realizing the possibilities): We could have them sing songs about whatever country they’re in!
RB: Exactly! Like in Mexico, they can sing “Cuanto le Gusta,” and in Fiji they can sing “I Told the Witch Doctor.”
JK: That’s not racist at all!
RB: I know! But the problem is, how do we get the Chipmunks around the world?
JK: How about they go on a rock tour?
RB: Eh, too “Jem.” Anyway, where’s the excitement? The suspense. No. I have a much better idea. Janice, who regularly travels around the world on business?
JK: Investment bankers?
RB: Think more exciting.
JK: Spies? Couriers?
RB: Getting closer.
JK: Oh, Ross, I give up.
RB: Drug smugglers.
JK (sighing): This again?
RB: Think about it. Some sketchy foreigners from Colombia or Austria or something are trying to smuggle cocaine around the world, but INTERPOL is on their trail. Then they have a genius idea. Who better to bring their coke across the border than a group of innocent chipmunk children?
JK: The Chipmunks and the Chipettes!
RB: Now you’ve got it!
JK: I didn’t see it before, but this is a brilliant idea for a children’s movie! But…
RB: But?
JK: My only worry is that we’ll spend a lot of time watching the Chipmunks in airports, waiting in security lines, that sort of thing. It’s kind of boring.
RB: I’ve got it. They smuggle the drugs… wait for it… in hot air balloons.
JK: Brilliant! Change the drugs into diamonds and you’ve got a deal.
RB: I don’t know… The Chipmunks singing and dancing while smuggling diamonds around the world in hot air balloons? Isn’t that a little unbelievable?
Doug, by Fenzel
It’s brief, but it’s perfect: light-hearted, metaphorical, elegant, swift and sweet. My favorite instance of somebody getting carried away by a balloon (other than all those crazy folks in Roswell who got all gussied up in alien outfits over a weather balloon, of course), is a brief moment in the title sequence to Nickelodeon’s Doug. It’s hard to find the actual clip online (the far inferior title sequence from Disney’s Doug is much more ubiquitous), but there are a frightening number of videos of people dubbing it a capella, including this one:
A benevolent, metacartoonic line wakes up little Porkchop, forms a curtain that Doug lifts and passes under, immediately becomes a tightrope across which walks the apple of Doug’s eye, Miss Pattie Mayonnaise. The line twirls into a heart balloon to lift Doug off the ground before it is pulled down by the nefarious Roger Klotz and Stinky, only to become a hole that the villains slip through before Doug tosses it to his friend Skeeter, swinging in from offscreen.
It’s such a wonderful way of describing how the stories in the series are told, from the spare use of line to create minimalistic but expressive characters to the seamless ups and downs of the mental life and kind-and-gentle travails of its protagonist.
“Lifted away by balloon” fantasies are all about sweetness, and Doug’s infatuation with Patti is so sweet and touching (I always found her to be a smart, classy dame, with few of the character flaws that always seem to burden “the girl the main guy is infatuated with” in stories like this. She’s also not hypersexualized, which is rare and welcome.) that the balloon motif fits it perfectly.
Even in the context of the opening sequence, the balloon is more suggestion than representation, heightening the sense of fantasy – that the lightness expressed is the lightness of mind and heart, not really of helium and latex (or mylar if you’re fancy).
As a side note, while looking for the Doug theme song on video, I found a whole lot of Doug fan videos, and I wanted to close by sharing two of them with you. First, this rather compelling interpretation that looks as if it took a long time:
And this one, which looks as if it took a lot less, but still does the trick (warning, a little bad language).
Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers, by Lee
Strange that this article features two instances of chipmunks carried away by balloons, but no story of balloon-powered flight is complete without Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers. In case you need a refresher:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2e5q6ubDlZE
(Do you have that theme song stuck firmly in your head? Good. You can thank me later.)
Admittedly, the Rescue Rangers aren’t really “carried away” by a balloon; rather, they fly in a plane that prominently features an oblong red balloon. But this is perhaps the most extraordinary balloon you’ve ever seen. According to The Ranger Wiki, the internet’s most reliable source of Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers knowledge:
[The Ranger Plane] is supposed to apply most of the lift to the Ranger Plane and help it hover in the air, so the gas in it has to be lighter than air. However, in Ghost of a Chance, the Rescue Rangers rode the detached balloon as they descended to the ground without the Ranger Plane, and afterwards, the balloon stayed on the ground. Another explanation may be that the balloon is more of a safety device in case the wings fail. Three Men and a Booby is a good example for the Ranger Plane being able to fly without it after it had been released to distract the falcons.
It’s not filled with hot air or helium. Instead, it’s filled with a mysterious gas that changes density depending on the circumstance. Remarkable? Unbelievable? Not when you consider its extraordinary inventor and pilot Gadget Hackwrench. Very little was outside of the realm of possibility for this genius inventor, engineer, scientist…and warrior:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XsHr5wwgrU&start=483
If she could invent a steel-armored tank that balances on a rotating ring of plungers and an electromagnetic projectile shield, then why not invent a special gas for the Ranger Plane balloon?
The other Rescue Rangers held aloft by this red balloon make up quite the motley crew. The thinly veiled Indiana Jones ripoff. The candy addict. The cheese addict. The green housefly that doesn’t speak English. On top of it all, rampant sexual tension between Chip, Dale and Gadget threatened to tear the group apart. But in spite of it all,
No, No, it never fails
Once they’re involved
Somehow whatever’s wrong gets solved
And they fly off into the sunset in a bleach bottle held aloft by a red balloon filled with a mysterious gas.
Whenever I imagine Bill Watterson – and I do, quite often – I think of him fishing. I don’t know why – that’s just an image that seems somehow fitting. Guy standing in a stream, big rubber pants dangling from suspenders, pole curved back over his shoulder, mid-cast, the line and hook spiraling into the sky. In other words, I imagine him as one of his drawings.
Sometimes I’m angry at him, for letting all that talent go to waste. By now, he could have started and finished a whole other strip, and if it was even half as good as Calvin and Hobbes, it would still be the best excuse to read the comics page. But mostly, I kind of admire his disappearing act. He’s like J.D. Salinger. But honestly, if I had the choice of having dinner with Salinger or Watterson, it would be an easy choice.
On July 4, 1988, Calvin and Hobbes started an 11-strip story about Calvin being inexplicably lifted skywards by a single balloon. At first it’s just an annoyance: Calvin has to contend with an angry flock of ducks, and dangles humiliatingly from his pants when he ties the string to his belt loop.
Then, in the fifth strip, the whole thing transitions from whimsical to terrifying. Calvin worries about getting sucked into a jet intake. Instead, the balloon pops and he plummets towards Earth, vainly trying to wake up. In the face of certain death, he muses about his life flashing before his eyes. But then he discovers his handy transmogrifier gun in his pocket. Just as he’s falling low enough to see the telephone wires, he transforms into a “light particle,” and races home to tell his parents why he’s late for dinner.
I feel like in most cases, the image of someone getting carried away by balloon is supposed to be, well, uplifting. Exhilarating. You’re grabbing hold of something simple, colorful, and fun, and taking flight with it. But Calvin doesn’t seem empowered. He’s a little boy lost in a giant sky. Alone. Watterson makes the balloon into something menacing, which is impressive.
