There are dozens to hundreds of wonderful blogs about children's television and literature already in existence; I keep discovering wonderful new ones virtually every week. I'll therefore be looking at these and even discussing them from time to time, but what I hope to bring to the table with 'The Red Balloon' is a combination of the views of a practitioner, a critic, and a consumer and parent. I have a darling four-year-old daughter (perhaps a frequent guest poster) and we love to discover new books, films, and television programs together, but I'm also a media professional working on kid's TV and literature and I've published a bit of film criticism as well. So hopefully I'll be able to balance those divergent yet complementary viewpoints into something that will be of interest to parents, professionals, and theoreticians--plus anyone else who likes kids and movies. The emphasis as I foresee it will be not on breaking industry news but on the experience of creating and consuming children's media, the phenomenology of the experience--plus some updates and discussions of my own work, kind of a "screenwriter-cam" type thing where the rubber meets the road to go along with the more abstract discussions.
The name of the blog comes of course from the 1956 French film La Ballon Rouge, written and directed by Albert Lamorisse and starring his son Pascal (recently released on DVD in the States by Criterion--I'm sure I'll have more on that soon enough). I chose this not just because it's an amazing and awe-inspiring film, which it is, but also because of the relationship between the director and the star. Parents and children are, for me, at the heart of all children's media, in whatever medium and with whatever subject matter. The purpose of children's media is to give parents and children something to take away and share together as they live the rest of their lives in the times when the books are closed and the television turned off. A father and son team interacting and creating this wonderful movie together--for other parents and children to enjoy--is the epitome of this principle. My favorite two books are probably Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner, precisely because they're essentially in the second person: a father making up stories both for and about his son.
Thanks for taking an interest and I hope to provide you something useful, fresh, and relevant every time you visit.
1 comment:
so excited to read all your entries.
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