Bust = To smash or break, especially forcefully

Bubble = A thin, usually spherical or hemispherical film (usually liquid) filled with air or gas

One evening while watching television, I was watching a basketball game when one of the teams called a time out. It was at this time out that the network televising the game went to a commercial break. I immediately picked up the remote control from the end table and began to quickly surf through the other channels to see what else was on television. I managed to surf through "fifty-seven channels with nothing on" until I reached the Bravo channel. That evening on the Bravo channel, there was this open forum interview where the famous actor John Travolta was being interviewed on a stage with a brief session of questions and answers from the audience. In my mind, I started to go through all the movies and television shows both good and cheezy Travolta starred in. I remembered Pulp Fiction, Urban Cowboy, Welcome Back Kotter, Saturday Night Fever, and one obscure made for television movie called The Boy In The Plastic Bubble that Travolta did very early in his acting career with other well known stars such as the late Robert Reed and Glynnis O'Connor.

In case you have never seen or heard of this movie, The Boy In The Plastic Bubble was a made for television movie (1976) based on a real life story about a person named Tod Lubitch. Tod was born without an active immune system (not AIDS) known as "severe combined immunodeficiency", more commonly known as "boy in the bubble syndrome" and therefore was prone to diseases and his body unable to defend himself from all communicable diseases. Because of his medical condition, the doctors order Tod to spend the rest of his life in a completely sterile environment. His room is completely sealed in the form of a huge plastic bubble against bacteria and virii with the finest in air filtering technology. His food is specially prepared, and his only human contact comes in the form of gloved hands. Therefore, Tod must face life everyday in an isolation chamber to be free from disease. Throughout his childhood, Tod adapts to this often-lonely existence with the help of his loving parents. However, when Tod hits the adolescent stage of his life, Tod is like every teenage boy in his quest to explore the world outside of his sphere of what has been presented to him as 'normality'. He begins to fall in love and have romantic desires with Gina (O'Connor), the teenage girl next door.

Because of Tod's condition, there are some major obstacles Tod would have to overcome in order to experience romance, social interaction, etc. We see in the course of the movie that Tod becomes restless and desires a way to be like everyone else in order to socially interact and also to circumvent the loneliness Tod now experiences. Seeing the restlessness manifest, Tod's parents are now faced with a dilemma of what to do. After much agonizing thought, Tod's parents decide to try to obtain a spacesuit to clothe Tod into in order for Tod to socially interact within society. Tod does receive a spacesuit from NASA presented to him by a real astronaut by the name of Buzz Aldrin. Tod begins to explore the world outside of his bedroom via the spacesuit by doing such things as go to the beach, attend school, and fall in love with Gina. Of course, Tod receives his share of stares, scorn, and ridicule from people unfamiliar with his condition that almost causes Tod to go back into his safe and familiar world of the insulated bedroom. However, through the support of his parents and Gina, Tod decides to go onward in his exploration of the world (his city and school) and eventually graduates high school and walks on the stage to receive his diploma with his fellow classmates with a cap and gown attached to his spacesuit.

As we see the story of one man's triumph of stepping into society and manhood, we must analyze the very end of this movie. The ending of the movie focuses on Tod who arises out of his bed at daybreak. Peeping out the window, Tod sees Gina outside getting ready to go to work. Without his parents knowing, Tod leaves the sealed bubble chamber without the spacesuit and walks outside in his yard and approaches Gina. Gina sees him in shock but then hugs Tod. The movie ends with Gina and Tod hugging with the ray of morning sunlight beaming down upon the two of them.

As a note before I go onward, when I began to research about what happened to Tod Lubitch, I have found some very conflicting facts that are questionable about the movie. Many sources state and many disclaim that the character Tod Lubitch was in real life David Vetter III who died in 1985 at age 14 at Texas Children's Hospital. Vetter had a spacesuit and went to school but eventually left the public school because his education level was well below his fellow peers to the point where more tutoring than expected was needed. Disney produced a very insensitive mockery of the Vetter's plight and the Travolta movie in 2001 entitled "Bubble Boy". The child psychiatrist who analyzed Vetter wrote a book about Vetter's life has had legal injunctions from Vetter's parents and the Children's hospital and threats by the Children's hospital to file formalized complaints against the psychiatrist and nurses who disclosed information about Vetter III to have their licenses revoked on the grounds of patient confidentiality. However, for the purpose of my article, the validity or invalidity of the movie is not going to be questioned. The sole purpose of bringing up the movie will be to show a parallel between the 'sanitized' bubble that Tod Lubitch lived in and in the movie discarded and the Christian 'sanitized' subculture that is propagated as 'God's will" many Christians have now retreated to while at the same time, many Christians have fled.

Please Click here for part two of this article.