2020 Reflection: Over the Garden Wall

 

Over the Garden Wall was written in November 2014 by Patrick McHale. The series is about two young boys Wirt and Greg becoming lost in the forest called the Unknown and must find their way back, with revealations later on that the Unknown is not just a normal forest. I've stated before that Commedia is the least flawed work of fiction, Yu Yu Hakusho is the least flawed Battle Shonen and Princess Tutu is the least flawed Magical Girl series If that's the case I think Over the Garden Wall is probably the least bad cartoon I've seen, it has the least flaws of any series I've seen and mixed with the references to Commedia, I was clearly going to like it from the start. Going into it in more detail though

3 Reasons I love it:

1: The series I think does an amazing job at evoking atmosphere, creating a timeless nigh-universal sense appeal through deliberate usage of archetypes and folklore, while also feeling incredibly grounded in a time and place. The series feels grounded while also having that ethereal otherworldly feeling I really like by mystifying the forests and making the supernatural elements very light but omnipresent so it feels like there is a pinch of magic behind every tree. This series was meant to be a modern fairy tale and evokes the idea beautifully, with the same flow and internal symbolic logic of one. Does it make sense that a bird can talk? Not literally no, but the bird was once human and humans can talk.

2: There's a great duality in most of the series whether it be in the visuals of light and dark or in the optimistic Greg and the cynical Wirt. This is where a lot of the humor and the drama of the series comes from, when Greg and Wirt get the same information but interpret it in entirely different ways. Greg's way may seem a bit naive but it's actually usually the correct way as hoping and attempting to press forward is pretty much always better then giving up completely, even if you have no idea which way to go. Conversely Wirt is essentially a child Byronic Hero, and in being so he's got a romantic intellectual air that's prone to despair and over-rationalizing and needs Greg's optimism to inspire his intellect to guide them. 

3: The series does the thing that I search for in series, the thing I am constantly wanting series to do especially ones that have the supernatural which is to use the supernatural to make the text and the meaning the same, align the meaning with what is being expressed. In this case, the series takes place after Greg and Wirt get frozen and their mental journey in the Unknown is a metaphor for the fight for survival. As their hope dims or their life starts to give out for Wirt and Greg respectively they start to become trapped forever and it's in Wirt coming to awareness again that he is able to bring himself and Greg out of the danger of the icy waters, because the reinvigoration of his hope is both the theme and the literal text. 

3 Flaws:

Every series has flaws, and despite being the least flawed cartoon I've ever seen, I can think of a few things that aren't as good about OTGW

1: OTGW sometimes just spells out the lesson or explains to the audience what it wants them to take from this. This is the part where I think more then anything it could better evoke fairy tales, fairy tales are often stories told generation to generation and you might think that would make them lose all details until they are just stating a moral lesson, but the reason they persist is because they're applicable to several different morals all of which can be read as a valid interpretation of the text and is useful. I know it's a cartoon for children but fairy tales were also used to teach children lessons without explaining the lessons to them explicitly.

2: Some of the episodes feel kind of disconnected. The episodes definitely share motifs and recurring elements, but especially the closer you get to the middle, the less Divine Comedy it feels, and the more Alice in Wonderland. I personally prefer works to be as unified as possible, as a general rule of thumb. 

3: One could argue that most of the characters outside Wirt are quite simplistic. On the one hand, this is used to feed into the fairy tale archetypal feel of the story. A character like Greg for instance is a figure of hope and cheer and is a naive but optimistic figure and never shows any doubt or more complexity then that but that's what makes him so important...makes him so important to Wirt's journey. Interestingly I think this is a criticism you could also apply to the Commedia, which was obviously an inspiration to OTGW. Many of the characters in both serve moreso to be symbols in the journey of the pilgrim, but Dante was limited by terza rima and the limit of poetry while OTGW's characters are only limited by being in 10 minute long cartoons.

My Favorite Part:

The climax of the series. The entire series the Beast is built up as an unstoppable force of nature, representing the deadliness of the unknown and later we learn the bleakness of Wirt ande Greg's situation, unconcious in cold water slowly dying. As such Wirt's decision to reject the Beast's offer because he's not going to just wander around in the wood forever, symbolically regaining his hope after he had lost it prior and nearly died made him completely above the Beast, casually threatening him even after the Beast tried his best to intimidate him. This is the best usage of the trope of "seemingly unstoppable villain is easily beaten" because in reality the Beast WAS still almost unstoppable, the power of despair, but the power Wirt found physically, psychologically and spiritiually was the power that beat him, the power of hope.