Here's an idea.
Over the Garden Wall is about having faith
in the face of the impossible.
[SCREAMING]
In the event you've been wandering
the woods for the last month, Over the Garden Wall
is a 10 episode Cartoon Network mini
series created by Adventure Time's creative director
Patrick McHale.
In an Adventure Time meets Grimm fairy tales
meets Miyazaki meets Mark Twain meets
[IMITATES EXPLOSION] style,
Over the Garden Wall follows brothers
Wirt and Greg, Beatrice, a talking bluebird,
and their frog, variously named Kitty, George Washington,
Doctor, Mr President, Benjamin Franklin, and so on,
around a rural, mysterious, Americana infused landscape
called the Unknown as the boys try to find their way home.
Where are we?
In the woods?
Along with having been met by nearly
universal critical praise, Over the Garden
Wall is also the most requested Idea Channel episode
topic in recent history by a long shot.
Thematically, OTGW has a lot in common with our episode
about the cable news.
It's an exploration of how fear can
pull at one's puppet strings.
Endicott is afraid of a ghost, Miss Langtree of a gorilla
and that Jimmy is gone for good, Lorna
is afraid of Auntie Whispers and Auntie Whispers of Lorna
leaving, The Woodsman is afraid of losing his daughter,
and so on and so on and so on.
The main antagonist, The Beast, a baritone voiced,
horned, black figure with glowing eyes
provides an undiluted personification
of the fear that is pervasive in the Unknown.
And as a matter of fact, when The Woodsman
warns Wirt and Greg to beware the Unknown,
it's not super clear if he means the place, The Beast,
or the general concept of that which is not known.
As it turns out, their respective reflexes
in the face of the Unknown, in each of its forms,
ends up making Wirt and Greg heroes.
But it also sets up a tension between them.
Greg, the younger teapot topped brother,
is a big old ball of hopeful.
He's got faith that things will work out
and, occasionally, doesn't even appear
to know that he should be afraid.
Pointy headed Wirt, on the other hand,
is a bit more resigned to stuff being hopeless or unlikely.
That is, until, spoiler alert, so take out your headphones
or turn down your volume until I put my spoiler hands
down, that is, until he is shown how his lack of faith
can poison those he cares about.
It's all clear now.
TV Tropes casts Wirt and Greg as the cynic and optimist
archetypes respectively.
For me, the brothers typify another duo
as well, Soren Kierkegaard's knights of resignation
and of faith.
Kierkegaard wrote about these knights
in "Fear and Trembling", a dialectical lyric
about what it means to have and act upon faith, inspired
by the biblical story of Abraham,
who is commanded by God to kill his son Isaac.
Abraham has faith in God.
So he does as he's told.
But just before he's about to kill Isaac,
he's allowed to sacrifice a ram instead.
He has proven his faith.
He would kill his own son at the word of God.
Kierkegaard had a hard time imagining himself
in Abraham's sandals.
Would Kierkedude believe that God
would pardon him, stay his hand, or bring his son back
after the sacrifice?
I don't know.
Having that kind of faith is not easy.
Abraham and other knights of faith,
Kierkegaard wrote, have no such doubts.
They act on, quote, "the strength of the absurd".
Though convinced of something's, quote, "humanly speaking
impossibility", they maintain it will or must happen
in some other not humanly way.
That impossible seeming something
doesn't have to be holy intervention either.
Kierkegaard writes about a young lover pining after a princess.
If that young lover were a knight of faith,
he might realize the absurdity of their union,
but believes it possible somehow, perhaps
through the will of some divine force nonetheless.
And divine force, from my perspective,
not so much from Kierkegaard's, we
could be talking about all kinds of inscrutable stuff, God,
luck, chance, destiny, the free market, who knows.
A knight of infinite resignation, on the other hand,
resigns himself to loneliness, no princess, no hope, no one
to drive with him to Ikea on Sundays, not gonna happen.
He doesn't abandon the thought of their love though.
Resignation is not surrender.
He is not, Kierkegaard writes, afraid to let his love steal in
upon his most secret and hidden thoughts,
to let it twine itself in countless coils
around every ligament of his consciousness.
By comparison, a knight of faith lives a life less binding,
quote, carefree, devil may care, good for nothing, he
hasn't a care in the world.
He resigned everything infinitely
and then took everything back on the strength of the absurd.
So maybe that's Greg, along for the ride,
worry free, sure that everything is going to work out,
carrying candy in his pants.
Candy camouflage!
And Wirt is our knight of resignation,
what with his, spoiler hand, general reluctance,
mopey poetry, and Sara feels.
I wonder if amongst all of its ideas
about fear and the unknown, Over the Garden Wall
is also, at least a little, illustrating something
of the tendency to be full of faith
as children and resignation as adolescents.
I don't wanna have anything to do with you or that frog!
OK.
I'll try to think of a name myself.
If it's not true, then at the very least,
it's a trope that, as the intricacies of the world come
into focus, we find it harder and harder
to have faith that they will work in our favor.
Kierkegaard says that a knight of faith
must resign first, give up their view of the world,
and then take it back under new conditions, new understanding.
What view do faith having children,
and by extension, candy pants teapot dome here,
have to give up?
I'm not sure.
Maybe none.
At this age, what does Greg, as our exemplar,
even have to give up?
Faith begins precisely where thinking leaves off,
Kierkegaard wrote.
But maybe it's not a giving up so much
as it's the careful selection of the set of things deemed
appropriate to think with.
Children and Greg have, by their very nature,
only a very particular set of knowledge at their disposal.
Does this make them somehow more capable or powerful,
especially in the face of the unknown?
While watching Over the Garden Wall, for some reason,
I couldn't shake this feeling that Greg has so much in common
with Ness, the main character from the video game
EarthBound, which you might also know as Mother 2.
I'm not gonna lie.
Their similar shape probably has something to do with it.
Ness doesn't have a damp blanket turned hero coconspirator.
But both he and Greg are these willing, faithful characters
of action.
In a landscape littered with fearful adults,
they don't ever question their capability,
or really, even that capability has something to do with it.
They just go for it and work towards ousting
this abstract, terrifying evil, hoping
to return their lives to normal and seemingly acting
on some faith that they know they can, that it will.
In EarthBound, it's a bit more explicit,
given how you have to defeat the final boss, Giygas, by praying,
by praying a few more times than feels right,
if I remember correctly.
It's been a little while since I played EarthBound.
But it means that both the character, Paula,
and the player, the person holding the controller,
need to have a little faith.
I gotta have faith.
In Over the Garden Wall, it's a little more
up in the air for reasons that are pretty clear if you've
seen the ending.
But could we say that they wouldn't
have made it through if it weren't for Greg's faith?
Maybe we could.
If it's not a fact, at the very least, maybe it's a rock fact.
It's a rock fact!
What do you guys think?
Does Over the Garden Wall say anything
interesting about faith when trying to navigate the unknown?
Let us know in the comments.
And to keep Idea Channel's lantern lit, please subscribe.
(SINGING) I've got a blank space, baby, for you
to write a comment.
Let's see what you guys had to say about Taylor Swift.
Kayla Haffey writes a really interesting comment
about the distinction between masculine and female narratives
and talks about how you could view Taylor Swift as someone
who is putting together a true or authentic,
with all of the scare quotes required
for authentic, female narrative but that she still appears
to be somewhat constructed.
And I think that this is maybe always the,
I don't know, like, dialectic of being some kind of mega pop
star that is advertising some level of personableness
or authenticity that, because of the way people
interact with you, because of the fact that you have
a team of people managing you, you will always
seem somewhat constructed.
And yeah, I mean, navigating that process,
as we watch Taylor Swift do all the time, is, I think,
really interesting.
But yeah, Kayla, thank you for writing this comment.
This was great.
Shessomickey writes a great comment
about how regardless of Taylor Swift's possible reinforcing
of traditional images of women, she is no less powerful
a feminist in that one of the sort of central tenets
of modern feminism is that however someone
chooses to perform their gender, that makes them no less
of a feminist.
The other thing Shessomickey brings up
that we didn't talk about is Taylor's crossover
from a country artist to a pop artist.
And this makes me wonder whether or not
there is maybe a connection between the agency Taylor feels
over her image and the songwriting that
allows her to make that transition and her involvement
in conversations about gender and pop music
or popular culture, which she has
been doing a lot more recently.
And yeah, I wonder if there is something there.
I'm just sort of putting this together as I'm saying it.
But this is what this made me think of.
So this is, yeah, interesting.
Mara K writes a comment about how
though you can view Taylor Swift as someone who is writing
her own story and in control of her own image,
there are things about that story and image that you could
view as less than positive.
And yeah, this is a criticism of Taylor Swift, especially
her older stuff, that I can absolutely see and understand.
I had read somewhere, so I don't know
if this is true at all, that she had actually stopped performing
certain songs that could be read as sending the wrong message
to young women.
Um, I don't say that as a defense of any kind,
just to say that, like, I think, yeah,
like, that's a sort of admission that there
are parts of this story that are, hmm,
you know, like, iffy at best.
And finally, I want to spend a couple minutes responding
not to a particular specific comment
but a type of comment that was left on last week's video
and is left sometimes on other videos.
There were a lot of people who said that they just blanketly
assume every pop star has their music written for them
and that they don't make a consideration for gender, male,
female, whatever.
They just assume if you're a pop star,
you don't write your music.
And if that is the case for you, that's awesome.
I'm glad.
You shouldn't.
You should not make that gender distinction.
Um, I mean, maybe you should believe that some people
write their own music.
But that's another thing entirely.
But there were a significant number of comments,
I think, that went one step further and said
that they believe there is no group of people who
make that gender distinction, that I literally invented
the idea that there is a group of people
who assume female pop stars don't write their own music
just for the episode.
And I want to talk about that for a couple reasons.
First and foremost, Taylor Swift,
who we quoted in the episode, says
that this distinction does exist, that she
has experienced it firsthand.
And she is a music professional who works in the industry
and has experience with this situation.
And I see some of you reaching for the authority fallacy video
that we made.
And I would like to remind you that Taylor Swift is
an authority not only on her own experiences,
but also the music industry, an actual authority.
So there is no fallacy here.
You could argue that she has invented this thing
for some bizarre PR reason.
But I think that that is exceptionally cynical.
And second, there is a thing that I've
started to notice now having done
Idea Channel for a little while, which
is that these types of comments where we get accused of making
things up, relying on hearsay, or inventing stuff really only
happen in very specific situations.
They show up in videos where I quote a female theorist,
talk about social issues, representation, or women.
These are the situations where we get accused
of just making stuff up.
And what I'm not saying is that on every other Idea Channel
video where we don't talk about those things,
people are 100% on board or in agreement.
That's not what I'm saying at all.
What I'm saying is that on those other videos,
like about too many cooks, if someone disagrees,
the response is usually something like,
oh, I don't know how I feel about this,
or that's a little bit of a long walk,
or you seem to misunderstand this thing.
We don't get accused of making things up.
It's not like a rampant problem.
We're not being accused of making things
up every other comment.
But it is a thing that I have noticed.
And I think it's important to point out.
And also to be perfectly honest, it kind of upsets me
a little bit.
So I just wanted to get off my chest.
The end.