Finally the riddle of this dream-like kids show, In the Night Garden, is explained
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Along with a lot of other toddler shows, my daughter has watched "In the Night Garden" with great delight for most of her life so far (16 months of it!). She is also mad on the toys, games, books and DVDs related to the show.
Considering the amount of TV she watches I consider it important that I know and understand what these shows mean and what morals she is learning from them.
You could argue that most of these shows are just rubbish and have no learning value at all; however I cannot agree with this as even if you believe they hold no real value, a child will still absorb something from it.
Further to this, as a former media critic, I am well aware that you can easily bury your meaning deeper down in the film’s Mise-en-scène so as not to make it apparent.
Thankfully, "In the Night Garden" doesn’t seem to carry any darker side, but it does mean something deeper down.
Have you ever sat there and wondered why your child was hooked watching Iggle Piggle’s asymetiric head? Why they were riveted by Uppsy Daisy’s wriggly hair and annoying singing?
I did!
Unlike other shows, like Toopy and Binoo, Wonderpets, or Caillou I was convinced that all these alien looking creatures must be based on something concrete and the "Night Garden" itself must have a footing in reality.
I thought this firstly because the narration seems so purposely cryptic, it almost invites decryption. And secondly, I’m usually stuck watching the same thing so I have to busy my mind or go insane!
Anyway here is the conclusion I’ve come to…. Whether right or wrong most people I’ve told firstly look at me like I’m completely nuts, then slowly nod in agreement.
I hope that other parents may find this mildly interesting and yes I know; I have way too much time on my hands….
In the Night Garden Characters
Before we start here are the characters next to each other to see the size differences between them
First off...
"In The Night Garden" has a finite amount of cute cuddly characters including; Iggle Piggle, Upsy Daisy, Makka Pakka, The Tombliboos, the Pontipines and the Har Hoos. Each character is individual and seems completely alien to the next… You could say they are all separate spices from each other. Therein lies the first clue, all these beings are separate animals.
At the beginning I tried to look for the most glaring animal connections. The first thing I decided was that the Tombliboos we obviously ant’s or termites since their home is such a give away. After a short while I identified that due to size differences they must be termites and the Pontipines/ Wottingers must be the ants
The Tombliboos
Termites even have the stripes
The Pontipines
The kids even have antenna
Easy, so far so good....
Now let’s focus on Makka Pakka, who lives underground surrounded by stones where it’s damp. Plus, his look and wriggly dance make him a bit like maggot. The confirmation of this is that he loves to ‘clean’ stones and faces etc, just like a maggot would love cleaning grot off everything in reality.
Makka Pakka
This one is obvious now
Stuck!
After this I had been stuck on the other characters for a while believing that perhaps they were completely random, until it hit me.
The key to decoding everything in In the Night Garden is….Iggle Piggle’s true identity
The first and most interesting of facts is that Iggle Piggle doesn’t actually belong In the Night Garden, he is only a visitor. He is the only character that must actively go to sleep at the beginning of each episode to actually travel to the Night Garden and he must also leave again at the end of each episode….
‘Don’t worry Iggle Piggle…. It’s time to go’
All the other characters are already in The Garden and are seen waving to him as he arrives during the intro sequence.
However, the key here is understanding who Iggle Piggle was before he fell asleep
The intro sequence also makes a clear divide between Iggle Piggle falling asleep and entering the night garden. In essence, we can take everything before he falls asleep as fact:
* He IS in the ocean, or a large body of water
* There IS a boat with a light and sail
* The boat ‘looks’ no bigger than your hand
What’s a boat doing way out in the middle of the ocean at night with the sail down and the light on?
I suggest it’s a fisherman who has found a good spot to start casting a line out in the hope he may catch something.
My first thought was that Iggle Piggle was a fisherman who had fallen asleep whilst fishing and had a vivid dream about some of the items inside his boat: some ants (The Pontipines/ Wottingers), some termites (The Tombliboos, the maggot on the end of the hook (Makka Pakka)
Following this vein The Haahoos would be a small pot of flowers and Upsy Daisy really does resemble a spider with her hair which moves like legs, but the thing that glues all of what I’ve said together is that Iggle Piggle, doesn’t look human, so he can’t be the fisherman
Upsy Daisy
Upsy is a spider
Furthermore, why would a boat be ‘no bigger than your hand’? Perhaps it only looks no bigger than your hand because of the way you are looking at it. It would look small if you were far underneath the surface of the water.
Boat from under water
Iggle Piggle Under the Water
If Iggle Piggle was living under the surface of the water it would explain a lot:
* He feels sleepy when brought out of the water.
* His colouring resembles something from the sea (blue and red) and also his hair does look more like a red fin.
* He doesn’t belong in the boat so he is a visitor.
* What he sees would look like a new world of wonder.
Added to these facts is the intro sequence, during which, as Iggle Piggle falls asleep the camera pans up into the sky, looking at it in much the same way that you would do from under the water. The camera then moves forward and the stars explode into flowers. Isn’t this what happens when you break the surface of water with your eyes open?
Breaking the surface of the water
We are then presented with a hedge surrounding the garden (the side of the boat). The only way in here is to…
‘Catch the Ninky Nonk’ or chase the bait/fish hook. Iggle Piggle is then dragged into the boat, or Night Garden.
The Ninky Nonk
Iggle Piggle the Siamese Fighter
So, I think you’ve probably worked out that I believe Iggle Piggle to be a blue and red fish, but we can be even more specific because of his red blanket.
There are only a few fish that look as though they are holding a blanket, fewer still that are blue and red…. In fact there’s only one that I can find; A Siamese Fighter Fish.
Iggle Piggle
The fish would be put into individual see-through plastic bags for sale on the dock when the boat got back to shore (the fish would fight if placed into one bag). Plus, the bag would give our fish, Iggle Piggle, a very distorted view of the world inside the boat.
It also makes the falling petals and the line; ‘Looking up, looking down…. Here and there and all about’ make sense. This is just a brief repositioning of the see-through bag, causing a few spots of foam to form on the surface of the water (the petals) then Iggle Piggle must look around again, but instead of looking left and right as most land animals do, he would look all about, firstly up and down as these are viable directions in water.
Lastly, and just as an after thought, if you turn one of these fish to ‘standing up’ position the head shape does resemble the strange asymmetrical shape of Iggle Piggle’s head.
Anyway, there are things I can’t explain… What’s the Pinky Ponk? The Titiffers, The stone path (in the shape of Iggle Piggle’s feet) the Gazebo etc… Please tell me what you think…. Can you explain the extras? Have you seen anything that could disprove/prove this further?
Regards,
Jamie – In The Night Garden Analyst
