Over the Garden Wall: Contextualizing "Babes in the Woods"

Abstract

Over the Garden Wall: Contextualizing "Babes in the Woods" My video essay for Dan Simpson’s FILM 456’s scene analysis assignment aims to contextualise episode 8 of Over the Garden Wall entitled Babes in the Woods by analysing its visual, audio, and narrative decisions and comparing them to early animation and western colonial storytelling. Over the Garden Wall uses sound, colour, shapes and animation style to masterfully execute a stylistic and narrative homage to not only early western and colonial stories, but to the origins of the medium it's telling these stories in, that being animation. Through the use of rubber hose animation style, its colour scheme, and its stylistic editing the episode is a visual homage to early animation such as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1923). A musical montage inspired by the song “Babes in the Woods” not only is a narrative nod to the series as a whole, but pays homage sonically to western folklore. Narratively, the dream sequence is inspired by greek mythology and odyssey with references to Boreas and the Onieri. These aesthetic and narrative decisions masterfully, overtly and subtly pay homage to the serie’s predecessors and make for an effective tribute to the art of storytelling as it’s come before.