In the Night Garden of the Soul

If you are not a parent, you are unlikely to have watched even more than a couple of minutes of “In the Night Garden” – if you are even aware of its existence.

If you are, you may – as I have – sat through hours of seemingly identical episodes of this bizarre and yet (for toddlers) utterly compelling programme.

Over the years, advertisers and even programme-makers have every so often proclaimed that they have produced some sort of televisual material “for dogs”, “for cats” etc.

Supposedly, these offerings have been based on research into how the minds of pets work, so that they will appeal to them.

Quite why anyone would want to create television that appeals to creatures that (i) do not have any money to spend on goods and service advertised and (ii) have better things to do than watch TV, such as sniffing the ground or licking their testicles, is unclear.

And yet it was nevertheless done, no doubt bringing to bear the kind of “science” that makes shampoo capable of increasing hair shine by 80% and inventing Bifidus Digestivum.

Over the years, I have watched some of these programmes “for animals” and my overriding memory of them was “what the hell was that all about?” – much as I expect the reaction of most dogs and cats to have been.

The argument as to why it made no sense to me, I suppose, would have been that these things were designed to stimulate the brains of animals, which in cognitive and (presumably) phenomenological terms are very different from mine.

That then, I suppose, explains the complete incomprehensibility of “In the Night Garden” to anyone older than three and its narcotic, addictive effect on toddlers. It has been carefully designed to interface with the brains of the undeveloped in a way that leaves the adult confused, bored and liable to drift off themselves into flights of WTF? fancy.

Which is what you are about to get right now, after I watched an entire episode of this with Tancred at the weekend.

Perhaps the Night Garden is in US

It occurred to me at the outset that ITNG features a lot of Freudian motifs.

First of all – the whole thing is a dream. Each episode starts with IgglePiggle going to sleep. The Night Garden is not a place; it’s a dream state.

Take the little sail down 

Light the little light

This is the way to the garden in the night

The “way” is the method of the dreamer, a psychical roadmap not a geographical one. It is only by taking his sail down – by ceasing to resist and to strive – that IgglePiggle can approach the Night Garden.

IgglePiggle then is a figure of tragic proportions. In reality, he is:

Out on the ocean 

Far away from land

He has – like Borges in “The Circular Ruins” – dreamed himself a whole new existence. No wonder he doesn't want to go to sleep at the end - to sleep in the dream world is to return to the utter isolation of the sea. 

The three central characters – or archetypes – correspond to Freud’s tripartite division of the mind: 

• IgglePiggle is manifestly the Ego at the centre of consciousness.
• Upsy Daisy is the Id – her phallic, erectile hair; her skirt which pops up wantonly at the pull of a string; her wandering bed which “only Upsy Daisy is allowed to sleep in”; and her overwhelming desire to kiss everyone are surely proof enough that she represents a raging whirlwind of sexuality and unconscious desire.

• MakkaPakka, by contrast, with his stooped, gnomelike body and obsession with “cleaning the faces” of the other characters is clearly the Superego – the force of repression, conscience and self-control.

The Ninky Nonk, moreover, is clearly Thanatos or the death instinct. Every journey on the Ninky Nonk ends up as a terrifying hellride which all are lucky to survive and yet the characters KEEP GOING BACK ON IT.

"An unconscious sense of guilt"

At this point, my analysis begins to break down. The opposite force to the Ninky Nonk is – as everyone knows – the Pinky Ponk, which ought then to represent the life instinct or Eros. The only way I can give any justification to that theory by pointing out that it looks like a big, green, flying tit.

Eventually, one’s knowledge of a subject matter and willingness to stretch an already ridiculously overtaxed metaphor becomes exhausted and the maddeningly disorienting power of the programme drives one’s thoughts along a new track.

Tombliboos are clearly the immature form of Teletubbies. The Tombliboo larvae and hatch out after a couple of weeks as adult Teletubbies – at which point, they are carefully relocated from the night garden to Teletubbie land.

Terrifying, bloody slaughter

The principal predators in the Tombliboo ecosystem are Fimbles. A hungry Fimble that breaks into a Tombliboo bush: a bloodthirsty tornado of fang and claw ensues, which – trousers or no trousers – the Tombliboos are helpless to resist. It is one of nature’s most shocking scenes, which has yet to have been captured on film.

As you can see, it is bewildering for an adult human to watch an entire episode of “In the Night Garden”. I haven’t even touched on the Pontypines and the myriad potential meanings of “wave to the Wottingers”. Is Mr Pontypine’s detachable moustache an emblem of castration-anxiety? And what are the Tittifers really?

Beware the Night Garden – once you have been there, you may come back a different person altogether.