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An Essay on the Movie Labyrinth

Every child has fantasies and dreams, building castles in the clouds and forts under the bed, pretending to be the brave knight rescuing the damsel in distress, or the proud queen of a fairy-tale domain. Yet sooner or later everyone must step out of childish fantasies into cold reality, seeing the world through the more cynical eyes of an adult. The two worlds meet and collide in that trouble stage of life called adolescence, that period of time in which the sparkling veil of innocence is cast off bit by bit to reveal a world at once more fascinating and more intimidating than any could have ever imagined. Jim Henson’s film Labyrinth not only brilliantly weaves together the stages of the journey towards maturity, but also shows that stories and fairy-tales both paint a picture of a fantasy world and help to define the world as it truly is.

Meet Sarah, a thirteen year old on the verge of adolescence. Sarah still loves to play dress-up and dream about princesses and knights. She names her dog Merlin and her favorite stuffed bear Lancelot. Her room holds fairy tale treasures: a tiny music box, rows of stuffed toys, children’s books such as “The Wizard of Oz” and “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.” Sarah’s room is her haven, a place for her fertile imagination to run wild. And run wild it does; dressing up as a princess and reciting lines from a fairy tale in the middle of a public park is not the least of it. Her stepmother complains that Sarah “treats me like the wicked stepmother in a fairy story no matter what I say.” Sarah truly sees herself as a princess, a fairy princess stuck in a dreary world over which she has no control, so much different from the world in which she wishes to live. During one particularly inconsolable crying session involving her baby brother Toby, all her frustration boils to the surface. “It’s not fair!” she screams. “I hate you! I hate you!” Her temper tantrum only reinforces Sarah’s character as childish, selfish, and utterly oriented towards the unfairness of the world towards her and her alone.

Her story about “a beautiful young girl…practically a slave” to her selfish family intensifies Sarah’s perception of herself as the heroine of a fairy tale. “But the king of the Goblins had fallen in love with the girl,” she says with glee, “and he had given her certain powers.” Here in Sarah’s imagination the classic fairy story resurfaces: a king, magical powers, true love. Even in her frustration she still searches for a way to “get away from it all.” As she implores the goblins to come and take her away she is only reenacting her part in the drama of the goblin king. The words she speaks halfheartedly, a sort of consolation to herself at her brother’s ceaseless crying.

Yet only when the crying stops suddenly does Sarah realize her softly spoken phrase might have more implications than she previously thought. The spoiled child, thrust suddenly into a situation of both adult and childish importance, must use her imagination as never before. With her baby brother missing and the King of the Goblins standing in the room in front of the locked window he has somehow broken into in the form of an owl, she pleads for her brother’s return. If only in defiance to the king’s mocking “Go back to your room Sarah. Play with your toys and your costumes. Forget about the baby…”, she presses on. Even though he offers her a crystal that contains all her dreams, her only thought is for her brother. By agreeing to take on the Labyrinth, by walking down that hill to the dirty rock walls of the goblin’s domain, Sarah takes her first steps towards maturity.

Sarah encounters her first trials before she even enters the Labyrinth. The first creature she meets, a squat, ugly looking dwarf, is urinating into a pool outside the Labyrinth walls. Sarah’s as yet undeveloped sexuality is reflected in this scene. The fairies Hoggle shoots, as Sarah discovers, don’t always “do nice things, like granting wishes.” Indeed, as Hoggle says after she so rudely criticizes him for not showing her the way through the labyrinth, Sarah takes “too many things for granted”: her brother included.

She soon learns not to take anything for granted in this Labyrinth that, as she is told, may not always be what it seems. Even after she finally solves the riddle to the two doors, her newfound cockiness –“I think I’m getting smarter! This is a piece of cake!” lands her in the oubliette, “a place you put people to forget about them.” Down in the oubliette with no doors and no escape, Sarah truly has come to a dead end. Reading about heroines in danger is one thing; actually being the one in distress is another matter altogether.

Jareth’s song “Magic Dance” sung with the goblins and Toby is only another reflection of Sarah’s fantasies. A purely nonsensical song with mention of “magic spells” and other such phrases, The goblin king’s maniacal glee at having captured the baby manifests itself in the song and its foolish lyrics and capers-“Dance, magic dance-Jump, magic jump.” “Magic Dance” is a song about forgetfulness, about whimsical fun and fancy. However, Jareth has underestimated Sarah’s abilities. “She shouldn’t have gotten as far as the oubliette,” he says quietly. The goblin king’s behavior here is paradoxical. He is, after all, trying to punish Sarah for trying to come after her brother. Would he not gain more out of this punishment, then, by leaving her in the oubliette than by sending Hoggle, who he knows to be untrustworthy, after her?

By tempting Hoggle with her plastic jewelry, Sarah unknowingly takes a step in the wrong direction. The dwarf represents greed, cowardice, avarice, stupidity – all the negative qualities that humans are ashamed to call their own. Yet Sarah manages to use these qualities to her advantage, not thinking once about the consequences. She has not yet learned that “things are not always as they seem,” though the old maxim has been repeated time and time again. One could call Sarah naďve and narrowminded, but also kind and forgiving. Though Hoggle left her to solve the Labyrinth by herself, though she no longer trusts him after the disastrous encounter with Jareth in the tunnels, she still calls Hoggle a friend.

The Wise Man and his Hat present a different side of Sarah, one that so far has been hidden. Asked to “leave a contribution in a little box,” Sarah does not hesitate to give up one her rings to the old man. Is this the Sarah of the film’s beginning, who defended her possessions with such ferocity, afraid to let even one of them go? Perhaps Sarah is only beginning to understand generosity and the need to look after others. More importantly, this scene is the first to offer her a glimmer of understanding as to why exactly she needs to rescue her baby brother.

The Fireys’ song to Sarah remind her of all she has left behind. “Ain’t got no problems,” they sing. “Ain’t got nothin’ to worry about!” The Fireys represent temptation, traps to lure Sarah back into the secure world she has already begun to leave forever. They represent a twisted version of her “perfect world” of no problems or responsibilities. For the first time, Sarah sees that nothing really is as it seems, not even in the world of her dreams. This realization hurts a bit. Yet, inside the Labyrinth, there is no turning back now. No way is left for Sarah but to go forward.

Sarah’s view of friendship has so far been her one true trait. Even a coward and liar such as Hoggle has been offered friendship, and it is no different for the hulking Ludo. Recognizing at once that Ludo has no great intelligence, Sarah befriends him not for his looks but seeing deeper to his kind spirit. Even in the Bog of Eternal Stench and Sir Didymus the fierce guardian of the bridge, Sarah learns the value of friendship However, the goblin king has seen this trait in Sarah, and so uses it to trap her. Once again, her innocence has been the fatal opening , and as Sarah takes a bite of Jareth’s drugged peach, she knows Hoggle has betrayed her.

The ballroom scene, one of the great central pivotal points of the film, has one main purpose: to introduce to Sarah her own sexuality. The ballroom, is, in reality, nothing more than her imagination gone wild under Jareth’s careful tampering. Sarah has always had the fantasies inside her mind and with the goblin king’s touch, she loses herself in a fairy world of magnificence beyond her dreams. As Jareth has promised, Sarah will “forget everything” in the dazzling display of her childish fantasies come true. But the uncomfortable introduction to her awakening sexual desires cannot be forgotten or left behind. No longer a child but not yet a woman, her dance with the goblin king leaves her disoriented and confused. As he sings “As the World Falls Down,” Sarah slowly begins to realize that even love, that fairy tale emotion of which she was so sure, may not be as simple as she imagined. Like everything in the Labyrinth, “falling in love” is a twisted path full of obstacles, changing passageways, and oubliettes. The goblin king’s words to her: “I’ll place the sky within your eyes...I’ll place the moon within your heart…” only add to her confusion. Jareth, the man who spirited her brother away, who so cruelly tried to prevent her from solving his puzzle, at the same time professes his undying love and protection. Instead of the “happily ever after” that ends all fairy tale love stories, love is perhaps the most labyrinthine of all.

Sarah’s rude awakening in the midst of the pile of junk is the beginning of a new stage in her journey and her life. “Look around,” exhorts the junk lady. “Everything you’ve always wanted is here.” The words hit Sarah deeply. Everything she has always wanted, in this pile of rubbish? Suddenly she sees herself for who she really is, and it is a rude jolt out of the cozy bedroom of childhood into the garbage pile of her shattered dreams. “It’s all junk!” she cries. Sarah’s epiphany in the middle of the possessions she once treasured effectively rips away the last shreds of her innocence, just as her room is ripped away by the violent winds, leaving her at the gates of the goblin city. Only by going back, back to her toys and games and her fantasy world and acknowledging it for what it truly is, has Sarah been able to go forward, as the Wise Man and his Hat told her earlier on.

Sarah’s final confrontation with Jareth brings all her newfound maturity to the fore. Until now, she has seen him as the king of the goblins, a cruel, cold uncaring monarch kidnapping her brother to make her suffer. But in his songs he tells a different story. “How you’ve turned my world, you precious thing,” he sings desperately. “You starve and near exhaust me. Everything I’ve done I’ve done for you.” He pleads with her, telling her he has been generous. “I have reordered time-I have turned the world upside down and all because of you. I am exhausted from living up to your expectations.”

And in that last statement, Sarah sees the final truth. Jareth is not just the goblin king. He is her, her fantasies and dreams, all the fairy tales and wishes she has ever wanted. He had been made by her imagination into exactly what she wants him to be, has done whatever she unconsciously expected him to do, all because he is her childhood personified into a single character – a goblin, a king, a magician who can offer her her very dreams. The goblin king and all his creations need Sarah to continue her fantasies in order to survive; he cannot “live without your sunlight, love without your heartbeat…” . Without Sarah’s nurturing and the guidance of her imagination, he simply ceases to exist. When he sees that she realizes this, he begs her to reconsider. If only she will fear him, love him and do as he says, “I will be your slave,” he offers. But Sarah knows the deal is two-sided. By agreeing to his words, she will forever be a slave – a slave to her childhood and childish whims forever.

So as she speaks the incantation out of her fairy tale book – “Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered, I have fought my way here to the castle beyond the goblin city” – ironically the one that will take her out of the Labyrinth, bit by bit she leaves behind another piece of her childhood, moving with purpose and force to the destiny which awaits her. “You have no power over me,” she says. “You have no power over me.” And with that, the spell breaks, and the goblin king disappears, back into the form of a white owl with wings that take him far away. With that line, Sarah is free.

It is a quiet and strangely subdued young woman who tucks in her teddy bear with Toby and starts to take down the decorations that adorn the walls and mirror of her room. In thirteen hours, Sarah has been transformed. She knows her “toys and costumes” are merely that – toys and costumes, that love can be both very real and an mere illusion, and she must leave her fairy tales behind.

But without legends and fairy stories, the world would be a bleaker and harsher place. Are dreams only for children after all, or are they the property of all the world, both young and old? As Hoggle says, “Should you need us…for any reason at all…”

There may be times to move on and times to answer that last statement as Sarah does in the end. The Labyrinth has been Sarah’s journey towards maturity, but it has also become her own fairy tale to treasure for as long as she should live. To realize that even in the world of adulthood, magic and adventure and dreams are never entirely lost.

“I need you, Hoggle,” Sarah finally says with a smile, as the white owl watches outside her window. “From time to time…for no reason at all…I need you. All of you.”
 

14 January 2000