An Introduction to the Labyrinth
Welcome to the Labyrinth. I am Jareth, the Goblin King, girl, and you are mine.
The Cult of LabyrinthWhat makes a movie like Labyrinth, a supposedly mere children's film, so special to so many people who have, or should have, long grown up? Why are there so many web sites devoted to it, why does it leave you rmind, why can't you stop thinking about him and why is this Muppet movie, really more a disguised one meant completely for someone else?
If you could think of one fantasy movie that gave you the intoxicating feeling that you were falling in love for the first time, then you have found the Labyrinth. This movie has the seductive power of pulling in the dreamers; the lovers and someone like you and pushing you away obsessed. There is no way to view Labyrinth; there is only ways to experience it. To become Sarah, the over sensitive, melodramatic child and to know that her needs are your needs, and to fall in love with a dream like Jareth.
This Labyrinth is your mirror. The hatred you feel for the world and everyone, the wish for something better, the search of it within your fantasies. But yet you all the time that in the end, you will have to acknowledge and accept the real world. This feels so tragic and the process so difficult that that maybe you are a hero or heroine after all. A neurotic romantic. Princess maybe. This is a horrible fairytale of a life that just will not end. The last thing you want to be told is that you are wasting your time, that it is immature and childlike. And this is where Labyrinth becomes your story.
Labyrinth does not push the fact that thinking in this wistful way is wasteful and that everyone should grow out of their daydreaming state. It does not end with the realisation that one needs to grow up and abandon what was before because it was "wrong". The Labyrinth is a metaphor of an ever-changing, fast and furious, yet gentle and nostalgic journey of our life, our minds and emotions. Everything changes and has so many perspectives that nothing can ever be wrong and nothing can ever be right. Where everything can be accomodated. We choose what we feel is the best way to live, and deep inside we know what that is for us, what is right and wrong for us and for that we do not need anyone to tell us.
Labyrinth is a poetic journey where you are reassured that in the end you are the hero, that you are brave and worthy. That heroines can be touchy and clumsy and intelligent, but end up demonstrating how stupid they are instead. But that it doesn't matter if you can think of it as crazy, strange creatures at doors and stranger things in bubbles. They are not mistakes. There are no such things as mistakes, only experiences. If we never made them, we wouldn't end up knowing what to in the end. Weakness can be sentiment, love and mercy and they push us down to make us strong.
In the end, Sarah doesn't change her characteristics, when facing Jareth, she is still a little girl, but now she is brave because she was scared. She is still selfish, but she is now determined. When she banishes Jareth as her duty calls, she still reaches out longingly for the dream bubble, she still wants him, but she is sacrificial. She has not changed herself; it is the journey that has brought out the different facets of each of her traits. We do not need to change what we are, we were always destined to be true survivors, but to learn the beauty of our characteristics which comprise of such shifting qualities, to love everything, accept everything, understand everything.
Sarah knows what Jareth has done for her, by doing absolutely nothing for her. In the end she will not substitute obsessive hatred for obsessive love. She still will still love him. She won't throw away her fantasies, but invites them all to stay. Nothing we have done in the past is bad. We should never deny them.
The Labyrinth is shimmering emotions that constantly change, where feelings are allowed to be multi-faceted instead of one or the other. In real life people are always both right and wrong at the same time and nothing is able to sit long enough to be labelled. The Labyrinth is not patronising, pointing out in black and white what is right and what is wrong and what you should be doing. The Labyrinth is about personal choices and knowing in the end that what we choose is what is right and wrong for us. The Labyrinth is your life. We al want to fall in love with something this beautiful, which manifests itself as Jareth. We also want to escape it because it eats us whole. The Labyrinth is your life. You will need in desperately one time in your life and then you will try to leave, but it will always stay a piece in you.
Official Labyrinth Movie Blurbs
The Element of Labyrinth
SARAH - The Little Princess
Sarah a 15 year old girl who hates her stepmother and neglected by her father, they all love the baby brother - who will love Sarah Williams? She's a child too who has her needs. Disillusioned and lonely with her real life, Sarah builds up a fantasy world to make her life more exciting and fit her drama queen behaviour. She idolises her maternal mother, who is a famous stage actress with an exciting career and a handsome actor boyfriend. After all, Sarah is always dramatic and nobody ever pays attention to her, her life must be an illusion. Almost everything she says comes out like some staged outcry ( "You don’t ask what my plans are!"). Perhaps drama is the only way she feels she can express herself. Her family are the villians, her toys, the childhood remeinders of a better past, are her heroes. Maybe the child can play the innocent sacrifice. The line between fantasy and fact is so blured that one night the boundaries disappear altogether. This is not surprising, everything has already been so real in Sarah’s mind and so real in her everyday life. The only difference is that Jareth can now talk back and Jareth now has a mind of his own.
JARETH - The Grim & Thin White Owl King
Introducing Jareth. Tsk, tsk, he's the nemesis come to pay Sarah her lesson. He’s the King of the Goblins and he lives in The Underground. He’s handsome and he’s everything you want him to be and he’s very, very mean. He’s neither real nor unreal, it depends on how much you believe in him. He just looks a lot like Sarah’s mother’s boyfriend. He can be your night owl, he can show you your dreams in his magic crystals and he can spin you any illusion you want and have you believe in them. He rules a crumbling kingdom full of stupid Goblins and he’s very bored. Maybe someone else would like to feel his tricks on them.
Jareth is Sarah’s villain. He steals away her baby brother, takes him to his castle in the middle of his huge Labyrinth and gives her 13 hours to get the baby back. If she fails, he’s going to turn Toby into a Goblin. Just like Sarah asked him to do. One often wonders how much of a villain he really is. Is Jareth the villian because he was the monster created for the purpose, or is Sarah the villian for creating him? Just so that Sarah can redeem herself by rescuing the baby, discovers what it is to be a true ‘heroine’, breaking out of her fantasy world and having a happy ending. Without villians there would be no heroes. All Jareth can do in the end is try and save himself or be destroyed along with all her other illusions, while torn between his love for her and his inability to say anything that would betray his role for her. Playing something that Sarah regards as a game because she thinks the whole world is her personal stage.
JARETH & SARAH - I will be King and You will be Queen
They love each other. No they don't. Or maybe they do. Maybe Jareth has affection for the one who created him and gave him life, and perhaps Sarah is fond of her villain, the only ‘person’ she has for company as she practises her play religiously, day in, day out, with flowers in her hair, lost and lonely within herself. They continually try to get their hands on each other. Jareth punishes her and Sarah trashes his City. In the end Jareth will claim he was generous, Sarah will say he wasn’t. He will say that he couldn’t possibly offer her any more when he has already offered her everything. He will say she is scared. She will take a step forward and he will take a step back. They will argue about each other and forget to argue about the baby. But along the way somehow, Jareth will take Sarah in his arms and they will attend a fancy ball and dance together. They're lost in a hopeless romantic world that is an illusion, a fake dream to them both that will break your heart lest you wake up, the longer you continue, but it was somewhat nice.
THE LABYRINTH - The Centre of the Universe
The Labyrinth is a dizzy, huge maze that surrounds Jareth’s castle. It is Sarah’s inner psyche and it is in constant turmoil. She must get to the very center of her heart and find Jareth there. But she cannot go straight to him, for there are too many layers, fantasies and illusions that keep them apart. The reward is not in finding Jareth, but in getting to him and getting him out. This world is too confusing. Why is a movie that tries to teach you not to be slave turn you into one? Would you have neede this labyrinth so much if you had never known what it was? Truth is, everyone always had one on the inside. Sooner or later something has to bring it out.
You will never leave the Labyrinth. My faithful will take care of that. They will take care of you, too. And so will I. You are mine, girl. Forever.
TAKE ME BACK!
