#oops accidental anti-capitalism message

[screemnch]

My silly little thoughts on "Labyrinth" (1986)

This isn't gonna be well put together at all, but I've just rewatched Labyrinth for the first time in years, and I have some... Thoughts

Watching it, the whole way through I kept thinking "woah, this is such a girlhood movie, damn" and while I think it goes a little bit beyond that, I still stand by this to a degree. Partially because I believe that it contains within itself a few core fantasies that young girls have drilled into their heads. Not to say that there's anything wrong with those fantasies, or that they're exclusive to women, BUT because I feel like it feeds in to the rest of the analysis.

The "I Can Fix Him" Fantasy.

I feel like this is pretty self explanatory, and also not really. I never found the movie particularly romantic (maybe that's just the aroace experience), it always felt deceptive and exploitative to me, BUT: Jareth does very much position himself as some sort of a dark romantic figure. He is being predatory towards Sarah, but in a way exploits the ideas that have been fostered by the books that she's read (or alternatively, he is constructed by Sarah entirely to match the book character, potentially deviating in where she personally wanted him to. But for this analysis, we're taking the existence of the goblin city, as well as Jareth's agency, at face value).

He presents himself as someone who has Sarah's interests in mind, even positioning his acts of malice (shortening the time she has to save Toby) as some feat he accomplished for her sake. If a person were to buy into his deception, at most they could grant him that he's "misguided" - which is where the fantasy kicks in. "If only Sarah could have done something to direct him, reign in his power towards what she actually wants, instead of outright rejecting it" - is a sentiment that I image people could have towards this story. And obviously, I disagree, in the sense that I believe that that is all a facade. It feels pretty textual to me that what Jareth is saying is very much a load of bullshit. The thinking of "if only" that he attempts to encourage in Sarah during the final confrontation is made to make her feel guilty for his actions and instil further compliance. If she doesn't do as he says because she is tempted by what he can offer - perhaps attempting to trick her into thinking that it's all her fault and what she actually wanted all along could work? But more about compliance later. For now, let's move to fantasy number 2.

The Plausible Deniability of Desire.

I don't actually have a name for it, and I don't know if there is one... But I find it to be one of the reasons why abduction, kidnapping, and other such tropes exist in media targeted towards women. You see it a lot in stories, even when it's painted in a negative light - a female character is held prisoner by a character who is either evil, or perceived to be evil, and to get her to cooperate the character offers (or forces onto) her fancy dressed, jewellery and other luxuries. Usually it's seen as the character attempting to "buy" the woman with "vain" items, but... The character still spends some time running around in the fancy dresses, even as she rejects the character's propositions, she still has to deal with all this luxury being thrust upon her. That's not even mentioning the stories where the person forcing these things onto the woman is her love interest.

I believe that there is a certain appeal that these scenes hold for the audience. This appeal is directly linked to how often young girls are raised to look down upon "vanity items", regard themselves as better and unlike those "dumb pretty girls who would sell their souls for a pair of shoes". Girls are also, in general, taught that they shouldn't want things. We see there are stories that focus on girls that want things, but you see way more often the girl that rejects the "vapid normalcy" of girlhood. Media teaches girls to not want things, that they are to be a passive receptacle of the will of those around them, all so that they can grow up to be good housekeepers and caretakers. The less you want, after all, the less the dissatisfaction of your everyday life hurts.

So, girls are taught to not want anything, and yet - they still want. After all, those dresses and jewellery and all that other stuff does look awesome. It's made to look awesome. The way that this is resolved, at least in fiction, is through the fantasy of this abductor/captor, that gives you all these fancy things, sometimes forces you to engage in all these "vain" activities such as dancing and having fun (god forbid) - and that's where you get the plausible deniability of desire. After all, it's not your fault that you're being given all these nice things! They are nice, and much better than whatever you had before, but it's not like you wanted it. The character gets something the audience wants, without committing the heinous crime of wanting.

I don't think I need to explain how that plays into the "Labyrinth". You just have to look at the tag and see all the gifs people share of Sarah in the ballroom scene, with the gorgeous dress and the slow ethereal dancing amidst a fantastical and dream-like masquerade. It's not her fault that she's going along with Jareth's plant at the moment - her memory's been erased! If she also gets to dance with David Bowie in one of the most beautiful dresses that I've ever seen... Well what can you do?

Sooo... Girlhood?

I don't even know how to get into this properly, because there are so many different approaches to this, and I don't wanna show all my cards at once, but...

"Everything you have wanted, I have done. You asked that the child be taken, I took him. You cowered before me I was frightening. I have reordered time, I have turned the world upside down, and I have done it all for you." "I ask for so little: just let me rule you, and you can have everything that you want." This is Jareth's main "thesis" so to speak. His final appeal to Sarah. Summing it up in less fancy and manipulative terms "Um, actually, you wanted me to do all these things that made your life difficult (but surprisingly, none of the things that could've made your life easier), and if you just want what I want, then you can have what I you want" - according to him, Sarah's the unreasonable one for not wanting her brother to be turned into a goblin, and she should've just let Jareth placate her with pretty dresses and parties for god knows how long.

This kinda felt like this... Experience to me. Again, not exclusive to women (if, at the very least, because I am not a woman and I find this relatable), but very frequently present in girls' upbringing. People telling them that they know what they want, and that all these things? It's done for them and they should be grateful. But if you look past the guilt tripping - what Jareth is looking for is a means of control. This is where we bring back the "if I could fix him" fantasy. Because there isn't actually any fixing being done.

I don't wanna go on too much of a tangent, but I find this to be present in a lot of stories where the love interest (which I hate to use for this movie) needs "fixing" - most of the time the "fixing" is just the female character adapting, complying and submitting. The one who's the asshole at most just becomes an "asshole but monogamous" now, while usually also getting to call the female character out for "being a hypocrite" and essentially bullying her into accepting the character with their flaws and assholishness. In "Labyrinth" Sarah did the right thing, which left her without Jareth's illusory offerings of happiness, which in reality was just complacency. Any kind of "if only" speculation, would involve Jareth having a degree of power over her. And then it hit me.

The Anti-Capitalist Curveball

I think "Labyrinth" goes a little bit beyond being a "girlhood" movie, as I've stated at the beginning. In my humble opinion, the "girlhood" aspect of it, ties into the more expansive anti-capitalist, revolutionary messaging of the story. Let me put it like this:

There is a king. He is powerful, and uses this power to push around his subjects, forcing them into misery and suffering, where there is no protection against inter-community violence and those who do not support the king's selfish ideas are punished. The King commits a transgression, a crime - kidnaps a child. His offering to the young heroine to save the child is an empty one - he doesn't believe that she'll get even as far as the oubliette. Once she does, he instructs one of his subjects to thwart her, which doesn't pan out - said subject is at first tricked into helping her, and then forms a genuine friendship with the heroine. All the king has to offer is threats of violence, which does work for quite a while, but does not reach sufficient results.

The girl, it turns out, has befriended those who have been made miserable by the king's rule, so one saboteur isn't enough to stop her. When at first she saw the "unfairness" of the labyrinth as something bizarre, she has since grown to understand it as part of the design, and taken active steps to prevent unfair treatment towards those she considers friends - even if they appear monstrous.

So the king takes a different approach - he offers her something that none of her friends could offer her, nothing that she could possibly achieve on her own (at least as long as she plays by his rules). He grants her an escape - a special status away from her responsibility (induced by amnesia), where she can have the fairytale setting she had always wanted. It's stuff - dresses, jewellery, dancing, masquerades, decoration. Even he is there, a figure of authority and power. Within this "escape" - he is reachable to her, they are almost on the same level.

But the heroine manages to break out of this dream, this... False consciousness, one might even say, and (getting really heavy handed with the metaphors) finds herself in a junkyard. She is placated again with complacency - go back to her regular life, focus on the things, focus on the material, objects, do not think about what you were searching for, what you wanted, what injustice has been committed against you. Do not think of the crime that has been done. But that doesn't work either.

After storming the castle, the heroine goes to confront the king alone. Her friends are always there for her, as she is there for them - they have found solidarity, and therefore no longer need to push each other down in an attempt to climb further up the ladder. All that remains is to confront the one who made this horrible labyrinth. Metaphors even more heavy-handed than before find the heroine meters away from rescuing her brother, except no matter where she runs, the labyrinth is set up in a way that she will never get to him. There is no way to win, when following the rules that the king has set. So she jumps.

And the whole thing comes down.

We can bring back the feminist messagings with phrases like "my will is as strong as yours, and my kingdom as great." But we can also acknowledge that Jareth's power is perceived, when Sarah's is denied up until the very end (when it's suddenly all her fault). Jareth can only be in power if she allows it, which is what allows him to present himself as better than her. But having seen through the lies of things meant to placate her, come together with those who actually do care for her, Sarah is finally able to defy the rules of the game and bring down the made up system that protects this man from the consequences of his own transgressions. He has no power over her.

And look, I'm not saying that this is how it is in the real world. Obviously things are a lot more complicated, and the goblin kings of this world will most likely just kill those trying to defy them, rather than turn into an owl and fly into the night. I'm also not denying the main theme of "growing up" present within the film. I just think that it's an interesting viewpoint to take on. For most of the story Sarah cannot see a solution, because believes in an answer that doesn't involve deconstructing the walls around her, and I find that this mirrors the current sentiment of a lot of people. The regular everyday person (from my experience) can hardly picture a future without capitalism, without oppression, without division. And this "taking things for granted" is how Sarah is set up to fail. If she doesn't believe that the walls are illusory, if she doesn't defy the appeal of the material things offered to her, if she doesn't break the rules - she doesn't rescue her brother.

All this to say - yeah, I like this movie.