Apparently Sarah had a thing for David Bowie, even before she entered the labyrinth. It's evidenced by the fact that her vanity table is a veritable David Bowie shrine. There's the aforementioned stature of Jareth, as well as several pictures of him stuck to her mirror. Many women who grew up in the '80s can attest that she's not the only person who's done this. Of all of the folks that Sarah encounters in the Labyrinth , it's arguable that Hoggle is her closest ally.
However, Hoggle is problematic for our heroine. For one, there's literally a face on the back of his jacket, which is an obvious indicator that he's, well, two-faced. He tells Sarah that they're friends, but then later he runs away and says in fact he isn't her friend.
Plus he's still doing Jareth's bidding, and feeds Sarah a drugged fruit at Jareth's behest, which prompts Sarah to forget her mission, albeit temporarily. And he's not just two-faced to Sarah: he also defies Jareth's commands to aide Sarah, again running away to deflect any punishment. At the end of the day, Hoggle's all about Hoggle, and no one else. David Bowie's soundtrack for Labyrinth has stood the test of time, just like the movie. That said, some of the lyrical content doesn't always promote best practices.
Most notably, "Magic Dance" provides some dubious advice for parents and caretakers of children — namely, if you're trying to cure your little one of the blues, it commands you to, "slap that baby" in order to "make him free. In contemporary western society, adorning yourself with jewelry is typically considered to be a feminine act. Men will wear some jewelry, such as wedding bands, religious necklaces, or cufflinks, but usually it's women who pierce their ears, receive engagement rings, and customize their outfits with carefully curated accessories.
But Hoggle isn't here for any of that. Rather, he unapologetically loves jewelry, as he tells Sarah, and is overwhelmed when she gifts him her bracelet. Hoggle isn't here for capitalism either, as he treasures that plastic like it's diamonds and pearls. So he's understandably freaked out when Sarah takes his jewels away, and in an ableist move, holds his stash over his head where he can't reach it.
Fortunately he gets it back, and can resume his own personal jewelry curation. Technically Labyrinth fails the Bechdel Test. While Sarah does talk to both her step-mother and the bag lady about topics other than men, neither of those characters have been given a name. Additionally, literally everyone else in the movie except for the fairies that Hoggle is assaulting at the beginning is presumably male do door-knockers have genders?
But in spite of this, Labyrinth has a lot going for it insofar as feminism is concerned. For one, the protagonist is female, and her character is multi-dimensional and developed.
She also gets stronger and more independent throughout the movie as she progresses through the labyrinth and evades Jareth's many obstacles. Without Labyrinth , would we have The Craft or Buffy? In most fairy tales, the heroine of the story gets married—think Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White. But Sarah isn't your typical fairy tale heroine, and so she rejects Jareth's offer of marriage even though it would have made her a queen. That's because she doesn't need his power, as she already has an immense amount of her own, and she finally starts to realize it toward the end of the film.
The more frustrated he became at his inability to defeat her and the further she got the more he wanted her. Perhaps because The Labyrinth was an externalization of his own personality and soul and she was solving it he felt she was getting to know him better than anyone else could as she was getting to know herself.
In the ball room he sees her, not as a child, but as a woman. He uses her dreams against her but in reality he's molding her dreams into his own. Maybe that's why Moppet in Return to Labyrinth has blonde hair.
She's not entirely Sarah's dreams. She's Sarah's dreams and Jareth's. Though admittedly other ablations don't have the same hair as their original source. When Jareth sees her in the ball he wants to seduce her. He wants to rule her, to have her. Maybe even to be ruled by her. Do as I say and I will be your slave.
He wants a queen. Jareth knows what love is. Sure he goes about things wrong and sometimes confuses love with domination but the idea of being in love does not evade him. He talks of unconditional love in As the World falls down. For all he's done he's afraid of physically hurting her. Even when she was in his Labyrinth Jareth never allowed any real harm to come to her.
If he had left her in the oubliette he would have had guaranteed victory but instead he sent Hoggle to take her back to the start? She can either give up or try again but either way he's rescuing her from the oubliette whereas if he left her there he would have had certain victory. This was mercy. Jareth lies to his minion, and possibly to himself, about his motives but Jareth is a clever character.
She begged the Owl King, who relented and struck a deal: she has 13 hours to solve the Labyrinth until her baby son becomes one of them forever. In the final issue, Maria makes it to the castle, where we see that the Owl King had no intention of making baby Jareth his heir. Maria takes baby Jareth through a portal, and he soon returns fully grown and ready to assume the Goblin throne. When Sarah wished for the Goblins to take her baby brother away, history repeated itself as Jareth attempted to trap Sarah and Toby in the Labyrinth with him.
And in case you were still wondering: they just put them on planes. The horses. For the Olympics. Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! She has written about TV, film and books for Den of Geek since , and for….
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