The Way Forward: Looking Back on Thirty Years of Jim Henson's "Labyrinth"

This month marks the thirtieth anniversary of my favorite movie, Jim Henson’s Labyrinth. Since David Bowie died earlier this year, the anniversary seems even more poignant.

Lo; in a cloud of glitter and synthesizers I come!

                             

Labyrinth is the story of a teenager who is still, at heart, a girl. Sarah loves playing dress up, reading stories, and her teddy bear. Her love of fairy tales, however, leads her to hate her stepmother and stepbrother, Toby. One night, when supposed to watch Toby, Sarah accidentally-on-purpose gives the child away to Jareth, the Goblin King. Realizing her mistake, Sarah attempts to outsmart Jareth and reclaim her baby brother by making her way through the Labyrinth, recognizing her independence, her impending adulthood, and, of course, the power of friendship along the way.

I didn’t watch a lot of movies when I was growing up. I had seen the entire repertoire of Disney movies, of course, and I could sing every word to “Barbara Manatee” from VeggieTales, but I didn’t really watch movies. So when my neighbor Jessica brought it home from the library one day and turned it on, I pointedly turned away.

Except, in the first five minutes of screentime, we see a girl in a beautiful white dress running around a park with Merlin, her sheepdog, and pretending to be a character in a play. This was my childhood in five minutes. I spent most of my time at my Aunt Connie’s 1) Wandering around dressed in a pink ball gown, 2) Pretending that I was Rebecca in Ivanhoe and threatening no one in particular that I was going to jump off of a tower, or 3) Reading. Sarah was, when I first saw Labyrinth, at least five years older than me, but she spoke to my middle-school heart. I still wanted to dream when everyone around me thought that was stupid; I wanted individuality when everyone else wanted to fit in.

But let’s focus on the movie.

Sarah immediately repents after selling Toby to the Goblin King, and is determined to right her wrongs. To rescue Toby, she makes a deal with Jareth—she must solve the Labyrinth in thirteen hours to get her brother back—Jareth tells her to “Turn back now, before it is too late.” Sarah refuses to listen to him, and makes her way to the Labyrinth, where she meets Hoggle, a sulky, sullen dwarf, at the very beginning of her time in the Goblin Kingdom. Hoggle is killing fairies when Sarah meets him, and Sarah is appalled by the cruelty until one of the little fairies bites her. Beautiful things, Hoggle seems to tell viewers, often hurt, and the beautiful Jareth hurts most of all. 

         

If "having friends" means I'm going to spend my Friday nights running for my life...

then no, not interested.

                               

Hoggle is not the kind of person who would win the Best Friend of the Year Award. He is secretly in the pay of the Goblin King, trying to make sure Sarah fails so she will stay childlike and timid throughout the movie. Yet Hoggle also learns to repent and in turn properly helps Sarah (even though his cowardice often wins out over his good intentions). Sarah also meets Ludo, Sir Didymus, and Ambrosius, who all help her reach the Goblin Castle with their own particular talents.

Although Sarah makes friends who help her solve the Labyrinth, she also encounters enemies who echo Jareth, trying to make Sarah turn back. After Hoggle betrays Sarah by giving her a poisoned peach that catapults her into a fantasy dreamland, Sarah awakes to find herself in a desolate junkyard landscape without a clear memory of who she is or what she is doing here. It is there she meets a Junk Lady, who ushers Sarah into a carbon copy of her childhood bedroom, where Sarah attempts to convince herself that the Labyrinth was only a bizarre dream. The Junk Lady further attempts to trap Sarah in her past by giving her discarded toys to hold onto, placing them on Sarah’s back until Sarah is bowed with the weight of her past. Yet Sarah realizes that all of these valuable things the Junk Lady offers is simply junk, and that Toby, the thing of true value, still lies ahead.

There was something beautiful for me in watching Jareth offer Sarah all of her fairy tale dreams—the masked balls, the fancy white dresses, the handsome lover—and watch Sarah become independent enough to say no. And yet, the movie is careful to say, just because Sarah grew up enough to say no to harmful fantasies doesn’t mean she gave up her childhood dreams, either. Sarah was allowed to be a rational adult, to make powerful decisions, and yet also hold her teddy bear closely and jump on her bed.

While I was too young to appreciate it fully, I also loved how the movie portrayed Jareth. Jareth has been in love with Sarah for no one knows how long; he has been watching her in the same way Edward Cullen watched Bella Swan sleep. (No mention is made if Jareth actually watches Sarah sleep, but he does watch her play dress-up in the park, which is creepy enough.) Jareth represents unrealistic dreams. He will take Toby away and leave Sarah to the single-child life she thinks she wants. He will give Sarah puffy white dresses and masquerade balls. He also offers Sarah a damaged form of love. “Just fear me,” he tells Sarah at the end of the movie, “love me, do as I say, and I will be your slave.” 

Not pictured: David Bowie's two-sizes-too-small tights.

              

But this is not love. Perfect love, the Bible tells us, casts out all fear, and that Jareth wants Sarah to fear him and obey him is terrifying. It is the kind of relationship a battered wife has with her husband, or a slave with a brutal master. It is not the kind of relationship a young girl should have with an older man. In the beginning of the movie, Sarah struggles to remember a key line of the script she carries around in her pocket. It is the line that symbolizes her freedom and independence, and yet Sarah can never seem to remember, possibly because she is too entrenched in the fairy-tale of an older king marrying a naïve young girl. Yet when Jareth tells her to fear him, love him, and do as he says, Sarah has reached a part in her development where she is able to remember her lines, and say it with wonder and conviction: “You have no power over me.” 

               

         

There is something so incredibly satisfying about a young girl telling a man that he has no power over her.

However, Labyrinth does not place Jareth in an entirely bad light. At one point Jareth tells Sarah, “I am exhausted from living up to your expectations.” Being the fairy tale prince—even if they’re really a Goblin King, but it’s David Bowie, come on—is exhausting. Sarah comes to realize this by the end of the movie, deciding that what she has is more valuable to her than what she has lost, or what she never had but always wanted.

When Sarah remembers the magic line, “You have no power over me,” the illusion shatters. She and Toby return home, but it is an empty victory. Sarah is still alone in her bedroom. Her brother is safe, but she feels no different than before. As she lies there in her room, she sees the reflection of Hoggle in the mirror, telling her that should Sarah ever need them, they will be there.

Although Sarah has realized her independence and come into herself, she is still allowed to play make-believe, throw dance parties in her room, jump on her bed, and believe in fairy tales. That was the message I loved most of all. As I got older and my friends started to do “adult” things, they cast aside everything they considered childish. However, their idea of “adult” things were just as toxic as Sarah’s original fairy tale fantasy, where she spent all of her time in white dresses and daydreaming about what life would be like if Toby had never been born. Even though fairies were vicious and men promised love in exchange for fear and obedience, my friends refused to see that sometimes “adult” things are just as harmful as staying firmly rooted in the past.

For years I have watched Labyrinth on New Year’s Eve. I don’t remember what started that tradition. We would put the DVD in a few hours before midnight, and I would watch with my sister and one of my friends, but in recent years I have watched it by myself. And every year I am reminded: I am still allowed to be child-like. I can keep what I love about being a child while at the same time learning from my mistakes. I can be smart, and independent, and still have impromptu dance parties in my room. But most importantly, I am reminded that my will is as great as any man’s, my kingdom as strong as any king’s, and I owe men nothing. 

              

Also, in case you were wondering: Labyrinth is the movie that made me fixated on sheepdogs.  

And Forever Hail

A few days ago one of my favorite religious tumblrs posted a quote from an Elizabeth Stuart book. I have not read Stuart’s works, probably because she is not Catholic and I tend to read Catholic theology, and also because she writes about queer relationships, so Dr. Miller wouldn’t have mentioned her in Four Gospels.

The original quote was much longer, but here is the piece that stuck with me the most: “We have an unhappy urge to pin God, Christ, the Spirit down. When I look at a crucifix I am always reminded of what the Victorians did to butterflies. They caught them, killed them and pinned them to bits of wood. The resurrection, whatever else it is, is a message that you cannot do that to God” (Stuart, Just Good Friends, pg. 13).

When I read those lines I immediately looked up to the Crucifix I bought at the Wyandotte art fair during the beginning of the summer and have hanging by my desk. I saw the nails in Jesus’ hands, the glory radiating around his head, and I thought, She’s right. I have pinned my lord down.

It was out of love for us that Jesus submitted to the cross, but it is a sign of his power that he came down from the cross and emerged from a stone tomb three days later, bringing with him those who had waited for him and had died still waiting. The cross is only half of the equation.

But I tend to stick not only Jesus on the cross, but the dead in the grave.  

I have been carrying a lot of grief around this year, especially as it seems that so many people are dying. I have been mourning Chelsea Bruck, especially recently, now that someone has been arrested for her murder. I have also been mourning a childhood friend who died this winter. We weren’t particularly close anymore, but when she died everything shifted and I started crying all the time.

When my friend died, I grew angry. I was angry when Chelsea Bruck died too. These women were my age; who had the right to take them from me? I was angry at Danny Clay, although I didn’t know his name then, and I was angry at Dale Malone, and I was angry with God. :You rose again,: I told him, :but where are they? They will not come back.: 

Jesus came back three days later; Mary Magdalene saw him in the gardens—but he told her, of all things, Touch me not.

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This is not really a blog about God. It is a post about mourning, and about death, and about dead women especially. If I believe that a man named Jesus rose from the dead, I cannot leave him on the cross. And if I believe in the resurrection, then I cannot leave these women in the earth.

So I have made a playlist, partially for Chelsea Bruck, partially for my friend, partially for all women my age who are murdered or who make a dumb mistake or whose bodies fail them. It is for the women who mourn them too.

But mostly, this playlist is for the people of a Baptist church down in Arkansas, for keeping a girl I once knew warm in the darkest part of the night.

Atque in perpetuum ave

A Light Shines in the Darkness, and the Dark has Not Overcome It

 http://8tracks.com/yesterdaystoday/forever-hail

1. I Will Never Die—Delta Rae

Wrap your roots all around my bones

And when they come for me, when they call my name

Cast my shadow like a bellow’s flame

2. In the Shadows—Amy Stroup

Silhouette against the wall

Lit up by the white moon

Will I run and wake at dawn

3. Chrysanthemum—Everclear

Five months gone and all I got

Pretty pink flowers on a chain link fence

And I don’t like what it means ’cause I know there is more to come

4. I Will Follow You Into the Dark (for Ashlie Gough)—Amanda Palmer (Cover)

The soles of our shoes are all worn down

The time for sleep is now

It’s nothing to cry about

’Cause we’ll hold each other soon

In the darkest of rooms

5. You—Keaton Henson

If you must mourn, my love,

Mourn with the moon and the stars up above

               . . .

And if you must die

Remember your life 

6. Saturn—Sleeping at Last

You taught me the courage of stars before you left

How light carries on endlessly, even after death…

How rare and beautiful it is to even exist

7. Remember Me—Thomas Bergersen

(Instrumental)

8. Dance in the Graveyards—Delta Rae

When I die

I don’t want to rest in peace

I want to dance in joy

I want to dance in the graveyards

9. Lost and Found—Katie Herzig

Oh, I’m afraid of the world I’m in

One day I will see Heaven’s reach

I’ll find the one who left me sleeping

10. I Believe—Christina Perri

Hold on—I am still alive

This is not the end of me

This is the beginning

10 Books for the Apocalypse

Fermi melted down, like, twice when I was growing up. Something like that. This isn’t a scientific blog post so I’m not going to do any fact-checking. But at any rate, there were times growing up that nuclear radiation melted into the surrounding area, and at least once I packed a carpet bag in case my parents said we needed to Go Now (and I put The Bible in, because that’s just who I am as a person, and my favorite pair of socks and my favorite skirt, and considered myself Ready to Flee the State if Necessary).

The point is, I have been indoctrinated into the culture of Pack Your Bags and Run at a Moment’s Notice and Hope You Get Out Alive (But You Probably Won’t). I was raised by a man who used to huddle under desks in elementary school in case Russia bombed us, so this is not too much of a surprise here.

In the off chance we do make it out of Michigan alive, though, here is my list of the ten books I’d take with me into the apocalypse, so when I’m not searching for unpolluted water/evading zombies/trying to get the Internet working again/whatever apocalyptic scenario you desire, I am well supplied with literature to start the world anew.

After all, consider the classic Beowulf, one of the only relics of Old English literature. Had the monks at the monastery where Beowulf resided known that only one text would survive, what would they have chosen, if given the choice?

(“Probably the Bible,” one of my friends scoffed. I didn’t tell her that I, too, had once packed my Bible to carry off into lands unknown.)

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1. In the Kingdom of Ice, by Hampton Sides. Why? Because I cried when I finished, and I carried the book with me for a couple hours afterward, the way one would a baby.

2. Our Mutual Friend, Charles Dickens. I wrote my first giant Master’s paper on this stupid book. I read it three times in two years. (It’s an 800 page monster.) I would sooner cut my arm off than part with my copy with all of its sticky notes and little place markers.

3. The Dream Thieves, Maggie Stiefvater. Her best work in the Raven Cycle. In a sense, it would be like carrying Maggie Stiefvater with me into the apocalypse, and there is no one I would rather have on my side during the end of the world than Stiefvater. Plus, my copy is autographed.  

4. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier. I would need a book about loss in my new life. And this book is in my top-ten books that influenced my life, so.  

5. Code Name Verity, Elizabeth Wein. I mean, this book is perfection. I ought to write scholarly essays on it. Someone ought to, anyway.

6. Chalice, Robin McKinley. You can’t start a library from nothing without a Robin McKinley. This one is my favorite. (Sorry, The Blue Sword.)

7. My sad little Bantam edition of the collected works of Oscar Wilde, for reasons obvious. I cannot live without Salome; I cannot live without the cheeky picture of young Wilde gazing sultrily (is that a word) at the camera.

8. A Little Princess, Frances Hogdson Burnett. I mean…this was my First Favorite Book. Ever. Sentimental reasons.

9. Henry V, Shakespeare. I feel like the future world will need a reminder that war is not glorious. And also Shakespeare. Station 11 proved that we would need Shakespeare after the apocalypse.  

10. The Year of the Secret Assignments, Jacklyn Moriarty. This is another book that made me cry when I finished. Moriarty wrote many sequels, but this one—this one is the best. I believe it will be the best thing she ever writes, and that is high praise, because each of her books is up there on my list of “best fiction ever written.”  

Honorable Mentions:

Undeniable, Bill Nye

The Blue Castle, L. M. Montgomery

Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Goldman

The Historian, Elizabeth Kostova

If you could only take ten books with you into a Brave New World, which would you choose?

This Is a Callout Post

On July 20 the Monroe Evening News posted a letter to the editor by a woman whose last name rhymes (rather unfortunately) with Trump. She was angry about critics of Ken Ham’s Ark, who called the structure “unscientific.” She was angry that evolution was being “taught as fact” in schools, and was very vocal about the impossibility of hummingbirds evolving from a single cell, citing facts “according to the Internet,” which made my composition teacher heart hurl.

If you’re sourcing Wikipedia, please, please be honest with me. We can figure this out together. You don’t have to live life like this.

This article’s thesis is that evolution is unreal, that God is the engineer of the universe, and also (sort of?) that Ken Ham’s Ark is so totally scientific, prompted me to write a letter to the editor in response. Before my article was published (and my father said they wouldn’t publish it! I’m two for three now, dad) the Monroe Evening News published another anti-evolution article. (That one I didn’t save to quote from.)

350 words and the need to be politically correct mean that I’m writing a callout post.

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Ken Ham is an Australian emigrant who now lives and works in Kentucky, where he founded the Creationist Museum and also Answers in Genesis. He has a bachelor’s in applied science and a certificate in education, both of which were granted by Australian universities.

The Creationist Museum is, I will admit, a thing of beauty, a place that children of all ages and one young lady of twenty-three can enjoy because we can pose  for selfies with 90’s-style dinosaurs. I haven’t been yet, so I can’t verify how accurate anything in the museum is, but I can confirm its basic premise (that evolution is a lie) is loony tunes.

A few years ago, when I was still at Madonna, Ken Ham pestered Bill Nye (the Science Guy) into debating him at the Creationist Museum about evolution. Bill Nye accepted. Two very important things followed this debate. No, wait, three. First, it snowed so badly in Kentucky that I am surprised nobody brought up global warming. Second, Bill Nye wrote a beautiful book called Undeniable which is probably one of the books I’d take with me if Fermi melted down and I had to pick ten books in ten seconds before attempting to flee the state. And third, it gave Ken Ham so much money that he was able to build a replica of Noah’s Ark.

Bill Nye toured the Ark, and Ken Ham seemed extraordinarily pleased. He asked Bill Nye if he (Ham) could pray for him. Nye basically responded, “It is a free country and I can’t stop you,” which I suppose is a victory.*

*This is not in any way meant to be taken as a quote. Ham has supplied a half-quote, and I riffed it. 

If people want to build Arks with their hard-earned money, that is their prerogative and may God bless and keep them. I, personally, am a wizened old hag and I can remember claims of people from my middle school days who combed parts of these mountains in the Middle East to find physical evidence of the real Noah’s Ark. I don’t know what happened to them. Maybe they realized that Noah built this Ark out of wood, and wood decomposes. Maybe stuff in the Middle East got too real and they bailed. What I am saying with this anecdote is, Noah’s Ark pops up every few years and it is always a semi-big deal. That’s fine. Whatever. You do you, Ken Ham.

No. What bothered me is that there were dinosaurs in this Ark.

And I guess it’s one (wrong) thing to say, Adam and Eve totally lived with dinosaurs, now here, kiddos, pose next to this friendly brontosaurus. I mean, it’s wrong. I don’t need The Urantia Book to tell me that. But dinosaurs with Noah on his Ark. Did the T-Rex somehow not eat everyone? Can this massive Ark actually not buckle and sink under the weight of two brontosauruses?

A few weeks ago I went to a barbecue with my friends and ranted about Ken Ham for a while. Because my friends are polite, well-behaved young women, they let me go on and on and on and kept their faces neutrally passive. “What does Ken Ham even think happened to the dinosaurs?” I finally cried. “Let’s imagine, for a second, that dinosaurs did chill out on the Ark. What does Ken Ham think happened that killed each and every dinosaur after the flood?”

My friends tactfully changed the subject, and I went on my phone to search for answers.

Ken Ham thinks that dinosaurs died after the flood mysteriously.

That is so not an answer. That’s not even a guess at an answer. The Greeks did better with their stories of gods. At least they tried. What does Ken Ham think, a mysterious virus that only killed the dinosaurs swept through the world? I’m positive Job would have noticed this and included this in his Bible.

(Especially since, Mr. Ham, the writing of the Book of Job precedes Moses’ testimony in Genesis. But I am sure you know this, yes?)

This is not even including the flora and fauna that were destroyed during the last extinction.

And, my God, I can’t forget: There have been five massive extinctions. And the one that took out the dinosaurs—the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction—was not even the worst one. Scientists have nicknamed the Permian extinction as “The Great Dying” because 96% of all life on Earth died. The 4% of creatures that survive gave birth to us.

But please, Ken Ham, I honestly want to know. I am not being jocular or passive-aggressive. Please tell me. If human beings were around at this time, we ought to have a good guess.

What happened to the dinosaurs after the flood?

They all mysteriously died.

What a cop out.

Paleontologists don’t stop at one answer, or give up when answers are hard to find. They gather many. When I was young nobody thought dinosaurs could have feathers; now, many scientists think it is a fact. We debate whether dinosaurs roared, or hissed, were warm-blooded or cold. The dinosaurs that existed look nothing like the dinosaurs that reside in Ken Ham’s Ark, or Ken Ham’s Creationist Museum.

Is he looking at fossil evidence, or what?

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Why does Creationism bother me so much?

Part of it must be that I did used to go to a Creationist church. I was shown maps with the location of Eden on them, and told about how evolution is a lie. And because I am Rebekah, I didn’t just say, “Okay, Pastor John, humans and dinosaurs lived together!”

I went to the library and I got books.

Let me tell you: I have read a ton of books attempting to prove that the Biblical timeline is correct. I spent a lot of head-space during my high school career puzzling out the line of Egyptian pharaohs with what the Hebrews wrote down.

@Moses, thanks for never naming your foster brother.

The more I researched, the more I read, the more I realized that the version of events provided by evolutionists was more detailed, more meticulously researched, more fascinating, than the flat version provided by Biblical archeologists. I spoke to my high school biology teacher, who very helpfully put evolution into context for me by asking me why, if evolution does not exist, I take antibiotics for the full thirty days and not give up when I start to feel better.

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And here’s the thing. The initial letter to the editor that started this rampage claims that evolution was taught in school. But I was never taught evolution. I learned it from television and from books. Even now, I am forbidden to teach evolution in public schools on pain of being fired.

“Our kids are being fed a humongous bowl of hogwash in our schools,” the letter says. But I was not taught evolution in school. And I do not teach evolution in school.

And the humongous bowl of hogwash I learned was that dinosaurs and man lived together from a church down the road.

When you look really closely at the fine details—if you’re really looking—there are all sorts of miracles in this world. Like that the gas we put into our cars comes from the decaying bodies of dinosaurs that died. That the stone olivine is pushed up from the core of the earth and is the closest I will ever come to touching the center of Earth.

All of this may be an accident, as militant atheist Richard Dawkins would claim. But I believe that there is no such thing as coincidence. The little details matter. And I believe that when God planned the world, he did it was I would a well-organized book. He knew to put hints about the dinosaurs early on, so that man could drive cars later. He knew to put glaciers over the state of Michigan so that one day we would have the most beautiful lakes in the world. 

It is more beautiful to me to imagine a God that carefully crafted us than to imagine a God that snapped his fingers and then got mad at us because we ate some forbidden fruit. 

The Bible is one story of our origins. But this planet that we have been honored to live on—it is another. And it is just as beautiful, and just as complex, and deserves to be honored. 

Thanks to Margaret Klump of Ottawa Lake for writing to the Monroe Evening News and inspiring this rant, and congratulations on the newspaper spelling your name correctly.