Who is Jareth and what is the labyrinth?

por The Labyrinth Treasury (Notas) el lunes, 25 de febrero de 2013 a la(s) 17:58

The Goblin King and his realm - a dream, or reality? Or somewhere in between? Most critics and viewers believe that Jareth and the labyrinth are figments of Sarah's imagination. There is a great deal of evidence to support this view. But discussing the issue with my friends, I found myself suggesting a different theory, which I still stick by; and in fact, I suspect (scriptwriter) Terry Jones thought along similar lines. But first "It was just a dream" The contents of the labyrinth seem to imitate Sarah's possessions. A panning shot near the beginning of the film shows the following: a wooden maze a bear resembling Sir Didymus toys resembling Ludo, the fieries and the goblins an Escher poster of gravity-defying staircases (Relativity, 1953) a statuette of an elf with a staff and crystal ball, dressed in grey trousers and high black boots like Jareth wears books including Grimm's fairy tales, The Wizard of Oz, Snow White, and Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales

Allen states that everything in the labyrinth is "a part of Sarah, based on the contents of her room, which show what's in her imagination". Even the landscape of the labyrinth seem to mirror Sarah's 'real life'. Its predominant colours - autumnal browns, oranges, greens and yellows are those of the wallpaper in Sarah's house. One obvious explanation is that she dreams the whole thing. The director was careful to include this possibility by having Sarah fling herself on the bed when her parents leave the house. She could, at this moment, fall asleep, and the beginning of her dream would be her noticing that Lancelot was missing. If she sleepwalked, she could theoretically wake up in the hall. In psychoanalysis, the characters in dreams are supposed to represent aspects of the self. So Ludo would represent Sarah's strength, Sir Didymus her loyalty, Hoggle her cowardice. And Jareth? He represents the part of Sarah that is reluctant to let her childhood go: the part of her that is dependent on fantasy. This part of Sarah is holding her back from developing properly. So her mind uses a dream-sequence to battle and finally banish it.

This is a compelling theory. It would explain Jareth's desperation to keep Sarah in thrall to her dreams; his knowledge of her greatest fears and desires; and also if our Sarah is a bit of a narcissist (and she does like looking in mirrors) her attraction to him. A slightly different take is that the labyrinth is a manifestation of Sarah's mind: her subconscious made real. Like the human mind, it has complex, often illogical structures and workings. At the end of the film, when Sarah falls to the 'bottom' of the labyrinth, it disintegrates into fragments a metaphor for the fragmented unconscious (according to French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, the structure of the unconscious is incoherent and fragmented). Allen takes this analogy further, suggesting that Sarah's quest is to "learn how her imagination works, its labyrinthian logic". As discussed in the section on creative input, Jim Henson's main interest was the character of Sarah. Perhaps, for him, Labyrinth told the story of Sarah's exploration of her own subconscious in an attempt to resolve her adolescent problems. Henson said in an interview,"The world that Sarah enters exists in her imagination [It] shows elements of all these stories that fascinated her as a girl". He sees the labyrinth as created by Sarah, either as a dream or as something more substantial. Another fan who has written extensively about Labyrinth is Lorelei. Her view of Jareth is based on an extreme interpretation of the 'Sarah-created labyrinth'. According to Lorelei, Sarah's little red book is the story of the labyrinth, and she has been fantasizing about the Jareth character for a long time. Finally she believes in him so much that he becomes real. (Lorelei refers to Margery Williams's book The velveteen rabbit, in which toys are made real by the love of a human child.) She compares Sarah and Jareth to a regent and his thrall (a model from vampire mythology, in which a blood bond creates the dependency of the thrall on his regent). Sarah is Jareth's regent, with complete power over him; Jareth lives only to serve her, and is under her control (though until the end of the film she lacks the knowledge or confidence to exercise that control). Lorelei sees Jareth as a "pawn"; "a simple means of allowing Sarah self-discovery". Jareth is real I think the Goblin King seems too autonomous for this kind of interpretation. Jareth constantly surprises Sarah, and there is the sense that she has no control over the situation until the end. Also, Sarah regularly surprises Jareth with her progress "She should not have gotten this far" he mutters irritably. No clear line can be drawn in the film between dream and reality, which undermines the 'it was all a dream' theory. At the end of the film, Hoggle and other characters from the labyrinth appear in Sarah's bedroom. And when Sarah is telling Toby a story, we see the goblins huddling somewhere nearby, waiting for her to say the right words. Both these scenes occur outside the frame of Sarah lying down on her bed and 'waking up' in the hall, on which the 'it was all a dream' theory would depend.

The owl, too, crosses over between dream and reality. At the very end of the film, it is watching her from a tree by the house, then flies off into the night. Just because the contents of the labyrinth echo Sarah's possessions doesn't necessarily mean she dreamed it, or created it. It is possible that some other power created it, using her mind as a template. This power, I suggest, is the Goblin King. When Sarah arrives outside the labyrinth, Hoggle says "Oh, it's you". If this were a dream, why would Sarah's subconscious imagine that a character whom she doesn't recognise, recognises her? Hoggle's words support the thesis that the labyrinth pre-exists Sarah: that it was created for her, that it expects her. I propose that Jareth exists independently of Sarah and created the labyrinth for her. He is some kind of immortal being who tries to lure human beings into his realm by offering them their dreams. The labyrinth is his dream-world - like 'the Dreaming' in Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics - which can metamorphose according to his whim (or to the dreams of his prey). Jareth himself can exist both in the dream-world and in reality. Yet Jareth is insubstantial and powerless without someone to believe in him. He desperately needs Sarah to succumb to his world, to choose to stay there, to love and fear him. It's as if (like the gods in Terry Pratchett's Discworld) belief is his essence. The curious line "Just fear me, love me, do as I say, and I will be your slave" fits with this theory. If Sarah accepts the Goblin King as the powerful mythical figure he is projecting, then he will be that figure and she will fear and love him. Yet his very existence will always depend on her for sustenance. So Jareth whoever he is creates the labyrinth for Sarah. The lyrics of his song to Sarah in the ballroom scene - "I'll place the sky within your eyes" and "I'll place the moon within your heart" reinforce this idea. He says at the end: "Everything that you wanted, I have done. You asked that the child be taken: I took him I have turned the world upside down and I have done it all for you!" He does all this in an attempt to seduce Sarah into staying in the fantasy world that he has built on the basis of her dreams and desires, to make her believe in his world and in him. If Jareth has created the labyrinth, to what extent does he control it? Not completely, it seems, otherwise surely he would not allow Hoggle, Ludo and Sir Didymus to help Sarah. Besides, even after Sarah has 'exorcised' the King from his realm, these characters still exist. Jareth can create a whole world inside a bubble to reflect Sarah's dreams and spirit her away. So why, during the masked ball, does he allow the clock to strike so loudly, a clear summons to Sarah to remember her quest? And if he creates the labyrinth to seduce and capture Sarah, why does he steal Toby and set her a quest to find him, setting himself up as the enemy? Surely she would be more likely to want to stay in a place where everything was perfect, and she had no reminders of home.

These points challenge any black-and-white view. Perhaps the labyrinth is created in an interaction between the Goblin King's and Sarah's imaginations. The rough draft of the script offers a very different perspective. Here, Jareth enters Sarah's house in the guise of 'Robin Zakar': the author of a play called Meander's Queen which Sarah is rehearsing (presumably for school, or an amateur dramatics group). He claims to be looking for "Sarah Williams, the actress", because he has heard that she is playing the queen in his play. It could be that Jareth is choosing to impersonate the real Robin Zakar, because he knows Sarah will be impressed and flattered. However, the implication is that Jareth and Robin Zakar are one and the same: Jareth has written the play for Sarah and somehow engineered it so that she is involved with its story. Perhaps this makes her more vulnerable to his seductions. Robin Zakar tells Sarah, "I've been known by many names, but the one I prefer is Jareth, King of the Goblins!" Perhaps he takes different roles to seduce different girls. Hoggle remarks to Sarah, when they first meet, "Bet he's gone and taken something you love", implying that this is Jareth's modus operandi. Hoggle also refers to other people who have come to try and find their way through the labyrinth. The rough draft contains a description of Jareth singing a song "about the labyrinth; what it is a test, a proving-ground, not for the faint of heart". This is an interesting idea, and not one that comes across in the final film. One of the screen directions reads: "Didymus whistles and is quickly joined by a tail-wagging sheepdog. Sarah gasps: he is the spitting image of her own Merlin". Sarah has not noticed any other resemblances between the labyrinth's landscape or denizens and her own possessions: just Merlin / Ambrosius. This suggests that, when writing the script, Jones did not have the idea of the labyrinth being drawn from Sarah's mind at all. I believe that he thought of it as a very real place. A C H Smith (the author of a loose 'novelisation' of the film) also understands the labyrinth as something that exists independently of Sarah. He makes references to its history, to the goblins' 'habit' of stealing babies. He portrays Jareth as a god, or demon, whose powers are fading through lack of belief, and whose age is showing. Jareth is frightened of Sarah, and backs away from her in the final confrontation, begging her "Just believe in me" "I can't live within you" The words of the final song, Within You, illustrate the confusion between dream and reality. The line "I can't live within you" is a subversion of the lover's cliched claim: "I can't live without you". What does it mean? If it referred to the fact that the Goblin King is inside Sarah's head, a product of her imagination, then that would surely require the statement "I can't live without you". I believe the line is not a plea, but a lament. Jareth realises that he can no longer live within Sarah, because she is determined to exorcise him from her mind. But which theory does this support?

Jareth as independent being, trying to lure Sarah to his realm? Or Jareth as figment of Sarah's imagination? It could support both. In yet another twist, Jareth sings "I do believe in you", suggesting an inversion of the relationship between the dreamer and the dreamed. Who is a figment of whose imagination? Who controls who? This is further discussed in the section on power. If the whole thing is a dream, and Jareth embodies the childlike part of Sarah, the song makes more sense. That childlike part of her is painfully reconciling itself to giving up its hold. The line "I do believe in you" is a kind of self-validation, and the line "Your eyes can be so cruel / Just as I can be so cruel" points to their being the same person underneath. A magic book? A third theory: the small red book that Sarah is reading is a magic book which draws her into it. Of course, that would raise the question: if the book tells the story of a young girl's quest through the labyrinth to save her baby brother, then surely this would only work on girls with baby brothers? Unless it is a book whose words magically change depending on who is reading it which is not without precedent in fantasy. The book is discussed more in the section about concepts of infinity. Creative input Several sources indicate that David Bowie's vision for his character, and his understanding of the story, differed from Jim Henson's. Bowie says, in the behind-the-scenes documentary, "Jim gave me complete free hand, allowed me to say what I wanted". I think he must be referring to the song lyrics indeed, Henson later commented that the lyrics often "surprised" him but perhaps he was allowed to make changes to the script too; and in any case, the song lyrics (particularly of Within

You) do suggest a lot about Jareth.

I was surprised when I heard Bowie talk about his character. He describes Jareth as "a big kid", who is "fed up" and "would rather be down in Soho". One wonders how much of himself Bowie put into the role..! This aside, I suppose Bowie's ideas are valid. The idea of the goblin king as allpowerful and sexually fascinating is very appealing to (female?) viewers, and it's easy to forget that he can also be described as childish, playful, petulant, and ultimately weak. Indeed, this is what the rough-draft version of Jareth is like. In the documentary, Bowie says of Jareth: "What has happened is that the goblins, without his command, have just gone off and taken another baby brother from another girl, and he's got to sort out the whole situation". This isn't an interpretation likely to occur to someone watching the film. However, the documentary was made while the movie was still in production: Bowie may not have had a full understanding of the story, and his ideas may have been based on an earlier draft of the script.

What is interesting about the statement is Bowie's suggestion that Jareth is not just a creation of Sarah's mind, but must exist outside the narrative, having taken baby brothers from other girls. Bowie apparently agrees with my interpretation and Smith's. Jones appears to hold this view too, but has his own take on Jareth. He has said that he didn't like Henson's vision of an all-powerful magic character, because he felt that Sarah would have no chance against him "there was no contest". Instead, he describes his version of Jareth as "a hollow man He was using the labyrinth to protect himself to keep people away. He was trying to control the world but he was really empty in himself. The one thing he couldn't stand was somebody coming close to him so when the girl got to the centre he kind of evaporated". In Jones's eyes, the story was focused on Jareth, and was "about the world, and about people who are more interested in manipulating the world than actually baring themselves at all, having any kind of emotional honesty." According to Jones, Henson didn't like this idea, and certainly it doesn't come through in the film. The rough draft Jareth - scripted mostly by Jones - is far less powerful, and in fact often seems as childish and petulant as Sarah herself. When Sarah finds the strength to challenge him, he shrinks down and becomes nothing but a bad-tempered goblin. Discussing the differences of opinion between himself and Henson, Jones states: "[Henson] wanted it to be about a young girl coming to adolescence and putting her childhood behind her and growing to face the world. But that wasn't a story that meant a lot to me. In the story I wrote, the labyrinth kept on getting wilder and wilder. It never obeyed any rules. It kept on cheating. Eventually the girl learnt there was no answer, no solution. The only thing you could do was to go with it and enjoy it. When she did that she got to the centre of the labyrinth". Henson creator of the muppets, Sesame Street and Fraggle Rock is a happy-ending kind of guy. He says, in the making-of documentary, "I like a film to leave me with an up feeling I like it to be about life". Whilst Jones was interested in exploring the chaotic strangeness of the labyrinth, and Jareth's role in it, Henson was more interested in the character of Sarah and how she learns and grows. Jones wanted an open-ended story with "no solution"; Henson wanted a linear narrative taking Sarah from childhood to adulthood. Jones does not mention any process of compromise just "friendly disagreement" - and the tensions between these two perspectives is evident in the film. Jones describes the film as "falling between the two stories". As Allen writes,"Henson's idea of labyrinth as teacher doesn't fit with Jones's idea of labyrinth as trippy amusement park. Both ideas come through with equal strength in the film, and are never reconciled". Conclusion So, dream or reality? I prefer to think that the film subverts this distinction. The labyrinth is both. In the final scene, Sarah sees her friends reflected in the mirror: a familiar trope from fantasy, and

we nod our heads and think "Ah, they still live on in her imagination". But then, when she tells them that she needs them, they bound into reality with a cheer, large as life. If they were imaginary before, in the mirror, what are they now? In a way, they are real; and not just in the half-hearted sense of living inside Sarah's imagination. The scene literally blurs the boundaries between fantasy and reality.