this one is gonna go over huge. people on here have definitely read herodotus
That’s Right
So according to recent wank started by prokopetz, Jareth from Labyrinth is a sexual predator of the pedophile variety. A lot of radfems in the replies are chest beating about problematic female fantasies and on god it's about to make me tear my hair out.
I mean I don’t know that I agree with him entirely on his analysis of Jareth’s villainy, but he is right that Jareth is - on the most basic level - most definitely preying on a teenage girl, and that he has very obvious sexual desire for her.
However, if we take up the very valid interpretation that the whole adventure is a dream or a fantasy (and moreover her way of working through her feelings about her mother’s death, her father’s remarriage, and her departure from childhood), it’s also clear that Jareth represents a lot of Sarah’s anxiety about sexuality. She has recently gone through puberty. We are also told that she doesn’t date, and where is she on a weekend evening? Playing dress-up/pretend in the park by herself.*
Then Jareth shows up with his seductive voice and his extremely tight pants and begins making overtures. Moreover, we need to remember the overall context that he was played by David Bowie in 1986, a time when David Bowie’s face was almost definitely plastered over many a teen girl’s bedroom wall. He was, at the time, an absolute beacon of male sexuality for many girls and women.
Moreover, despite his creepy actions, I would argue that Jareth is still very obviously presented within the female gaze. He is lithe and elegant, he’s royalty, he’s magical, his clothes are tailored to show off his body in an erotic-but-not-too-erotic way, he’s self-controlled up until the point that he throws aside his dignity to beg her for love (Mr Darcy vibes, anyone?), his idea of a hot date is a fairy-tale ball and he even magics her a dress that every young preteen/teen girl dreams of, and on top of that, he’s shown being cute with kids! That is 100% female gaze material right there.
So basically, you have a story of an isolated girl who is clinging to her own childhood in order to maintain a sense of normalcy as her life falls apart, but who is also being faced with the unavoidable changes that come with adolescence - including sexuality. At the start of the film, we are shown that she is threatened by her step-mother assuming the role of her father’s wife and sexual partner. She is saddled with the very proof of that sexuality - her baby step-brother - who she obviously resents, partially because he is the embodiment of her step-mother’s entrance into the family, and perhaps partially because he is a symbol of something that very frequently comes along with adult womanhood (fertility and babies).
So she fantasises/dreams of a world where everything is confusing, with no clear answers, and life is unfair. In other words, adulthood. She also fantasises/dreams of a man who absolutely drips with a teenage girl’s version of eroticism, but who is also threatening and frightening at the same time - because guess what? Those desires and feelings can be very frightening and confusing when they first show up! And they can feel extremely demanding, too - just like Jareth.
Anyway, all that said, I disagree with @prokopetz that Jareth symbolises predatory male sexuality, because it is very clear that he was written to simultaneously represent young girls’ desires and anxieties about the unfamiliar world of sex and adulthood. And for young teen girls like myself who watched that movie…yeah, it damn well worked. There’s a reason a lot of us remember that movie fondly, and why it continues to fuel a lot of fantasies today. I would also disagree that he is the villain. He’s an antagonist, surely, but the real villain is Sarah’s own uncertainty and fear.
Of course, obviously, if you want to take a literalist interpretation of the story, then yeah, Jareth is a predatory villain, but I would argue that a literalist interpretation is missing the point of the film entirely. And I’m not surprised that radfems are missing that point by a country mile.
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* Personally, as a ND woman who can very distinctly remember the experience of being a ND teenage girl…yeah, this movie really resonated with me at the time for obvious reasons, and I’d say that it’s very safe to also read Sarah as a ND girl who has been traumatised by the death of her mother.
Such a good answer.
This is great analysis… but there’s something that the responder left out that I think is relevant to the conversation. That the Jareth-lookalike and his iconic look are both present in Sarah’s bedroom (like the fireries, Ludo, and even the labyrinth itself) before she goes into the Labyrinth to go on her Hero’s Journey.
I’ve drawn red arrows to the three germane things: two pictures in the mirror and the stand up doll near where the 14 is (BTW the 14 isn’t in the movie this image is from a website about 1980s bedrooms as seen on film)
So the two pictures show Sarah’s mother, an actress, with her new leading man and current love interest. The man in the photos is played by David Bowie. This was intentional according to the filmmakers.
And the other thing that the awesome analysis missed is that Sarah’s mother isn’t dead. Sarah’s mother had an affair with her co-star and abandoned her family. (It’s in the novel. The dude’s name is Jeremy). So Sarah’s mom… who looks a fuck load like Sarah… runs off with her co-star and abandons her daughter.
Talk about messed up.
So, in addition to her conflicting feelings about her father and his remarriage and new baby. Sarah’s got conflicting feeling about her mother, her mother’s abandonment of her, and also her mother’s new love interest. And a lot of that manifests in Jareth.
It’s particularly interesting to note that the pictures she has of her mother and her mother’s new love interest are in the form of a promotional still and a newspaper clipping. That shows a distance. And heightens the feelings of abandonment that she has. As a little tidbit from one of the behind the scenes things I saw somewhere – the play that Sarah’s acting out throughout the film is the same play that her mother and her new beau are performing in. That’s right, Jareth is saying the lines that his human counterpart/actor would be saying in the play.
Anyway, back from the tangent and into the analysis, so Sarah’s got a heap ton of stuff to work through. And Jareth is a part of that. He’s made up to look like a lot of the hairbands and glam rockers of the day… including David Bowie himself.. and he’s the spitting image of her mother’s co-star. Someone who Sarah, at 15, could feel some serious resentment toward and need to work out her feelings for. This man stole her mother, in her mind, just as much as he stole Toby.
And that’s really relevant.
And I think it’s important to consider when looking at this film.
Thanks for these additions! I’ve never read the novelization and never got that close of a look at the newsprints, so I was always under the assumption that her mother was an actress who had died. Nevertheless, having your mom abandon you to run off with her new boyfriend to a glamorous new life you both envy and despise is definitely also traumatic for a young girl!
