one of the things that bugs me about like, reactions to Labyrinth is you’ll see a lot of people eager to call out the element of sexual threat that Jareth implies, with the sensuality and the tights and the romantic subtext of the ballroom scene, and so on
but *far fewer* people seem to grasp/acknowledge that the final incantation, the line that Sarah could never remember until she understood it, ’you have no power over me’ ties into that element of Jareth-as-antagonist, on the level of both learning and fantasy.
the relevant element of the lesson being that men can’t actually make you play along in their romance games, no matter how much it feels like they have that power, or like you got yourself into this and now they define the terms of engagement. this is a growing-up Lesson about setting coherent boundaries that Sarah takes away for relationships generally, but because of how romantically coded that last exchange got it becomes very specifically freighted, as a lesson for a teenage girl moving into adulthood and adult romance and its dangers.
And the reason it’s a key part of of the fantasy is that as soon as Sarah grasps the fundamental nature of her power to say ‘no,’ Jareth has to stop.
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