'Ello! Would you like to come inside an' have a nice cup of tea with me n' the missus?
The sketch for this little Art Nouveau pannel featuring this little guy had been sitting in my desk for ages, along with the last (Pan't labyrinth) one and several other unfinished projects.
In-between commissions, I've started working on these- I hope this fine ol' lad brings good memories!
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You know how, in stories where some treasure-hunting adventurer goes into some ancient lost ruins in search of a particularly special artifact or treasure horde, and there's all these traps left behind by some civilization so long gone that the ruins are all overgrown with jungle vine, moss, or some other form of vegetation (or it's filled with snakes, beetles, or some other vermin) with or without crumbling stone, worn rope bridges, or some other signs of the structure being old and worn...
I gotta ask, if the place has been protected by traps since it was built, then why would any part of it show wear of any sort other than old age alone, looking like countless generations of people wore down stone steps or bridges or whatever else? Have there really been THAT many people who tried to break into this place? (Also: Do the vermin never set off the traps accidentally?)
BUT MORE THAN THAT: if it's so long abandoned, old, and untended by a lost civilization that (presumably) is no longer there to tend it, then why do the modern-times adventurers come across multiple skulls/skeletons and other signs of previous would-be raiders having been killed by the traps... which are still sitting in wait, ready to be sprung by the next attempt? Is there some secret hidden someone who lurks around, just waiting for people to get killed by the traps, and then who resets the crushing room and the wall spikes, opens the fallen-down stone doors, closes the trap doors, refills the stock of poison darts and/or arrows in the walls, puts back any large rolling boulders, and rebuilds crumbled statues and other stoneworks? Also, if everything is so old that rope bridges might fall apart at any moment, why would the trap mechanisms not also be falling apart? Why should they work as well as they ever did when they were first made? Organic material components break down over time, metal can corrode in environments where there's enough water present for plants to grow or vermin to thrive, and even stone mechanisms would eventually wear down if the traps have been set off countless times before.
(am now picturing the Knight in The Last Crusade who guards the Grail, waiting centuries for the right person to come along, and most of the time, even if someone does show up, they don't even make it to the inner room to fight the Knight, so after waiting a respectable time after hearing the traps in the outer passages get set off, he's saying to himself: "Well, I guess that's another one who didn't make it very far. Better go reset the traps." )
SO:
In your dungeon, who would reset the traps?
Fairies, gremlins, magic somehow indefinitely sustained by some secret power source, perhaps the very creeping vines that cover the walls have enough intelligence and freedom of movement that they are in charge of dungeon maintenance...
...or maybe it's this guy?
" 'Ello. "
(btw, am now also imagining some kind of scenario where there's an entire working dungeon ecosystem (on purpose), where the artifact in the ruin provides energy (instead of sunlight) to the plants, which perform maintenance (including trap-resets) and where insects feed on the plants, larger vermin feed on the insects, and dumb wandering animals larger than the vermin feed on them... and also randomly set off the traps, which provides the important function of routine testing to make sure the traps are working smoothly as designed. Alternatively, the larger fauna (such as gremlins) might perform maintenance instead of sentient flora. "Oh, hear that? There goes the trap in corridor 2-57G. Today was Bob's turn to test there, I wonder if he survived?" )
(alternatively, are none of the traps actually automatic at all, but instead all function by some life form(s) in the walls manually setting each one off, firing each individual dart, moving the spikes and walls and trap doors because they are always watching for intruders to come by? The sci-fi equivalent would be that nothing would be set to automatically go off, but instead some kind of dungeon/spaceship/building master-control AI is watching everything all the time and chooses each trap to turn on at just the right time... a fantasy-world equivalent of THAT would be some magical being with a crystal ball (or hundreds of them) watching everyone who enters and choosing what perils to inflict on which people, and when. (Like a GM in an RPG, haha)
(Note: Totally am NOT planning to use any of this stuff for anything anywhere in my writing, just couldn't help thinking about it when watching Indiana Jones movies... so it is all up for grabs for anyone (or everyone) who might want to use it, that's why it's here.)
(hoping it won't keep taking up space in my head, causing me to think of more and more related concepts)
Let’s talk about Labyrinth and the meaning behind it because people like to ruin everything.
Let’s start with a question, as an angst teen drama queen did you never make up scenarios in your head? an adventure in space or in a fantasy world that you created yourself, or one from a film. A situation to be with a made up hero/ love interest, or a self insert into a movie/ show/ book so you could be with your favourite character or to simple just be in a world you love and find fascinating? because fantasy is sometimes way better than our reality.
Because I did, I’m 24 now and I still do to this very day.
This is what I think Sarah is doing and what Labyrinth is really about, I’m here to talk about it and show the evidence.
So pretty early on in the movie (based that you have seen this movie a good 100 times, because if it’s your first time watching this will probably go over your head) we see signs that the whole trip that Sarah takes to the Labyrinth is all due to her imagination.
In the very first scene of the movie we see Sarah in a park, she’s wearing a very princess looking dress with a crown on her head and reading from a book or play called ‘The Labyrinth.’ which we can tell she’s clearly obsessed with.
She’s read it enough times to memorise the lines, well apart from that very last line that she clearly gets frustrated at not knowing.
She then returns home only to be shouted at by her step-mother which clearly upsets her, and finding her favourite teddy missing just pushes her over the limit.
It’s all made up, her mind has created a fantasy to get away from what she thinks is a ‘terrible’ life in her angst teen state, a way of coping. Being told what to do by her step-mum, her dad taking his wife’s side and to top that all off thinking she has no time for herself because she always has to love after her step-brother Toby.
Also we see evidence that she was extremely close to her mum, she has photos of them together on her mirror, we see news paper cuttings in a scrapbook of ‘Linda Williams’ who looks to be a famous stage actor, she’s pictured along with her ‘boyfriend’ who also is a co-star (who in the photo’s is actually David Bowie)
(Netflix Screenshots.)
We literally see a statue of Jareth on her dressing table at the beginning.
Sarah’s dog Merlin = Sir Didymus’s dog Ambrosius,
A plush of a Fiery,
A music box of Sarah in the masquerade dress dancing in a ‘bandstand’ the music box also plays ‘As the world falls down’.
A plush of Sir Didymus.
A puzzle game of a maze.
A book stand of Hoggle.
A poster of the Escher room of stairs.
A plush of Ludo.
We are also shown a range of fantasy books which tells us that Sarah enjoys reading fiction, especially adventure novels.
As for the form Jareth takes, he is believed to be a fae (if he is even real and not just a figure of Sarah’s imagination) which would mean that he’s probably way over 100 years old, and could probably change his appearance to anything anyone desires. But we are taking about this being Sarah’s way to comfort herself,so we talked about her mum and her being incredibly close to her mum. So maybe she’s jealous of her, that she gets to live this glamours life as a famous stage actor where she gets to life out all these amazing fantasy scenarios. On top of that she’s dating the most desirable actor and the media is even making that look glamours with their ups and downs.
So maybe that’s why Jareth look’s like her mums actor boyfriend.
Through her journey she begins to realise that she takes everything for granted, and only when Toby is in danger does she realise how much he means to her.
She also realises that she can’t just close herself off from the world and live in a fantasy world, she needs her family and friends to guide her sometimes and it’s okay to ask for help.
I wanted to dive into this more because recently one of my good friends who also adores labyrinth posted a tiktok of the Masquerade scene, and she was flooded with comments of ‘This is so wrong he’s luring a child.’ ‘Jareth is a p**o.’ So I wanted to clear up that Sarah imaged it all, and 300 year old man (Jareth became goblin king in the 1700s) didn’t just come to kidnap her. Maybe if you watched the movie properly, or actually researched the movie properly and not just want to cause harm to something so precious to many many people just because people love to ruin absolutely anything these days.
Also can I add that David Bowie was extremely respectful of 14 year old Jennifer Connelly and she said herself that he made her feel so comfortable while filming and he became a hero to her. She still speaks of him fondly in interviews.
Okay lets talk about the songs!
Underground:
‘No one can blame you for walking away, too much rejection no love injection.
Life can't be easy It's not always well, don't tell me truth hurts, little girl
'Cause it hurts like hell.
But down in the underground, You'll find someone true.’
Kinda speaks for itself doesn’t it? She doesn’t think people love her and just use her to get what they want, and she lives in a fantasy world of her own making because the truth hurts too much. Because who’s going to hurt her in her own fantasy world where she is the main character?
As The World Falls Down:
‘There's such a fooled heart beatin' so fast, In search of new dreams a love that will last. Within your heart, I'll place the moon within your heart.’
‘As the pain sweeps through makes no sense for you, every thrill is gone wasn't too much fun at all. But I'll be there for you-ou-ou, As the world falls down.’
Because it is Sarah’s own imagination she’s the main character so even when the ‘bad guy’ tries to make her forget everything, because we always need a obstacle for the main hero she easily defeats it and remembers about her baby brother that needs saving.
Within you:
‘Live without your sunlight, love without your heartbeat.
I, I can't live within you’
Sarah can’t always live in her daydreams, one day she’s going to have to wake up and live in her reality no matter how bad it is. But that’s growing up.
I am a sucker for the fan theory that Jareth once had a true love named Sarah who was a human and also had an evil step-mother and she made Sarah do all the chores and look after her baby step-brother, and Sarah and Jareth were forbid from marring because her step-mother needed Sarah.
So Jareth took the baby and turned it into a goblin, and then made the Labyrinth for him and Sarah to live out the rest of their days in, but time moves differently in the Labyrinth so by the time Jareth had finished Sarah in the human world had grown old and died.
Now he searches for his lost soul mate in reincarnations of Sarah who also have evil step-mothers and baby brothers. This is why when Hoggle ask’s who she is and she says Sarah he replies with “That’s what I thought.” But then again this could be because its Sarah’s imagination.
But my favourite bit was that the Labyrinth book that Sarah reads at the beginning was wrote by another girl who had solved the Labyrinth and defeated Jareth. I guess you can have different takes on the plot, I definitely have over the years but watching it over several hundred times in my twenties and having a growing interest in media and film, with hyper fixations of my own to cope with reality I see now the real message of Labyrinth.
Now the last scene - Jareth starts with this line.
“I’m exhausted from living up to your expectations of me.”
We then move onto a dramatic reenactment of the scene she played out in the park from the book. She’s finally realising what the words mean and I always thought that, that last line. The one she can never remember, I don’t think she does remember it but she finally realises that whatever he does he doesn’t have any power over her.
“You have no power over me.”
Thus the reality kicks in.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk on why you shouldn’t disrespect David Bowie, peace out.
