"Labyrinth," David Bowie and the Limits of Conventional Criticism

There comes a point in a young man's life where he matures beyond childish thoughts into new ways of thinking, where the layers of ideas peel away to caverns of mature interpretation. These are the years where, like the protagonist of the seminal Jim Henson film "Labyrinth", we confront the adult thoughts that frighten us, and must welcome them into our lives to sit amongst youthful fantasies. We thrust deeper into the labyrinth, or "Labyrinth", if you will, and become the people we are meant to be.

In my twenty-sixth year I realized that this was pretty much never going to happen for me, because I still don't understand thing one in this flick.

There's something going on here, I know. David Bowie's Jareth is pretty much the reason for the movie to exist, and he acquits himself admirably; I'd actually have been willing to see more adventures of this character, in a film of less unfortunate implications. "Citizen Jareth". "Mr. Jareth Goes to Washington". We could do worse, especially if contact juggling was involved.

It began, of course, with "Magic Dance". Despite not having seen "Labyrinth" since 2001, I found that the song had burrowed into my head and done that thing songs do where they won't leave. I informed the song, "You have no power over me," which was, of course, a lie.

But there was something to it that I wasn't seeing before. Here's the thing about Jareth: why is he a David Bowie when all the other goblins are Muppets? Is he just younger than them, or a different kind of goblin? Or is he an outside consultant who was later made King? You know, like an elected monarch. Like Natalie Portman in a different Lucasfilm production that also doesn't make a lick of sense.

What does Jareth want with Toby, assuming the whole thing isn't one of Sarah's fever dreams? Was there nothing so pressing going on in goblin politics that he had to transport a minor across state lines? What do the goblins think about him going after a human baby, in their heart of hearts? If Jareth wants to turn Toby into a goblin, doesn't that mean they're not doing a very good job at whatever they're supposed to do? (George Lucas, there's that name again, deployed a similar theory in "Return of the Jedi" with Palpatine shoving aside Vader for Luke, but then he also managed to fill the flick with his share of inexplicable Muppets, so.)

It's little things like this that make one realize that the true labyrinth isn't the maze David Bowie watches Jennifer Connelly flail about, it's the layers of intellectual experience that comprehending this film requires you to sidestep through, each corridor flanked by two hairpin turns of interpretive whimsy. The funny thing is, the work's been done for you, or so you think: yes, Jareth makes a point of showing his balls off to Sarah, and the less said about that bulge in his pants the better. It doesn't take an advanced film theorist to cough up a paragraph or two on the M.C. Escheresque nightmare set. The mirror represents the self, or the vision of the self. The owl represents owlness.

Pull away from the simple one-to-one correspondence of images, the bits and pieces you glean from the poster, and more strangeness awaits. Is Sarah's mother is having an affair with someone who looks like David Bowie? Does Sarah want to be her mother? Does she dream Jareth into life to become a woman or to become her mother? Does she want him to be her father? Does she want her father to turn into an owl? This is the real maze, the true labyrinth: symbols linking up like the heads and bodies of the disturbing fieries, able to break apart and recombine at a moment's notice.

Even that avoids the darkest secret. Because nothing's ever easy, nothing's ever a piece of cake, in "Labyrinth", is it?

Maybe, just maybe, the film (and thus the universe) is exactly what it appears to be: a confusing hodgepodge, overseen by David Bowie's crotch. To impose meaning on it is to throw good emotional capital after bad.

Words cannot possibly express the sexual unease "Labyrinth" should by rights cause in anyone under the age of, say, a hundred and six. The fact that it may be all one giant smoke-and-mirrors show for baby steps toward an incomprehensible universe functions as a frankly welcome distraction from David Bowie's bulge. Nonetheless in light of my actual confrontations with adult life I come to sympathize with the film's take on the dark world without. When Jareth sings "I can't live within you," we feel, because we want him to live within us, if only because that would keep us from having to look at him and figure out just what he thinks he's doing there.

It's right there in Bowie's lyrics. Not just his frequent, deliberate contradictions. No, it's in one of the lines he doesn't bother to contradict: "Makes no sense at all."

But, then, picking up on that would be a piece of cake, and we're left with nothing again.

What we have here may be a first in the realm of children's fantasy cinema: a movie almost entirely about its own resistance to interpretation. The potentially pedophilic overtones of David Bowie's lust for Jennifer Connelly are a smokescreen, having as little to do with the actual problem of the movie as the simple pseudo-Arthurian claptrap Sarah recites from her book does with the surrealist horror house Jareth's (and Jim Henson's) "Labyrinth" actually cooks up for her. No wonder she doesn't want to grow up, because growing up means you have to review "Labyrinth" and wonder what you spent your childhood watching.

"Labyrinth", gaze upon it and quiver, for it is your first hint that maybe, just maybe, life is meaningless. That the way forward is neither the way forward nor the way back, but simply just the way to David Bowie, for all roads lead both to and from David Bowie, and the universe is wrapped around him like a prizewinning ball of twine around an acorn. People get so wrapped up in how "Labyrinth" ends from Sarah's point of view that they don't consider Jareth's. He's still there. He hasn't ended up by any objective standard any worse than he was before the film began. He's just there. Always has been, always will be. Well? Think back to your memories of the film, and he's who you remember, isn't he?

If I'm right, then I think better of it for it, I think. It helps that I haven't actually seen it a very, very long time.

I did acquire the MP3 of "Magic Dance," however, and it has gone a long way toward putting me on the right side of sanity... though I won't tell you which.