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Inside the Labyrinth

By Bob Oswald

You remind me of the babe....

Disclaimer: It happens to me at every party I go to. I have a few drinks, start talking about Jung and reciting poetry (I do a particularly dramatic rendition of Bukowski's "to the whore who stole my poems"). Pretty soon the room clears and it's just me talking to a few passed out drunks, as everyone with the ability to stagger away has abandoned me and my pseudo intellectual diatribe to look for the passed-out girls. Well, I thought I was going to give you the whole symbolic rundown, tell you what everything in the movie--from the oubliette to the bog of eternal stench, from the poem to David Bowieâs eyeshadow--means. In an archetypal sense, of course. But no one believes me or listens when I talk about symbolism anyway, so I decided I'd just try to make a case for people to open their eyes to the world of symbols around them--using a classic movie of the 80s as an example, of course. And this time, there's no keg to distract you, nor any heavily intoxicated women--just you, me, and the ideas of a few dead foreign guys whose names most people canât pronounce. But it's still a party, isnât it? Isn't it???

Labyrinth

1986 USA

Director: Jim Henson

David Bowie, Jennifer Connelly, more muppets than you can shake a stick at.

We all saw "Labyrinth," but, in case you've been avoiding the sickening trend toward 80s nostalgia that's been creeping around college campuses lately, I'll refresh your memory. Sarah (Jennifer Connelly) is a girl whom the goblin king Jareth (a tight pants-clad David Bowie) is madly in love with. One rainy night, when Sarah is forced to baby-sit for her baby brother instead of frolicking in the meadow reciting poetry to her dog (no joke), she, in a fit of anger, wishes for the goblins to come and take her brother away. Sarah has forgotten one of the first rules my generation learned in the 80s: if the goblin king is madly in love with you, never wish for goblins to come take your brother away. Because they will. Jareth, of course, uses this opportunity to force Sarah's hand--by giving her "what she wanted," he has created a situation which poor Sarah has to remedy by getting her brother back. And there is only one way to do that; she must find her way to the center of the Labyrinth and face him down.

So Sarah enters the Labyrinth, a twisting maze of tricks and traps, inhabited by monstrous creatures. Here we go with our first archetypal symbol. The Labyrinth, a near-impregnable maze, has been part of religious and cultural mythology since the beginning of myth itself. It is a place where heroes are made; think Theseus and the Minotaur. You go into the Labyrinth a nobody, but come out (if you come out) victorious--see where this is going? The Labyrinth is a symbol of the individuation process, that is, the yearning towards becoming a whole person. We enter the dark recesses of our psyche (the unconscious) totally unprepared to face the symbolic hazards and monsters that lie inside, but we come out with greater knowledge of ourselves. "The unconscious is often symbolized by corridors, labyrinths, and mazes," says Marie Louise Von Franz in Jung's Man and His Symbols--on the page opposite a picture of the floorplan of a maze in the Chartres Cathedral, which was walked in a symbolic journey to the holy land, another symbol of the true self (Pg 176-177).

"Quite often it seems we aren't getting anywhere" says the old man with the chicken-hat, "when we really are." We are continually reminded in "Labyrinth" that we cannot take things for granted. Could there be a more obvious way to say that the unconscious is symbolic and not to be taken literally? Well, I guess the old man could have said those words exactly, but wouldn't we all love to have a chicken for a hat? What's important is that the creatures and traps encountered in the Labyrinth are overcome by logic and clear thinking (just like problems in our unconscious)--as Sarah's initial meeting with Sir Didymus proves. The litany of parallels to highly symbolic primal religious myths in Labyrinth is way beyond the scope of this rambling,but let me point interested parties to the "bog of eternal stench"--check out some Zoroastrian or even Greek mythology for incredibly similar images of fetid, underworld rivers that infect everything they touch with foulness.

All right, onward and upward. Let's talk about one of my favorite topics, David Bowie. Bowie's heavily made-up character Jareth first appears in the thunderstorm scene, where he accosts Sarah and hurls a snake at her. Has anyone read any Freud? Jareth is a really interesting character, though, because he serves both as a negative animus figure to Sarah but also as a shadow figure--"I can't live within you," he tells Sarah in the final scene. And of course he can't--our dark, faulty side cannot survive once we begin the trip toward individuation. In case you're not hip to the psychological terminology here, an Animus figure is Carl Jung's conception of the "male side" to a female's psyche. It's interesting that this "hero's journey" is a girlâs quest to battle the destructive, negative Animus--the archetypal hero myth usually involves a man saving his Anima (female side to a male psyche), in the form of a princess or other maidenly figure, from danger. But Jareth is more than Sarah's tendency towards masculine destructiveness and manipulation. "Fear me, love me, do as I say, and I will be your slave," he tells her. Here Jareth is speaking for the whole, shadowy unconscious. But more on that, later.

I'm running out of space, but with the grace of my editors I'd like to talk about one final scene in the movie. When Sarah eats the peach of forgetfulness, she slips into a deep fantasy of a beautiful ballroom dance, and then ends up in a junkpile where all of the things sheâs collected since her childhood comfort her--for a moment. "Better to stay in here," says the hunchbacked trash lady, "there's nothing you want out there." How many seekers of truth--poets, scientists, artists--have slipped into the trap of fantasy and memory, losing themselves in imagination when the real life quest for knowledge becomes too difficult? Here Sarah learns probably the most important lesson of the Labyrinth--memory and fantasy are what sustain us, but there is no return to Eden. Those fruits are infested with worms.

The heroic myth of "Labyrinth" tracks Sarah's growth from a selfish child whining "It's not fair" every few minutes, to a mature woman in full control of her psyche. In the final confrontation between the lone Sarah and Jareth, after she has fought her way the through trials and tests of the Labyrinth, she only needs to utter the words "You have no power over me" to end Jareth's spell. She doesn't destroy him, but renders him harmless--he becomes an owl, symbolic of the wisdom Sarah has gained in her trip through the Labyrinth. This is exactly what a human being must do in order to become fully individuated; take control of the unconscious, and understand its symbols and use its twisted logic to his/her own benefit. It's not so important what the symbolism means, as it is how you interpret it. So if the next time you watch the movie, you decide I'm just another drunk college kid who's living in the 80s, then maybe you should think about what it means to you. And like all art, it means something. Daddy, daddy, get me out of here.

Bob Oswald is cool. So cool, in fact, that we had him write two pieces this issue. He hopes that this increase in exposure will soon make him the most recognizable and popular man on the Ithaca College campus. All we have to say is, Bob: Good Luck.