Labyrinth Through My Ages

LABYRINTH THROUGH MY AGES
By Angela Hartwick

The 80s were an iconic time for family-friendly geeky films. Fandoms arose from The NeverEnding Story, Willow, Princess Bride, Dark Crystal, E.T the Extra-Terrestrial, Ghostbusters and My Neighbour Totoro among others. My personal favourite of the era is Labyrinth. In this article I’d like to share how my understanding of the plot of Labyrinth has evolved (in a similar manner to a crazy staircase) in the course of the almost three decades since its release. 

ONCE UPON A TIME, THERE WAS A BEAUTIFUL YOUNG GIRL WHOSE STEPMOTHER ALWAYS MADE HER STAY HOME WITH THE BABY

An array of supercool people worked on Labyrinth: it is directed by Jim Henson, executively produced by George Lucas, the initial script was drafted by Monty Python’s Terry Jones, and it stars David Bowie and Jennifer Connelly. The plot consists of a 15 year old girl (Connelly) that, upset at babysitting her fussy baby brother, wishes goblins would come take him away. The goblins take the baby to a castle in the middle of an enchanted Labyrinth that is ruled by Jareth (Bowie). Sarah immediately regrets what she wished for and is given a limited amount of time to get to her brother to save him before he becomes a goblin.

THINGS ARE NOT ALWAYS WHAT THEY SEEM IN THIS PLACE

I was three years old when Labyrinth was released. I watched it repeatedly throughout my childhood without really knowing what was happening. My earliest recollections are that I thought Sarah was a bad-tempered princess, the goblin puppets were terrifying, the songs were the best pieces of music ever recorded, I should also have a dog named Merlin, and sometimes I thought Jareth was the villain and at other times a prince. It was probably the feeling there was more to the film that was the lure for frequently rewatching it.

THAT’S NOT FAIR! BUT THAT’S THE WAY IT IS.

As an older kid I identified with and looked up to Sarah. Her angst seemed perfectly legit and she was right on to complain about life not being fair! I thought she was smart to use lipstick to trace her steps, that she had the right answer to which door to choose (though now it sounds like circular logic), and I admired the way she spoke up against Jareth. I started to grasp some of the life lessons of the film, such as the importance of using the right words, and not taking things for granted. I understood that Jareth was mean and manipulative because he, you know, stole babies, trapped people in oubliettes and sent cleaners to squash them, but the psychological evil he inflicts (mind games, torture, threats, drugs) took me longer to concept.

WHAT’S THE MATTER, MY DEAR, DON’T YOU LIKE YOUR TOYS?

As a teenager I picked up on how Sarah gave up material things throughout her journey (bracelet, ring, everything she used to cherish in the junkyard scene). I started to see the film as a coming of age story in which Sarah becomes less selfish, less materialistic, and more maternal. 

But most importantly as a teenager, I noticed what is referred to as the Bowie Bulge. I won’t elaborate too much on this since there are Tumblr and Pinterest pages devoted to the fandom of the bulge itself.

THE WAY FORWARD IS SOMETIMES THE WAY BACK

As a young adult Sarah’s bedroom became worthy of attention instead of just the boring part preceding the action: the Hoggle bookend, stuffies of the fieries, Sir Dydimus and Ludo, a wooden labyrinth game, a print resembling the cleaners, the ballerina music box playing “As the World Falls Down”, a goblin king sculpture on the dresser, the crazy stairs poster (Escher’s “Relativity”). 

The books in Sarah’s room that I’m familiar with mirror her journey. Where the Wild Things Are, for example, is the story of a boy who, angry at his mother, goes into his room and imagines being transported to land of beasts until he decides to return (Toby’s striped pyjamas may be an ode to the monsters in Max’ world). There’s The Wizard of Oz, in which a girl enters a fantasy world, makes three friends who help her get to the location of a powerful being and then finding out she had the power to return home all along. 

There are aspects of Labyrinth I definitely didn’t catch until adulthood - the age difference between Sarah and Jareth, for example. When the film was shot Connelly was 14 and Bowie was 37. It’s a disturbing sexual subtext.

SHE TREATS ME LIKE A WICKED STEPMOTHER IN A FAIRY STORY, NO MATTER WHAT I SAY

As a parent, the age difference between Sarah and Jareth, which I had never paid attention to, has become a disturbing sexual subtext difficult to overlook. When the film was shot Connelly was 14 and Bowie was 37. This makes me think of Freud. - in fact, one article called Labyrinth “the most blatantly Freudian film in the history of the world.” I don’t know that I agree with the purely Freudian analysis of Labyrinth, but it is difficult to ignore all of the phallic and fertility symbols: the many obelisks, a ball that turns into a snake, a peach infested by a worm, groping hands, dismembered heads, bubble balls, cannon balls, glass balls, rock balls. If we return to strange and wonderful things found in Sarah’s room, the most interesting is probably the open scrapbook featuring her birth mother, an actress, who is pictured in several photos with a man none other than David Bowie. So if the Labyrinth is Sarah’s fantasy, the face of the older man obsessed with her is that of...her step-father?

I CAN’T LIVE WITHIN YOU

Nowadays my interpretation of the film is as fluid as ever. I see the entire film as an allegory. Jareth lives within Sarah as her impulsive darker side that is dying out while Toby represents her maternal side that becomes more pronounced. To this day I’m unsure who Sarah is referring to when she says “You have no power over me.” Her mother? Her emotions? Jareth? Men? Manipulative people? The darkness within herself? Luckily, the film is as enjoyable to watch in a straightforward manner as it is to dissect it and I’m still able to appreciate it that way.

EVERY NOW AND AGAIN IN MY LIFE - FOR NO REASON AT ALL - I NEED YOU. ALL OF YOU.  

Inspiration for this article came from reading about the documentary David Bowie Is premiering at the Mayfair this month so check that out if you’re a Bowie fan. By pure coincidence, Labyrinth was recently trending due to false rumours of a sequel. If the news of it being a hoax disappointed you, I strongly recommend the little known Return to Labyrinth manga four-part series. The story takes place 13 years after the timeline of the movie and centers around an adolescent Toby. It brings back the characters we know and love/fear and also introduces new interesting ones. 

Angela is a 30-something year old mom of three kids - a baby, a school-aged kid and a teenager – and a furbaby, living in Orleans with her geek soul mate husband. She studied English Literature and Social Work but took an unexpected turn somewhere and ended up working as a policy analyst for the feds. Hobbies include reading, playing boardgames and Magic: the Gathering, cooking healthy foods, blogging, and discussing favourite tv shows and movies. She is the proud organizer of the Ottawa Geek Social Club, which strives to provide meetup opportunities that reflect the many facets of geekdom and beyond! www.ogsc.ca.

Bavaria's Castles and the Romantic Road

BAVARIA’S CASTLES AND THE ROMANTIC ROAD – A FAMILY ADVENTURE

By Sandi Moser

Neuschwanstein castle

While all the cool kids in Ottawa were attending Comiccon, we were on our first family vacation to Europe – Germany, to be exact. Why Germany? After making a shortlist we left the decision up to my 8-year-old daughter. A travel geek in her own right she made the final decision based on the number of castles to visit.

We began the Castle portion of our trip in Schwangau in southern Germany. Schwangau’s main attraction is Neuschwanstein, Walt Disney’s inspiration for Sleeping Beauty Castle. What I didn’t know before planning this trip was that this castle, like many others in this region, is relatively new. 

Hohenschwangau Castle

The construction of the area’s castles started in the early 19^th century, when King Maximilian of Bavaria restored the ruins of a 12^th century fortress to be used as a summer home. Hohenschwangau is a pretty yellow castle, full of paintings and statues of knights, lions and swans (schwan = “swan”). There was a certain homey, family feeling to the castle. It’s easy to see why Maximilian’s son Ludwig fell in love with the region and began his own castle-building endeavors.

By the time Ludwig became king the position no longer had real power over Bavaria. To compensate, he built a fantasy world for himself through his castles. In the mid-19^th century, he ordered the building of Neuschwanstein, his pride and joy, on the mountain next door. 

Being the Disney fan I am I could see the similarities with Sleeping Beauty’s castle in every tower and courtyard. While the exterior of the castle is complete, only 15 interior rooms were finished before Ludwig’s death. Being there, I was struck by the similarities between Walt Disney and King Ludwig II – they both desired to completely recreate and immerse others in a romantic fantasy world.

Linderhof Castle

Our final castle stop in the region was Linderhof Castle, another of King Ludwig II’s creations. Linderhof is the smallest of the castles, and the only one of Ludwig’s to be fully completed before his mysterious death. I’m not sure if it was the relative coziness of Linderhof or the extensive gardens, but it was my favourite of the three. 

From Schwangau, we made our way through the medieval villages along the Romantic Road to Rothenburg ob der Tauber. Rothenburg is the most preserved medieval town in Germany, with its fortified wall still fully intact. The city was founded in 1170 and remained a free city until the early 19^th century. The Night Watchman tour was very informative and helped us to understand the history and how it was so well preserved. The reason? They were defeated in a siege then hit by the Plague, and were too poor to do anything more than recover. 

While I agree with my husband that Rothenburg is very touristy, there were still many interesting nooks and crannies in which to daydream myself onto a Carcasonne game board. And once the day-trip bus tours leave, you have the cobblestone streets almost entirely to yourself.

Rothenburg

Sandi is a 30-something environmental engineer and mother of two from the metropolis of Stittsville, Ontario. Writing for Capital Geek Girls is a new adventure for her, with previous writing experience limited to technical documents, briefing notes and Facebook updates. In her spare time, Sandi enjoys playing board games and video games, reading books, watching movies, and crocheting. She looks forward to sharing her geeky endeavours with you, as well as reporting on the next generation’s response to those endeavours.

The Last Unicorn and Peter S. Beagle Visit Ottawa

THE LAST UNICORN: CANADIAN SCREENING TOUR AND CHAT WITH THE AUTHOR

By Marie Victoria Robertson

I was going to start by saying ‘This weekend, I had the pleasure of seeing The Last Unicorn and meeting Peter S. Beagle’. But to call it a ‘pleasure’ would be a huge understatement.

The 1982 movie The Last Unicorn, along with Peter S. Beagle, the author of the 1968 novel, has recently toured through Canada and, as of this writing, is about to conclude in the maritimes. Like most children of the 80s, I grew up enamored with the movie—it was the source of wonder and escapism I needed in my sometimes-grim childhood. When I discovered the novel, I was in love. It was obviously written from a place of great love for magic and the little mysteries of this world.

In the story, the titular last unicorn embarks on a quest to locate the others of her kind, who have been driven into the sea by the Red Bull. She is aided on her quest by Schmendrick the fumbling magician, and Molly Grue, the sassy scullery maid. Along the way, the unicorn temporarily turns into a human woman, and learns about love and regret. 

The Last Unicorn was written from 1962 to 1968, though it took two years of cumulative writing. The half-finished book, Mr. Beagle said, was stashed away due to his doubts about the story, and it was only at the insistence of his wife that he pulled it out again and kept working at it. 

Seeing the movie on the big screen at Silvercity was a treat. It was heartening to see so many youngsters in the audience, a new generation of boys and girls who will grow up knowing the movie like I did. But it was the presence of Peter S. Beagle, there for a signing and a Q & A, that made my day. I was fortunate enough to speak to him before the movie, before the fans began to swamp him.

Mr. Beagle absolutely radiates charm and sweetness. He graciously took questions from tiny children at the Q & A and answered them on their level. When I confessed an attack of nerves at the thought of speaking to him, he told me, “Don’t be nervous! I’m nothing special, just an old man who fell asleep in the van on the way over here.” He then took my hands and we talked about books and writing for so long that I was worried the people around me would start a mutiny. 

But this is Mr. Beagle’s way. When an organizer was asked how long he would stay after the movie, the reply was “As long as it takes for him to meet and speak to every fan!” Class act, all the way. 

I asked him what his favourite books were as a child. He said he was fond of the Jungle Books, Edgar Allan Poe, and “anything with animals”. I was moved to hear him talk about how Molly Grue was his favourite character; she wasn’t based on anyone in particular, but was influenced by several strong women he’d known in his life, including his mother.

“How did you invent the unicorn?” a little girl asked him at the Q & A.

With a good-hearted smile, Mr. Beagle explained how the concept of the unicorn came from all the mythology tomes and tales he’d devoured as a child. As an interesting point, it was mentioned that, before The Last Unicorn was written, unicorn in myths and culture had always been depicted as male. Mr. Beagle was responsible for creating the concept of the female unicorn. 

He was responsible for so much more than just that, of course. The Last Unicorn is a childhood classic that will surely continue to spark children’s imaginations for years to come. 

Thank you for the memories, and thank you for my childhood, Peter S. Beagle. Despite what you may think, you ARE special. 

Marie Victoria Robertson is a published speculative fiction writer and playwright, as well as the board president of Jer’s Vision: Canada’s Youth Diversity Initiative (www.jersvision.org). When all the other girls wanted to marry Johnny Depp, she wanted to run away with Worf on the Enterprise. She enjoys giant robots, time-travel paradoxes, and forcing her son to watch Futurama

The Dreaded Mary Sue Label: the Hobbit & Tauriel

by Marie Robertson

THE HOBBIT, TAURIEL, AND THE DREADED MARY SUE LABEL

The term Mary Sue comes from fanfiction. It refers to flawless, idealized original (usually) female characters created by inexperienced writers. The Mary Sue character is beautiful, strong, smart, loved by all, and saves the day. She’s also boring as hell. I’m sort of an expert on Sues, in the sense that I wrote fanfiction at age 13 and inadvertently wrote tons of idealized self-inserts (because at age 13, I not only wanted to be a Transformer, but the coolest Transformer. Who didn’t?)

More and more, I’ve noticed the term has crossed over to movies, TV shows and books. “It’s a good movie, even though Character X is such a Sue”, I hear. I can’t agree that being female in a movie automatically makes you a Sue, but I can see the argument when it comes to certain characters.

Characters such as Tauriel from The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug. Before the movie even came out, accusations of Mary Sueism rang out from the fandom. After the movie’s release, the cries abated, but didn’t stop.

The problem is that there’s a huge imbalance in The Hobbit movies. We have one (sometimes two, if Galadriel shows up) female character for… what, about twenty-plus male characters? And Tauriel wasn’t even in the original book (seriously, Tolkien? Not one chick in The Hobbit?), which doesn’t help her supposed Sueism. Fans see her as too strong, too beautiful, too capable, too noble. 

These movies are full of dwarves and hobbits and elves and dragons and all sorts of characters with penises (I’m assuming for the dragon here, though wouldn’t it be cool if Smaug were actually a lady dragon? Actually, wouldn’t it be cool if we could find a way to film a complete genderswap version of The Hobbit? Lady Thorin Oakenshield, anyone? Gandalf the Wizardess? Miss Beorn?), which means you can afford to have them run the spectrum of characterization from heroic to lazy to brainy to caring to cowardly to handsome to fat. No one will assume you’re trying to make a statement about men. But with our single female character, can we afford to make her anything less than strong and noble and utterly capable? Like it or not, she’s now a representative for her whole gender.

It’s hard to win when you’re a chick in a movie. Too flawed, and people accuse the filmmakers of sexism. Too perfect, and she’s a Mary Sue.

Tauriel is strong and brave and beautiful and frankly, a textbook case of a Sue. But it’s not her fault. It’s not really any female character’s fault if Hollywood thinks one or two women in an otherwise male cast ‘balances things out’. In a perfect world, female characters would always run the spectrum of broken to perfect, because there would be enough of them to do it. After all, flawed characters are fun. I’ve always preferred Veronica because perfect Betty is boring. 

For now, though, I’ll stand by Tauriel, Mary Sue label and all, because it’s better than the alternative—no women at all.

(…. Seriously though, can someone genderswap The Hobbit movies for me? Peter Jackson? Anybody?)

  

Marie Victoria Robertson is a speculative fiction writer and playwright, as well as the board president of Jer’s Vision: Canada’s Youth Diversity Initiative (www.jersvision.org). When all the other girls wanted to marry Johnny Depp, she wanted to run away with Worf on the Enterprise. She enjoys giant robots, time-travel paradoxes, and forcing her son to watch Futurama.