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edenfallingThe movie Labyrinth has bugged me since the first time I watched it, mostly because it's trying to be a family film but it has much darker subtextual themes, mostly all about sex. (Then again, considering David Bowie's tights, perhaps they're not all that subtextual!) This ficlet grew from my issues with the ending; more detailed notes follow the story.
(ETA: A slightly revised version is cross-posted here on Fanfiction.net.)
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Running From Her Shadow
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As the years went by, Sara began to realize that something was missing from her life. Her dreams were still the dreams of a young girl, dreams of fame and beauty and something light and airy and insubstantial. While the other girls began to flirt and talk of sex, Sara couldn't get over her discomfort at the very idea of looking at boys.
They all reminded her of Jareth, somehow. Oh, they couldn't match his unnatural beauty, or his intangible sense of danger, but there was something about their maleness that repulsed her.
For a time she wondered if she might be a lesbian, but a few fumbled experiments with one of her friends seemed to put paid to that theory.
No, Sara simply couldn't react normally to anything vaguely approaching sexual.
She dreamed, sometimes, of her dance with Jareth in the dream, and of their final confrontation in the Escher room. He had almost seemed sincere at the end, she thought, almost seemed to really care about her decision, and for more than just his reluctance to lose a game.
It was as if her wanted her to like him, she realized one morning. As if he saw her as herself, as Sara, not just another girl caught up in his twisted kingdom and convoluted games.
And she had rejected him.
"You have no power over me," she had told him, and now he didn't. And neither did anyone who reminded her of him. All the pieces of her life, the parts that should have let her become a woman, were gone, missing. She had left them with Jareth in the Labyrinth.
Sara closed her eyes and refused to cry. She had made her choice, made an utterly wrong choice, but still had one chance. Maybe this time she wouldn't even mind losing the game; at least then she wouldn't have to live as half a person.
"I wish the goblins would take me away," she whispered, and waited for the owl to fly in her window.
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Inspired by the 11 April 2004![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
15minuteficlets word: abandoned
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Notes: Labyrinth is a story of the rejection of female sexuality.
Sara is on the verge of becoming a young woman, moving away from girlhood, and Jareth represents all her blossoming and suppressed sexuality. The other inhabitants of the Labyrinth, with their colorful and amusing character, represent the childhood she clings to. This is why Jareth is dangerous and her friends are safe.
At the end of the film, Jareth pleads with Sara, saying "Only submit to me and I will be your slave," but Sara rejects him utterly. He has now power over her. She has shut herself off from sexuality and retreated into the shelter of childhood. This point is further driven home when she calls her friends through the mirror and they begin to have a party. She is surrounding herself with childlike friends and rejecting the potentially dangerous world of womanhood.
Now, granted this is all subtext and Sara really does need to defeat Jareth in order to rescue her brother Toby, but what are the consequences of the method in which she chooses to fight him?
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And there we are.
(ETA: A slightly revised version is cross-posted here on Fanfiction.net.)
---------------------------------------------
Running From Her Shadow
---------------------------------------------
As the years went by, Sara began to realize that something was missing from her life. Her dreams were still the dreams of a young girl, dreams of fame and beauty and something light and airy and insubstantial. While the other girls began to flirt and talk of sex, Sara couldn't get over her discomfort at the very idea of looking at boys.
They all reminded her of Jareth, somehow. Oh, they couldn't match his unnatural beauty, or his intangible sense of danger, but there was something about their maleness that repulsed her.
For a time she wondered if she might be a lesbian, but a few fumbled experiments with one of her friends seemed to put paid to that theory.
No, Sara simply couldn't react normally to anything vaguely approaching sexual.
She dreamed, sometimes, of her dance with Jareth in the dream, and of their final confrontation in the Escher room. He had almost seemed sincere at the end, she thought, almost seemed to really care about her decision, and for more than just his reluctance to lose a game.
It was as if her wanted her to like him, she realized one morning. As if he saw her as herself, as Sara, not just another girl caught up in his twisted kingdom and convoluted games.
And she had rejected him.
"You have no power over me," she had told him, and now he didn't. And neither did anyone who reminded her of him. All the pieces of her life, the parts that should have let her become a woman, were gone, missing. She had left them with Jareth in the Labyrinth.
Sara closed her eyes and refused to cry. She had made her choice, made an utterly wrong choice, but still had one chance. Maybe this time she wouldn't even mind losing the game; at least then she wouldn't have to live as half a person.
"I wish the goblins would take me away," she whispered, and waited for the owl to fly in her window.
---------------------------------------------
Inspired by the 11 April 2004
15minuteficlets word: abandoned---------------------------------------------
Notes: Labyrinth is a story of the rejection of female sexuality.
Sara is on the verge of becoming a young woman, moving away from girlhood, and Jareth represents all her blossoming and suppressed sexuality. The other inhabitants of the Labyrinth, with their colorful and amusing character, represent the childhood she clings to. This is why Jareth is dangerous and her friends are safe.
At the end of the film, Jareth pleads with Sara, saying "Only submit to me and I will be your slave," but Sara rejects him utterly. He has now power over her. She has shut herself off from sexuality and retreated into the shelter of childhood. This point is further driven home when she calls her friends through the mirror and they begin to have a party. She is surrounding herself with childlike friends and rejecting the potentially dangerous world of womanhood.
Now, granted this is all subtext and Sara really does need to defeat Jareth in order to rescue her brother Toby, but what are the consequences of the method in which she chooses to fight him?
---------------------------------------------
And there we are.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-12 11:59 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-12 05:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-12 09:50 pm (UTC)Oh, and. I love your last line. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-13 11:51 am (UTC)Glad you liked the ficlet.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-18 08:16 pm (UTC)Sarah before was a dreamy, whiny, selfish child even though she was 15. The constant claims of unfairness, favoritism, and clinging to the vestiages of her childhood: the dolls, toys, and books she adored when her parents were still married, all contribute to a picture of a young girl stubbornly staying in her neverland while desiring the freedoms of adulthood.
Jareth is truly akin to Byron's Faerie Queen, beautiful, magical, unpredictable, seductive, and dangerous. Sarah does not reject Jareth out of a fear of her sexuality, but softly realizes for all his power, Jareth has no power that she does not give him. Labyrinth follows in the footsteps of the Nutcracker, where the transformaton from girl to woman is made, not by packing childhood into boxes and squaring them away in the closet, but transfiguring them inward into moral resolve and a responsible self. Sarah rejects Jareth because she has grown in her trials within the maze, she understands that freedom without responsiblity is an illusion and all Jareth offers her is smoke and mirrors.
At the end of the flim, Sarah can part and pack up her childhood treasures without any avarice, but still call upon the wonder and wisdom of her early years when she needs them.
Had she given in tp Jareth, Sarah would have been reduced. Always caught in an unending dream like the Lotus Eaters, acomplishing nothing, a plaything to Jareth.
I have read very few good Labyrinth fics since most writers see David Bowie's tights and not the themetics behind the movie. They reduce Sarah her preLabyrinth state: wishwashy, dreamy, and hollow despite her experiences. After her bout in the Labyrinth, how could any real life experience cowe or diminish her.