January 11, 2016: Here at SBTB HQ, we’re quiet and sad about the death of David Bowie, and we kept returning to this entry where we discussed Jareth, his appeal, the layers of bad boy villain and potential redemption. We’re resurfacing it here to pay a small tribute to the character and person who transfixed so many of us, and we’re re-opening comments if you’d like to add yours.
I’ve always struggled to understand why some readers find a controlling, super-alpha hero attractive. I got down-right snotty about it for a while before I realized that I, too, have known the love of a man who is fun to fantasize about but who is a terrible, terrible person…Jareth, from the movie Labyrinth, played by the gorgeous and very, very bad David Bowie.
Labyrinth is a movie featuring people and Jim Henson’s Muppets. The movie is a coming of age story about Sarah, played by Jennifer Connelly. She’s a bratty young teen who doesn’t want to grow up. She idolizes her missing mom, resents her stepmom, and feels put upon by her father and stepmother when they ask her to babysit her baby brother Toby. When Toby cries, Sarah says she wishes the goblin king would take him away.
Enter the Goblin King, Jareth, played by David Bowie. Here’s a sampling of Jareth’s actions:
- He kidnaps a baby
- And sends an under-age girl through a maze full of machines and creatures that might kill her
- And threatens to turn the baby into a goblin
- All of which causes Sarah to be almost killed and/or made permanently stinky
- He has Sarah’s memory erased so he can attempt to seduce her via magical roofie
- He sends the baby crawling after a ball on a set made of M.C. Escher-style stairs in a fashion that is CLEARLY not safety minded. If he had electrical outlets, he probably wouldn’t even put those safety covers on them.
He also looks like this:
At the climax of the film, Jareth says that he did everything for Sarah:
Everything that you wanted I have done. You asked that the child be taken. I took him. You cowered before me, I was frightening. I have reordered time. I have turned the world upside down, and I have done it all for *you*! I am exhausted from living up to your expectations. Isn’t that generous?…I ask for so little. Just fear me. Love me. Do as I ask, and I shall be your slave.
For those of us who were around the same age as Sarah (she’s fifteen) when the movie came out, this sparked lively discussion – should Sarah have rescued Toby or should she have stayed with Jareth and ruled over the Goblin City with him?
Jareth is a skeevy older guy who preys on under-age girls, he’s a kidnapper, and he’s certainly controlling – and all of us would have laid down our lives for him in a blink. Sure, David Bowie, take all the younger siblings you want as long as you dance with me in that weird giant bubble.
Behold the scene which is creepy as shit, actually, but also pretty much totally defined my adolescent sexuality:
So many of the Bitches encountered Jareth in our formative years that we all have thoughts. Jareth is a shit, ladies! He’s scum! He’s not even sorry! He’s going to keep being scum! So why are we helpless before the power of the tights?
Amanda:
As a teenage girl, it’s hard not to be mystified by Bowie’s bulge in The Labyrinth. Seriously. Whenever it’s in a scene, it’s an impossibility to take your eyes off of it. That man knows his assets.
HOWEVER! I am not here to wax poetic about Bowie’s bits. Though I could. If you really want me too.
For me, this is probably the earliest example I can think of where I was totally into the bad guy. Let’s not get into the fanfiction that I devoured because of this. I’m blaming Jareth for my eschewing the well-meaning hero and pining for the morally ambiguous, unfairly attractive villain instead, even though I’m well aware that they are awful people. THEY CLEARLY JUST NEED THE LOVE OF A GOOD WOMAN TO CHANGE THEM.
- Jareth/Sarah
- Draco/Hermione (where my Dramione fans at?)
- The Phantom/Christine
The list goes on.
There’s an arrogance that comes with being a villain; they’re so self-assured in who they are and what they’re doing. They’ll exercise their power and do whatever is necessary to reach their means, and it just flips all my switches. I’m a fixer by nature, so perhaps a character needing (though perhaps not actively seeking) redemption appeals to that personality trait.
Give me a good bad guy any day of the week.
RHG:
He’s right in that gives her what she (thought she) wanted. She wanted an adventure. She wanted to be frightened. She wanted to get the damn baby to shut up. She wanted to be the center of attention for someone and be appreciated for being her and not the live-in baby sitter. (Was that unfair for her to think that’s all she is to her dad and stepmother? Yes, but 15 year olds are not known for being fair.)
And being of the age where all I wanted was that – adventures and attention and being in peril and have to think my way out of it (but not ACTUAL peril, adventure movie peril) and those pants – that had a profound effect. A girl, on an adventure, who had to think her way through it and collect a bunch of friends along the way (and the implications that either her toys were Real or it was in her head)?
Either way I could relate to everything Sarah went through. Stepparent with whom she had a cantankerous relationship. Conflicted feelings about a younger sibling’s very existence. The desire to playact and live deeply in fantasy and books. Wearing a vest because it was the fashion.
I want to unpack the “Love me, fear me, do as I ask and I will be your slave” thing a bit more. I think this was the first introduction many of us had to the concepts that arise in BDSM, before any of us had a word for it. I remember thinking that on the surface, that was SUCH a huge contradiction, and yet…. and yet… it was intriguing. How would that work? He did give her everything she asked for and there was a pretty dress and Bluto and well… why not? At least consider the choice he’s given you, girl!
I also love this Fan Theory on what Jareth’s deal is. IT EXPLAINS SO MUCH.
CarrieS:
First of all, thanks Mom, for making me a version of Sarah’s vest that I wore constantly and that my kid is now wearing constantly. Many generations will wear that thing, clearly. As an adult I think Sarah is incredibly irritating but as a kid DAMN but I wanted to be her.
I think one thing that makes it easier to crush on Jareth is that the story isn’t presented as a romance. The difference between Edward in Twilight and Jareth in Labyrinth is that we aren’t being tricked into thinking of Jareth as a hero – he’s always presented as a bad guy.
When Jareth drugs Sarah so that she enters a trance and finds herself dancing with him in a magic bubble, the scene embodies all the tension of discovering your sexuality – it’s kind of scary and kind of hot and you have to find your own power within it. But even though the scene itself has these romantic elements (the song, the dress) it’s not presented as a romantic thing that Jareth did. It’s quite clearly presented as an evil and manipulative thing that he did. If I felt like the writer or director wanted to convince me that drugging Sarah was an admirable and romantic act, I’d be revolted, not turned on.
It’s a scene with a lot of contradictions that I’m able to enjoy because it’s presented as a complicated scene. As a teen, this spoke to a lot of things I was juggling – fear of being exploited and having not being able to make my own decisions, a completely contradictory desire to not be held responsible for my own decisions because sexuality is scary, a feeling that sex is dirty and creepy (Sarah is totally creeped out by the dancers with their grotesque masks) and a feeling that sex is glamorous and alluring (Davie Bowie’s hair and make-up deserved their own Oscar).
I can’t stand romances in which controlling heroes are portrayed as romantic heroes unless part of their arc is that they meet their match in the heroine and/or they change in the course of the story. But I LOVE a broken-hearted villain, i.e. Eric from Phantom of the Opera and Loki from the Marvel movies.
Readers, did Jareth awaken strange new stirrings with you? What unrepentant, has not changed, is still evil, villain or villainess has rocked your world, and why? Should Sarah have stayed in the goblin world with that amazing dress or what? Let us know your thoughts.
My secret vice is professional wrestling and I have always cheered for the heels.
I always had a bit of a thing for Alexandre Dumas’s villains: Fernand (at least he was motivated by love) and Rochefort – especially from the Godawful 1990’s Disney version.
Definitely Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert from Ivanhoe and Marvel’s Loki.
I am currently crushing on Grell from Black Butler. I’m not sure how much of a villainess she is, but she is a stone-cold, unrepentant killer with an implied tragic back story in the manga. And in the anime she punches a child in the head for calling her impure!
I like Cherie Priest’s take on the movie.
I only got to watch it when I was well out of teenagehood. Jareth didn’t awoken any “strange new stirrings” in me, since at the time I already knew that: a) I find men who look like this aesthetically attractive; b) I don’t find any men, regardless of how they look, sexually attractive (honestly, payed zero attention to the bulge, he could have Ken’s anathomy for all I care(d) – he still would be gorgeous). I still don’t find Sarah all that annoying and feel very defensive of her, actually. I hope she eventually found some LARP community to hang with.
Most villains who left a serious impression on me are female, two notable exceptions being current TV-incarnation of Hannibal Lecter and some evil scientist from a cartoon, who started off interesting, then got kinda one-dimensional, and eventually did find some kind of redemption, so I’m not even sure he counts here. (Said cartoon villain is also the reason I stopped myself from getting into Mutant X – I felt that I might end up sympathising with their Warhol lookalike baddie much more than with the good guys, and decided that one evil scientist in my life is enough for now.)
One thing about villains – they are allowed to present themselves in ways that good guys/girls usually aren’t, unfortunately. Like, I was so happy that we resently got a cartoon where a non-villainous female character wore a lot of makeup and dressed in red and black. And many people (out-of-universe) kept expecting her to go to the Dark Side. Grrr. I mean, there are female characters that aren’t evil, but still kinda on the dark side – various (Somewhat) Friendly Neibourghood Goths, and they’re “allowed” to dress weirdly. But usually female protagonist can’t look/act “too femme” (so the less makeup the better) or “too butch”, and female villains are much freer in that respect. Male villains can be effeminate even if they lust exclusively after female protagonists. Male heroes? Good luck, unless you live in some shojo anime bubble and never wander off. If there were more movies with good guys who dress like Jareth, I’d watch more movies. (Especially if at least some of them were explicitly, textually non-straight.)
@Dayle:
A very good question!
Alas, I was a bit too young to really appreciate Bowie when I first saw it and didn’t get the chance to see it again until college.
I find bad guys fascinating, especially if you throw in a tragic back story, but I can’t think of any that I find all that appealing sexually. (Seriously, I don’t get the MCU Loki appeal. He’s easy on the eyes, but he was a whiny ass who wanted to rule before he found out mom and dad didn’t tell him he was adopted and didn’t really change after.)
I spent years trying to find a dress as like Sarah’s in the dance scene as possible. Years. This movie!
I somehow didn’t see this movie until I was 17, and Jareth was my obsession, although I could not have told you why. It was (and is) a tangle of things. Jareth was very pretty, but also undeniably masculine, and much older than the classmates and boy-banders I had previously crushed on. He had that voice (I like voices), and he behaved like he was completely in control at all times, and everything Carrie and RHG said about the dance scene, that it was simultaneously creepy and manipulative while also being sexy and tempting to a teenage girl (dancing! Ballgowns! The way he looked at her!) is accurate. And the end, the “fear me, love me, do as I say” speech, when he knows he’s losing his power over her and so offers it right back to her with conditions–yes, that was my first taste of a BDSM concept, and to a conservatively-raised teen in the deep South, it was a mind-blowing idea. I thought A LOT about Jareth as my slave.
This is my favorite Labyrinth meta because in the end, it is a choice to take your power back.
Have you ever read the book? It becomes very obvious that it’s the step-mom and the dad who are the real bad guys in it. They treat Sarah like a slave. She’s put down for being “too much like her mother,” the father ignores her, she’s ordered to do things with absolutely no consideration for her feelings. This isn’t just parents trying to mold a child into a responsible adult, it’s pretty darn clear in the book that Sarah could die and they wouldn’t care. It’s only Toby that matters to them.
The right choice would’ve been for Sarah to say “I’ll stay with you if you send Toby back.” She wouldn’t have even been missed.
However, in the book it also becomes clear that like Buttercup in The Princess Bride, Sarah is Too Stupid To Live. And not just teenage stupidness either. She’s just a literal moron who only gets by on her youth and beauty.
Oh, and one more thing – The Phantom’s name is spelled Erik with a K. It’s the usual Swedish spelling as he chose the name because of Christine, who’s Swedish, not French.
do I go for ‘bad boys’? named my puppy Loki – ‘nuf said….
Everything that was said in the post, all of it. I was introduced to the movie as a teen because my younger brother had seen it in school (thanks, young brother’s teacher? who also had the feels for Jareth?) and OMG yes. My friends and I still to this day talk about Jareth and how Sarah should have chosen.
Also, I heard this on the radio, and it took me THE LONGEST TIME to place the song, because context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7ju56qtO2k
Jami – I’m sorry, I hope it won’t sound too confrontational, and in case it does, my apologies – but since the book based on the movie, not the other way around, I’m not sure how it makes anything about the movie characters “obvious” or “clear”, since it’s not like Smith was involved with the movie creation at all. Unless there’s some other book which existense I’m not aware of.
(I’d need to try to read it again (already tried once, wasn’t impressed by the translation, DNFed) to be able to judge for myself whether novelisation!Sara or novelisation!parents are really that awful in it, but I don’t think reading the book would change the way I feel about the characters in the movie anyway.)
Apologies again.
I watched this movie when I was waaaaay too young (11 yrs old) and found it downright terrifying. Everything from the muppets to the plot scared the heck out of me. So I’ve never understood the appeal of Jareth. But I totally understand the appeal of a good bad guy. They are cocky and confident and if played right, just a little bit broken. Just broken enough that you can believe with a little love and some firm shaking, you can fix them into good-guys.
I also recognize that that is the fantasy. In reality, Loki is a conniving serpent who spent the entire movie acting out an elaborate plan – a plan he had placed in motion from the first 5 minutes. A plan he would never change, no matter how much love anyone threw at him (which is why I love Thor’s relationship with Loki – Thor loves his brother, despite everything.) If Thor cant fix him, no one can!
Redcrow – The book expands on the thoughts and actions we see in the movie. (Remember, the father wasn’t even shown in the movie.) Which makes it clearer that Sarah’s parents didn’t give a bug’s butt about her. She could be murdered in front of them and they would’ve just shrugged and said, “It happened because she’s too much like her mother” and expect her corpse to clean up everything.
She’s basically Meg from Family Guy.
@Jami I’ve never read the book, but I’ve not heard good things about it.
On screen, especially from an adult perspective, her dad and stepmom don’t seem that bad. They shouldn’t have given Toby the bear, but other than that, there’s really nothing.
Stepmom gets annoyed that Sarah is late, but it seems pretty clear Sarah loses track of time a lot. Sarah complains that she always gets stuck babysitting, but given her flair for the dramatic I’d take that with a grain of salt.
And maybe it wasn’t intended that way, but the actress playing her stepmother left me with the impression that she really did wish Sarah had more of a social life and wouldn’t ask her to cancel her plans to babysit.
Loved Labyrinth when it came out, even though I was the Mom. Already loved bad boy Bowie. My daughters were the target demographic and also loved it. It was a family cult classic. My youngest, the band geek, and I used to plan a hypothetical field show using the music from the movie. I still think that would be ultra-cool.
One thing still disturbs me. I remember seeing the movie and feeling a sense of familiarity. It seemed to me that the plot device of a girl wishing her little brother on the goblins or some sort of magical evil dudes and then having to rescue him was the premise of something I’d read in my childhood. I positively gobbled up fairy tales as a kid, to the point that I doubt my ability to remember titles or distinguish plots, but this quest story certainly rang a bell. Doesn’t seem to be George MacDonald or Tamlin. Do any of y’all know of something like this that would predate Labyrinth?
I love this article. My sisters and I could never understand how she didn’t choose to stay with Jareth. We sure would have at that age, and her brother was having a lovely time. Some of these themes are explored in Maurice Sendak’s work wherein a dark fantasy helps young people explore their emotions. (I think the writer meant Ludo, not Bluto)
YES! I love this entry!
I wrote something similiar on my dumb film blog a few years ago.
https://latetothetheater.wordpress.com/?s=labyrinth&submit=Search
The allure of those sparkly pants will never go away. The Power of Crotch Compels Us to create art around it. 400 years from now a stone crotch will be on display in some floating space museum and people will be like ‘I wonder who he was? What was so great about THIS crotch in particular? Digital records from that time from something called ‘Twitter’ indicate there was no shortage of crotch pics.’
David Bowie is and always has been, of course, extremely attractive. 🙂
Never saw “Labyrinth.” I think I was just on the cusp of the wrong age.
I have however been to the Labyrinth of Jareth interactive masquerade ball/performance art event in Los Angeles. Hoo boy, people. Y’all should go.
dang it, forgot to answer the question. Evil character I crushed on? Alan Rickman’s Sheriff of Nottingham. He’s disgusting and vile and I love him.
I WISH I could have seen him in the original stage version of Dangerous Liaisons. Until I found out about that I thought Malkovich was great (and objectively he still is great) but I can’t watch the movie again because I’ll just want to see Rickman there.
I was a little older than the target demographic when Labyrinth first came out, but I still love it and have replaced my original VHS copy with a DVD from WalMart’s $5 bargain bin. The inherent contradiction in the “do as I say and I will be your slave” speech always stood out to me as emblematic of Jareth’s whole raison d’etre; belief gives him power, as for all mythic (and not-so-mythic) beings. To me this movie was a study in all the ways a woman can be persuaded to give up her autonomy, and how seductive that persuasion can be.
I’ve always been a big fan of a well-drawn villain. I knew from the first viewing of Star Wars that Darth Vader could be redeemed, I’m a huge POTO fan, and my favorite animated character was always Desslok from the Yamato movies. (Evidently most of Japan agreed, because they eventually gave up and had him ally with the good guys without losing his signature snark.) I think what makes them so much more interesting than the heroes is their unpredictability. You always know the hero is going to do the right thing, even if it’s not the smart thing; but you never know how a villain is going to react or what his next play will be. It could be subtle, it could be over-the-top, but you never know. It’s so much more fun trying to get into their heads, trying to figure out what they will do next and why they are doing it.
Labyrinth scared the crap out of me when I first saw it. I think, because it was the first movie I saw where the “evil” was appealing. Most kids versions of fairy tales involve some evil monster who is defined solely by evilness, is visually obviously evil and doing things that are obviously evil.
In this movie the evil is appealing. The evil is literally everything Sarah has ever treasured or wanted or hoped for (from the treasures in her room to the handsome magical guy who nearly worships her). The story says all that magic, all the treasure, everything you’ve ever dreamed or wanted is a trap and you have to give it all up. Growing up is about sacrificing everything you love in order to become tame and responsible.
That messed me up a lot.
When I saw it again later, after I’d been exposed to more complex bad guys and plots, the growing up message didn’t bother me as much as Sarah generally acting like a wet dishrag. I wanted another Sarah. I wanted Sarah to stand up for herself, answer the riddles, be suspicious of suspicious things. I really wanted her to get to the end and say ‘Send the kid back, take me instead.’ Because isn’t that what the rest of us would have said? We know how that story goes, she kisses him and he becomes a prince. Not that she rejects him and becomes happy about her un-magical life.
This is one of the few movies I’d actually like to see remade or given a sequel just because I really want to see that ass-kicking Sarah.
Or an older Sarah trying to figure out how to find the magic again, wandering through the labyrinth ruins.
No mention of Jareth’s riding crop? I’m pretty sure this movie is solely responsible for turning me to the dark side.
“He’s right in that gives her what she (thought she) wanted. She wanted an adventure. She wanted to be frightened. She wanted to get the damn baby to shut up”
Why did I never think to call upon the Goblin King during my son’s colic phase?!?!
I’ve never made the connection between my draw to the strong-willed alpha type characters(something I try to deny, but in all honesty, can’t) and this movie, but, yep. There it is.
Check out Luke Evans in No one lives. Crazy psycho serial killer but so damn hot. Or maybe there’s just something really wrong with me.
See also: the fandom surrounding Guy of Gisborne, Richard Armitage’s character in the BBC Robin Hood.
And damn near everyone else he plays – if loving him as a bad guy is wrong I don’t want to be right.
I was older when I saw Labyrinth, old enough to have loved David Bowie as a teen in the seventies. I even went out with someone partly because he had cheekbones, a smile and even teeth like Bowie (and yes that was a lousy reason, it didn’t last). So hell yes I’d have satyed with Jareth!
PamG–There is a children’s picture book called Outside Over There by Maurice Sendak which involves a little girl going to get her baby sibling back from goblins. I seem to recall someone involved with “Labyrinth” (maybe Brian Froud?) commenting that it was an influence on the film, along with the general myth of faeries kidnapping human children because it’s difficult/impossible to have any of their own.
Others have mentioned what I now refer to as the Rickman Conundrum: Simply adding Alan Rickman to any situation apparently makes it swoon-worthy. Hogwarts students… is your Potions professor a cold, gloomy, mean, greasy-haired wretch? Simply add Alan Rickman and he becomes rather tall, dark, brooding & dishy. Employees in Nakatomi Plaza… has your Xmas party been interrupted by the henchmen of a merciless mercenary who doesn’t care if you die as long as he gets his money? Simply add Alan Rickman and you’ll be ready to push John McClane out the window with no more than a brief “Yippee-ki-yay, motherf**ker” and nary a backward glance.
I also felt exactly the same way about David Bowie in Labyrinth. Although I loved my younger siblings too much to give them up, I would have considered a liaison with the Goblin King. I was 12 when I saw the movie but had hit puberty early so Jareth – and, oh gods, that riding crop – gave my hormones a vigorous stirring.
I’m also on team Nottingham (Rickman version), Gisborne (Armitage version), and Bois-Guilbert (book version).
I’m not sure if they’re exactly villains but I also have a powerful attraction to Julius Caesar (Ciaran Hinds version from “Rome”) and Rumplestiltskin (Robert Carlyle) from Once Upon a Time.
I think a lot of my villain-love has to do with the voice and the confidence, and a vague notion that they will sort of magically intuit when you’re in the mood for rough/DS sex without you actually having to say it. But, [TMI Alert!]… villains are always more attractive to me when I’m ovulating, not all the time. And not every villain.
Which is all very well & good in theory. In real life, I’m exclusively attracted to nice (somewhat nerdy) men who believe in enthusiastic, affirmative consent, as long as they are comfortable in their own skin, secure in their nerdiness, and lusty in the bedroom.
Ah, David Bowie as Jareth. Massive crush then, massive crush now. I didn’t quite understand why I was in love, because hello, I was maybe 8 or 9, but I knew I would have let him keep the baby as long as I got to live in his pretty floaty castle and he sang to me on a daily basis.
As an adult, I know it’s problematic, and I don’t care at all, because David Bowie, who is basically a unicorn in human form even without the Jareth costuming. He had danger and wit and beauty all in one very tightly clad form. Also, not for nothing, but how beautiful was Jennifer Connelly? That is not what I looked like at 15, that’s for damn sure. She was nothing short of a fairy princess.
Also, others have mentioned Loki, and oh, yeah, all day long, but when you bring up the bad boy, well, I just finished A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah Maas, and there was a character introduced about halfway through called Rhysand. He’s the faerie lord of The Night Court (fairy kind, not the Richard Moll kind). His intentions are dubious, he doesn’t balk at using people for his own ends, he’s rarely kind, he likes violence, and that’s without me even getting into to the several instances where either the consent is dubious, manipulated, or even steamrolled right over. And yet, I still found him much, much more interesting and fine, hot than the hero.
Oh heavens, we’re talking about one of my favorite subjects: sympathic sexy villains.
I think I love them more than most traditional heroes because most of the time villains can do and say whatever they want without care for likability. You want to have your hero be a jerk just one time? Most people won’t ever forget or forgive that. But the brooding anti-heroe or villain? They do what they want and are so much more dynamic than heroes.
My favorite villain who is not a good guy nor is he redeemed at the end is Prince Nuada from Hellboy II. First he’s sexy as hell with his voice, way of speaking (very much like Jarith), costuming, and physical skill with a lance. Second he’s determined to reclaim his homeland since his people are slowly fading away (sidhe and other fey) and it’s his job as prince to protect them. While the king and his sister are more than happy to sit back, let humans who don’t even know they exist encroach on their land and simply fade away, Nuada will stop of nothing to protect his people, including raising the Golden Army. Del Toro (the director) said he drew a lot of parallels between Nuada and Geronimo, the last Native American brave who fought the white settlers in a losing war, and it shows. Nuada gets the best lines, had the most agency, and has a completely tragic character arc. He does terrible things, but he regrets them and sort of takes on the role of the sin water for his people. It’s fun to see the writers walk that fine line between him doing terrible things for good reasons and going so far overboard he turns into a complete jerk.
*derailing*
Brooding Bibliophile – yes! More Rickman! Everywhere! LOL
If you want to see a not very good early Clive Owen movie with a very subtly good Rickman, “Close My Eyes.” It’s squicky subject matter but some of what Rickman does in it was really, notably, good acting in a way I hadn’t been conscious of before. I mean, it was “OMG I love him” plus “OMG that was really brilliant.”
@chacha1, I never cared for John Malkovich in Dangerous Liaisons. Colin Firth in Valmont, on the other hand, is probably a big part of why I still find 18th-century men’s clothing unbearably sexy.
@PamG, aspects of Labyrinth remind me of The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen. That might be why it seemed somewhat familiar to you.
My babysitter first showed me this movie when I was 8 or 9 I loved it so much, I begged her to bring it over everytime. I wouldn’t say I saw the movie too early, because I also saw Candyman when I was 8 or 9 and I am still scarred, but I was fascinated by Jareth in a way that had nothing to do with goblins. I absolutely blame this movie for building the foundation of my attraction to: androgyny, broken-hearted villains, broken-hearted villains who control their sphere but are sexual submissives (see also: Spike from Buffy, Eric from True Blood) men in tight tight pants.
Speaking of, when I’m searching for that Jareth/Spike/Eric bad guy good guy hero in romance novels, I don’t often find him. Instead I find the wounded alpha, the redeemable alpha (Sebastian from The Devil in Winter comes to mind), the Alpha with whom the heroine can go toe to toe (I’m looking at you, Curran), all of whom are just as dominate in bed; throwing the heroine on the bed, introducing her to realms of pleasure, or battling it out for control (in a sexy way, of course). Very few are truely submissive sexually. Is that because romance novels don’t often feature bad guy good guys who want to dominated? Or am I just not finding them?
Any recommendations?
Yes, Dramione!
Ahem, apart from that, I’ve always had a soft spot for Tracy Belmanoir from Heyer’s The Black Moth. I even think there’s beginnings of a fan fiction in which I think I was vaguely trying to redeem him while still keeping him so, so bad.
Thank you for a very well done piece on villains – I realise many readers like them for all kinds of reasons. Mine always have to do with a bland hero(ine) – some writers give them more love (and character) than their positive protagonists, ergo the readers love them more too.
@ijinx: I think Heyer realized she was on to a good thing with Tracy, so she re-wrote him as the Duke of Avon.
I believe I have mentioned, probably during a discussion of Rand Morgan, that I had a crush on Captain Hook from about age 5. Poor schmuck–stuck on some lost island with a bunch of preschoolers.
There’s a book that I always wondered if it was influenced by “Labyrinth:” “The Hollow kingdom” by Claire Dunkle, although the Goblin King in the book wasn’t as drop-dead sexy as David Bowie.
Oh Jareth. Oh be still my beating heart.
I actually won contests with my Labyrinth fanfic.
Oh tortured hero, he LURVED Sarah so he only wanted to keep her!
Always loved this movie so much. I was half in love with Jareth, but knew it would never work. Either he was being a player or else it would be a hugely unhealthy relationship. My teenage interpretation of the beloved lines was “Just change everything about yourself to conform to my wishes and completely cut yourself off from anyone else, and I’ll reward you with what I think you should want.”
Compare & contrast with the Mia Sara/ Tim Curry seduction scene in Legend. Tim Curry as the demonic Lord of Darkness is not as physically hawt as Bowie (giant horns don’t turn me on), but OMG his VOICE. Much more overtly creepy, but very much the same idea. I’ll give you what (I decide) you want if only you turn yourself over to me completely.
Started to read a story recently that read like a fanfic mashup of these. The hero gave the “love me, fear me” speech almost word-for-word. I DNF’d; I maybe could have tolerated the plagiarism/ homage, but I am even less tolerant now of “become a different person for me” than I was 30 years ago. I desperately wanted the Jareth/Lord of Darkness character to be redeemable, and when that didn’t seem to be happening, that was it.
I remember going to see this when I was in college. I want to have her hair. So many years later, I’m still disappointed that I don’t have hair like that… ::pouts::
Speaking of fanfic, Shona Husk has a Goblin King series, which I enjoyed a couple books of, but the prequel (still free on Kindle!) felt very homage du Jareth to me: Summons: A Goblin King Prequel
I was 9 in 1987 when the movie came out (think it was 87.. Princess Bride was the same year. Good times).
I came for the muppets and stayed for Jareth. I also wanted to be Jennifer Connoly SO BAD. I may, um, still try to dress like her. Shh. But Jareth and those pants…!
Some of my first hours lost on Netscape Navigator were poring over sites (Geocities much?) devoted to Labyrinth exegesis, fan art, doll making and so on.