First Class: A Journal of First-Year Composition
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"You Remind Me of the Babe With the Power":
How Jim Henson Rede#ned the Portrayal of Young
Girls in Fanastial Movies in His Film, Labyrinth
Casey Reiland
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15
“you remind me of The babe WiTh The PoWer”: hoW
Jim henson redefined The PorTrayal of young girls in
fanTasTiCal movies in his film,
labyrinTh
By Casey Reiland, McAnulty College of Liberal Arts
Instructor: Dr. Jessica McCort
When I was fourteen, I was very surprised when one day my mom picked me up from school and
plopped a DVD of David Bowie in tights posing with a Muppet into my hands. “Remember this?!”
She asked excitedly. I stared quizzically at the cover and noticed it was titled, Labyrinth. For a moment
I was confused as to why my mother would bother buying me some strange, fantasy movie from the
eighties, but suddenly, it clicked. I had grown up watching this lm; in fact I had been so obsessed with
it that every time we went to our local movie rental store I would beg my mom to rent it for a couple
of nights. However, by the time I was ve the store had closed and I began to develop other tastes
in lm. I completely forgot about my beloved characters of Labyrinth, and as I looked at the DVD in
my lap I felt a wave of nostalgia wash over me. As soon as I got home I popped the movie into my
DVD player and sat riveted for an hour and forty-one minutes, overwhelmed by how much a lm
made specically for children could relate to someone like me. Watching the main character Sarah’s
maturation from an innocent, selsh teenager into an empowered young woman is a transformation I
admire a transformation that should be focused on more in fairy-tale based lms. Society has become too
accustomed to trivializing the role of princesses; rather than a strong gure, audiences prefer the damsel
in distress in a revealing dress waiting for her knight in shining armor to save her. In Labyrinth, however,
director Jim Henson proves that stereotype isn’t necessary by portraying Sarah as the courageous hero.
She is the one who unites the various characters of the labyrinth, saves her baby brother’s life, and
overcomes the power of the Goblin King (also known as Jareth) all the while wearing a sensible outt. By
depicting Sarah’s metamorphosis from adolescence to adulthood, along with her resistance against and
eventual destruction of Jareth, Henson argues that young girls don’t always have to be illustrated as weak
characters, and men shouldn’t always have to be presented as dominant and charming. Rather, the roles
can be switched and leave just as much of an impact, if not more, on an audience.
The theme of an empowered young woman in fairy-tale lms was not very popular when Labyrinth
released. Disney wouldn’t start integrating feminism into their movies until the 1990s, and even then
the company still ended their stories with the female lead ending up with the prince. When Jim Henson
created Labyrinth, he directed a lm that was the complete opposite of Disney’s, paving a path for a new
attitude toward princesses. The focus of the movie wasn’t just about a girl trying to be with her “one
true love” it was about her development into womanhood and the sacrices she had to make along the
way. Henson’s use of a labyrinth, then, is very signicant to Sarah’s growth as a character. The labyrinth is
symbolic for a journey—whether that journey might be to reach a physical goal or to grow mentally and
emotionally—and a symbol for sacrice (“Labyrinths”). Writer T.S. Miller asserts this notion by insisting,
“more than anything, the labyrinth becomes the gure for fear, for entrapment, but also the gure for
what a passage through…the fantastic can or cannot accomplish for the individual confronted with his or
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her emerging sexuality, external violence, bodily powerlessness, and everything else that lurks inside its
twistings and turnings” (Miller). In a labyrinth, a young child can be transformed. They must give up their
immature ways and accept the reality of adulthood in order to be successful in their excursion through
the labyrinth Jim Henson conveys this process though the main protagonist, Sarah, showing the struggles
she faces internally in a fun movie that is approachable for younger children.
Of course, feminism is a touchy and dicult subject to explain to people, which is why Henson’s
creative mind was important in making the lm because he was able to portray this social issue in a
entertaining way that the public could enjoy. Henson and his team used the technique of puppetry or, the
term that Henson coined, “muppetry”, which was “his own combination of marionette and foam-rubber
hand puppets” (Blau). Unlike his other movies, though, Henson had to construct puppets that would
be able to converse and interact smoothly with real people (“Journey”). Brian Froud, a close friend of
Henson’s and also the creature designer for the lm, discussed, for example, the science and technology
they had to use to build the beast, Ludo. He describes the process as, “We wanted it [Ludo] to have
muscles. It had to have uidity to it, and it had to have personality” (“Journey”). Henson didn’t want his
Muppets to look like they were being controlled by people, he wanted them to be realistic as possible so
that they would be able to reect the feelings that Sarah was dealing with throughout her journey. Often
there were several dierent Muppets for one character because they needed to show various emotions
through their facial expressions, along with dierent actions that could only be controlled by standing
up or sitting down (“Journey”). David Goelz, a puppeteer/performer in the lm, claimed that what was
particularly dicult about shooting Labyrinth was that there were three or four puppeteers for each
character, and how they had to go through every line in the movie and match up a function to go with a
word in that line (“Journey”). Froud emphasizes the soul that Henson put into Labyrinth, remembering,
“he [Henson] was always wanting to make it better and more expressive…and what we discovered was
that it [Labyrinth] was timely, that it was being of its time, but it continues to be meaningful for especially
teenage girls” (“Journey”). Henson produces a lm that contains complex characters, but a concept that
every young girl can relate too. Henson conveys Sarah’s journey to heroism through a creative and unique
form of art that is entertaining and also deeply relevant to its audience.
Initially, Sarah doesn’t appear heroic at all to viewers. She isn’t considerate of others and often acts
as if she is the victim of some horrible life in her household. When her step-mother and father tell her
that she has to babysit her little brother, she yells, “It’s not fair!” A complaint that she uses frequently
throughout the movie. She behaves as if her brother is a burden and the cause of all of her troubles,
blaming him for taking her toys from her room and forcing her to stay home every night, even though
she doesn’t have any plans to go out anyway. Sarah’s immaturity can also be seen in the manner in which
she perceives herself. Instead of acting like a teenager by having an interest in the latest pop culture,
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Sarah gives the impression that she is still a child—fascinated only with the world of fantasy instead of
the world of reality. Her room is lled with stued animals and toys, and she even likes to pretend that
an imaginary goblin king is pining for her in his castle. Henson even reveals her naiveté in her outt by
having her wear a white shirt and later on a white dress, a color that is symbolic of purity and innocence.
Sarah’s callow attitude is the cause of the kidnapping of her brother because she wishes him to be taken
away by Jareth; however, once she realizes her consequences for her actions she automatically desires
for them to be reversed. Despite Sarah continually claiming that her life is dicult, she has really never
had any struggles besides having to stop playing dress up in order to babysit her brother, Toby. This is
why, when she is forced to make her way through the labyrinth in order to save him, she is in complete
shock because she never had to take responsibility of her problems before. Even Jareth comments on her
carelessness and childishness when he shows her the labyrinth and declares that Sarah’s situation is “such
a pity” his voice practically dripping with sarcasm. Sarah has to learn to give up her selsh, infantile ways
in order to focus on what matters most: rescuing Toby. The executive producer of the lm, George Lucas,
explains Sarah’s conict over growing up by claiming, “She’s on that cusp between being an adult and a
big sister [...] and it’s her struggle to kind of compete with these two things, but of course, in the end,
she enters adulthood on her own terms” (“Journey”). Sarah is eventually able to release her fears about
accepting adulthood, and once she does, she nally recognizes the power within her to overcome the
labyrinth and the Goblin King.
Naturally, Sarah’s maturation is not an easy process. She is, after all, stuck in between two dierent
stages of her life: childhood and womanhood. One half of her still wants to rely on her imagination while
the other half aspires for the freedom that grown-ups have. Eventually, Sarah learns how to balance each
of these desires in her life, but she has to undergo many lessons before she is successful. For instance, she
is extremely frustrated when she rst enters the labyrinth, complaining about how the path constantly
changes on her without any warning. At one point, she begins to draw arrows on the ground to remind
her which way she had previously gone; but that plan unfortunately falls through when she spies tiny men
popping out of the ground, switching the blocks which she drew her arrows on. Once again, she wails
her cliché line “It’s not fair!”, but instead of any of the characters showing her sympathy, two goat-like
Muppets who guard doors in the labyrinth respond back to her: “No it’s not! But that’s only the half of it”
Later on, when Jareth runs down the hours for Sarah’s chances of saving Toby and he hears her childish
complaint of injustice, he scos, “You say that so often. I wonder what your basis of comparison is?”
Sarah nally realizes how petty she sounds when she is talking to Hoggle, a dwarf she befriends in the
labyrinth, and he uses her typical objection against her (Carroll). Writer Shiloh Carroll emphasizes Sarah’s
understanding of her immature conduct by expressing, “Her [Sarah’s] sudden look of understanding
indicates that she’s learned that things may not be fair, but they must be dealt with, not whined about”
(Carroll). Like life, the labyrinth is always altering, creating new paths and removing old ones. There
is no way for Sarah to stop this reorganizing from happening, she has to endure it; and once she opens
her mind to unexpected change, she starts to move more boldly and swiftly through the labyrinth. Her
transformation in her attitude describes the notion that if people tolerate the exibility of life, than they
are more likely to achieve success in their future. If Sarah were to continue pouting instead of coming to
terms with the fact that life isn’t always fair, then she would’ve never made any progress in the labyrinth
or gained the power to defeat Jareth.
Another weakness that Sarah learns to overcome is her vanity. In the beginning of the movie, the
audience can clearly tell that Sarah is obsessed with her looks and materialistic items: she is extremely
protective of her toys and she also enjoys staring at herself in the mirror while putting on lipstick.
As Sarah journeys through the labyrinth, though, she realizes that all of those aspects in her life are
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worthless compared to rescuing her brother. Her awareness of her narcissism nally strikes her when she
falls into the world of the “junk people”, tiny creatures who carry a massive amount of garbage on their
backs. When Sarah meets one of the “junk people”—named the Garbage Lady—the creature takes Sarah
to what she thinks is her old room and piles up all of her trinkets and stued animals around her. As the
mountain of Sarah’s toys grows around her, she suddenly discovers that all of these items are meaningless
to her. They can’t have any real, deep connection with her, unlike her family and friends who actually
care for her. Her toys are simply rubbish, distracting her from what is really important in her life, and she
nally conrms this notion by declaring, “It’s all junk! I have to save Toby!” When she gives this cry, her
bedroom walls crumble around her and she nds herself at the entrance of the Goblin City, continuing
on the right path. By letting go of her invaluable possessions, Sarah grows into a more condent person,
because she no longer relies on materialistic needs to make her feel better about herself (Carroll). Sarah
also displays her conceited ways in her relationship with Jareth. In the beginning of the lm, her step-
mother argues with her about how Sarah doesn’t ever hang out with friends or boys, yelling, “Well
I’d assume you would tell me if you had a date. I’d like it for you to date!” Sarah yearns for a romantic
relationship, but since she is still immature at this point, she isn’t able to have a real one, so she creates
one for herself. She tells her younger brother a story about how a Goblin King has fallen in love with her,
and would do anything to please her. When Jareth steps from her imagination into reality, however, Sarah
discovers that she isn’t prepared to enter into any type of relationship with him and that the love he is
oering her is very supercial and not real at all. She specically comes to this conclusion while she is
at the masquerade ball dancing with Jareth. The setting is very glamourized and Jareth is serenading her
with a love ballad, causing Sarah at rst to be smitten by him. But as the song continues, she notices that
none of it is genuine—the people, the costumes, even the ball itself are all fake. She breaks free from the
trance that Jareth has put on her, and smashes the glass around the ballroom, releasing herself from the
scene. Brian Henson, Jim Henson’s son, comments on this part of the lm, concurring, “It’s that thing
that happens that girls with that age who can pull o an allusion that they’re an adult, is then they end
up with the struggle of what happens when an adult man starts to respond to them? It can be scary…but
in the end Sarah makes the mature decision” (“Journey”). By Sarah recognizing that her old habits were
very childish and delusional, she vanquishes the hold that Jareth has over her and moves forward with the
strength to rescue Toby.
As Sarah evolves into a mature woman, her capability for heroism expands as well. It’s not often
that audiences see a fantastical lm where a young girl isn’t constantly relying on or lusting for a prince,
and that is why Henson’s movie is so inuential. According to writer Susan Sellers, author of the book,
Myth and Fairy Tale in Contemporary Women’s Fiction, Sellers observes the impression of women in fairy
tales by arguing, “women rarely gure as named individuals but only as the anonymous, ‘beautiful’
accompaniments to great men…such traditions have conspired to teach women to value themselves only
in terms of the way they are perceived” (Sellers). Henson, however, moves away from this idea, instead
of depicting Sarah as a frivolous princess, he provides her with qualities—such as courage, strength,
and intelligence—that are usually associated with the character of a prince; therefore, restructuring the
stereotype of lead female roles in fairy-tale-based lms. Sarah’s courage is seen when she nds Ludo,
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a large, furry red beast, being attacked by small soldiers in the labyrinth. The soldiers have tied Ludo
upside down to a tree and are poking him with sticks that have tiny creatures on the end of them with
razor-sharp teeth. Ludo is completely defenseless, and while Sarah could just continue to walk right by,
she instead decides to help Ludo by throwing rocks at the soldiers. Sarah defeats the whole army on her
own and even manages to tame Ludo by scolding at him, “Now stop that! Is that anyway to treat someone
who’s trying to help you?”. Typically, in most stories, the prince or knight has to confront a beast and try
to conquer him, but in Labyrinth audiences see a teenage girl with no special powers whatsoever, not only
take down a beast, but also a small army of creatures. Sarah also takes over the role of prince by resisting
the dierent characters of the labyrinth who try to demolish her chances of saving Toby. The Fireys,
monsters who can produce re from the tips of her ngers, are perhaps one of her greatest challenges.
She nds them in a forest in the labyrinth, and they attempt to stray her from her path by singing a song
that contain the lyrics, “Ain’t got no problems to worry about…think small with the re gang”. They want
her to forget about her mission, and they are so desperate that they even try to remove her head. But
Sarah manages to escape their tempting words and physical clutches on her by removing their heads.
Her ght against them represents how she no longer is thinking emotionally, but logically; a sign of the
wisdom and resiliency that she has acquired throughout her journey.
Finally, Henson also emphasizes how ridiculous the structured gender roles are in fairy tales by
conveying Jareth as having qualities that are deemed as “princess-like” and also having him depend on
Sarah for his survival. In most movies based o of folk tales, such as Disney, the princess, or female
protagonist, is usually depicted in a very sensual manner. She dresses scandalously and sings songs to
her companions about her dreams and hopes for her future. In Labyrinth, though, it is not Sarah who is
depicted in this way, but rather the Goblin King. Jareth sings three songs throughout the movie, one
about his desire to keep Toby, another that expresses his “so-called” love for Sarah, and another that
describes how he has done everything Sarah wishes because he yearns for her so much. And then there is
his wardrobe, specically his tights, which are so notoriously recognized throughout the public that some
parents feel uncomfortable showing their younger kids the movie. Perhaps Henson didn’t mean to make
Jareth so sexual on purpose, or perhaps he did. Either way, David Bowie’s portrayal of Jareth poses the
question of why society is okay with seeing a young girl’s breasts practically spilling out of her dress, but
embarrassed when a man’s pants are too tight. Henson also challenges gender norms by displaying Jareth’s
need for Sarah’s belief in him so he can carry on living. Jareth can’t survive without Sarah’s imagination;
in fact, he only came to life because she created him in her mind. Jareth is used to getting his way, he
is the Goblin King after all. Even David Bowie describes him as, “He [Jareth] is kind of spoiled. He
gets everything his own way. He’s a big kid” (“Journey). But when Jareth is denied of the one thing he
wishes for in life (to have control over Sara), he starts to weaken. His frustration and anger causes him to
cling more ercely onto Sarah, but his desperation only forces her to pull even further away from him.
Eventually, Jareth’s power is diminished so much that he is reduced to appearing as half human/half owl
at the end of the lm and begs, “Just fear me, love me, do as I say, and I will be your slave”. Jareth needs
Sarah to trust that he is alive and real, or else he will completely disappear. Luckily, Sarah doesn’t fall for
his temptations, and nally demolishes him by declaring, “You have no power over me!”. Henson shows
how a lead female character can have more power than the lead male, and still be a successful lm years
later. By posing Jareth as taking on the “feminine role”, and having Sarah regarded as the hero, Labyrinth
challenges fairy tale stereotypes and sends a positive message to young girls struggling with the dierent
pressures that growing up entails.
It’s been ve years since the moment my mother gave me a copy of Labyrinth, and I still feel a
profound sense of connection with the characters and ideas behind the lm. The lessons Sarah learns as
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she grows into a woman, and her wisdom and strength she gains with her maturation, is a process that Jim
Henson was able to portray in an honest manner. He didn’t attempt to make Sarah appear any dierent
from who she actually was: a teenager. Yes, Sarah at one point dreams of the life of a princess, but in the
end she understands that that’s not really who she is or wants to be. She doesn’t want to always be at
the beck and call of a prince; she doesn’t want to reside in a goblin castle for the rest of her life, and she
doesn’t not want to be able to make her own decisions and choose her own friends in life. Compared to
other lms being made at this time for young children, Henson directs a lm that allows a girl to thrive
in the world of fantasy and not be subservient to the prince, but instead have the prince be subservient
to her. While the lm industry has come a long way from the concept that certain qualities should only
be given to certain sexes, there are still some moments where the damsel in distress emerges on screen.
These are the moments when society needs to look toward Sarah, a character who truly depicts the
struggle girls are faced with as they grow up: how to hold onto the fantasy while accepting reality. Life
isn’t about nding a prince, it’s about facing the labyrinth boldly and condently, even though the goal at
the end of it might require sacrices and a few cheesy musical numbers along the way.
Works Cited
Blau, Eleanor. “Jim Henson, Puppeteer, Dies; The Muppets’ Creator Was 53.” The New York Times 17 May
1990: n. pag. Print.
Carroll, Shiloh. “The Heart of the Labyrinth: Reading Jim Henson’s Labyrinth as a Modern Dream
Vision.” Mythlore 28.1 (2009): 103.Literature Resource Center. Web. 2 Apr. 2015.
Journey through the Labyrinth: Kingdom of Characters. Tri-Star Pictures, 2007. DVD.
Labyrinth. Dir. Jim Henson. Screenplay by Terry Jones. Prod. George Lucas. Perf. Jennifer Connelly and
David Bowie. Jim Henson, 1986. DVD.
“Labyrinths: Their Origins and Development.” Medieval Studies. Loyola University Chicago, n.d. Web. 16
Apr. 2015.
Miller, T. S. “The Two Kings and the Two Labyrinths: Escaping Escapism in Henson’s Labyrinth and Del
Toro›s Laberinto.” Extrapolation 52.1 (2011): 26-50. ProQuest Central. Web. 29 Mar. 2015.
Sellers, Susan. Myth and Fairy Tale in Contemporary Women’s Fiction. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire:
Palgrave, 2001. Print.
