Trapped inside Labyrinth

And no desire to get out of there.

Before I begin my analysis, let me point out that no baby, doll, or bug was harmed in the production of this film, or at least that is what I have always wanted to believe, as part of the multiple excuses with which I have justified for more than 30 years, that this and no other film in existence or to be created, has been and will forever remain, “my Guilty Pleasure on Screen”.

Join me in visiting the Confessional for a while, while I release to the world all the sins that tie my life to this work, unjustly underrated, and that despite its box-office failure, ended up turning on the lights in my path forever.

Starting with the responsible consideration that very possibly you have not even come across this film in the past, or even worse, that you had met it and passed it by cataloging it – as some have told me – as childish and even ridiculous, that Labyrinth was released in 1986, when the use of CGI was still a little explored option and only a few could afford to play with it, as for example “Lucas Films”, by means of the very expensive Silicon Graphics, that George Lucas himself made available for the production of Labyrinth (1986), after having also contributed some adjustments to the script, so that the creator of the Muppets, Jim Henson, directed with all his fantastic talent the development of a story of Goblins, a girl, in full conflict with her transition to maturity, due to the lack of adult referents that would have to serve his as a guide, and a villain impregnated with all the warning signs that were supposed to have helped protect me, from falling prey to the so common idealizations of our most naive imaginary feminine.

Let me defend her before you throw tomatoes at me.

Strangely enough, I don't keep track of how many times I've watched it, nor how much I've sighed to watch it again every time things have been so difficult for me, as the very fact of stumbling upon it, until YouTube made it easier (Latin Spanish version). But I can say that in every new journey, I undertake inside Labyrinth, I find some other fascinating element, with which to continue strengthening the mental exercise of learning to recognize in myself the transformations that I must assume, to continue advancing through the walls and challenges that the journey plants me, reminding me at every obstacle that “things are not always what they seem".

This last sentence jumped from the screen to the inside of my skull, since the first time I saw this film when I was only about 9 years old and began the journey in the Labyrinth of my own life, anchoring itself in my soul, even more than in my mind, as an essential value that reminds me, every time it deserves it, the important need to look at things from different angles before rushing to make judgments or visceral decisions.

But before moving on to analyze all the other values that this peculiar film has been able to imprint on me – as it surely did on many other of its defenders who have consecrated it as a Cult Film – let me invite you to take a walk through some of the technical arguments that were as avant-garde as they were unappreciated for their time.

And now with so much CGI they can't make a Fantasy so Real.

After one of the best movie intros ever designed, in the best eighties style, in which tribute was still paid to those responsible for the work with their well-deserved credits, comes a whole splendor of impeccably developed scenes, through the coupling of digital resources, the construction of the characters with puppets and the human characterization of a cast that only let us see 5 faces among the dozens of people that were needed to build also the cast of the puppets and many of the visual and artistic effects.

All this finely spun within a script that dared to embrace so many narrative arguments, that it would need at least a separate article exclusively to talk about it; by the way, if you want me to develop it, let me know in the comments and I will gladly agree to your request.

As I was saying, the coherence between the discourse of the story, the dialogues, and the visual aesthetics, is an ode to the attention to detail and the deep love that everyone had for the project of making this film; So much so, that it is a real shame that the public of the time did not know how to appreciate it, being seduced by Tom Cruise instead of the King of the Goblins, being possible to discuss whether this was due to a failure in the selection of the criteria for the image of the male stereotype that is supposed to be more unconsciously attractive to teenage girls, or, to mere issues of marketing strategies between competing films at the box office. What is certain is that to everyone's unhappiness, Labyrinth did not manage to see the light of day through the big door, but rather through the cracks of a window that it took a long time to open, without anyone or anything in particular, to could be guilty for its economic failure.

However, the slow visibilization that this work achieved over time offered it a much more intimate space in the warmth of an audience also more sensitive to its profound messages and the disruptive didactics that presents them, through the combination of Monty Phyton-like satire and the compendium of Visual Arts with which each of the scenarios are built. From beginning to end, this film represents more than a class of advanced semiology; it is an explosion of Jungian dreamlike representations with which one can perfectly understand what happens inside the thoughts, emotions, and general feelings of a teenage girl, taking us by the hand to make a journey towards the confrontation of one's own attitude.

Cult of empathy and friendship

I am very grateful for so much pedagogy to learn how to cope with the difficult process of growing up, even more so when in my environment there was no other company than that offered by books, even so, I can not boast, that this teaching was made me immune, to the unconscious attraction to the "bad friends", because while other parents were concerned that their children were not atracted by the well-known social problems, mine parents realized very late that I had adopted Mafalda as a nanny, and that I lived in escapades with Steven King, E. Allan Poe, and Hitchcock.

Returning now to the reflection of the values bequeathed by Labyrinth, I must prioritize the fact that it taught me the importance of learning to ask the right questions, in order to obtain the necessary answers, instead of pretending to listen only to what one wants or, as we usually do as children, what is convenient for us. But Henson's pedagogical intentions did not stop there, because the least popularized of his works is capable of completely enveloping you in its atmosphere of the prevalence of friendship over arrogance, between confrontations that teach us how necessary empathy is for the resolution of any conflict.

Overcoming the habit of “take too many things for granted” would have become the life lesson that allowed me to open my mind towards the integration of scientific thought and procedure, but don't tell my professors, that I had been taught this by a Goblin, lest it affect their self-esteem to know it.

As if that were not enough, this film, in its pertinent exposition of the typical rhetoric of adolescent immaturity, emphasizes courtesy, coherence, and logic as fundamental tools to be able to advance on the road to our goals, making it clear that they are a natural part of our mental abilities, and, therefore, that it is up to us to learn to use them, as well as to trust in our own steps, because many times "it seems like we're not getting anywhere when in fact we are"; although for this we must assume the possibility that “the way forward is sometimes the way back”.

A platonic love is one thing and an extra-planetary lover is another.

Although, as I had previously confessed in another article about my Platonic Love, that, this is forever reserved for Edward, just contemplating any image of David Bowie makes the whole Universe stop around me, even more, if it is reinforced with the remembrance of all the artistic qualities that were intertwined in such a wonderful human being, who was unquestionably not of this world.

However, his so attractive demeanor would not at all have been exposed as a tasty candy reward for having arrived at the castle, let alone like the charming Prince Charming with which Disney likes to make us believe that is what we girls want. Not so! In the Labyrinth, as in the deepest part of our mind, it harbors the seductive image of narcissism that turns everything questionable into submissively forgivable, until finally the dominion of the Ego over the forces of the Overself, takes charge of helping us, to establish the correct limits, to follow the path towards the evolution of maturity, through the acceptance of responsibilities and the overcoming of guilt, learning to leave aside the fascination for... those ultra tight little pants and one or another Guilty Pleasure.