Character study: Jareth (2024)

Of course I have to start with one of my favourite movies of all time.

Introduction:

I’ve been all over the place with Jareth:

-When I met him for the first time (at my three or four years old): I hated him for beeing the villain.
-Ten years later: I understood him.
-Today: I’m on his side and I’ll fight for him tooth and claws.
Why? The fact that he was played by David Bowie helps, of course, however now, as an aspiring author, I came to notice that he is a far more complex character that the one we could wait to find in a kid’s flick (or teen’s, since it belongs to the “Coming of age” genre).

Luckily, I’ll convince you to see him like I do.

The Official Story:
Sarah is a teenager tired of taking care to her baby stepbrother, Toby. Influenced by her favourite fairy tales, she asks the goblins to take him away.

Little does she knows that said creatures are real and make her wish come true.
The Goblin King, Jareth, gives her the possibility of rescuing her brother by solving his labyrinth in thirteen hours.

Behind the scenes:
First version of Jareth:

Many would be as surprised as I am by the fact that the original plan wasn’t just to make a sequel of the former movie The Dark Crystal, centered on Jen’s -now a king- journey to retrieve his baby from the goblins that took him BUT that once this idea was ditched, it was planned to make the Gobling King the lead character on Labyrinth. Once it was decided to have a young girl as a protagonist, the King became the villain to be defeated.

After twenty eight (yeah, 28!) screenplays, Jareth was born.
It’s quite easy to find thefirst draft online that shows a very different version of him. He presents himself as a human knocking on Sarah’s front door (and sneaking in to have a drink in the moment Sarah leaves to take care of her brother) and is quite childish (to the point of throwing a temper tantrum once she defeats him, yelling “Is not fair” over and over again).
I don’t know how the other versions were, but I think that the writer’s hard work was worth it.

Conception of the character:

It all begin with a Brian Froud’s concept art.

Jim Henson insisted on not having a puppet as the Gobling King, if we add the “rockstar” quality that he would posses, it was just a matter of finding the right person to play him. David Bowie was always the first choice, but other candidates were Michael Jackson, Sting, David Lee Roth, Freddie Mercury and even Rod Stewart.

(Mis)quoting Bowie “Jareth rathers be elsewhere than with his people, to have a drink in Soho, or something like that”, his weariness of being with his goblins is quite easy to see. They are inept, childish and a little dumb… there’s no doubt why he’s the king. By having Toby in his arms, he shows another side of himself: maybe he does plan to turn him into his heir, or perhaps because, for the first time in so many years, there’s another person on the labyrinth or just because he’s having fun by having the baby while his sister is wandering his domains.

However, the main question that bugged us fans since the begining of time was: Sarah’s journey through the labyrinth was real or not? I’m so sorry for beeing the carrier of bad news: according the Ultimate Visual Guide, everything is a product of the young girl’s imagination
So, why would she create such antagonist to herself? Well, maybe it wasn’t her but her Subconscious -or maybe it took Jareth’s shape-.

The Goblin King represents everything she loves: magic, fantasy, melodrama, music and even that little interest on the opposite sex that begins with puberty. Jareth is a bait destined to slow down her growth.

Even if this is my guess, the bottom line is true: Jim Henson & Co. started this idea.
Henson wanted the labyrinth to be a metaphor for the rite of passage from child to woman as a way to honour his daugthers or, at least, to represent the adventure of growing up; so it’s not so weird to have a villain that embodies all the ideals a young girl has. By beating him on his own game she goes from the fantastic world where all girls are princesses to the reality, where we have to accept that not everything will happen as we want it and that we won’t get anyone’s magical help.

To me is rather interesting that, at the very begining, Jareth was as childish as Sarah: a typical case of hero and villain having more in common that what meets the eye.
With all the changes, both characters ended up on opposite sides of the spectrum even when one represents what the other desires: Sarah wants to stay in her fairytale without responsabilities nor obligations and Jareth longs for someone with whom to be an adult in a children’s world -by children I mean goblins- and maybe, even, starting a family. Once the plot moves foward the sides meet in the middle: she understands that she must leave her toys and costumes at the same time he realizes that Sarah has taken a decision that doesn’t include him.

So, Jareth is a piece of her mind or even a trait of her personality (is also possible that he represents everything she wants to be or what she could become if she remains in her make-believe) does that mean that Sarah is her own enemy? Maybe BUT is Jareth just a villain?

It’s been already established that the Goblin King is the summation of all of Sarah’s likes, that one obstacle she has to overcome to become an adult. However that’s quite a simplistic reading of his role in the story.
My over twenty something years of watching the movie made me see, at least, four different roles inside The Goblin King.

The problem:

He is the one that gaves Sarah “certain powers” to call the goblins, he sets the rules, and commands his goblins to stray Sarah of her way over and over again.
In Sarah’s mind, plagued by fantastical literature, Jareth is the typical michievous goblin and evil in the likes of Rumpelstinskin. He’s the villain and behaves as such.
She gave him that freedom and he knows how to use it well.
Without Jareth, there is no plot. Without plot, Sarah would never evolve nor she would learn the lessons she so desperately needed.

The Adult:

Just like any other kid Sarah sees the adults as people who don’t understand her, despise her and are extremely strict. No matter the situation, she has no chances to win an argument against her parents so all she can do is to lock herself on her room to stop talking them.
Maybe that’s why Jareth looks older than she: Sarah needs to defeat an adult so she can reaffirm her identity.
But this is not the main reason for such a relevant age gap. Sarah has to learn to listen and to think before speaking. In anytime she feels like she’s winning his game, he invades her personal space or, in a certain way, reproves her language.

Jareth -What’s said is said-
Sarah -But I didn’t mean it-
Jareth -Oh, you didn’t?-

Sarah- Is not that far-
Jareth- Is further than you think, time is short-

Sarah -Is not fair!-
Jareth -You say that so often, I wonder what your basis of comparison is-

Sarah -It’s a piece of cake-
Jareth -So my labyrinth is a piece of cake? Let’s see how you deal with this little slice-

Who’s better than an adult to teach a girl that all her words carry some weight?

The romantic interest:

I’ll touch a delicate subject.
Lots of people think that Sarah’s adventure can be interpretated as the one of a woman getting free of her abuser. The age difference between David Bowie and Jennifer Connelly, next to quite clear signs that Jareth pretends to make Sarah his queen, lead to some people to believe that we’re talking about a pedophile and his victim.
I already said that the Goblin King is the embodiment of her childhood and wishes -on top of being imaginary-, reason why such conclussions no longer apply to him.

On the other hand it is true that Jareth develops feelings towards Sarah and he doesn’t hesitate in showing them.
On the first draft of the script he was so much more blunt and, yes,creepier. At the very begining, as I said, he shows up at the door and takes advantage of Sarah’s run towards Toby to invite himself in and have a drink, eventually he goes to the room “to help calming down the baby”. Closer to the end -when Sarah breaks the crystal ball that contains the masked dance and falls into the abyss- she emerges in (what seems to be) Jareth’s room… and more precisely in his bed. No doubt why the first script was heavily modified.

Still, in the movie, Jareth is the romantic interest more than once.
Since the very begining, when Sarah tells Toby her favourite story, she says “the Gobling King has fallen in love with the girl” reason why “he gave her certain powers”. He watches her during her trip, occasionally helps her, he’s extremely jealous of her relationship with Hoggle and builds a perfect dream where he assures her that he’ll “be there” for her “as the world falls down”.

Finally he makes the offer we all know:

-I ask for so little. Let me rule you and you can have everything that you want-

-Fear me, love me, do as I said and I will be your slave-

I gotta tell ya, Jareth may be really poetic for singing… but he’s kinda clumsy to speak.
More than one eyebrow was raised at the King’s proposal: nobody wants their other half to be afraid of them or be reason of that fear. But has anyone sat down to think what kind of slave is worthy of beeing feared?
Jareth wants equal footing, make Sarah his slave so he can be hers. It was a poor choice of words.

All of his courtship revolves around this proposal, why? Could it be because his life depends, literaly, on Sarah never growing up?

Acceptance:

How you’ve turned my world, you precious thing
You starve and near exhausted me
Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for you
I moved the stars for no-one

You’ve run so long,
You’ve run so far…
Your eyes can be so cruel,
Just as I can be so cruel

Though I do believe in you
Yes, I do
Live without your sunlight
Love without your heartbeat

I,
I can’t
Live within you

When I was younger, I didn’t understood why “the bad guy” turned Sarah into a princess nor why he sang with such a deep emotion that “he cannot live within her”. Once I was twelve, mom threw a bomb at me: “he’s in love with her”
It explained their interactions on the ballroom… but what about Escher’s room?

Of course, as many others, I was convinced that Jareth being in love was the real reason whyeverythinghappened,but that part of the song still didn’t clicked with me. I needed Bowie himself to decode it for me.
In the Visual Guide, he explains that “Within you” is the cry of a creature that just realized that his maker has taken the decision to destroy him. By then Jareth knows that he won’t belong to Sarah’s world once she leaves his domain. He’s accepting this at the same time he makes sure to let her know that, no matter what, he’ll always give her his support (something he starts to say with the song “As the world falls down”).

Jareth is Sarah’s childhood’s embodiment accepting it’s time to let her go. He lets her have her victory moment, first he presents a final test of course, and doesn’t puts up resistance to her “You have no power over me”. At the same time, we can say that since he’s a part of Sarah’s imagination, is her who accepts to grow up.

Their last confrontation is much more focused on melancholy than in triumph (beyond some change on the soundtrack), is dramatic thanks to the clock’s bells and the way Jareth disappears makes us sad rather than joyous.
When was the last time you felt sorry for a villain?

A Villain?
I always find a hard time trying to put the Gobling King among villains.
He DID do “bad things”. He kidnapped Toby, threw a -fake- snake to Sarah, hired Hoggle to divert her, makes her fall on an Oubliette, puts her life on risk by sending “the cleaners”, throws everyone to The Bog of Eternal Stench, tries to erase her memory and, finally, organizes a war against the poor girl. BUT:

Jareth: Sarah, beware. I’ve been generous up until now, but I can be cruel.
Sarah: Generous? What have you done to be generous?
Jareth: Everything! Everything you’ve asked I have done. You asked the child to be taken, I took him. You cowered before me, I was scary. I reordered time. I put this world upside down and everything was for you. I’m tired of living up to the expectations you have of me.

“I’m tired of living up to the expectations you have of me”

Do I need to say more? Sarah wanted a villain and that’s what she got.
Yeah, I explored in this essay that he represents everything she has to leave behind and that’s why he turns her life into hell, because he’s fighting for his existance. Yet, Jareth is still a part of Sarah and he does wants her to succeed despite all.
Why do I say this? Because my inner fangirl has detected some things that -probably- are not on the script but the results are in plain sight.
Oh, yeah… I’ll list them right here. Buckle up!

The right question:
Jareth gives great importance to words. Besides marking how exaggerated Sarah is or how wrong she is, he has no problem in showing her that a proper way of speaking can open a lot of doors.
Literally, everytime Sarah needs to move to a new part of the labyrinth she finds a character that gives her two options. The girl’s mistakes take her down to a more dangerous road and when she has it right she gets new friends to help her on her journey.

The ever-changing labyrinth:
What kind of creature spawns a location that never stands still? It’s quite frustrating for Sarah to know that she never undoes her steps but the very soil under her feet does it for her. Are we sure that this is what happens?
The first time Sarah stumbles with this inconvenience, she’s more than undecided about which road to take. Once she finds out that someone is changing her marks she throws her lipstick away with anger and, probably, starts to think that all her effort is useless. Then she sees the two doors and its guardians in front of her, walks to meet them and when she thinks that she can’t handle them tries to go back she finds a wall that forces her to face them. She has no other choice than taking one of the two roads (and one of them leads her to Hoggle).
The second time, is a similar situation but this time she’s with Ludo -and he doesn’t know his way around the labyrinth either-. Again two doors, it doesn’t matter where do they take her the thing is that her options are narrowed to two.

Hoggle:
I never understood why someone as smart as Jareth would choose Hoggle as a minion. He’s fearful (it might help to make him obey) while, at the same time, he’s extremely selfish, arrogant and rude… how can a young girl trust him?
For his sake, let’s not bring to the table how easy is for Sarah to manipulate him by giving him her bracelet or taking his jewels.
Of course, Hoggle seems to be a little more enlightened than the goblins but he’s weaker (and in a certain way, more innocent) than the others.
Despite his reservations, he cares about Sarah and doesn’t take him too long to start to help her. And Jareth didn’t see that twist coming? I find it hard to believe.
Even once he knows that Hoggle isn’t following his commands, Jareth doesn’t bother on sending him to the Bog… he keeps pushing the dwarf to go to Sarah to “fulfill his mission”.
Hoggle keeps on guiding her through the labyrinth and thanks to his advice she gets further than she would’ve gotten by herself. That’s how she meets Ludo, in his company gets to the Fireys domain from where Hoggle has to rescue her and is awarded with a kiss that sends both to the Bog of Eternal Stench where she reunites with Ludo and meets Sir Didymus who joins the party to protect Sarah at the end of the trip. Journey that takes them to the forest where Hoggle is forced to give her the peach that will erase her memory, making her wake up a few steps away from the Goblin City. Was it all a big coincidence or it was meant to happen? Call meafoolishbeliever, but I chose the second option.

The cleaners:
The most remembered scene, due to the “Nothing? Nothing? Nothing tra la lá?” or for Hoggle’s plead (kneeling in front of Jareth making this way the king’s jewels take over the screen) as for the danger Sarah has to overcome. Oh! It’s also when he reoders the time in her favor even if she thinks it’s against her (maybe she had more time than the one she needed reason why he fast fowarded time? Maybe the Goblin King thought she needed more motivation to get to the castle? He mentions this between his “generosities” but I don’t fully understand how this was a benefit to her, unless we are talking about the time in the real world. She was given 13 hours to solve the labyrinth, but her entire adventure lasts as long as her parent’s date… and there aren’t night-outs of 13 hours as far as I know)
The cleaners, technically clean the labyrinth tunnels (hence their name?) is not very clear how such mechanism can clean anything, I’m not just talking about the knives that are in it but the mere fact that it destroys everything it touches. However what they do is not important but the direction they take.
At the begining of the scene, Sarah and Hoggle, pass by the false alarms. A crystal ball rolls up to a blind beggar’s cup, they don’t pay attention to it until Jareth takes off his costume making them get back a few steps (they were already going to the back of the tunnel -or set, for better explanation). After a few exchanges, he calls in the cleaners and this guys show up from the direction Hoggle and Sarah were about to go. Ok, if we talk about the filming of the scene this had to happen this way for both the camera and pupeteer’s convinience… at the same time we know that Henson & Co. knew what they wanted to say/show. If we follow this train of thought, Jareth made Sarah and Hoggle take the road he wanted, the one that ends with a door opening “by magic” and, behind it, with a stair that takes them away from the tunnels.

Ludo:
Who doesn’t want a bodyguard like Ludo? Goblins are afraid of him, he has power over the rocks and brutal strenght, just what Sarah needs for the end of her quest.
So, if he’s an advantage to his “enemy”… why was he being tortured so close to her?
You could argue that those were the orders of the day, that nobody knew that a human girl would be in the labyrinth and that’s why the soldiers stuck to their calendars… it makes sense, with the exception of one of Hoggle’s lines: “Ah, it’s you”

We know that Jareth has been watching Sarah since who-knows-when and that he keeps on doing that on his castle, that maybe many goblins have been assigned to this task as well and have to threw her off the trail as many times they can. Is easy to assume that everyone was told about this young girl trying to get to the castle… and nobody told this group of soldiers? If they just couldn’t wait to torment this beast… why doing so in plain sight on a patio? in the middle of the day? were those the King’s commands? Did the white noise took over the crystal balls so Jareth couldn’t see the possibility of this union between all the possible developments? The fact that Sarah finds such a kind and sweet beast seems a little too convenient and this kind of draws attention. Or maybe my writer’s side has a very active imagination.

The Fireys:
There are some that think that the scene with “The Wild Gang” has no reason to be on the film. That is there just to satisfy Henson’s whim of using detachable puppets with, at least, three pupeteers each. It’s also said that they bring nothing to the plot and that the movie could’ve easily kept on going without them. I disagree.
Even if they don’t show up again until the end of the film, without the Fireys the plot wouldn’t have progressed, period.
While this creatures sing and dance around the fire, Sarah is afraid of getting hurt -for real- for the first time on herjourney. She runs to get away from them but there’s no way out… until Hoggle shows up with a rope and gets her out of her predicament. If this never happened, the dwarf wouldn’t have been kissed by her and they wouldn’t ended up on the Bog.

I bet Jareth would’ve preferred for the kiss to never happen but he needed to keep her on the forest long enough so Hoggle could give her the peach.

The Peach:
Fruits have always been dangerous, which is kinda weird since fables should tell us that fruits are good and healthy so kids would run to eat them… but they are always poisoned or bring a gloomy fate to the lead characters. Ask Eve, Persephone, Hercules and Snowhite among (probably) many others.
Of course, Jim Henson used this resource for his own fairytale, he switched the poison for sleeping powder and all it does is to erease her memory, a quite convenient fruit for the plot’s sake.

Hallucination aside -another attempt of Jareth to delay Sarah’s growth-, once she woke up she found herself a few feet away of The Goblin City… and this happened only because she broke the crystal, who knows what could’ve happened is she stayed there a little longer?
I could add that her amnesia reminded her what was truly important. While the Junk Lady was clogging Sarah with all her toys and memories, the young girl rediscovers her favourite book that reminded her of her brother and the quest. This little moment having a blank space in her brain put everything on perspective.
Then again, who gave her such a gift?

This entire article with my fangirl ON has a reason to be, even if it doesn’t look like it, to give us a few writing tips:
- A well written character must have solid bases. Maybe we’ll never explore the whole reason why behind his actions (both hero or villain) but the more complex it’ll look for others, the easier it’ll be to believe that it could be a real person.

- There’s no need to give the villain a good side to make people empathize with him/her nor is necessary to give him a redemption ark. The whole essay may look like a case on Jareth’s behalf, but the 80% of it belongs to theories while the remaining 20% are things sort of confirmed by the creators or the movie itself.
During the full lenght of the movie, the Goblin King does nothing but torment the protagonist and enjoys doing so. Beyond the fact that he’s kind with Toby, the threat of turning him into a goblin is never lifted and his goblins are loyal to him only because they fear him.