Labyrinth (1986)
and the Girl Who Said "You Have No Power Over Me"
The first refusal in the series. A king offers a girl everything she has ever dreamed of, if she will fear him, love him and do as he says. She remembers one line, and his whole kingdom falls apart.
Labyrinth (1986). Directed by Jim Henson, written by Terry Jones. Jennifer Connelly as Sarah, David Bowie as Jareth, the Goblin King.
“Just fear me, love me, do as I say, and I will be your slave.”
“You have no power over me.”
This page belongs to On Screen. The films before it, from Mannequin to Pretty Woman, each taught a lesson about love that we had to take apart. This one is different. Labyrinth is a refusal: a film that teaches the way out, and puts it in one line a girl can carry for the rest of her life.
Like every entry on the On Screen page, it reads a story for the pattern it teaches, and makes no claim about anyone’s diagnosis. Jareth is a fairy-tale king in a fantasy film, and he is enormous fun to watch. Sarah is a teenager, and the film keeps what Jareth wants from her deliberately vague. This page reads him only as the shape of an offer, because the offer is the thing so many of us met again later, from someone real.
The Story
Sarah is a teenager who would rather be acting out her favorite book, The Labyrinth, than babysitting her baby half-brother, Toby. One night, fed up, she wishes the goblins would take him away. They do. Jareth, the Goblin King, appears in her bedroom and offers her a trade: forget the baby, and take her dreams instead. She refuses. He gives her thirteen hours to solve his labyrinth and reach his castle, or Toby becomes a goblin forever.
The labyrinth cheats. Walls move, signs lie and doors tell riddles. Along the way she gains three friends: Hoggle, a grumbling dwarf; Ludo, a gentle giant; and Sir Didymus, a tiny, fearless knight who happens to be a fox. Jareth, watching, sends Hoggle to give her an enchanted peach. She bites it and falls into a dream: a masked ball, all silver and candlelight, where Jareth dances with her while a song tells her how the world falls away. She sees a clock, remembers what she came for, and smashes her way out of the dream.
She wakes in a junkyard, in what looks exactly like her own bedroom, where an old woman starts handing her toys and keepsakes, burying her in her own things, until she finds her copy of The Labyrinth and remembers again.
Deep in the castle, after a chase through a room of impossible staircases, she faces Jareth alone. She begins the speech from her book: she has fought her way to the castle to take back the child he stole, “for my will is as strong as yours, and my kingdom as great.” She forgets the last line. He steps closer. “I ask for so little. Just let me rule you, and you can have everything that you want.” Then: “Just fear me, love me, do as I say, and I will be your slave.”
She remembers. “You have no power over me.”
The world around them shatters. Jareth becomes an owl and flies away. Sarah is home, Toby is asleep in his crib, and her friends appear in her mirror to say goodbye. They tell her that should she need them, they will be there. She tells them that every now and again, for no reason at all, she does need them. All of them. Then the party starts.
Labyrinth was a disappointment at the American box office and did better abroad. It found its audience on home video, among exactly the girls who were the right age to need it.
What It Teaches
1. The offer is everything, and the price is you
Jareth’s opening move, in her bedroom, is to offer Sarah her dreams. His closing move, at the castle, is the same offer made plain: let me rule you, and you can have everything you want. The terms never change. What changes is how beautifully they are wrapped.
That is the shape of every seduction the Decoder Series describes. In the first phase, idealization, the offer is so generous that asking the price feels ungrateful. The film does what real life rarely does: it makes him say the price out loud. Fear me. Love me. Do as I say. Hearing all three in one breath is the whole lesson. Love that requires fear and obedience alongside it is not love with conditions. It is a rule with love as the bait.
2. “I have done it all for you”
Just before the end, when Sarah asks what he has ever done that is generous, Jareth tells her: everything. She wanted the child taken, so he took him. She was afraid, so he 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 of me.”
Listen to what that speech does. He stole her brother, set her against a maze built to defeat her and drugged her with a peach, and in his account all of it was a gift, and she is the one who has been demanding. The Glossary calls the move DARVO: deny, attack, reverse victim and offender. The Communal Narcissist’s version has a line of its own: after everything I’ve done for you. Many women have heard that speech in a kitchen. Sarah hears it in a castle, and the film lets her see it for what it is.
3. The ballroom makes you forget what you came for
The masked ball is the most beautiful scene in the film, and it is a trap. It has music, a dress, a man who only has eyes for her, and one effect: Sarah forgets her brother, her quest and her friends. The dream is designed to make her stop wanting anything he hasn’t given her.
The Decoder Series calls the waking version love bombing: too much, too soon, and all of it pointed at making you forget your own life. What saves Sarah is small and exact. She sees a clock, and remembers she has somewhere to be. The way out of the ballroom is not to stop finding it beautiful. It is to remember what you came for.
4. The junk pile is a room that looks like home
The second trap is quieter. After the ballroom, Sarah finds herself in a copy of her own bedroom and handed her own toys, one after another, by someone who keeps saying these are the things she loves. It is comfortable. It is also a way of keeping her small, surrounded by the girl she used to be, too busy with her things to get up and walk out.
That is what the pull back often feels like. Not a threat, but familiarity: the old role, the old room, everything you know how to be. Sarah finds her way out through the one object that reminds her of the story she is actually in.
5. His power was only ever what she gave him
This is the film’s gift, and the reason this page exists. Sarah does not defeat Jareth by being stronger than him, cleverer than him or rescued by anyone. She wins by remembering a sentence. The moment she says it and means it, his castle comes apart, because it was held up by her belief in it.
That is what the Decoder Series means by sovereignty. Much of the power a controlling person holds is power the other person has been trained to hand over: fear, love and obedience, the three things Jareth asked for. None of those can be taken. They can only be given, and so they can be taken back. The films on this page mostly taught girls to wait for a man to climb up and take them away. Labyrinth taught one to open her mouth.
6. Afterward, she keeps the ones who helped
The last scene matters as much as the refusal. Sarah is not left alone with her victory. The friends she made along the way, the ones who asked for nothing, turn up in her mirror, and she tells them she needs them. Not him. Them.
Getting out is only half of it. The other half is being able to tell the difference, afterward, between someone who offered you everything and someone who simply showed up.
The Series So Far, and the Turn
| Film | What she was taught | How it ends |
|---|---|---|
| Splash (1984) | Learn who to be from the screen | He follows her into her world |
| Weird Science (1985) | Spend your power on his confidence | She vanishes when he no longer needs her |
| Mannequin (1987) | Come alive when he looks at you | She becomes real as his reward |
| Pretty Woman (1990) | Wait for the knight, not the bus with your friend | He climbs up to take her away |
| Sleeping with the Enemy (1991) | Escape into the next man’s arms | It is over only when he is dead |
| Labyrinth (1986) | Refuse | He was never real to begin with |
Every other film in the series ends with a man. This one ends with a sentence and a party.
If You Grew Up on This
Many of us watched this film until the tape wore thin, and for a lot of us it was Jareth we remember first. That is fine, and nothing on this page asks you to stop. He was built to be dazzling, which is the point. The useful thing is to look at it clearly from where you stand now.
Some questions to sit with:
- Has anyone ever offered you everything, in exchange for you? What were the three words they did not say out loud?
- What is your ballroom: the thing so beautiful it makes you forget what you came for?
- What is your junk pile: the old room, the old role, that keeps you comfortable and small?
- Who are your Hoggle, Ludo and Sir Didymus? When did you last tell them you need them?
- What is the sentence you would say, if you knew it would work?
Sarah forgot her line once, right at the end, with him standing close enough to touch. She remembered it anyway. So can you.
You’re the audience now. You know the words.
Related: Pretty Woman → · Mannequin → · Resources →