Epilogue: The Films Revisited.

In Labyrinth, Jareth the Goblin King oversees Sarah Williams' rite of passage from childhood to adulthood. He is her opponent, her antagonist, her teacher and her judge. His ability to perform his role-with generosity and cruelty in setting the tests she must undergo-isn't something that is his by accident. It's a position of immense trust and power. This position isn't something one can inherit or receive by birthright. It must be earned or it's worthless. I looked at Labyrinth and I wondered what shape the ritual would take if it were Jareth undergoing the same sort of ritual that Sarah Williams does in her story, only a ritual appropriate to his (older) age and (fairy) nature. Jareth is watched and tormented by his human antagonist, just as Sarah is observed and bedeviled by Jareth in the film.

In Labyrinth, Jareth seems to be bored, spoiled, heartbroken, angry, and afraid. He seems obligated to perform the rite-of-passage for Sarah, but completely emotionally unready to assume his role. He teases Sarah. He sneers at her when she whines. When she insults his battered, glittery, hard-won kingdom by calling it a "piece of cake," and insults his office and the difficulty of the ritual, he becomes murderously angry with her. (There's no other way to justify The Cleaners—Jareth is angry enough to kill her, and the danger to her life is real.)

But in the final confrontation on the Escher stairway, Jareth is afraid of Sarah. He's played his role too well; he's in danger of becoming an appendage of her imagination. "I can't live within you," is the plaintive cry of a creature who wants to be more than a fairy-tale enemy who is defeated and buried. He doesn't want to be for Sarah what his own opponent was for him. He seems afraid of losing more than the game-he's afraid of losing his very substance and personality to this woman who was a child five minutes ago. This new woman is something he himself helped to make. And Jareth has made Sarah Williams very, very powerful.

One of the boons Sarah has earned during her rite of passage is the ability to exist in both worlds at once—what Joseph Campbell called "The Master of Two Worlds" in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. It stands to reason, given tertiary evidence in Labyrinth, that Jareth, too, has the ability to exist in both worlds—but until Sarah Williams came to the Labyrinth, he'd refused to look at the human world for a long, long time, because of how much pain and anguish it caused him. I see him as a trauma survivor who is beginning to let go of his anguished rage.

Fans of horror classics will recognize Dr. Phillip Channard, of the Channard Institute, from Hellbound: Hellraiser II. In this story, Channard is a cold, fiftysomething ascetic, a brilliant neurosurgeon and psychoanalyst with an obsession with the occult. We first meet Channard as he's cutting into the brain of one of his patients, musing on the labyrinth. He says: "The mind is a labyrinth, ladies and gentlemen, a puzzle. And while the paths of the brain are plainly visible, its ways deceptively apparent, its destinations are unknown. Its secrets still secret. And, if we are honest, it is the lure of the labyrinth that draws us to our chosen field to unlock those secrets….We have to see, we have to know."

In this film, rather than pay his own price and undergo the rite of passage that every neophyte must face, Dr. Channard of Hellraiser II instead abducts and imprisons a young woman—just Sarah's age, just on that cusp between childhood and adulthood—and forces her to solve Lemarchand's Lament Configuration. This mysterious puzzle-box is a means to open doors to the supernatural Labyrinth which is, in this movie, a metaphor for Hell. Channard is quintessentially a coward who demands that others suffer for the things he wants. But as the head of the Order of the Gash says, as Channard enters the Labyrinth with a traitorous supernatural guide, "It is not hands that call us; it is desire." Channard's desire for the Labyrinth leads him to a place of utter defilement and transformation, where he loses his flesh and his mind to the rapacious Leviathan-god of that place.

Channard's punishment is so terrible—"Suffering…legendary, even in Hell"—that it has the mark of a destiny. I like to imagine that the film is only the final judgment on a damned man who well-earned the horrible things that happen to him in Hellbound. His long list of sins against man and fae and himself are past due for repayment. Channard is defiled and devoured in Hellbound, and the awful scraps of his lust, sadism, and will are finally utterly destroyed by the bond of mutual trust and love between the younger woman-child and her older protective friend. Love triumphs over fear and madness, and the prisoners of the Hellraiser Labyrinth are liberated by their powerful bond, the living and the dead together.

Notes: Surprises Along the Way

I was surprised that Channard was a homosexual. This caused me some consternation, because I worried that I was playing into that long-standing, dangerous, and cruel stereotype of the "evil homosexual." But I think that stereotype exists for a reason, though not the reasons that are generally given.

When a society forces a person to bury or subsume their natural and God-given birthright to love and be loved, that person can become sick and evil. If they internalize the message that they are evil for even thinking about fulfilling their basic human desires, they become evil. The 1960s, when this story was set, was a particularly terrible time to be homosexual in the United States. People had to live lives in secret, or forego living full lives altogether. In most states at that time, homosexuality was a criminal offense. Channard, if uncovered, would certainly have been stripped of his medical license. If his luck were very bad, he might have been forced to undergo reparative therapy in his own mental institution. I can't imagine the daily horror of such a life, but I can imagine how it might twist an intelligent and good man into a damnably evil creature.

The "box" that Channard dreams of keeping Tyto in is a closet for a reason. The closet is a prison, the closet is death. I want to live in a world where we don't make more Channards. The solution, naturally, is love: a compassion that makes no demands of the beloved. When Tyto sings to the other men at the secretive, underground gay nightclub, it's a blessing he's giving to the free expression of their sexuality. Those men represent a lost generation of gay culture; the shame and fear and hatred of homosexuality allowed AIDS to proliferate in the late '60s through the '80s. I'd like to think that I've managed to balance the scales there, without being politically correct or preachy.

Second, I was surprised that almost all the speaking parts in this story were for male characters and that female characters were tangential to the plot. Labyrinth is a story deeply embedded in female characters and feminine imagery, so it felt strange and sometimes inappropriate not to include more active female roles. Medea is a McGuffin, like Toby in the film: she is the ball in a game played between opposing (in this story, all-male) teams. Linda, Sarah's future mother, is a self-absorbed idiot. The lack of female agency really bothered me. But that's the way it is.

And the Bob-Ross happy-tree that came out of it was getting Robert Williams, Sarah's future dad (who has about seven lines in the movie) involved, and watching him be a hero. Robert is a shining example of heroic manhood in this story. He uses his God-given intelligence and empathy to help and comfort the people who need it. When he's able to right a wrong, he uses every tool at his disposal to do so. He's protective of the woman he loves, and protective of the weak and helpless-but never in a possessive way. His moral compass points true North. I can see in him the man who will let his oldest child be a disrespectful brat because that protective fantasy allows Sarah to love her mother, even though that mother, Linda, has obviously abandoned her daughter. Robert doesn't get a lot of love in fanfiction; he's sort of everything that the Goblin King (and Jeremy, Linda's lover) isn't. But there's virtue in him, and he is worthy, and I was really happy he had a role to play in the story.

"What about Medea's baby?"

"No."

Not in this story, anyway.

Acknowledgements: Sources that Made this Story Work

1. Outside: album: "I Have Not Been to Oxford Town," and "The Hearts Filthy Lesson" official music video, David Bowie.
Made in 1995, this music video … just watch it. It's horrifically grotesque. The whole album is rich in sonic and lyrical imagery, and was directly inspirational for the second half of this story.

American Horror Story II: Asylum
If you enjoyed this story, you will love this series. Set in a 1960s asylum run by a sexually, emotionally, and intellectually repressed nun, AHS2 provided critical thematic visual elements (particularly the common room) which helped with mentally staging this story.

"As the World Falls Down," official music video, David Bowie
In the official music video for this song, a man and a woman muse on pictures of each other. They never quite come together. It's very sad.

Katherine Briggs: The Fairies in Tradition and Literature
I've anachronistically included this book among the ones Channard reviews in Chapter 5. Briggs' book is among the first to clearly theorize the relationship between faeries and demons or ghosts. (There is a relationship, but it's hard to define.) The text is absolutely brilliant. Among other things important to fae lore: the role and the power of True Names, the rituals involving bargains and exchanges between humans and fae, and the damaging power of Cold Iron when applied to fae flesh. I've tried to follow all the traditions.

Batman Begins/The Dark Knight/The Dark Knight Rises: Christopher Nolan
Dr. Philip Channard is played by the excellent Kenneth Crantham in Hellbound: Hellraiser II. For this story, I needed to capture something of the character's coldness and intelligence but also demonstrate youthful vitality and masculine beauty. Cillian Murphy's portrayal of the Scarecrow, Dr. Jonathan Crane, provides a template for the younger Channard in this story.

Hellbound: Hellraiser II
See Epilogue above. The image of the opening door in the green-painted office are taken directly from this movie. Not for the weak-stomached.

"Heroes." David Bowie
"And the shame was on the other side." A defiant call to love and life against impossible odds.

Inside the Labyrinth. Documentary film.
David Bowie's discussion of his character was invaluable in understanding Tyto Albans and Jareth. I'm on the fence as to whether Bowie is human, prehuman, transhuman, or fae. Whatever else he is, David Bowie is a gift.

Labyrinth
Uses should be obvious, but in particular Jareth's amulet (which he wears in every single scene of the film) has some special importance, which I've tried to uncover in this story. Also, Jeremy's (or Robin Zakar's, if you've read the original script for Labyrinth) play, that Sarah toys with, is composed of various handwritten scenes on lined notebook paper. You can see this in the film if you go frame-by-frame. When I saw that, I had to punch the air with joy. Parts of what Sarah is playing with are obviously the authors' own original words. And there's the peach. I couldn't resist using the peach. It seemed like a particularly apt, particularly sexual, particularly cruel reference to make.

"Tam Lin" 39B, The Child Ballads
One of a series of stories about a human woman in a (nonconsensual) relationship with a fairy knight. He begs her to save him from the Tiend, the Tax to Hell (human sacrifice) and to her credit, she is willing. It's an emotionally complicated story, and a good one. Required reading for anyone interested in fae lore.

The Tempest by William Shakespeare
Prospero, the magician, draws his enemies into the labyrinth of magic created by the forbidden books which caused his exile and downfall in the first place. Prospero is a beast to the rightful witchborne god-blooded heir to the island. Prospero only finds forgiveness and homecoming in abjuring magic and setting his prisoners free. It's a smart lesson; pity Channard learned nothing from it.

"Underground" official music video, David Bowie.
In this official music video, we see a humanized Goblin King singing in an underground nightclub and wandering dark and rainy streets, attempting to find some way back to his Labyrinth. Jareth's solution, unlike Albans', is to tear the skin of his flesh in two and walk away.

The Venerable Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People
The lesson of "The Sparrow in the Hall" comes from this text, and is a foundational lesson on English-speaking Christian conceptions of the soul.

"The Width of a Circle."
An early David Bowie song which describes a magical, sexual rite-of-passage with a monster who is also the neophyte. The song also contains a reference to Kahlil Gibran, an important poet in 1960s American counterculture, whose book The Prophet is excerpted in Chapter 13.

The Sacred Mysteries of Eleusis, under Crossed Keys
The rites still persist, and maybe you are my Brother or Sister: you know what I owe you from this story. For the rest of you, even if you never have opportunity to partake of a rite of passage, you can learn more about them from Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces, Herman Hesse's The Journey to the East, and Arnold van Gennep's The Rites of Passage. If you're very courageous, you can design and perform the rites for others. These rituals are so very necessary, and so very rare.

There are likely a number of sources I haven't remembered to credit. If there's something in here that originally belonged to someone else, remind me. It's theirs and not mine. It's all our stew, but I didn't provide the ingredients, I just cooked it. Thank you for sharing the meal with me.