Bowie’s “Labyrinth” – Esoteric Analysis, pt. 1

By: Jay Dyer

Dedicated to Ross!

It’s always fun to go back and watch the movies you grew up with. However, it can also be a disturbing experience, akin to finding out that uncle you had that was so cool was actually an alcoholic. This last week re-watched several movies that were favorites of mine from the 80s. I started with the Jim Henson/George Lucas production Labyrinth(1986), starring David Bowie and Jennifer Connelly.

Seemingly a harmless mish-mash of various fairy tales into one puppeteered hodgepodge, virtually all of my contemporaries are well familiar with this film which constitutes, as we say, the “essence of 80s.” But is it harmless fun, or is there something else going on?

In the story, Sarah (Jennifer Connelly) is a young girl who has yet to enter womanhood. Her parents are divorced, while her mother is a moderately popular actress we never meet. Sarah is obsessed with fantasies, and in the opening scene we see her in a park/garden, where she wears a pure white dress, emblematic of edenic purity, reciting lines from the book, The Labyrinth. But Sarah isn’t just standing in a garden/park, she is surrounded by Egyptian/masonic obelisks as seen here and in the video below.

Read more of this post