“Play with your toys and your costumes”:
dolls and sex in Labyrinth and MirrorMask
by Elizabeth A. Allen
December, 2005

12/14/05: Everything in Labyrinth can be analyzed, I tell you. Everything! Even dolls. What dolls? Where? Read more to find out about this subtle, interesting theme.

Though separated by 20 years, the films Labyrinth (1986) and MirrorMask (2005) tell similar stories of adolescent female protagonists [Sarah in Labyrinth and Helena in MirrorMask] who learn maturity. Each of them start out self-absorbed and spoiled. Then they go into dreamy wonderlands where they challenge representations of their fears; Sarah (Jennifer Connelly) stands up to the King of the Goblins, Jareth, to rescue her brother Toby, while Helena (Stephanie Leonidas) has to stare down the Dark Queen. Sarah and Helena emerge victorious, more responsible and wiser. [If you’re interested in a deeper discussion of the debt that MirrorMask owes Labyrinth, go here.] Along the way, though, both have to contend with creepy dolls, which symbolize both the girlhood they are leaving behind and the adolescent sexuality that they are moving into.

Dolls don’t appear that blatantly in either movie, but they play important background roles. In Labyrinth, look on Sarah’s vanity in the beginning and end. Among all her stuffed toys and memorabilia, you will see a doll of a Jarethian figure and, more pertinently, a music box doll. This figure, gowned in white and playing “Greensleeves,” fuels Sarah’s peachy drug trip into the bubble ball with Jareth, where she dresses just like the figure, her eyes glazed and her expression even more stupid than usual. And, when the Junk Lady tries to distract Sarah post-ball, Sarah is led into a replica of her room that contains all the toys and décor of her real room, as well as the music box doll.

Meanwhile, over in MirrorMask, Helena’s rooms are papered with the drawings that inspire the Shadow Lands that she visits in her dream. She has “a moon lamp and a cuddly sea anemone” in her room, but no dolls. Dolls appear confined to a music video sequence of the film in which the Dark Queen brainwashes Helena so she can serve as a substitute for the Dark Queen’s runaway daughter. At the Dark Queen’s bidding, life-size artist’s mannequins come out of music boxes. Singing a cracked version of the Carpenters’ “Close to You,” they dress Helena up in velvety, spiky Goth glory. [Incidentally, this is, hands down, the most sinister, sexiest and odd seduction/transformation sequence ever, beating out Darkness’ seduction of Lili in Legend. You should see MirrorMask just for this scene.] Helena later kneels at the Queen’s feet, her expression just as vacant as ballroom Sarah’s, and she’s playing with small versions of the dolls that dressed her up.

Now that we’ve seen where the dolls are in these two movies, what do they mean? First of all, dolls stand for childhood and self-centered involvement. In Labyrinth, the music box doll functions clearly as a distraction from Sarah’s youthful past. You see this when Sarah is in the junkyard. Like I mentioned earlier, during this scene, Sarah enters a simulacrum of her room, where the Junk Lady literally loads Sarah with her old toys. It’s obvious that the Junk Lady is weighing Sarah down with reminders of her childhood so that she won’t go rescue Toby.

When Sarah starts to remember her quest, the Junk Lady pulls out the music box doll: “What about this? This is not junk.” As the inspiration of Sarah’s ballroom daze, the music box doll embodies her fairy tale fantasies, but Sarah doesn’t want it: “I have to save Toby!” Doll = junk. Fairy tale fantasies = junk. [See my essay on Sarah falling down for further discussion.] When Sarah tosses the music box doll aside, she also tosses aside the romantic dreams of her girlhood in favor of a tougher reality.

When we move to MirrorMask, we see that dolls have a similar function; they refer to childhood. Like I said, after Helena is hypnotized by the Dark Queen’s mechanical minions, she sits at the Queen’s feet. Her subservient posture makes her seem younger, a fact reinforced by the two dolls in her hands. The Dark Queen has accomplished her goal of making Helena take the Dark Princess’ place.

But Helena is more than a daughter surrogate for the Dark Queen. The Dark Queen seems to think of her daughter as a pet; hence the wanted posters looking for the Princess: “People do it for lost pets,” says the Queen. A domestic animal is completely dependent on its owner, and it cannot express complex desires in the way that a teenager can. In some ways, a pet is like a baby or young child, which is what the Dark Queen wants to turn Helena into. The dolls that Helena plays with highlight her infantilization.

In both movies, dolls stand for an eventually surpassed childhood. Interestingly enough, they also symbolize sexual awakening and the fact that Sarah and Helena are freaked out by it. In Sarah’s case, the music box doll, with its big hair, big dress and obvious figure, is an adolescent, meaning someone with a developing body and an active sex drive. When the music box doll dances by in a bubble, Sarah is prompted to imagine herself in the doll’s place. In other words, Sarah takes on the doll’s sexiness.

In Helena’s case, she is attacked by singing mechanical dolls. The artist’s mannequins fawn over her. With their wasp waists and their penchant for painting Helena with lipstick, the mannequins, like Sarah’s music box princess, can be seen as stereotypical adolescents with defined figures and an interest in sexual attractiveness. Primped and painted, Helena becomes one of them. Both heroines, once transformed, move slowly and dreamily, with empty stares and beautiful clothes; in essence, Sarah and Helena turn into fashion dolls!

And, while fashion dolls are ubiquitous toys for little girls, they’re also plastic versions of sex appeal. So it’s fitting that, when they take on doll-like characteristics, both Sarah and Helena also don revealing clothes. Sarah sheds her practical, unisex blouse and jeans for a princess dress; plus she shows off her delicate neck and growing breasts, over which the Goblin King drools. Helena gets rid of baggy PJs and bunny slippers for vampy black lips and a dress that’s worthy of the Zombie Cotillion. Both Sarah and Helena reveal their sexiness when they get all dolled up.

Fans of both movies love these scenes, what with our heroines looking so pretty, but Sarah and Helena don’t know what to make of their sexuality. The doll-like states that they enter give them sex appeal, but also leave them silent, mindless and passive. Sarah and Helena almost forget their quests under the influence of dolls; our heroines seem to become child-like in brain even as they look more mature and sexier in body.

The doll-like state addresses both girls’ questions about femininity and adulthood. They each fear that becoming sexual, i.e., growing up, entails becoming stupid, losing one’s intelligence, one’s voice, one’s power. Both Labyrinth and MirrorMask answer their heroines’ concerns by having them overpower evil, sexy characters: the Goblin King and the Dark Queen. With these POOR role models for sex appeal out of the way, dolls as symbols of dependency disappear, as well as dolls as symbols of ambivalent sexual power. Sarah and Helena now have the maturity and the room to create assertive, positive sexual selves.

MirrorMask (c) 2004 by Jim Henson Co.
 All original analysis, commentary and art
(c) 2005-present by Elizabeth A. Allen.
Plagiarists will be devoured by shadows.
E-mail: jareth /at/ oddpla /dot/ net