Clothes and Labyrinth
Jul. 27th, 2016 08:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethLabyrinth was such an important film to tiny me. Also current me, and all the ones in between.
The whole thing is just layered and complicated about gender and expectations, while also running around awesome scenery with creatures you want to hang out with.
Plus, music.
The end part with 'fear me, love me, do as I say, and I will be your slave'
that's the basic deal of romance under patriarchy
where you get to pick your oppressor but he super promises to look after you.
but 'you have no power over me'
all she has to do is realise, and boom, winning!
(though obviously systemic oppression gets a teensy more complex than that, but she won the whole system over by making friends and helping people while Jareth just tried to boss them, so.)
and then there's the clothes
and obviously it was saying stuff about being a woman in the 80s, but, there's more ways to read it
like, it starts with Sarah wearing a swoopy dress, medieval via paintings of Ophelia in the bath, all droopy and very shortly all wet. But almost straight away it's revealed as a costume, one she lifts up to reveal practical jeans as she runs home.
And the other unusual outfit she wears is the swish ballgown, turning and turning, dancing like the music box doll. It's in all the publicity posters and seems like the posh princess dress of most dreams, but that's an out and out trap. That goes away when she breaks out.
What she mostly wears is jeans, shirt, and waistcoat. Good, practical clothes, protecting her legs, got pockets. And pretty close to gender neutral.
I don't like the texture of jeans but trousers/shirt/waistcoat is still how I try and dress, most days. Feels most comfortable.
So the film is probably only saying that there's ways to be women that don't involve princess dresses and waiting for your new boss to pick you, but, there's enough extra room around that to read other interpretations of gender, where the old story trap is just binary gender itself.
So today (after I gave up and went back to have a nap and reboot) I dreamt I was Sara's offspring and she gave me her waistcoat, the one that had been all around the Labyrinth, and I wore it and wore it until one day it wouldn't button up any more because too much boobs.
A meltdown Sara was not quite equipped to deal with, cause she kept offering to go out and get me dresses that fit.
So Sara's husband, as played by Brad Pitt because why not, waved her off and was all, don't worry, I got this. And she didn't see what he did, but dream me came back in all buttoned down and happy again, so that worked out.
But later when things got fighty there was a very tense moment of knives in the chest, but then it was Frodo with the mithril shirt, no worries because chainmail underneath.
Because the guy who had been through his own Labyrinth and come back? He'd realised that under some decent chainmail, everyone fits their coats. A little weighing down, a whole lot of protection, and acceptance that some people are the prince and the princess, and nobody has power to tell them elsewise.
I liked that dream.
The whole thing is just layered and complicated about gender and expectations, while also running around awesome scenery with creatures you want to hang out with.
Plus, music.
The end part with 'fear me, love me, do as I say, and I will be your slave'
that's the basic deal of romance under patriarchy
where you get to pick your oppressor but he super promises to look after you.
but 'you have no power over me'
all she has to do is realise, and boom, winning!
(though obviously systemic oppression gets a teensy more complex than that, but she won the whole system over by making friends and helping people while Jareth just tried to boss them, so.)
and then there's the clothes
and obviously it was saying stuff about being a woman in the 80s, but, there's more ways to read it
like, it starts with Sarah wearing a swoopy dress, medieval via paintings of Ophelia in the bath, all droopy and very shortly all wet. But almost straight away it's revealed as a costume, one she lifts up to reveal practical jeans as she runs home.
And the other unusual outfit she wears is the swish ballgown, turning and turning, dancing like the music box doll. It's in all the publicity posters and seems like the posh princess dress of most dreams, but that's an out and out trap. That goes away when she breaks out.
What she mostly wears is jeans, shirt, and waistcoat. Good, practical clothes, protecting her legs, got pockets. And pretty close to gender neutral.
I don't like the texture of jeans but trousers/shirt/waistcoat is still how I try and dress, most days. Feels most comfortable.
So the film is probably only saying that there's ways to be women that don't involve princess dresses and waiting for your new boss to pick you, but, there's enough extra room around that to read other interpretations of gender, where the old story trap is just binary gender itself.
So today (after I gave up and went back to have a nap and reboot) I dreamt I was Sara's offspring and she gave me her waistcoat, the one that had been all around the Labyrinth, and I wore it and wore it until one day it wouldn't button up any more because too much boobs.
A meltdown Sara was not quite equipped to deal with, cause she kept offering to go out and get me dresses that fit.
So Sara's husband, as played by Brad Pitt because why not, waved her off and was all, don't worry, I got this. And she didn't see what he did, but dream me came back in all buttoned down and happy again, so that worked out.
But later when things got fighty there was a very tense moment of knives in the chest, but then it was Frodo with the mithril shirt, no worries because chainmail underneath.
Because the guy who had been through his own Labyrinth and come back? He'd realised that under some decent chainmail, everyone fits their coats. A little weighing down, a whole lot of protection, and acceptance that some people are the prince and the princess, and nobody has power to tell them elsewise.
I liked that dream.