On Sexual Awakening and Goblins and Just4Men

Who knew there were so many asexuals in the world?

They say – and by “they” I mean, my Dad – that to assume makes an ass of me and u (lol), and honestly never has that been truer than right now, as I grapple with the results of a scientific poll (again, lol) I conducted on Instagram Stories.

Lindy West did Labyrinth for her latest Butt News, and, as always, I couldn’t read without reciting an extract for Brandin.

Butt News Movie Club #21: Labyrinth

(I love reading out loud. I think it’s a throwback from primary school, when it was my number one best most impressive talent. My favourite thing to read out loud is this essay by Nora Ephron from the New Yorker, because it gives me the chance to dramatically pronounce a lot of Swedish street names in my best Swedish¹.)

The paragraph I read him was this:

They get home and mean stepmommy doesn’t let Wet Merlin in the house and makes him go into the garage. This is foreshadowing for later in the movie when Jennifer Connelly doesn’t let David Bowie’s Wet Merlin into HER house! I’m so sorry. Am I arrested for writing that?? I said she DOESN’T let him—the correct choice, to be clear!!!!!!!

When I finished reading, Brandin noted, through tears of laughter², that he’s never quite got the whole “Bowie thing”. He said the words “Bowie thing” – I would never be that irreverent.

“Did people actually find him attractive?” he asked, like an idiot. “Like… is he sexy in that movie? He’s not. He’s ridiculous.”

I was struck dumb. I was stupefied. I was disgusted by this moment of revelation – that I had married a man who does not understand the allure of David Bowie. (And I’m just getting over the realisation that I married a man who thinks a Cadbury’s Flake is “only okay”.)

“Everyone fancies Bowie,” I said, with great authority.

“No way. They don’t. I refuse to believe it,” he said, which is very him of him, refusing to believe facts unless they come out of his own mouth.

“Ugh fine,” I said. “I’ll do an Instagram poll.”

“I’m not the only one who found David Bowie sexy in Labyrinth… am I?!” I asked my adoring fans***³, most of whom were asleep as it was 10pm in Indiana, and 3am in Ireland, where 98% of my followers live.

By the time we went to bed, I felt assured of my success.

“It’s at 100% yes,” I told him, before we switched out the lights. “And I’ve already got two messages from people who can’t believe anyone would even need to ask!”

There is no sleep as sweet as the sleep of the smug, let me tell you.

Well. The morning dawned bright and crisp and cruel, as I checked in on my poll. As the Irish massive woke up, they began to vote on my poll in great numbers: 6,259 people weighed in on whether or not they found (or find) Jareth, the goblin king, sexy.

To my great chagrin, the tables had – quite literally – turned, with 61% of people now saying that no they do not fancy Jareth! What is wrong with these people, I wondered aloud, (barely) swallowing my ire at this bitter defeat.

The thing is, on paper, as they say, Jareth is a terrible choice of love interest. He’s selfish and has a weird thing about babies – why does he even want that baby?! – and his trousers are simultaneously too tight and too high and the fabric is far too thin (he must be freezing!) and he’s really mean to Hoggle, the underlooked hero of Labyrinth.

His wig is, quite frankly, ridiculous, and if you take a step out of the action for a second, the seduction storyline between Bowie and Connelly, the movie’s stars, is totally fucked up, as Connelly was 16 when the movie came out, while Bowie was 39. (I know it’s a kids’ movie with puppet goblins but don’t try to convince me that sexual tension wasn’t in there on purpose.)

What my poll has forced me to accept, though, is that there are two types of people: people who are not attracted to David Bowie in Labyrinth, and people who assume that everyone is attracted to David Bowie in Labyrinth.

“What?!” one follower DMed me. “I thought everyone fancied the goblin king!”

Another: “God, I really wished I was that baby.”

A third: “Come on. His package was basically the lead role! My first love. Himself and the Sheriff of Nottingham.”

THE SHERIFF OF NOTTINGHAM, I exclaimed (internally, as I was now being completely silent and trying not to draw attention to my poll-related defeat in front of Brandin) – he (Alan Rickman, 44 at the time of filming Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves) and Bowie did indeed, inform a lot of my pre-adolescent notions about who and what, exactly, a Sexy Man was.

Clearly, they both spent a lot of time at the hairdresser, but the fact that Nottingham’s hair was blacker than Mother Nature ever intended was neither here nor there. He was just… so sexy. Marion was making a mad fuss over being forced to marry him – surely it could have been way worse! Women be complaining, thought 8-year-old me (way before I discovered feminism or used my brain for anything more than playing Minesweeper⁴ on our PC).

Nottingham and Jareth have more than haircare in common, if you think about it. Selfish, controlling, entirely governed by ego and on a major power trip, and if I think further about it I think this might have been my type for, oh, I don’t know, the majority of my adult life?!?

I truly find it hard both to articulate why it is that I felt such a sexual attraction to Jareth (and Nottingham, I guess, although he is more “traditionally” sexy than Bowie is, what with the latter’s wig and waistcoat combo) and how I feel about people who didn’t and don’t feel the same way.

In general, I can get on board with differences of opinion: we’re all different! Life would be boring etc etc!

But on this front I… it does not compute. What do you mean, you don’t feel a stirring in your loins when he starts singing about magic spells and puppy dogs and throws that doll-baby in the air with great gusto?!

As an aside of sorts, my friend and former podcast producer interviewed Toby Freud, the Toby from Labyrinth, and it’s funny to me imagining the baby from Labyrinth not being a baby any more but you should listen to him anyway:

All of this is to say that maybe bringing your children up in a Catholic country and telling them that any and all sexual attraction is bad is… not a great idea?! Cos then they will fancy goblin kings and evil sheriffs instead of, oh, I don’t know, anyone else?! (This isn’t my precise problem because I will confess I fancy everyone, but they were just my first and most fancied movie characters.)

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

1. I don’t speak Swedish

2. He was barely laughing

3. lol x 1,000

4. I have recently downloaded Minesweeper on my phone and it’s great! Just like the PC version! And by that I mean, I am terrible at it and keep dying very early on.