Inspiration

The musical fantasy, Labyrinth (1986); the film told a story about a young girl who wished away her step-brother to the goblin king (David Bowie), who will keep the toddler, if Sarah (Jennifer Connelly) cannot complete the labyrinth within the time limit of thirteen hours. As soon as I heard the soundtrack to Labyrinth, I became hooked, playing it every second of everyday. Through the songs David Bowie poured emotion into his music, making me feel close with the characters, and giving me a better understanding of the story; for instance, the ballroom scene when the Goblin King begins to slowly fall in love with girl and attempts to make her feel the same way, Bowie shows this by using the song “as the world falls down” this song descibes how he sees her sadness and wishes to take her pain away; a romantic gesture which shows one sided love, in a short amount of time. In the same year as the film was released, a book was also published, The Goblins of Labyrinth (1986), which is an encyclopedia of goblins within the movie. The sketches are beautiful drawn with a small caption describing the characteristics of each creature; I automatically fell in love with the style of art that Brian Froud portrayed, especially the way he made the illustrations come to life with realism; he also uses a pale colour palette, making the drawing seem historic but not as vibrant, as other illustrated books would be, giving this illustrated book it own unique style. The clothing and staging for Labyrinth seems almost gothic (1980); which is a style that combines romance and horror into historic clothing making a new type of genre, by doing this the director (Jim Henson), made the film seem even more magical and real. Each character has a different type of clothing which resembles there personality, for instance the Goblin King’s outfit shows his alluring, devilish side and armour that refers to 15th century knights and for Sarah, her outfit resembles her purity and innocence, which in fact attracts the Kings attention with a 18th century dress.

 

Labyrinth (1986) film. Directed by Jim Henson. [DVD] AND IMDb [Online] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091369/ [Accessed: 28/03/15]

Sketches by Brian Froud and captions by Terry Jones (1986) The Goblins of Labyrinth (Published in October 1986 by Pavilion books)

Goth subculture (1980) Wikipedia [Online] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goth_subculture

“As the world falls down” [song] David Bowie [DVD, CD, Online] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_the_World_Falls_Down