Ch-ch-ch-changes: David Bowie’s generic influence on Jim Henson’s "Labyrinth" film franchise
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35921/jangada.v1i18.426Keywords:
Urban Fantasy, speculative fiction, setting, Labyrinth, Jim Henson, David Bowie, genreAbstract
Jim Henson’s Labyrinth has been a family staple for almost forty years. Steadfast in its popularity, the film was even lauded as a cult-classic for the 30th anniversary re-release. Though this newfound status has done little to alleviate the persistent difficulty of generic categorisation, instead it highlights Labyrinth’s awkwardness when grouped among contemporaneous fantasy or adventure films. Henson had originally intended to make a traditional secondary-world fantasy, yet during production the film would undergo a host of unexpected changes, many of which came about after casting David Bowie as the film’s antagonist. The latter alterations led Labyrinth down a winding and transformative path, rendering the magical movie both more mature and generically anomalous for its time. Yet, when the film’s trans-mediatic elements are also taken into consideration, it appears to parallel another genre in the fantastic mode that rose to popularity in print at the same period: Urban Fantasy. Leaning on recent research of both the latter and its better-known cousin, Fantasy, the following article considers Bowie’s influence on the production of Henson’s Labyrinth, as well as on its story, score, and setting.
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