For those who have asked, and who haven't seen the 1986 Terry Jones/Lucasfilm/Jim Henson film Labyrinth, this is the key speech in which she saves her brother and escapes from the Labyrinth.
Then the Labyrinth collapsed, and I was condemned to view my relationships through the slightly odd prism of the Goblin King.
And really, look at David Bowie's jodhpurs. Anyone would be transfixed.
I'm not sure I would go so far as to accuse Labyrinth of being literature, but as a girl, it has themes that have chimed with me all my life. As a child, it was about the importance of friendship; as a teenager and young adult, it was about relationships and the complexity within them. Not necessarily as extreme in their contradictions as 'fear me, love me, do as I say, and I will be your slave', but complex and confusing nevertheless. As a parent, it has been about the ambivalence that you sometimes feel, the experience of this enormous responsibility, of permanent attachment and wanting that to go away, but at the same time the complete horror at the thought of if it did; and the knowledge that you would go through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered to get it back.
So that's why my blog address is what it is. It's because sometimes I do want The Goblin King to come and take it all away. But most of the time, I'd just like to have a peek at his jodhpurs :)
