Whole lot of dreaming going on
One of the motifs that I enjoy is the blending of fear into the subconscious. When you are unaware if you are in reality or a dream. There are a few films for me that highlight this for me the most, and I think it is no coincidence that these are all children’s films as well. These are Labyrinth, The Wizard of Oz/Return to Oz and some verison of Alice in Wonderland. What all of these films have in common is that you see the things in the “alternative” world in the person’s “normal” world. In some of the film’s cases, the things that scare the individual in thier normal world, is then exaggrated in the “alternative” world.
In both The Wizard of Oz/Return to Oz and Alice in Wonderland, it is the people that are in the person’s “normal” life that are transported to these “alternatives”, where the individual can “fight” against these people that usually control thier lives. For Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, it is a simple tale of an innocent child craving the freedom for those trying to keep her a child. This simple fear is hyped up in Return to Oz, because the fear of growing up has been tainted with mind control. The film seems to be teaching Dorothy that what happened in Oz was a fantasy and she needs to be purged of her imagination for when she approaches womanhood. The people that Dorothy sees as controlling in both the films are the villians in the “alternative” world.
In some verisons of Alice in Wonderland they have employed the same permence. Although the fear is more relating to stage fright as Alice is anxious about performing in front of a group of adults. As Alice hides from the performance, her “alternative” world contains those audience members. How Alice sees the audience that is how they treat her in the “alternative” world, either genial or cruelly.
While Labyrinth follows the same idea of the “normal” world filtering into the “alternative” world, the approach is different. This is the child that is afraid to growing up and therefore there is no people that follow Sarah into her “alternative” world, but things. This is completly about power, sex and reaching adulthood. And the fact that Sarah remains “unbranded” by the Goblin King means that she achives the maturity she needs but without losing her childlike wonder.
It is interesting that there is only a year difference between the release of Return to Oz and Labyrinth and yet there are poles apart as “coming of age” films. Now all those films could be analysised more than I have done but I just want to touch upon them only. If you have not seen these film I would recogmend them all.
