Didn't David Bowie court and fuck a teenager?
Iirc the titular China Girl describes an under-aged fan of the Thin White Duke. And it is alleged by some that in his mid-late twenties he SA'd and took the virginity of a fourteen year-old 'baby groupie' (victim lbr) named Lori, though this claim has never been verified.
Then in a frightening parallel to Lori's story, there was the forty-something David's alarming eagerness to work opposite then-teen Jennifer Connelly in the dark fairy-tale Labyrinth, wherein his Goblin King character Jareth behaved quite literally as an autocratic child/baby g roomer and ab ductor ("what Babe? The Babe with the power" etc). And wore the tightest and most codpiecey trousers imaginable.
All through the film, Jareth's clear motivation is that he's striving to court, marry and knock up 14 a year old Sarah after
breaking into her bedroom, invading her dreams, stealing her baby brother then taking them both to his dimension, where they have no protection so he can toy with their minds until they do his bidding. In the very first scene Jareth & Sarah share, we're shown Sarah begging Jareth for her baby sibling's safety, telling him she'll do anything, and Jareth in return trying to seduce her with flattery & gifts, then switching tack to extort and threaten her when she doesn't bend.
A later line of Jareth's dialogue that sticks out for me, spoken at a point that Jareth is losing control and grip over his victim: (to Sarah) "fear me, love me, do as I say, and I will be your slave." It sounds like so tempting a deal, to have someone powerful be at your beck and call. But like all bargains made with a predator, there is a catch. It is a way of gaining control over you, luring you into something much harder to escape. You gain something that could grant all you think you desire--at the cost of your freedom, innocence and sense of self.
It's the main reason why predators pursue younger people; the victim's naivety means they're less likely to recognize abuse, coercion and exploitation for what it is. Jareth's character blended protective and possessive behaviors in such a way that it is difficult for those who don't know to identify which it is, and easy to confuse possessive and manipulative with what is truly not protective behavior. One of the most childish responses is to accept without a question the offer of a mysterious stranger to whisk you away from all your perceived problems.
And when you reach a certain age as a teen or preteen, the most effective lures against you aren't adventures, sweets or games, but dancing, clothes, praise, security and adult conversation. A classic grooming technique is telling victims they're so special, different, advanced and mature for their age. "You're so mature" is a red flag when I hear people say it to kids nowadays. The most precocious children want to be seen as independent or intelligent enough to make their own decisions....until they fall into the wrong clutches, it's too late to make any decisions at all.
One chilling little detail that often goes unnoticed in the film, because it is so hidden away in the background set: atop a dresser in Sarah's bedroom, there sits a photo of Sarah's mother together with Sarah's mother's boyfriend, Jeremy…the latter depicted and played by David Bowie. And in the opening chapter of the novelisation of the film, Jeremy gives Sarah a beautiful party frock (as Jareth does in the ballroom masque sequence), takes Sarah out for her birthday in it, and asks that Sarah dance with him to celebrate. Brrr. Meanwhile Sarah's birth father it seems is absent and can't be bothered with talking to her or spending time with her.
The Goblin King represents the heady combination of authority, attentiveness, danger and power that parts of our culture encourage young woman to admire and worship in men, rather than seek inside themselves. Sarah bravely and wisely holds out, though, and instead of giving in and foolishly believing that her 'love' (r: submission) could change Jareth into someone heroic or kind, she remains strong in her autonomy and rejects the allure. In interviews with Brian Henson, he talks about the fact that his father Jim explicitly and specifically wrote this story as a cautionary tale, warning young girls & women against falling prey to predatory older men via Sarah & Jareth's power struggle. Given what we know now about Hollywood, his concerns make a lot of sense.
Some try to downplay this subtext, though, explaining the entire plot away as a dream/DILF fantasy Sarah used to express her burgeoning adolescence, or a latent crush on her pervy would-be stepdad. Or that the Labyrinth itself was a more general complex/construct built by Sarah's psyche, and Jareth sexually pursues and challenges her as her own projected mirror invention created to confront wider coming-of-age issues, such as having to make her own decisions, test boundaries or learn how to identify what she needs or truly wants. Perhaps there's something to that, I could see it, though I find it disingenuous to divert from the central dark themes.
The fact that to this day so many adult people think of Labyrinth as linear romantic or a passionate love story between the two characters has always been distasteful to me--it's like thinking of Lolita, The Phantom of the Opera, the original Bluebeard or the non-Disneyfied Beauty & The Beast as aspirational rather than as archetypal instructional fables.
