I forgot to mention, Jareth is completely a vampire sort of creature, in that he can only come when he's invited or summoned. The way that Sarah defeats him by declaring her autonomy magnifies this perspective.

--
If there was only something between us
other than our clothes

Thanks for redirecting me back to this thread. It'd completely slipped my mind.

As for your knowledge of East Asian folklore, I am completely blown away. I haven't read any local folklore since I was child, so my own knowledge is a little shoddy. I will however agree with you about the matriarchal threat to little girls, particularly the story of the tigress-aunt. The fact that the story of Little Red Riding Hood may have originated in Asia is particularly interesting, considering how the wolf is actually also interpreted as a metaphor for Jews. Some theories also postulate that Little Red Riding Hood might be a prostitute, focusing on the prominence of her red cape.

I suppose in my original argument, I meant to point that children are rarely stolen in East Asian myths. They are eaten, but rarely stolen. The changelings, as you point out, work in reverse -- the acceptance of supernatural creatures into the household that bring good fortune -- which often preach that curiosity leads to the protagonists' downfalls.

As for the goblins in East Asian mythology, I'm still arguing that Asian 惡魔 and 妖怪 are more akin to demons than goblins. Of course, as you pointed out, this might depend on our personal definition of goblins. Goblin is actually a derivative of the word kobold, and traces its origins to the concept of mischievous sprites, whose actions may or may not be helpful or harmful. They might even be malicious, although I've often interpreted that to be in the manner that children are malicious -- without consideration. However, as in my experience, the Chinese 魔鬼 is vindictive by nature, existing to eat and pillage and wreck destruction. Naturally, the details of their nature may be influenced by environment, whether they live in woods or in rocky caverns.

I also still maintain the difference in Eastern and Western magic, differences that also may be shaped by history and culture and perceptions of the world. Even if the Eastern explanation of magic can be found in Western magic, Western magic is still more visible than Eastern magic. Eastern magic functions more as the acceleration of natural forces, although there are instances of conjuring money and magical items that defy the rules of nature, such as the money tree, which grows money as its leaves. But in these instances, the magic is not so much wielded as harvested. Whereas Western magic has the ability to defy nature and its laws. Even the creation of an illusion defies physics and suggests tampering with a third person's perception.

You point out something very true about the Brothers Grimms. But despite all their fabrications to fill up the blank spaces, the basis of their stories were founded in existing folklore.

I'm not sure sure I see Baba Yaga in the make-up of Sarah's character.

--
If there was only something between us
other than our clothes

Though I saved the original reply I was working on, life suddenly got complicated with moving 300 miles and frantic job applications and that sort of thing, so my sincerest apologies for dropping entirely out like that. I'll rewrite and (believe it or not) condense it here. And thanks for moving the discussion to my page, I tend to get carried away….

Thanks very much as regards the masks, I was glad then and now to hear you enjoyed them. ^-^

I think the geographic determinism angle has a lot of relevance in the particulars of myth - the entities and locations that figure - but I think the storylines often are fairly universal. Where a wolf in France is an ogress in Russia and a tigress-aunt in China, they all threaten a little girl from a position of matriarchal power. (Most scholarly works I've read on Little Red Riding Hood seem to agree that her story originated in China. I honestly think it's more likely that the themes of most of our stories are truly universal - memes diffuse across civilizations, but we've probably been telling the same sorts of stories since we developed language.) As another example of this, Japan's climate is more similar to Europe's than China's is, and while Japanese myths feature the same notions of the laws of existence as Chinese myths do, because they adopted their cosmology from the mainland, many of the particular creatures are more analogous to European ones. Kitsune in particular act rather a lot like British fairies.

I'd say certain man-made objects, where they occur, are the exception to the rule that 'details' are less universal than themes - artifacts like swords, mirrors, masks etc. have a magical, miraculous quality in myth that corresponds to the immense power they hold to alter the experienced world when they are invented. They crop up an awful lot in myth and magical stories, probably because the ability to see the world doubled, or to hide or change one's basic individual characteristics, or what-have-you, is just as shocking and amazing to one culture as to another. Spilling grain as a way to distract the dead, or crossing running water to escape them - these things will have to do with whether your culture has been agricultural for a long time, or has built heavily atop rivers. Killing a man or beast you feel to be threatening with a single stroke of a magic stick - that is, a blade - is pretty universal. Containers - sacks, boxes, bowls, whatever - come up a lot, too.

A note on Andersen, Grimm and authenticity - it seemed to me that Andersen was writing the equivalent of "modern" fantasy. His tales have a fairy-tale formula but they're contemporary in their flavor. The funny thing is that the brothers Grimm weren't doing things all so differently - they fabricated a lot of details and tried to create cohesive stories out of various conflicting versions; their scholarship was admirable in its aims, but in execution was the sort of thing that earns disgrace in the modern community. Of course, it was its own step in the evolution of the stories - it just wasn't factual historical documentation.

As for whether there are goblins in China - well, I'd say it depends on your definition. 魔鬼 is often translated "goblin"; all a goblin really needs to be is a nonhuman creature with a dangerous or mischievous nature. Since changeling stories are as likely to feature beautiful fairies as ugly trolls, their function in Labyrinth isn't specific to what they are; the notion of a goblin probably applies to some beast or other in a number of cultures. In Chinese Buddhist myth I know of a few things that might be translated "goblin" as well as "demon" or "devil."

As for changeling stories in Asia, well, I'd say it often works in the reverse - unnatural children, or supernatural lovers, are taken into human families. Often the children/ lovers (usu. wives) manifest supernatural powers which they use to the benefit of their families, but investigation into their gifts exposes them and they must return to their own people or rightful place. The Moon/ Bamboo Princess, Crane Wife of Japan, myriad fox spirits throughout East Asia, and White Snake in China all exemplify this type. (Oftentimes there is concern, when the wife is exposed, that she will steal their children away when she leaves, which also parallels the changeling.) In the West, the story follows the same pattern but the supernatural lover is more often a male - as in Greece's Eros & Psyche, which became the model for Beauty & the Beast.

I think the East Asian concept of magic as an uncommon use of natural life force dovetails reasonably well into the European take. Frequently European magic doesn't so much twist reality as just redirect energy or human perceptions - as if energy and matter were finite. Vampirism is a great example because there's some spin on it just about anywhere, and you are dealing with life force, after all. Witches get their strange power from the strange objects they employ. Fairies practically never create from nothing, they spin glamours over extant things, a pumpkin to a coach, straw to gold. This tendency to create glamours and illusions shows up in human-impersonation stories like White Snake and various fox myths a lot.

I'd say your initial impression of Labyrinth's similarity to the Snow Queen story was dead on - the dynamic of brother and sister against some supernatural foe with dangerous intentions. (I'm also delighted that you specifically distinguished amorality and immorality. I feel like I have to do that all the time because people always confound them.) This dynamic crops up in Hansel & Gretel, too. Labyrinth, being a good eighty minutes longer than the average fairy tale as we receive them, is made up of a patchwork of countless other stories. Considering Jareth, you could draw parallels between Labyrinth and all sorts of stories featuring a supernatural dangerous entity - the Elf-king and myriad other fairy beings, vampires, death personifications. Looking at Sarah, we're inclined to see Gretel, Gerda, Little Red Riding Hood, Vasilissa (Baba Yaga), Alice (of Wonderland), Dorothy (of Oz) - and yes, even Persephone - a rescuer who shall in turn become the prey, and even the seduced, like Belle gone to save her father from his mistake. (Notice the girls always rescue a male?) Labyrinth incorporates both the changeling-child and snatched-away-youth under the eyes of its King of the Underground, so on to Toby - from his angle, there again is the Elf-king's prey, Hansel, Kai - and also a certain measure of a new sort of story, where a very little boy goes away to play with magic for a while and then comes home, without a whole lot of message except "the world is there to be seen." This is cropping up more and more often in modern fantasy for children - think Where the Wild Things Are. I think that it actually will have some importance in time, but since I haven't figured much out about that yet, I'll have to leave off.

Many thanks for all the ideas and sorry again for my belated reply!

Eh, freakin' tired. I've been preparing to move out and I'm jobhunting for something to pay the bills until I can find something more bilingual-oriented (damn recession.) Not been doing much in the way of art or anything. Taiwan was fun for me but fairly extreme as goes the natural disasters (four earthquakes and at least as many typhoons, there was a fire down the block, etc.) So real life is sort of overwhelming for the time being.

How are you? Your journal's not been much but roleplay ^-^ I suppose that means things on at least one front are good. And where are you, now? I'm not up to date X.x