'If she had kept going down that way, she would've gone straight to that castle!': Labyrinth, the Gothic body of David Bowie and the education of desire.

This article analyzes the 1986 film *Labyrinth* as a Gothic narrative that attempts to "educate desire" into normative, heteronormative channels within the socio-political context of the late Cold War and the 1980s Culture Wars. It focuses on David Bowie’s portrayal of Jareth, the Goblin King, as a Gothic figure embodying transgressive, queer-coded desire, and on Sarah, the adolescent protagonist, navigating liminal spaces of desire amid anxieties shaped by conservative activism and the AIDS crisis. The film dramatizes Sarah’s journey from fantasy and transgression toward acceptance of familial and societal responsibilities, reflecting dominant White, bourgeois ideals while simultaneously leaving openings for alternative readings and fan engagements that resist or complicate this normative closure. Through its Gothic tropes, character dynamics, and cultural references, *Labyrinth* serves as a site for exploring tensions around sexuality, identity, and desire both at its time of release and in ongoing fan interpretations.