Pan's Labyrinth

A Review

In what seems to be becoming a personal ritual of mine, I watched the Spanish language film called Pan’s Labyrinth on the flight back to home after a long weekend of boozing, smoking, and socializing. I had seen the film a long time ago, closer to when it was released, and simply did not feel like watching any of the other progressive slop that passes for movies in airline travel.

This film did not make a whole lot of sense to me when I originally saw it 10-15 years ago, unaware as I was in the shitlib normiedom that was California in the late 2000’s. The knowledge of the Spanish Civil War and the Franco period in Spanish history was a subject not spoken about or taught at all. I remember thinking how brutal the film’s subject matter was for an ostensibly children’s movie. Furthermore, I have an interest in this film because of the religious conclusions that my own personal journey in returning to the realm of the spirit have led me to. But there’s other insights as well, and not just from a stereotypical RW Pagan point of view. To put it bluntly, this entire movie is from a communist perspective. The interaction between RW christians and Pagans frequently notes how often there are stereotypical lefty pagans who are cringeworthy. Lefty Pagans have nonbinary, tatooed, pink-haired feministas just as much as there are churches with female pastors wearing rainbow-colored vestments. From my perspective, finding and analyzing the media sources which helped to create this situation, especially due to the susceptibility of women to media messaging is of high importance. The understanding of why, at the height of the Boomer Truth Regime, this film is still being displayed in “Hispanic Heritage Month” film categories is important. The film is not intended for Hispanics necessarily. It is, like so many media sources, intended for AFWLs.

The two most important factors of why AWFLs become pagans are firstly, the necessity to collect victim categories since as progressive whites, they cannot advance in the progressive hierarchy without the extra credit of being gay, trans, non-binary, pagan, etc. Any way to avoid being classified as “white” and therefore forced to realize that the only way to get what they want in life is through ethnocentrism. Anyone who has observed Elizabeth Warren being called “Pocahontas” by Trump understands what the game is, but few say in actuality why the progressives are necessitated to behave this way. Pagan to progressives is not viewed as a pathway requiring rigor. It is simply those who view it as the default option for the “spiritual but not religious crowd”. Christianity, despite being deprivileged under the current regime, is still viewed as the oppressor. However, they also believe that words are magic. To speak is to manifest thoughts in reality. They want magic without structure, rigor, strict gender roles, and upheld taboos whilst ignoring the necessity of ethnocentrism. In short, all this is truly what Pan’s Labyrinth is about. This film must be understood in this cultural context and general spiritual milieu.

The setting of the film occurs a few years after Franco has taken power, during the Second World War. It focuses on the counter insurgency operations of the Franco regime against what are presumably maquis rebels hiding in the picturesque northern, more forested, and stereotypically European parts of Spain. This area of Spain has deep significance because of its geography. It, like mountainous terrain generally, culturally and politically lags behind coastal regions. These regions, called Galicia, Asturias, Navarre, The Basque Country, or Cantabria have always been a final redoubt. The Celtic tribes who fought the Romans engaged in savage wars there before being subsumed into the Roman Empire. The battle of Covadonga which started the long process of Reconquista and ended the Muslim win streak in Iberia was fought in this region. The Romans, long before, found that the northern region of Iberia was the last to be conquered. In fact, the Astures apparently never actually surrendered to the Romans. Not to be too funny, but did you think of Rome today? I thought about Rome today.

An Aerial View of the Basilica of Our Lady of Battles at Covadonga

Picu Urriellu in the Picos de Europa

There’s a valid military and geographical reason why the very word we use in English for armed insurgent comes from Spanish. Spain is actually a very mountainous country, described as essentially shaped like an upside-down bowl. Lots of forests, especially in the less populous and protected areas of the north. A key funny bit of filmography that Guillermo del Torro uses is that the Francoists (the obvious antagonists) are somehow always moving uphill throughout the film. Conversely, the reds are always moving downhill like water. It’s clear he views the Right Wing’s task as essentially Sisyphean. In actuality, the movie was filmed in the Sierra de Guadarrama, located northwest of Madrid. Perhaps the reason why my mind pictured Asturias as the setting’s location and not simply the more pan-Iberian experience is this bit of filmography. Going south is, as Treebeard says, like going downhill. Therefore, the inverse of going north is like moving uphill. The geography in my mind’s eye matches with the filmography, as an invader trying to capture the same area which the Romans and Muslims tried to capture would have them maneuvering essentially uphill until they met the Bay of Biscay.

This uphill slant, taking the forest in frame, is clear from the introduction of the protagonist Ofelia. From the outset, it is clear that the forest is magical. A fairy disguised as an insect notices Ofelia and immediately comes to the conclusion that she is actually the long-lost princess Moanna, whose “father” rules in absentia in the underworld. Her actual IRL father died before the movie’s events. Her mother, named Carmen, is Captain Vidal’s wife. For a reason I cannot fully explain by using evidence from the film, there is a small implication that Ofelia’s real father died in the war. I also perceived her real father as being sympathetic to the republican cause. There is a tension between Ofelia and Captain Vidal. Almost like Captain Vidal has conquered her mother, like the followers of Franco conquered Spain. This brings us to a major plot device, which is the infant son that is inside of Ofelia’s mother at the start of the movie. This babe is the son of Captain Vidal. The love of this unborn babe is a massive distraction for the captain, as he has constant interruptions between his duty as a soldier and the pregnancy sickness displayed by the mother of his child. As is typical of lefty movies, pregnancy is not depicted as a beautiful thing. It is difficult, painful, and bloody horrifying if it goes wrong. The tension is further heightened because Ofelia’s mother wants Ofelia to act as if Captain Vidal is her actual father. This is a problem because Vidal is not actually Ofelia’s father. Neither Captain Vidal nor Ofelia have any interest in pretense, they basically seem to ignore each other for almost the entirety of the film. Their preferred interaction is indirect through Carmen as an intermediary.

The character of Captain Vidal is one which is the most serious in the movie. He is portrayed as vain, incompetent, and yet somehow looms over everything. The old women in the kitchen declare that he should be ignored as a fussy dandy. Because caring about your physical appearance makes one vainglorious apparently. He is depicted many times in acts of hygiene, especially shaving and polishing his boots or otherwise caring for his uniform. As if, as a military man, he is not required to do any of this. He just does it because that is a personality quirk. As any military man will tell you, caring for one’s appearance is a requirement, and is considered especially important for leadership. If you look like shit, you are shit. If you look like you give a damn, you probably do. But Captain Vidal’s appearance is chiseled from stone. You can tell from his uniform that he is a high-ranking main character and not a side character. That is a huge difference between the Falagist Vidal and the other main characters, who look common, dirty, and disheveled. They are indistinct, and blend in. Even Ofelia does, except when her mother has her wear a special green dress in order to impress the captain at a dinner party. Vidal is the only visible person possessing a noble bearing.

Speaking of the green dress, the importance of it to the storyline cannot be overstated. Ofelia is instructed by the Faun, who Ofelia meets after the fairy-as-insect draws her into the labyrinth. She must complete three tasks before a specified timelime elapses. That timeline is related to the lunar cycle. The giving of the green dress overlaps chronologically in the story with the dinner party and the completion of the first task given to Ofelia by the Faun. The first task is one which should be familiar to many in the Froggosphere. There is a poisonous frog who sits beneath a tree eating insects. His poisonous milieu is killing the tree and preventing its growth. Ofelia’s task is to get the frog to eat three magical stones, thus healing the tree. In order to do this, she must enter the muddy hole at the base of the tree. However, she is confused temporarily because she is wearing the green dress in preparation for the dinner party. This presents a dilemma: should she enter the hole wearing the green dress, and get it dirty? Or should she take off the dress in order to save it and hedge her bets so that she can complete the task given to her by the Faun and obey her mother later? She chooses the latter. She strips down and enters the muddy hole in her underclothes. Strangely though, she still wears the shiny black shoes that came with the dress. After she completes the task of getting rid of the frog, she obtains a key from the frogs deflated corpse. When she exits the muddy hole, she finds that her dress has fallen off the branch it was placed on to keep it safe from the mud.

This episode entirely turns a classic European folk tale on its head by gender swapping a male protagonist for a female one. In fact, ATU 461, The Three Hairs proves that in fact it is a male in classical folklore who goes underground to purify a spring by getting rid of the frog who resides there.¹ The role that the green dress plays is to symbolically cast aside Ofelia’s femininity. She chose to hedge her bets and try to play the male role in completing the first task, but fate had in store for her the closing of the “female path”. The dress falling into the mud and thus being ruined for the dinner party ensures that only a more masculine pathway is available to her. She is not going to put on a pretty dress and play dress up for the pleasure of a man. This is the first real inkling as to how subversive this film’s nature is. The scene cuts away to the Captain awaiting his guests for the dinner party, immaculately dressed, and wearing full regalia. The contrast could not be clearer. But it also must be stated that Ofelia’s path is now seemingly set. In order to be a leftist, one must soil oneself and go down into the depths. This completion of the first task seems innocuous and unrelated upon first viewing, but it actually seems to have deeper consequences in the film’s plot. It sets in motion the events which follow.

The dinner party reveals more. Captain Vidal’s lack of humanity (from a left-wing perspective) is beginning to be revealed. The local populace is to be rationed, and as the dinner guests are examining the ration cards they question whether it will be enough. The priest answers affirmatively that yes, it should be enough if the people are careful. Vidal’s reason for not giving out more food is that he cannot have the local population giving excess food and supplies to the rebels. Of course, he further goes on to say that he wants his son to be born in a clean Spain. That he is willing to kill all of the rebels if necessary. This is the first time the audience hears of Vidal’s resolve (a leftist would say bloodlust). He then reveals a major plot device, which is the weakness of the rebels. They have wounded men in their party, and they require antibiotics. Vidal is performing counter insurgency operations. He needs to limit the access of the communist rebels to the critical supplies of ammunition, food, medicine, etc. He needs to limit communications to and from the rebels, limit the spread of their propaganda. In essence, anything which can be used to carry on the struggle.

The anti-biotics requirement means that Vidal requires greater security of his stores. There are two crucial side characters who must be explained for this story arc to make sense. First is Vidal’s housekeeper, Mercedes. Second is Doctor Ferreiro. These two characters are important because they are always performing tasks for Vidal, but in fact are secret anti-falangists. Mercedes even has a brother who is fighting with the rebels. This is important because these are two characters who Vidal basically entrusts with access to the supply barn. They are the only two non-soldiers who can get in. Captain Vidal even makes a point about asking Mercedes if the key to the barn door has more than one copy. She replies that no, that is the only key to the lock. The captain retains the key throughout the film. This key can be viewed as a real key juxtaposed with the spiritual key which Ofelia possesses.

Ofelia’s mother has a turn for the worse. She appears to suffer the beginnings of a miscarriage, blood and all. Ofelia seeks the help of the Faun, who advises her on the proper magical cure: to lay a mandrake in a bowl of milk, and to add her own blood to the mixture. This cure will allow Carmen to return to health; and does for a time. That is, until Captain Vidal catches her in the act of feeding the mandrake. The mandrake is cast into the fire, which immediately precipitates contractions in Carmen. Doctor Ferreiro is summoned, and Vidal tells him that if he has to choose between Carmen’s life and that of his son-to-be, then the son’s life should be saved. The scene pans away to Carmen’s funeral. This is presented as if Vidal actually was making a decision over Carmen’s life, a pronouncement and verdict of death if you will. This is untrue, and Vidal is faced with the prospect commonly facing husbands with decisions over difficult pregnancies. In actuality, he was thinking of the two possible outcomes. This is a similar dilemma to the classic trolley problem. Given two inevitable alternatives, who does one choose to save? Carmen at the expense of the child, or the child at the expense of Carmen? Vidal’s priority is the life of his son. But this is coded as evil, when it is simply a decision based upon the reality of limitation of resources. Not everyone can be saved. And why is this decision coded as malicious towards Carmen? Simply put, it is anti-male. Not only do lefty pagans view the pronouncement of intention as magical, but they would also prefer the decision be made in the exact opposite way, because that is perfectly in keeping with the intersectional rubric. A woman’s life, especially a mother of the protagonist is more important than an unborn baby boy.

The Faun then gives Ofelia her next, and second, task. She is given magical chalk which can open doors to the magical world. The next task is a more complicated one than the first. She has to use the magical chalk to enter into a place with a sleeping monster, use the key from the first task to open a cubby holding a special dagger. She must do this whilst avoiding the temptation of eating anything off of a sumptuous banquet table, which will awaken the monster who will then attempt to eat Ofelia in turn. After retrieving the knife, she eats two grapes, and awakens the eyeless Pale Man who puts his eyes in his hands in order to see. The monster eats two of her fairy friends who try to discourage her from eating the forbidden fruit and attempt to distract the monster long enough for Ofelia to get away. She is chased by the eyeless monster into a corner because the hourglass runs out of sand and the door she had previously drawn closes. She escapes by making a new outline of a door on the ceiling.

The significance of this part of the movie is that it is a more challenging quest for the protagonist on multiple levels. First, it requires the usage of special items to break down the barrier between the physical and magical realms. Next, it requires the hero to complete the task under the pressure of a time limit. Lastly, it requires the protagonist to display moral uprightness, to obey prohibitions placed by others, to heed multiple warnings. To resist temptation which will cause one to fail the task and be destroyed. She was indeed warned by the Faun not to eat anything. Despite her recovery of the knife, she is upbraided by the Faun for her moral failing and mental failings. This is a conflation and confusion of several myths from multiple traditions, which furthermore most poignantly illustrates the role of sexual inversion of the story. Ofelia in this task is required to perform a masculine role by bypassing and defeating a monster in the task of recovering the magical knife. However, the eating of forbidden fruit by a female protagonist is directly from the Adam and Eve myth. It is also telling that Ofelia basically only survives the encounter by luck alone. If the chalk had not still functioned after the hourglass ran out of time, she would be dead and eaten. The Faun understands this, that she is absolutely unworthy of continuing on. This, from a masculine perspective, is correct. Her fairy friends died because of her actions and choices. This task should be one which is more in keeping with the hero’s journey. After a moral failure or lack of adequate preparation and training, a male hero would be required at this point in the story to perform additional tasks, rites, or processes to “git gud” and correct his deficiencies. Ofelia, because she is female, is automatically forgiven. She does not have to perform any special act of contrition, no additional tasks to make amends. From a female perspective, this is correct. She lucked out, it “all worked out in the end”, she obtained what was required, and thus she can proceed despite everything. This story arc is important because it is supposed to demonstrate that one is of age. That one understands consequences and can deal with them as they arise. The ability to understand one’s actions proves that one is no longer a child, an “innocent”. This is an unflattering vision of women. Dare I say, “the progressives are the real sexists”? Just kidding.

Ofelia is not tempted by anything other a vision of opulence. In fact, despite the multiple warnings, she chooses to willfully disobey. There was no whispering serpent in her ear egging her on to transgression. She cannot claim that she was tricked, and she tries to play it off as an accident. Oddly enough, it seems that from the film’s perspective that she has lost her innocence. To willfully transgress and willfully lose one’s innocence is a commonly held rite of passage by leftoids. For my part, I do not believe that women have no agency. But in any case, the ambiguity here is intentional. Is she an innocent, or isn’t she? The casting of a young girl on the verge of puberty was a good choice to reinforce the ambiguity. The not-a-girl, not-yet-a-woman trope in film is one which certainly has been done before. However, that trope always in stories ends up requiring the female lead to come to terms with adulthood. In a RW perspective, Ofelia chooses to remain a child. The Faun accepts and reinforces that choice by offering her another chance. Which sets up the third task that Ofelia is expected to perform. That task is presented as the “last chance”. But was it really? She was always expected to perform three tasks, so why is the last task presented in this way? By the power of femininity alone, she goes on.

The loss of two comrades brings up an interesting comparison with Captain Vidal’s counter-insurgency efforts. Captain Vidal’s men capture two fellows who were supposedly out in the woods rabbit hunting. That is their claim anyway. Their weapons are not clearly defined for the audience, so it is impossible in the moment to verify this. Vidal makes reference to pamphlets that they carry which to the learned eye are obvious red propaganda. No gods, no bosses. Etc, etc. Both these men are killed by Vidal in brutal fashion, one is bludgeoned to death by pistol whipping. To a normie audience this cements the perception of Captain Vidal as a terrible man. As an evil man. Of course, comparisons between Vidal and the Pale Man abound. He kills two, same as the monster. Vidal, in typical leftist fashion, would be claimed to have been blind to the suffering of others. In many scenes he is wearing sunglasses, which prevent his eyes from being seen by the audience. Just like the Pale Man. Of course, not for nothing is the monster called the Pale Man. The literal, yet unspoken comparison between Vidal and the Pale Man is that they are capital W White men. On an ideological level, this is par for the course, but it isn’t readily noticeable because the Pale Man isn’t referred to as such in the film itself, just the credits. Furthermore, the Pale Man guards the sumptuousness of a banquet table. Captain Vidal guards the storage barn with all of the necessary materials for warmaking within. White Man therefore, stands in the way of access to resources for woman, rather than being the pathway to accessing resources. If you avoid stealing the things that are right under his nose, you can obtain the real treasure without breaking him out of his inactivity.

Behold, a Pale Man

As the first two tasks unfold, Captain Vidal’s efforts continuously seem to deteriorate. The fighting between the Falangists and Reds increase in frequency and intensity as the film progresses. Somehow, they are getting help. Vidal manages to capture a wounded rebel and through torture is able to flush out the treacherous Doctor Ferreiro. After being outed as pro-Red by having prevented the further torture of the rebel prisoner by killing said prisoner via lethal injection, Captain Vidal confronts and kills him. Vidal doesn’t know it, but Ferreiro has been providing medical supplies and even performed an operation on a wounded rebel who the anti-biotics do not prevent becoming infected enough to have to operate on. So really, what the audience by this point perceives as a totally unfair and unjustified murder following the good Doctor’s mercy killing to prevent further torture of the helpless prisoner; is in fact a justified execution of someone who has been acting as a spy. Doctor Ferreiro was consistently acting contra to Captain Vidal’s purposes in both word and deed. He was siphoning off medical supplies to an enemy, which is to say providing aid and comfort to communists. He treated their wounded. He was on their side the entire time. His last words reaffirm his rejection of Captain Vidal’s authority on any level. He did Captain Vidal’s bidding only to gain his trust and gain access.

This brings up the character of Mercedes. Mercedes has a friendly relationship with Ofelia, talking to her one-on-one at points. Mercedes’ communist brother proves where her true loyalties will lie. She essentially does the same thing as Doctor Ferreiro, which is to gain the trust of Captain Vidal in order to gain access to supplies and to be able to spy on the Falangists for the Reds. She does not share the fate of the Doctor. However, her cover is blown after Doctor Ferreiro is killed. She takes Ofelia and attempts to escape into the woods but is promptly caught. She too had been siphoning off supplies to the rebels. Vidal attempts the same routine of torture in order to extract information but is prevented from completing interrogation because Mercedes has hidden a small knife in her clothing. She retrieves it and breaks free of her fetters. She then stabs Vidal repeatedly and cuts a smile into one side of his mouth (let’s put a smile on that face!). She then escapes basically unnoticed despite having the captain’s blood on her.

What this does is two things. First, Mercedes’ escape will inevitably trigger an attack on Vidal’s outpost. Now that the supplies cannot be gotten clandestinely, they can only be had by the rebels through victory. Second, though Vidal is not killed, and not even truly incapacitated, he is seriously wounded. But he stiches himself up. Vidal proves himself to be an absolute tank of a man. Which is the point. Vidal is such a competent fighter, always in the thick of the action, that he has to have small wounds inflicted on him in order to slow him down, and to distract him. Which also proves that the left’s perception of the fascist is accurate. Vidal’s men do not have their faces on camera frequently, they have little dialogue. Essentially, they are just minions. In every fight scene, it seems that Captain Vidal is the decisive factor. Without their Captain, Vidal’s men are helpless in the final fight scene. By crippling and therefore distracting Vidal, Mercedes makes possible the final task of Ofelia: to kidnap Vidal’s son and take him away inside the labyrinth to the Faun. Once Ofelia steals away the baby, Vidal is thus permanently handicapped. He chooses to abandon his men in order to recover his child.

Seriously though, who wouldn’t want this drip?

Heretofore, there is a juxtaposition of Ofelia’s actions and Vidal’s which had remained separate. The death of Ofelia’s mother as an intermediary between the two set them on a collision course which leads to confrontation. The spiritual realm and the physical world had therefore been slightly separated before. However, by completion of the tasks the two realms are brought together and will overlap in the final moments of the movie. As Ofelia interacts with the Faun for almost the last time, she has yet another choice to make. The Faun states that he requires Vidal’s son in order to have a pin prick’s worth of blood as a sacrifice to open the portal which will allow Ofelia to take her place as princess of the underworld, thereby righting a wrong. The blood is of course, the blood of an innocent. She refuses to do this, and at that moment Captain Vidal enters the center of the Labyrinth and recovers his child. Vidal then shoots Ofelia, attempts to exit the Labyrinth, and is shot in turn by Mercedes’ brother. But before he dies, he hands his son over and asks the communist rebels to at least tell his son what time he died. This has deep significance for Vidal, since it is revealed during the dinner party scene that his own father died without passing similar information on. But Mercedes is ice-cold: she replies that the boy will not even be told Captain Vidal’s name.

The final scene of the film is Ofelia’s death, which displays a dying vision: Ofelia’s blood dripping into the recessed part of the labyrinth, presumably this is some kind of altar. She suddenly finds herself well dressed in a golden hall, where her mother, her kingly spirit realm father, and the Faun meet her. There are three fairies, implying that the two dead ones are apparently revived. Her father states that she passed the final and ultimate test: she chose to die “rather than spill the blood of the innocent”. Cue epilogue.

Now that the entire plot of the film has been laid out in detail, we can look for further analysis. The most glaring part of the ending is where Captain Vidal is told by Mercedes that there will be no connection between his son and himself. This directly violates the Roman morality presented by Fustel de Coulange.² By breaking the connection between father and son, by preventing the stories of the father from being told to the son, Mercedes is not just creating an orphan, she is creating a deracinated, atomized individual with no conception of self. An individual who is fertile ground for propaganda. This should be considered absolutely evil from our point of view, as the poor child is being weaponized against itself, against its true nature as an aristocrat of the soul. She is directly violating the sacred passing down of story between pater and filios. Patriarchy just isn’t allowed. Also, speaking of family connections, Ofelia and Vidal are actually correct in their treatment of each other. It is in fact, Carmen who is wrong about the treatment of children who are not of the lineage of the father. Vidal as patriarch in the Indo-European sense, has essentially no obligation to Ofelia, only to his son. Ofelia absolutely recognizes this, but Carmen insists in the opening scene that Ofelia call Captain Vidal as her father. Vidal’s duty is to pass the sacred flame down through the ages, to honor his own ancestors by passing down the flame of story and identity to his son, so that it can be transmitted further. Mercedes prevents this.

Let us now turn to the actual story itself, and how it compares to the Indo-European tradition. The film’s story combines many different parts of myths, which is part of its strategic ambiguity, and lends it a strange quality. However, ATU 461 or The Three Hairs is what the basic plotline of the film is attempting to follow. Specifically, two of these stories in the three-tale set presented by Imperium Press are similar enough to comment on. These are The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs and The Three Gold Hairs of Old Vsevede. The twin tales are from Germany and Czech Republic respectively (I urge the audience to look into the Bohemian Question). The tale format is as follows: an orphan child who is dispossessed of his parents by a wicked king who perceives a prophecy that the child will marry his daughter causes him to throw the child into a body of water. The child is rescued, and by using the three golden hairs from either the devil himself, or from a mythical being Dede-Vsevede, he completes the task and finds the answers to three impossible and mysterious questions. The answers to the questions should be familiar:

“There is a frog which has lodged itself in the opening, and so it prevents the water of the spring entering the well. Let them kill the frog, and their well will be as full of water as it used to be.”

“The means are not difficult, a viper has hidden itself amongst the roots of their tree and feeds on its sap, let them kill the viper and transplant the tree, and they will soon see it covered in fruit as it used to be.”

“..He has only to put his oar into the hand of the first person who wants to be rowed and jump ashore. Whoever receives the oar will replace him as boatman. But leave me in peace, mother, and do not wake me anymore; for I have to be up early, first to dry the tears of the Princess, the wife of the charcoal-burner’s son. The young creature passes her nights in weeping for her husband, who has been sent by the king, her father, to fetch him three gold hairs from my head.”

As we can see, del Toro has mixed up the stories in the first task of Ofelia. The frog was underneath the tree, and not a viper (The German version is a mouse instead of a viper). The frog/toad is supposed to be under a well, not a tree. He has defiled the purely masculine character of these stories, which can be discerned by their similarity to the biblical Moses myth of a specially gifted child whose prophecy of power causes the ruler to throw him in a body of water in order to dispose of him and prevent the boy from marrying the princess. So, it’s masculine story through and through, with a sterotypically male oriented goal of getting the girl. The man-child himself does not actually have to perform the tasks revealed by the answers, he only needs to acquire the three golden hairs and get the answers. No frog killing is required by the hero.

In fact, there are other tales with similarities, ATU 570, The Rabbit Herd, follows a similar pattern, with a young man who must perform a series of three difficult tasks in order to win the princess’ hand in marriage. One tale in the three-tale series is The Hare Keeper. It especially has a small detail which proves the connection between ATU 461 and ATU 570. In The Hare Keeper, the hero must also be able to catch a golden apple that the princess throws into the air. This is a very small detail, but it matters. In both versions of The Three Hairs presented here the afflicted trees produce golden apples. So, what is actually the moral of the story? The moral of all these stories is that a young man performs a series of tasks or finds knowledge which allows him to marry the girl. Knowledge is a kind of key is it not? This proves that Del Toro has absolutely twisted the original meaning of the tale. He disrespected the boundaries of the original tales. This is not a story which should have been told with a female protagonist. It is a tale for boys which has been coopted by del Toro for his own purposes.

What was del Toro’s purpose of telling this story? The purpose was to continue to emotionally sentimentalize a moral code to young women using a non-Christian setting. That moral code as demonstrated by Mercedes and Doctor Feirrero is a deeply dishonest one. It has moral dishonesty in the usage of violence. The moral code which allows for acting as an enemy, but that must never result in being treated as an enemy. It instructs them to not become women, and to tread the path of men instead. Del Toro also is guilty of conflating the two masculine paths as well. As Evola wrote, the path of the warrior is what is more classically the hero’s journey tale which everyone is familiar with. The path of the priest is a story with the format that a hero must collect specified items in order to perform a rite with a sacred object in the center of the ritual space. The purpose of this priestly rite is to restore order. The Jim Henson movie The Dark Crystal is probably the best interpretation of this I have seen in film. The ritual space with a sacral center is the actual Labyrinth. So, del Toro is guilty of not just conflating the male and female life pathways according to tradition, he is guilty of mixing up the male paths to heroism as well. In essence what he is communicating to young women is not just that a single male pathway is open to them, both are. The modern confusion between men being women, women being men, has much to do with the confusion about what the proper pathways for the sexes truly are.

Really, where does the path that Ofelia takes lead her? Given that Vidal is not actually her father, she is therefore orphaned after the death of her mother because she refused to enter adulthood. Through that interpretation, the orphaned protagonist is at least the same as in the originals, but it mixes up the order of occurrence. Ofelia is taken in by Mercedes and comforted after the loss. Which are communists telling on communists, because they enjoy preying on vulnerable children to enlist them in their cause.

Furthermore, it is not actually Ofelia who performs the rite of sacrifice in the Labyrinth, but Captain Vidal. She is said to have “refused to spill the blood of an innocent”. The innocent discussed is at first glance, Vidal’s child. But this is not true. Ofelia, remember, is from our perspective, still a child because of the choice at the second task. The strategic moral ambiguity plays well in disguising the intention here. As far as she knows, the pin prick of blood demanded by the Faun will get her goal accomplished. So, what is she doing? She is volunteering, and by being a voluntary sacrifice, ensures that the communist rebels have total victory over the Falangists. So, technically, her blood is also innocent blood, thus opening the portal to the golden hall of her father before she dies. In actuality, the “innocent” are the communist rebels. Remember Doctor Ferreiro? Remember Mercedes? They are framed as innocent even as proven traitors and spies. Ofelia, by performing the third task, allows the communists to achieve victory because it distracts Captain Vidal. But, by not allowing the Faun to use Vidal’s son for the sacred rite, she is actually ensuring that Vidal will kill her with his pistol, the shot alerting the communists to his presence in the Labyrinth. Without that shot, he should have been able to walk away stealthily. His child would have been raised by his own hand, and the patriarchy would have continued on. The magic of sacrifice appears more potent when the victim is willing.

From our viewpoint, the sacrifice of Ofelia appears to have been one made in vain. Surely an orphaned male child such as Vidal’s son would inevitably come fulfil his foretold purpose in ATU 461. But she presents to women an archetype to follow. Their sacred and ordained purpose is to distract men from the true battle, from leading the poor men of more common mindset to victory. They will continue to use their bodies, their choices, their refusal to be women to prevent us men from having sons. To prevent men from passing the torch alight to the men who will follow in our footsteps. But, despite victory, the sacrifice of modern women by walking masculine paths leads them ultimately to death. That is what del Toro’s message is.

1. Folktales in the Indo-European Tradition. Imperium Press, 2022. pp. 539-556, 599-620.

2. The Ancient City. Nema Denis Fustel de Coulange. Imperium Press, 2020.