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Labyrinth (1986 film)

Labyrinth is a 1986 musical fantasy film directed by Jim Henson with George Lucas as executive producer. Based on conceptual designs by Brian Froud, the film was written by Terry Jones, and many of its characters are played by puppets produced by Jim Henson's Creature Shop. The film stars Jennifer Connelly as 16-year-old Sarah and David Bowie as Jareth, the Goblin King. In Labyrinth, Sarah embarks on a quest to reach the center of an enormous, otherworldly maze to rescue her infant half-brother Toby, whom she wished away to Jareth.

The film started as a collaboration between Henson and Froud following their previous collaboration The Dark Crystal (1982). Terry Jones of Monty Python wrote the first draft of the film's script early in 1984, drawing on Froud's sketches for inspiration. Various other scriptwriters rewrote it and added to it, including Laura Phillips, Lucas, Dennis Lee, and Elaine May—although Jones received the film's sole screenwriting credit. It was shot from April to September 1985 on location in Upper Nyack, Piermont, and Haverstraw, New York, and at Elstree Studios and West Wycombe Park in the United Kingdom.

The New York Times reported that Labyrinth had a budget of $25 million. The film underperformed at the United States box office, grossing $12.9 million during its US theatrical run. However, it was a success in the United Kingdom and overseas, grossing over $34 million worldwide. Labyrinth was first met with a mixed critical response upon its release, which contributed to a difficult period of Henson's career, according to his son Brian Henson. It was the last feature film that Henson directed, and over the years it has been re-evaluated by many critics. A success on home video and television broadcasts, Labyrinth has gained a large cult following.

The film has been adapted into a variety of media, including books, video games, board games and comics. Tokyopop published a four-volume comic sequel Return to Labyrinth between 2006 and 2010, and Archaia Entertainment published a comic prequel Labyrinth: Coronation between 2018 and 2019. In January 2016, it was announced that a sequel was in development, which screenwriter Nicole Perlman described as more of a "spin-off" in the same fictional universe.

Plot
While in the park with her dog Merlin, 16-year-old Sarah recites from a book titled The Labyrinth, but is unable to remember the last line. Realizing that she is late to babysit her infant half-brother Toby, she rushes home and is confronted by her stepmother who leaves for dinner with Sarah's father. Frustrated that Toby was given her treasured teddy bear, Lancelot, and by his constant crying, Sarah rashly wishes that Toby be taken away by the goblins from her book. Toby disappears and the Goblin King Jareth appears, offering Sarah her dreams in exchange for the baby. She refuses, instantly regretting her wish. Jareth reluctantly gives Sarah 13 hours to solve his labyrinth and find Toby before he is turned into a goblin forever. Sarah meets a dwarf named Hoggle who aids her to enter the labyrinth. She has trouble finding her way at first and meets a talking worm who inadvertently sends her in the wrong direction.

Sarah ends up in an oubliette where she reunites with Hoggle. The two are confronted by Jareth, escape one of his traps, and encounter a large beast named Ludo. Hoggle flees in a cowardly fashion, while Sarah befriends Ludo after freeing him from a trap but loses him in a forest. Hoggle encounters Jareth, who instructs him to give an enchanted peach to Sarah, calling his loyalty into question, as he was supposed to take her back to the beginning of the labyrinth. Sarah is harassed by a group of creatures called The Fire Gang, but Hoggle comes to her aid. She kisses him, and they fall through a trapdoor that sends them to a flatulent swamp called the "Bog of Eternal Stench" where they reunite with Ludo. The trio meet the guard of the swamp, the anthropomorphic fox terrier Sir Didymus and his Old English Sheepdog "steed" Ambrosius. Ludo summons a trail of rocks to save Sarah from falling into the bog, and Didymus joins the group. The group gets hungry, so Hoggle gives Sarah the peach and runs away as she falls into a trance and forgets her quest. She dreams that Jareth comes to her at a masquerade ball, proclaiming his love for her, but she rebuffs him and escapes, falling into a junkyard outside the Goblin City near Jareth's castle. An old Junk Lady fails to brainwash her and she is rescued and has her memory restored by Ludo and Sir Didymus. They are confronted by the humongous robotic gate guard, but Hoggle comes to their rescue. Despite his feeling unworthy of forgiveness for his betrayal, Sarah and the others welcome him back, and they enter the city together.

Jareth is alerted to the group's presence and sends his goblin army to stop them. Ludo summons a multitude of rocks to chase the goblins away, and they enter the castle. Sarah insists she must face Jareth alone and promises to call the others if needed. In a room modeled after M. C. Escher's Relativity, she confronts Jareth while trying to retrieve Toby. She recites the lines from her book that mirror her adventure to that point, but she still cannot remember the last line. Jareth offers Sarah her dreams again, but she remembers the final line: "You have no power over me!" Defeated at the last second, Jareth returns Sarah and Toby home, turns into a barn owl and flies away.

Realizing how important Toby is to her, Sarah gives him Lancelot and returns to her room as her father and stepmother return home. She sees her friends in the mirror and admits that, even though she has grown up, she still needs them in her life, whereupon the labyrinth characters appear in her room for a raucous reunion party, hugging each other in joy. Jareth, in his barn owl form, watches their celebration from outside and then flies off into the moonlight.

Cast

 * David Bowie as Jareth, the king of the goblins
 * Jennifer Connelly as Sarah, a 16-year-old girl who searches through the labyrinth to find her baby brother Toby
 * Toby Froud as Toby, Sarah's baby half-brother
 * Shelley Thompson as Irene, Toby's mother and Sarah's stepmother
 * Christopher Malcolm as Sarah and Toby's father

Juggler Michael Moschen is credited with performing Jareth's elaborate "crystal-ball manipulation", which Moschen had created for his stage performances and is now known as contact juggling. He performed the manipulations blind, behind Bowie's back.

Creature performers
Goblin Corps performed by Marc Antona, Kenny Baker, Michael Henbury Ballan, Danny Blackner, Peter Burroughs, Toby Clark, Tessa Crockett, Warwick Davis, Malcolm Dixon, Anthony Georghiou, Paul Grant, Andrew Herd, Richard Jones, John Key, Mark Lisle, Peter Mandell, Jack Purvis, Katie Purvis, Nicholas Read, Linda Spriggs, Penny Stead, and Albert Wilkinson.

Influences
Richard Corliss noted that the film appeared to have been influenced by The Wizard of Oz and the works of Maurice Sendak, writing that, "Labyrinth lures a modern Dorothy Gale out of the drab Kansas of real life into a land where the wild things are". Nina Darnton of The New York Times wrote that the plot of Labyrinth "is very similar to Outside Over There by Mr. Sendak, in which 9-year-old Ida's baby sister is stolen by the goblins." This almost got the film into legal trouble, as the similarity caused Sendak's lawyers to advise Jim Henson to stop production on the film. However, the legal complaint was eventually settled, with an end credit being added that states that, "Jim Henson acknowledges his debt to the works of Maurice Sendak". Sendak's Outside Over There and Where the Wild Things Are are shown briefly in Sarah's room at the start of the film, along with copies of Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, and Grimms' Fairy Tales.

The film's concept designer Brian Froud, who had previously collaborated with Henson on The Dark Crystal, has stated that the character of Jareth was influenced by a diverse range of literary sources. In his afterword to the 20th anniversary edition of The Goblins of Labyrinth, Froud wrote that Jareth references "the romantic figures of Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights and a brooding Rochester from Jane Eyre" and The Scarlet Pimpernel. Bowie's costumes were intentionally eclectic, drawing on the image of Marlon Brando's leather jacket from The Wild One as well as that of a knight "with the worms of death eating through his armor" from Grimms' Fairy Tales. In his audio commentary of Labyrinth, Froud said that Jareth also has influences from Kabuki theatre.

The dialogue starting with the phrase "you remind me of the babe" that occurs between Jareth and the goblins in the Magic Dance sequence in the film is a direct reference to an exchange between Cary Grant and Shirley Temple in the 1947 film The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer.

Labyrinth's "Escher scene" features an elaborate staircase set inspired by the art of Dutch artist M. C. Escher. A print of Escher's lithograph Relativity is shown on Sarah's bedroom wall in the film.

Origins and script
Brian Froud says that Labyrinth was first discussed between himself and director Jim Henson. Both agreed to work on another project together, and Froud suggested that the film should feature goblins. On the same journey, Froud "pictured a baby surrounded by goblins" and this strong visual image, along with Froud's insight that goblins traditionally steal babies, provided the basis for the film's plot.

Henson discussed the film's origins to say that he and Froud "wanted to do a lighter weight picture, with more of a sense of comedy since The Dark Crystal got kind of heavy, heavier than we had intended. Now, I wanted to do a film with the characters having more personality and interacting more."

Labyrinth was being seriously discussed as early as March 1983, when Henson held a meeting with Froud and children's author Dennis Lee. Lee was tasked with writing a novella on which a script could be based, submitting it at the end of 1983. Henson approached Terry Jones to write the film's script, as "his daughter Lisa had just read Erik the Viking and suggested that he try me as screenwriter". Jones was given Dennis Lee's novella to use as a basis for his script but later told Empire that Lee had produced an unfinished "poetic novella" that he "didn't really get on with". In light of this, Jones "discarded it and sat down with Brian [Froud]'s drawings and sifted through them and found the ones that I really liked, and started creating the story from them".

Jones is credited with writing the screenplay, while the shooting script was actually a collaborative effort that featured contributions from Henson, George Lucas, Laura Phillips, and Elaine May. Jones has said that the finished film differs greatly from his original vision. Jones states that, "I didn't feel that it was very much mine. I always felt it fell between two stories, Jim wanted it to be one thing and I wanted it to be about something else." Jones has said that his version of the script was "about the world, and about people who are more interested in manipulating the world than actually baring themselves at all". In Jones' original script, Jareth merely seems "all powerful to begin with" and is actually using the Labyrinth to "keep people from getting to his heart".

Jones has said that Bowie's involvement in the project had a significant impact on the direction taken with the film. Jones had originally intended for the audience not to see the centre of the Labyrinth, prior to Sarah's reaching it, as he felt that, in doing so, it robbed the film of a significant "hook". Henson decided that he wanted Jareth to sing and appear throughout the film, which was something Jones considered the "wrong" decision, with the thought of Bowie starring in the film in mind. Despite his misgivings, Jones rewrote the script to allow for performing songs throughout the film. This draft of the script "went away for about a year". During this time, it was redrafted first by Phillips and subsequently by Lucas.

An early draft of the script attributed to Jones and Phillips is markedly different from the finished film. The early script has Jareth enter Sarah's house in the guise of Robin Zakar, the author of a play she is due to perform in. Sarah does not wish her brother would be taken away by the goblins, and Jareth snatches him away against her will. Jareth is overtly villainous in this draft of the script. His final confrontation with Sarah tells her that he would "much rather have a Queen" than "a little goblin prince". The early script ends with Sarah kicking Jareth in disgust, and her blows transform him into a powerless, sniveling goblin. In the extensive junkyard scene, Jareth operates the Junk Lady as a puppet, whereas, in the film, she is autonomous. There is actually a pub or bar in the Labyrinth where the Man with Hat and Hoggle gather, and the river Lethe in Greek myth is mentioned. As well as this, the ballroom scene features extensive dialogue between Jareth and Sarah, whereas, in the film, there is none (though there is in the novelization by A. C. H. Smith), and the goings-on with the dancers in the ballroom are more overtly sexualised.

The redrafted script was sent to Bowie, who found that it lacked humour and considered withdrawing his involvement in the project as a result. To ensure Bowie's involvement, Henson asked Jones to "do a bit more" to the script to make it more humorous. May met with Henson in several months, prior to the start of filming in April 1985, and was asked to polish the script. May's changes "humanised the characters" and pleased Henson to the extent that they were incorporated into the film's shooting script.

At least 25 treatments and scripts were drafted for Labyrinth between 1983 and 1985. The film's shooting script was only ready shortly before filming began.

Casting
Henson intended the protagonist of the film, at different stages of its development, as a king whose baby had been put under an enchantment, a princess from a fantasy world, and a young girl from Victorian England. They made the lead a teenage girl from contemporary America to make the film more commercial. Henson noted that he wished to "make the idea of taking responsibility for one's life, which is one of the neat realisations a teenager experiences, a central thought of the film".

Auditions for the lead role of Sarah began in England in April 1984. Helena Bonham Carter auditioned for the role but was passed over in favour of an American actress. Monthly auditions were held in the US until January 1985, and Jane Krakowski, Yasmine Bleeth, Sarah Jessica Parker, Marisa Tomei, Laura Dern, Ally Sheedy, Maddie Corman, and Mia Sara all auditioned for the role. Out of these, Krakowski, Sheedy, and Corman were considered the top candidates. Fourteen-year-old actress Jennifer Connelly "won Jim [Henson] over", and he cast her within a week. Henson states that Connelly was chosen, as she "could act that kind of dawn-twilight time between childhood and womanhood". Connelly moved to England in February 1985, in advance of the film's rehearsals, which began in March. Connelly discussed her understanding of her role with Elle magazine that the film is about "a young girl growing out of her childhood, who is just now becoming aware of the responsibilities that come with growing up".

The character of Jareth also underwent some significant developments during the early stages of preproduction. Henson states that he originally intended him as another puppet creature in the same vein as his goblin subjects. Henson decided that the role should be filled by a live actor and initially considered offering it to Simon MacCorkindale or Kevin Kline. Henson eventually wanted a big, charismatic star "who could change the film's whole musical style" to play the Goblin King and sought a contemporary musician for the role, considering Sting, Prince, Mick Jagger, and Michael Jackson before choosing Bowie.

Henson stated that, "I wanted to put two characters of flesh and bone in the middle of all these artificial creatures, and David Bowie embodies a certain maturity, with his sexuality, his disturbing aspect, all sorts of things that characterise the adult world." Henson met David Bowie in the summer of 1983 to seek his involvement, as Bowie was in the US for his Serious Moonlight Tour at the time. Henson pursued Bowie for the role of Jareth and sent him each revised draft of the film's script for his comments. During a meeting that took place on June 18, 1984, Henson showed Bowie The Dark Crystal and a selection of Brian Froud's concept drawings to pique his interest in the project. Bowie formally agreed to take part on February 15, 1985, several months before filming began. Bowie discussed why he was involved in the film, stating that, "I'd always wanted to be involved in the music-writing aspect of a movie that would appeal to children of all ages, as well as everyone else, and I must say that Jim gave me a completely free hand with it. The script itself was terribly amusing without being vicious or spiteful or bloody, and it had a lot more heart in it than many other special effects movies, so I was pretty hooked from the beginning."

Gates McFadden was originally offered the role of Sarah's mother by Henson, and she signed up to do the choreography as well, but she was not allowed to act in the film and had to accept the choreography role alone due to union rules. She is credited in the film as Cheryl McFadden (her first name), as she usually is when being credited for choreography work. She said that, "Even though that was the reason I took the job and had, for two years, been thinking that was what was going to happen. They would not allow us."

Filming
The team that worked on Labyrinth was largely assembled from talent who had been involved in various other projects with the Jim Henson Company. Veteran performers Dave Goelz and Steve Whitmire operated various puppets in the film, along with Karen Prell, Ron Mueck, Rob Mills, and Kathryn Mullen (as various goblins), who had all worked with Henson on Fraggle Rock. Kevin Clash, a puppeteer from Sesame Street best known for performing the character Elmo, also worked on the film as various creatures, as did Frank Oz, who performed briefly as the Wiseman (while also directing Little Shop of Horrors around that time). Members of Henson's family also worked on the production, including son Brian (the voice and chief puppeteer for Hoggle) and daughter Cheryl (who assisted on one of the Fireys and is also credited for building the characters). Newcomers working on the production included puppeteers Anthony Asbury, Angie Passmore, Nigel Plaskitt, and Mak Wilson (the latter three of whom are credited for performing goblins) who had previously worked on the satirical puppet show Spitting Image, while a few others, including David Barclay, David Greenaway, Toby Philpott, and Mike Quinn, were carried over from The Dark Crystal. Other goblin puppeteers included David Rudman (also known for his work on Sesame Street), Robin Stevens, Don Austen, Robert Tygner, and, briefly, Jim Henson himself. Louise Gold, a veteran Muppet performer who had gotten her start on The Muppet Show, cameos in the film as a masked ballroom dancer during the "As the World Falls Down" sequence, while Kenny Baker and Warwick Davis, best-known as the performers of Star Wars' R2-D2 and Wicket W. Warrick respectively, were credited as some of the "Goblin Corps". "Ambrosius", Sir Didymus' canine steed, was voiced by Percy Edwards, who had previously supplied the voice of "Fizzgig" in The Dark Crystal.

Principal photography began on April 15, 1985, at Elstree Studios. Labyrinth took five months to film and was a complicated shoot due to the various puppets and animatronic creatures involved. In the making-of documentary Inside the Labyrinth, Henson stated that Jim Henson's Creature Shop had been building the puppets and characters required for around a year and a half, prior to shooting, but "everything came together in the last couple weeks". Henson noted that, "even if you have the characters together, the puppeteers start working with them, they find problems or they try to figure out what they're going to do with these characters".

Each of the film's key puppets required a small team of puppeteers to operate it, but Hoggle was the most complex puppet of the production. Shari Weiser was inside the costume, while Hoggle's face was radio-controlled by Brian Henson (who also provided the character's voice and performed a few goblins) and three additional puppeteers. Brian Henson stated that Weiser "does all the body movement and her head is inside the head. However, the jaw is not connected to her jaw. Nothing that the face is doing has any connection with what she's doing with her face. The other four members of the crew are all radio crew, myself included," in the Inside the Labyrinth documentary. Brian Henson also said of the challenges involved with performing Hoggle that, "five performers trying to get one character out of one puppet was a very tough thing. Basically, what it takes is a lot of rehearsing and getting to know each other." The film's big, ogre-like monster Ludo, whose original build weighed over 100 pounds, was similarly challenging. It would have been too exhausting for performer Ron Mueck to inhabit the 75-pound suit for all of his scenes, so Henson decided to have Mueck and Rob Mills exchange performances inside Ludo, as they were the same size and had a similar body shape.

At the early stages of filming, stars Connelly and Bowie found it difficult to interact naturally with the puppets they shared most of their scenes with. Bowie said that, "I had some initial problems working with Hoggle and the rest, because, for one thing, what they say doesn't come from their mouths, but from the side of the set or from behind you." Connelly remarked that, "it was a bit strange [working almost exclusively with puppets in the film], but I think both Dave [Bowie] and I got over that and just took it as a challenge to work with these puppets, and, by the end of the film, it wasn't a challenge anymore. They were there, and they were their characters."

The film required large and ambitious sets constructed, from the Shaft of Hands to the rambling, distorted Goblin City where the film's climactic battle takes place. The Shaft of Hands sequence was filmed on a rig that was thirty feet high, with a camera mounted on a forty-foot vertical camera track. Many grey, scaly hands integral to the scene were actually 150 live hands supplied by 75 performers and 200 foam-rubber hands. Connelly was strapped into a harness when shooting the scene and spent time between takes suspended midway up the shaft.

The set of the Goblin City was built on Stage 6 at Elstree Studios near London and required the largest panoramic back cloth ever made. Production designer Elliot Scott states that the biggest challenge he faced was building the forest Sarah and her party pass through on their way to Jareth's Castle. The film's production notes state that, "the entire forest required 120 truckloads of tree branches, 1,200 turfs of grass, 850 pounds of dried leaves, 133 bags of lichen, and 35 bundles of mossy old man's beard".

Most filming was conducted at Elstree Studios, while a small amount of location shooting was carried out in England and the US. The park seen at the start of the film is part of the West Wycombe Park estate in Buckinghamshire, England. The scenes of Sarah running back home were filmed in various towns in New York State, namely Upper Nyack, Piermont, and Haverstraw.

Shooting wrapped on September 8, 1985.

Post-production
Most of the visual effects on Labyrinth were achieved in-camera with several notable exceptions. The most prominent of these post-production effects was the computer-generated owl that appears at the opening of the film. The sequence was created by animators Larry Yaeger and Bill Kroyer at Digital Productions and marked the first use of a realistic CGI animal in a film. The owl head maquette was rescued from a skip when the animation company Omnibus went bankrupt in 1987.

The scene where Sarah encounters the Fire Gang was altered in post-production, as it had been filmed against black velvet cloth to disguise the puppeteers, and a new forest background was added behind. Jim Henson was unhappy with the compositing of the finished scene, although he considered the puppetry featured in it worthy including them.

Henson received help editing the film from executive producer George Lucas. Henson states that, "When we hit the editing, I did the first cut, and then George was heavily involved on bringing it to the final cut. After that, I took it over again and did the next few months of post-production and audio." Henson went on to say that, "When you edit a film with somebody else you have to compromise. I always want to go one way, and George goes another way, but we each took turns trading off, giving and taking. George tends to be very action-oriented and he cuts dialogue quite tight. I tend to cut looser, and go for more lyrical pauses, which can slow the story. [In doing] so, I loosen up his tightness, and he tightens my looseness."

Music
The soundtrack album features Trevor Jones' score, which is split into six tracks for the soundtrack: "Into the Labyrinth", "Sarah", "Hallucination", "The Goblin Battle", "Thirteen O'Clock", and "Home at Last".

Bowie recorded five songs for the film: "Underground", "Magic Dance", "Chilly Down", "As the World Falls Down", and "Within You". "Underground" is featured on the soundtrack twice. The first version of "Underground" is played in an edited version that was played over the film's opening sequence, while the second version is played full. "Underground" was released in various territories as a single and, in certain markets, was also released in an instrumental version and an extended dance mix. "Magic Dance" was released as a 12" single in the US. "As the World Falls Down" was initially slated for release as a follow-up single to "Underground" at Christmas in 1986, but this plan did not materialise. Bowie did not perform the lead vocals on "Chilly Down", which was performed by Charles Augins, Richard Bodkin, Kevin Clash, and Danny John-Jules, the actors who voiced the "Firey" creatures in the film. A demo of "Chilly Down" under its original title "Wild Things", which was performed by Bowie, was leaked in 2016 by Danny John-Jules shortly after Bowie's death.

Steve Barron produced promotional music videos for "Underground" and "As the World Falls Down". The music video for "Underground" features Bowie as a nightclub singer who stumbles upon the Labyrinth encountering many of the creatures seen in the film. The clip for "As the World Falls Down" integrates clips from the film. This video uses them, along with black and white shots of Bowie performing the song in an elegant room. Both were released on the 1993 VHS tape Bowie – The Video Collection and the 2002 two-disc DVD set Best of Bowie.

In 2017, Capitol Studios announced a reissue of the soundtrack on a vinyl record. This included all five original songs by David Bowie, along with Trevor Jones' score.

Promotion
The production of Labyrinth was covered in multiple high-profile magazines and newspapers, in anticipation of its release, with articles appearing in The New York Times, Time, and Starlog magazines. An article that appeared in The New York Times shortly after filming wrapped in September 1985 focused heavily on the film's large scale and emphasised the size of the production and selling Labyrinth as a more "accessible" film than The Dark Crystal due to the casting of live actors in its key roles. An hour-long making-of documentary that covered the filming of Labyrinth and included interviews with the key figures involved in its production was broadcast on television as Inside the Labyrinth.

Labyrinth was featured in music trade papers such as Billboard magazine due to Bowie's soundtrack for the film. Bowie was not heavily involved in promoting the film, but Jim Henson was nonetheless grateful that he produced a music video to accompany the song "Underground" from the soundtrack, saying that, "I think it's the best thing he could have done for the film." Commercial artist Steven Chorney provided the film's teaser one-sheet, while Ted Coconis produced a one-sheet poster for the film's North American release.

A range of merchandise was produced to accompany the film's release, including plush toys of Sir Didymus and Ludo, a board game, a computer game, and multiple jigsaw puzzles. An exhibition of the film's characters and sets toured across shopping malls in various cities in the US, including New York City, Dallas, and Chicago. Labyrinth was featured in an exhibition titled "Jim Henson's Magic World" that was shown at the Seibu Department Store in Tokyo in August 1986.

Theatrical release
Labyrinth opened in US theaters on June 27, 1986. The film received a Royal Charity premiere at the London Film Festival on December 1, 1986, with Charles, Prince of Wales and Diana, Princess of Wales in attendance. Jim Henson, Brian Henson, Brian Froud, Jennifer Connelly, and the animatronic creature Ludo were all present to support the film.

The film was rolled out in other European countries largely between December 1986 and February 1987 and premiered in France as Labyrinthe on December 2 and in West Germany as Die Reise ins Labyrinth (The Journey into the Labyrinth) on December 13. The film was released in Denmark as Labyrinten til troldkongens slot (The Labyrinth to the Troll King's Castle) on February 20, 1987 and saw its last theatrical release in Hungary under the title Fantasztikus labirintus (Fantastic Labyrinth) when it premiered there on July 7, 1988. The film was also released in Brazil on December 25, 1986 where it was named Labirinto – A Magia do Tempo (Labyrinth – The Magic of Time).

In April 2012, a remastered re-release of the film was screened at the Astor Theatre in Melbourne, Australia.

Home media
Labyrinth was first released on VHS, Betamax, and pan and scan LaserDisc in 1987 by Embassy Home Entertainment in the US and by Channel 5 Video Distribution in the UK. After Embassy was sold to Coca-Cola in 1985, its home video line was renamed Nelson Entertainment, and a VHS release was also made under this label (re-using the same Embassy box artwork). New Line Home Video re-released the film on LaserDisc in Widescreen through Image Entertainment in 1994. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment reissued the film on VHS for the last time in 1999 in the US under the name of its subsidiary company Columbia-TriStar and in the UK the same year, with Inside the Labyrinth included as a special feature.

The film made its DVD premiere in 1999 in the US and has since been re-released on DVD in 2003, 2007, and 2016. All DVD releases of the film feature the Inside the Labyrinth documentary as an extra. The 2003 re-release was described as a collector's edition and featured a set of exclusive collectors cards that featured concept art by Brian Froud. The 2007 release was promoted as an Anniversary Edition and featured a commentary by Brian Froud and two newly produced making-of documentaries, "Journey Through the Labyrinth: Kingdom of Characters" and "Journey Through the Labyrinth: The Quest for Goblin City", which featured interviews with producer George Lucas, choreographer Gates McFadden of Star Trek fame (listed as Cheryl McFadden ), and Brian Henson.

The film was released on Blu-ray in a 2009 package, which replicated the extras featured on the 2007 Anniversary Edition DVD. The Blu-ray release featured one new special feature, a picture-in-picture track that lasts the length of the film, and interviews with the crew and several minor cast members including Warwick Davis.

A 30th anniversary edition of Labyrinth was released on DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K Blu-ray in 2016. An Amazon exclusive gift set version with came with packaging similar to Jareth's Escher-style stairs. New features included "The Henson Legacy" featuring Jennifer Connelly and members of the Henson family discussing Jim Henson's puppetry style and includes a visit to the Center for Puppetry Arts, which houses many of Jim Henson's puppets. Adam Savage from MythBusters hosts a Q&A with Brian Henson, David Goelz, Karen Prell, and Sheri Weiser. Jennifer Connelly, Brian Henson, and Cheryl Henson pay tribute to David Bowie in "The Goblin King".

In 2021, a 35th anniversary limited edition of Labyrinth was released on Blu-ray and 4K Blu-ray as a set in a digibook designed to resemble Sarah's book from the film. The 2021 Blu-ray disc is the same as the 2016 release, while the 2021 4K Blu-ray disc includes an upgraded 4K transfer with Dolby Vision HDR, and special features such as 25 minutes of deleted and extended scenes with optional commentary by Brian Henson and 55 minutes of footage from the original auditions for the role of Sarah.

On January 1, 2024, a worldwide distribution agreement signed between Shout! Studios and the Jim Henson Company for Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal as well as associated content went into effect. The agreement grants Shout! Studios streaming, video-on-demand, broadcast, digital download, packaged media and limited non-theatrical rights to the films. The company released the films on all major digital entertainment platforms on February 6, 2024.

Box office
Labyrinth opened at number eight at the US box office with $3,549,243 from 1,141 theaters, which placed it behind The Karate Kid Part II, Back to School, Legal Eagles, Ruthless People, Running Scared, Top Gun, and Ferris Bueller's Day Off. In its next weekend at the box office, the film dropped to number 13 in the charts, only earning $1,836,177. By the end of its run in US cinemas, the film had grossed $12,729,917, just over half of its $25 million budget.

The film grossed $9 million in Japan during the summer. In December, the film opened in Europe, opening at number one at the UK box office. It was the highest-grossing film over the Christmas period in the UK, with a gross of $4.5 million in its first month, three times more than its competitors. It was also the highest-grossing film for the period in Spain, Bolivia, and Venezuela. By January 1987, it had grossed $7.5 million from eight other foreign territories (Australia, Brazil, Central America, Germany, Holland, Italy, Mexico, and Spain), for a total worldwide gross of over $34 million at that time.

Critical response
The film received mixed to positive reviews from critics. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of based on  reviews, with an average rating of. The website's critics consensus reads, "While it's arguably more interesting on a visual level, Labyrinth provides further proof of director Jim Henson's boundless imagination". Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 50 out of 100, based on 10 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.

Roger Ebert acknowledged that Labyrinth was made with "infinite care and pains", and he gave the film two stars out of four, as he felt that the film "never really comes alive". Ebert said that, as the film was set in an "arbitrary world", none of the events in it had any consequences, robbing the film of any dramatic tension. Gene Siskel's review of Labyrinth for the Chicago Tribune was highly negative, and he referred to it as an "awful" film with a "pathetic story", "much too complicated plot", and "visually ugly style". Siskel objected to the film's "violent" plot, writing that, "the sight of a baby in peril is one of sleaziest gimmicks a film can employ to gain our attention, but Henson does it".

Other critics were more positive. Kathryn Buxton of The Palm Beach Post found that it had "excitement and thrills enough for audiences of all ages, as well as a fun and sometimes slightly naughty sense of humor". Roger Hurlburt of the Sun-Sentinel called Labyrinth "a fantasy fan's gourmet delight", writing that "though plot aspects are obviously borrowed from other fantasy stories – Cinderella, Snow White and the fairy tale classics, events are served in unique form". Bruce Bailey of The Montreal Gazette admired the film's script, stating that, "Terry Jones has drawn on his dry wit and bizarre imagination and come up with a script that transforms these essentially familiar elements and plot structures into something that fairly throbs with new life". Bailey was also impressed by the film's depth, writing that, "adults will have the additional advantage of appreciating the story as a coming-of-age parable".

Several critics noted the film's subtext and found it successful to varying degrees. Saw Tek Meng of the New Straits Times acknowledged that "Sarah's experiences in the labyrinth are symbolic of her transition from child to woman" but ultimately found the film "too linear" for its latent themes to come through. The New York Times' Nina Darnton compared the film's tone to the writings of E. T. A. Hoffmann, stating that Hoffman's The Nutcracker "is also about the voyage to womanhood, including the hint of sexual awakening, which Sarah experiences too in the presence of a goblin king". Darton enjoyed the film and considered it more successful than Henson's previous collaboration with Brian Froud, The Dark Crystal.

Colin Greenland reviewed Labyrinth for White Dwarf #85, stating that, "Like Time Bandits, Labyrinth is the story of a child trying to negotiate a dreamlike otherworld where logic is not all that it should be, and so it also borrows lavishly from The Princess and the Goblin, Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, and Where the Wild Things Are. A couple of scenes along the quest are truly eerie. Others are doggedly sentimental." Lynn Minton in Parade opined that "what [Labyrinth] lacks in story and memorable music it makes up for, in part, with amusing special effects, loveable and funny "people" and an emotionally satisfying ending".

Connelly's portrayal of Sarah polarised critics and received strong criticism from some reviewers. Los Angeles Daily News critic Kirk Honeycutt referred to Connelly as "a bland and minimally talented young actress". Jon Marlowe wrote for The Miami News, stating that, "Connelly is simply the wrong person for the right job. She has a squeaky voice that begins to grate on you; when she cries, you can see the onions in her eyes." Hal Lipper of the St. Petersburg Times felt contrary to these negative views and praised her acting, saying that, "Connelly makes the entire experience seem real. She acts so naturally around the puppets that you begin to believe in their life-like qualities."

Bowie's performance was variously lauded and derided. In his largely positive review of the film for Time, Richard Corliss praised him as "charismatic" referring to his character as a "Kabuki sorcerer who offers his ravishing young antagonist the gilded perks of adult servitude". Bruce Bailey enjoyed Bowie's performance, writing that, "the casting of Bowie can't be faulted on any count. He has just the right look for a creature who's the object of both loathing and secret desire." In a largely critical review, Hal Lipper found that, "Bowie forgoes acting, preferring to prance around his lair while staring solemnly into the camera. He's not exactly wooden. Plastic might be a more accurate description."

Henson came "the closest I've seen him to turning in on himself and getting quite depressed" following the film's mixed reception, his son Brian told Life magazine. It was the last feature film directed by Henson before his death in 1990.

Labyrinth has been re-evaluated by several notable publications after Henson's death. A review from 2000 in Empire magazine called the film "a fabulous fantasy" and wrote that, "David Bowie cuts a spooky enough figure in that fright wig to fit right in with this extraordinary menagerie of Goth Muppets. And Jennifer Connelly, still in the flush of youth, makes for an appealingly together kind of heroine." Michael Wilmington described Labyrinth as "dazzling", writing that it is "a real masterpiece of puppetry and special effects, an absolutely gorgeous children's fantasy movie", for the Chicago Tribune in 2007. In 2010, Total Film ran a feature called "Why We Love Labyrinth", which described Labyrinth as a "hyper-real, vibrant daydream, Labyrinth's main strength lies in its fairytale roots which give the fantastical story a platform from which to launch into some deliriously outlandish scenarios". In their February 2012 issue, Empire featured a four-page spread on Labyrinth as part of their Muppet Special.

Accolades
Labyrinth was nominated at the British Academy Film Awards for Best Special Visual Effects and received two Saturn Award nominations for Best Fantasy Film and Best Costumes. The film was also nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.

In 2008, the American Film Institute nominated Labyrinth for inclusion on its Top 10 Fantasy Films list. Labyrinth is ranked 72nd on Empires "The 80 best '80s movies" and 26th on Time Outs "The 50 best fantasy movies". In 2019, The Daily Telegraph named it as one of "The 77 best kids' films of all time".

Legacy
Despite its poor performance at the American box office, Labyrinth was a success on home video and later on DVD. David Bowie told an interviewer in 1992 that, "every Christmas a new flock of children comes up to me and says, 'Oh! you're the one who's in Labyrinth!'" In 1997, Jennifer Connelly said that, "I still get recognized for Labyrinth by little girls in the weirdest places. I can't believe they still recognize me from that movie. It's on TV all the time and I guess I pretty much look the same."

Labyrinth has become a cult film. Brian Henson remembered his father Jim Henson as being aware that Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal both had cult followings by the time of his death in 1990, saying that "he was able to see all that and know that it was appreciated". Academic Andrea Wright wrote that Labyrinth has managed to maintain audience popularity long after its initial release to a greater extent than The Dark Crystal. Since 1997, an annual two-day event called the "Labyrinth of Jareth Masquerade Ball", in which revelers attend dressed in costumes inspired by the film, has been held in various locations, including San Diego, Hollywood, and Los Angeles. Labyrinth has developed a significant internet fan following since the early 1990s, and, as of 2021, FanFiction.Net hosts more than 10,000 stories in its Labyrinth section.

The strong DVD sales of Labyrinth prompted rights-holders the Jim Henson Company and Sony Pictures to look into making a sequel, and Curse of the Goblin King was briefly used as a placeholder title. However, the decision was ultimately taken to avoid making a direct sequel and instead produce a fantasy film with a similar atmosphere. Fantasy author Neil Gaiman and artist Dave McKean were called in to write and direct a film similar in spirit to Labyrinth, and MirrorMask was ultimately released in selected theaters in 2005 after premiering at the Sundance Film Festival. On January 22, 2016, Sony Pictures announced that a reboot is in development with Lisa Henson as producer and Nicole Perlman attached as the screenwriter. However, on January 25, Perlman confirmed on Twitter that, while she is working on a Labyrinth project with the Jim Henson Company, it is not a remake or reboot. Perlman also discussed the timing of the rumors in conjunction with David Bowie's death and said that, "Henson Co & I started talking in late 2014, so the timing of these rumors is so upsetting. I would never seek to profit from Bowie's death."

Books
Since its release, a number of books based on Labyrinth have been published. The Goblins of Labyrinth is a book containing Brian Froud's concept art for the film with descriptions by Terry Jones. It was published in 1986 and reissued in a deluxe expanded 20th anniversary edition in 2006. A concurrent novelization of the film was written by A. C. H. Smith which, along with Smith's novelization of The Dark Crystal, was reprinted with illustrations and Jim Henson's notes by Archaia Publishing in 2014. The film was adapted into picture book form as Labyrinth: The Storybook, written by Louise Gikow with illustrations by Bruce McNally, and Labyrinth: The Photo Album, written by Rebecca Grand with photographs taken by John Brown from the film set. Other tie-in adaptations included a read-along storybook produced by Buena Vista Records, which came with either a 7" 33⅓ RPM record or cassette tape.

In 2019, Boom! Studios published Labyrinth: A Discovery Adventure, a hidden picture book illustrated by Laura Langston and Kate Sherron. Macmillan published Labyrinth: The ABC Storybook, an alphabet book by Luke Flowers, in 2020. Insight Kids published Labyrinth: Straight to the Castle, an interactive pop-up book for preschoolers by Erin Hunting, in 2021, and will release Labyrinth: Goodnight, Goblin King, a bedtime story book, in September 2023. In 2022, Insight Editions published Labyrinth: Bestiary, an in-universe "guidebook" to the various characters and settings of the film, illustrated by Iris Compiet with text by S. T. Bende.

Video games
The film was adapted for the Commodore 64 and Apple II home computers in 1986 as Labyrinth: The Computer Game. Different versions were also released in Japan only the following year for the Family Computer console and MSX computer under the title of Labyrinth: Maō no Meikyū (Labyrinth: Maze of the Goblin King), developed by Atlus and published by Tokuma Shoten in association with Activision and Henson Associates.

Mighty Coconut, developer of the virtual reality game Walkabout Mini Golf, released in 2022 an add-on to the game called Walkabout Mini Golf: Labyrinth, which features a 36 hole mini-golf course set in the world of Labyrinth.

Comic books
Marvel Comics published a three-issue comic book adaptation of Labyrinth which was first released in a single volume as Marvel Super Special #40 in 1986.

Tokyopop published a manga-style four-volume comic sequel between 2006 and 2010 called Return to Labyrinth, written by Jake T. Forbes and illustrated by Chris Lie, with cover art by Kouyu Shurei and in partnership with The Jim Henson Company. Return to Labyrinth follows the adventures of Toby as a teenager when he is tricked into returning to the Labyrinth by Jareth.

Archaia Entertainment announced that it was developing a prequel graphic novel about the story of how Jareth became the Goblin King in 2011 in collaboration with The Jim Henson Company. Project editor Stephen Christy described the graphic novel as a "very tragic story" featuring a teenaged Jareth and said that it does not feature Sarah or Toby. In early stages of development, there were plans for the novel to integrate music into the plot in some way. David Bowie was approached by Archaia to seek permission to use his likeness and ascertain if he wished to have any involvement in the project. Brian Froud was set to design characters as a creative consultant on the project and produce covers for the graphic novel. Reported to be about a young Jareth who is taken into the Labyrinth by a witch, the novel's official synopsis describes Jareth's plot as his "attempt to rescue his true love from the clutches of the wicked and beautiful Goblin Queen". The graphic novel was initially set for release at the end of 2012 but was repeatedly delayed. Its scheduled April 2014 release slot was replaced by Archaia's reissue of the Labyrinth novelization. The graphic novel remains unreleased as of 2023.

Archaia released a Labyrinth short story titled Hoggle and the Worm for Free Comic Book Day on May 5, 2012 and another titled Sir Didymus' Grand Day on May 4, 2013. Archaia published Labyrinth: 30th Anniversary Special, a collection of seven short stories, in 2016 to mark the film's 30th anniversary. Cory Godbey's stories from this collection were also released in picture book form as Labyrinth Tales. Another six-story collection was released the following year, titled Labyrinth: 2017 Special. In 2018, the two were compiled as Labyrinth: Shortcuts, which also included two new stories, and another three-story collection was released as Labyrinth: Under the Spell.

Between 2018 and 2019, Archaia published Labyrinth: Coronation, a 12-issue comic series written by Simon Spurrier and illustrated by Daniel Bayliss. The series is a prequel about how Jareth became the Goblin King. It began with officials of the 1790s Venice. The story revolves around an infant Jareth who has been stolen by the previous ruler of the labyrinth the Owl King and follows the quest of Jareth's mother Maria to rescue her son. In 2020, Archaia published Labyrinth: Masquerade, a one-shot story set during the film's masquerade dream sequence, written by Lara Elena Donnelly with art by Pius Bak, Samantha Dodge, and French Carlomango.

Stage adaptation
In 2016, Brian Froud expressed that he would like to see Labyrinth adapted as a stage musical with live puppetry and special effects, remarking that it would be "an absolute gift to do it on stage. People would come and sing the songs and dress up, I think." Brian Henson announced that the Jim Henson Company was working on a "stage show, a big theatrical version" of Labyrinth, in April 2018. He said that the production was not intended for Broadway theatre but could potentially take place on London's West End.

Possible sequel
In January 2016, Nicole Perlman announced that she had been hired to write the script for the sequel. By April 2017, Fede Álvarez signed on as director, as well as co-writer with Jay Basu. Henson's daughter Lisa Henson was named as producer. By October 2018, Álvarez confirmed that the script was complete. In April 2020, however, Álvarez announced that he had stepped down as director. In May 2020, Scott Derrickson, known for directing Doctor Strange, was announced as director. Maggie Levin joined him in writing the script for the film. The Jim Henson Company's Brian Henson was set as the executive producer and confirmed Lisa Henson as producer.

In February 2021, Jennifer Connelly revealed that she "had conversations" about being involved in the Labyrinth sequel but was unsure about what is going to happen.

In October 2023, Derrickson stated he was unsure whether the sequel is going to be made, as the project was "so imaginative and surreal" that he believed it would be difficult to make commercially viable. In February 2024, Brian Henson confirmed that the sequel is still in development despite setbacks, although the project may be different to the Derrickson version. Lisa Henson revealed the same month that the reason for delay was that "We just haven't been able to get the script right. We've had a couple of scripts written, and we're gonna start over again. We're gonna start with a new script and a new director so it won't be anytime soon."

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Labyrinth (1986 film)


text:
Harold Innis

Harold Adams Innis (November 5, 1894 – November 8, 1952) was a Canadian professor of political economy at the University of Toronto and the author of seminal works on media, communication theory, and Canadian economic history. He helped develop the staples thesis, which holds that Canada's culture, political history, and economy have been decisively influenced by the exploitation and export of a series of "staples" such as fur, fish, lumber, wheat, mined metals, and coal. The staple thesis dominated economic history in Canada from the 1930s to 1960s, and continues to be a fundamental part of the Canadian political economic tradition.

Innis's writings on communication explore the role of media in shaping the culture and development of civilizations. He argued, for example, that a balance between oral and written forms of communication contributed to the flourishing of Greek civilization in the 5th century BC. He warned, however, that Western civilization is now imperiled by powerful, advertising-driven media obsessed by "present-mindedness" and the "continuous, systematic, ruthless destruction of elements of permanence essential to cultural activity." His intellectual bond with Eric A. Havelock formed the foundations of the Toronto School of communication theory, which provided a source of inspiration for future members of the school Marshall McLuhan and Edmund Snow Carpenter.

Innis laid the basis for scholarship that looked at the social sciences from a distinctly Canadian point of view. As the head of the University of Toronto's political economy department, he worked to build up a cadre of Canadian scholars so that universities would not continue to rely as heavily on British or American-trained professors unfamiliar with Canada's history and culture. He was successful in establishing sources of financing for Canadian scholarly research.

As the Cold War grew hotter after 1947, Innis grew increasingly hostile to the United States. He warned repeatedly that Canada was becoming a subservient colony to its much more powerful southern neighbor. "We are indeed fighting for our lives", he warned, pointing especially to the "pernicious influence of American advertising.... We can only survive by taking persistent action at strategic points against American imperialism in all its attractive guises." His views influenced some younger scholars, including Donald Creighton.

Innis also tried to defend universities from political and economic pressures. He believed that independent universities, as centres of critical thought, were essential to the survival of Western civilization. His intellectual disciple and university colleague, Marshall McLuhan, lamented Innis's premature death as a disastrous loss for human understanding. McLuhan wrote: "I am pleased to think of my own book The Gutenberg Galaxy as a footnote to the observations of Innis on the subject of the psychic and social consequences, first of writing then of printing."

Early life

Innis was born on November 5, 1894, on a small livestock and dairy farm near the community of Otterville in southwestern Ontario's Oxford County. As a boy he loved the rhythms and routines of farm life and he never forgot his rural origins. His mother, Mary Adams Innis, had named him Herald, hoping he would become a minister in the strict evangelical Baptist faith that she and her husband William shared. At the time, the Baptist church was an important part of life in rural areas. It gave isolated families a sense of community and embodied the values of individualism and independence. Its far-flung congregations were not ruled by a centralized, bureaucratic authority. Innis became an agnostic in later life, but never lost his interest in religion. According to his friend and biographer Donald Creighton, Innis's character was moulded by the church: "The strict sense of values and the feeling of devotion to a cause, which became so characteristic of him in later life, were derived, in part at least, from the instruction imparted so zealously and unquestioningly inside the severely unadorned walls of the Baptist Church at Otterville."

Innis attended the one-room schoolhouse in Otterville and the community's high school. He travelled 20 mi by train to Woodstock, Ontario, to complete his secondary education at a Baptist-run college. He intended to become a public-school teacher and passed the entrance examinations for teacher training, but decided to take a year off to earn the money he would need to support himself at an Ontario teachers' college. At age 18, therefore, he returned to the one-room schoolhouse at Otterville to teach for one term until the local school board could recruit a fully qualified teacher. The experience made him realize that the life of a teacher in a small, rural school was not for him.

University studies

In October 1913, Innis started classes at McMaster University (then in Toronto). McMaster was a natural choice for him because it was a Baptist university and many students who attended Woodstock College went there. McMaster's liberal arts professors encouraged critical thinking and debate. Innis was especially influenced by James Ten Broeke, the university's one-man philosophy department. Ten Broeke posed an essay question that Innis pondered for the rest of his life: "Why do we attend to the things to which we attend?"

Before his final undergraduate year at McMaster, Innis spent a summer teaching at the Northern Star School in the frontier farming community of Landonville near Vermilion, Alberta. The experience gave him a sense of the vastness of Canada. He also learned about Western grievances over high interest rates and steep transportation costs. In his final undergraduate year, Innis focused on history and economics. He kept in mind a remark made by history lecturer W. S. Wallace that the economic interpretation of history was not the only possible one but that it went the deepest.

First World War service

After graduating from McMaster, Innis felt that his Christian principles compelled him to enlist in the Canadian Expeditionary Force. He was sent to France in the fall of 1916 to fight in the First World War. Trench warfare with its "mud and lice and rats" had a devastating effect on him.

Innis's role as an artillery signaller gave him firsthand experience of life (and death) on the front lines as he participated in the successful Canadian attack on Vimy Ridge. Signallers, or spotters, watched where each artillery shell landed, then sent back aiming corrections so that the next shells could hit their targets more accurately. On July 7, 1917, Innis received a serious shrapnel wound in his right thigh that required eight months of hospital treatment in England.

Innis's war was over. His biographer, John Watson, notes the physical wound took seven years to heal, but the psychological damage lasted a lifetime. Innis experienced recurring bouts of depression and nervous exhaustion because of his military service.

Watson also notes that the Great War influenced Innis's intellectual outlook. It strengthened his Canadian nationalism; sharpened his opinion of what he thought were the destructive effects of technology, including the communications media that were used so effectively to "sell" the war; and led him, for the first time, to doubt his Baptist faith.

McMaster and Chicago
Harold Innis completed a Master of Arts degree at McMaster, graduating in April 1918. His thesis, called The Returned Soldier, "was a detailed description of the public policy measures that were necessary, not only to provide a supportive milieu to help veterans get over the effects of the war, but also to move on with national reconstruction."

Innis did his postgraduate work at the University of Chicago and was awarded his PhD, with a dissertation on the history of Canadian Pacific Railway, in August 1920. His two years at Chicago had a profound influence on his later work. His interest in economics deepened and he decided to become a professional economist. The economics faculty at Chicago questioned abstract and universalist neoclassical theories, then in vogue, arguing that general rules for economic policy should be derived from specific case studies.

Innis was influenced by the university's two eminent communications scholars, George Herbert Mead and Robert E. Park. Although he did not attend any of those famous professors' classes, Innis did absorb their idea that communication involved much more than the transmission of information. James W. Carey writes that Mead and Park "characterized communication as the entire process whereby a culture is brought into existence, maintained in time, and sedimented into institutions."

While at Chicago, Innis was exposed to the ideas of Thorstein Veblen, the iconoclastic thinker who drew on his deep knowledge of philosophy and economics to write scathing critiques of contemporary thought and culture. Veblen had left Chicago years before, but his ideas were still strongly felt there. Years later, in an essay on Veblen, Innis praised him for waging war against "standardized static economics."

Innis got his first taste of university teaching at Chicago, where he delivered several introductory economics courses. One of his students was Mary Quayle, the woman he would marry in May 1921 when he was 26 and she 22. Together they had four children, Donald (1924), Mary (1927), Hugh (1930), and Anne (1933). Mary Quayle Innis was herself a notable economist and writer. Her book, An Economic History of Canada, was published in 1935. Her novel, Stand on a Rainbow appeared in 1943. Her other books include Mrs. Simcoe's Diary (1965), The Clear Spirit: Canadian Women and Their Times (1966) and Unfold the Years (1949), a history of the Young Women's Christian Association. She also edited Harold Innis's posthumous Essays in Canadian Economic History (1956) and a 1972 reissue of his Empire and Communications.

Donald Quayle Innis became a geography professor at the State University of New York. Mary married a surgeon and did graduate work in French literature. Hugh Innis became a professor at Ryerson University where he taught communications and economics. Anne Innis Dagg did doctoral work in biology and became an advisor for the independent studies program at the University of Waterloo and published books on zoology, feminism, and Canadian women's history.

History of the CPR

Harold Innis wrote his PhD thesis on the history of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR). The completion of Canada's first transcontinental railway in 1885 had been a defining moment in Canadian history. Innis's thesis, eventually published as a book in 1923, can be seen as an early attempt to document the railway's significance from an economic historian's point of view. It uses voluminous statistics to underpin its arguments. Innis maintains that the difficult and expensive construction project was sustained by fears of American annexation of the Canadian West.

Innis argues that "the history of the Canadian Pacific Railroad is primarily the history of the spread of Western civilization over the northern half of the North American continent." As Robert Babe notes, the railway brought industrialization, transporting coal and building supplies to manufacturing sites. It was also a kind of communications medium that contributed to the spread of European civilization. Babe writes that, for Innis, the CPR's equipment "comprised a massive, energy-consuming, fast-moving, powerful, capital-intensive 'sign' dropped into the very midst of indigenous peoples, whose entire way of life was disrupted, and eventually shattered as a result.

Communications scholar Arthur Kroker argues that Innis's study of the Canadian Pacific Railway was only the first in which he attempted to demonstrate that "technology is not something external to Canadian being; but on the contrary, is the necessary condition and lasting consequence of Canadian existence." It also reflected Innis's lifelong interest in the exercise of economic and political power. His CPR history ends, for example, with a recounting of Western grievances against economic policies, such as high freight rates and the steep import tariffs designed to protect fledgling Canadian manufacturers. Westerners complained that the National Policy funnelled money from Prairie farmers into the pockets of the Eastern business establishment. "Western Canada," Innis wrote, "has paid for the development of Canadian nationality, and it would appear that it must continue to pay. The acquisitiveness of Eastern Canada shows little sign of abatement."

Staples thesis
Harold Innis is considered the leading founder of a Canadian school of economic thought known as the staples theory. It holds that Canada's culture, political history and economy have been decisively shaped by the exploitation and export of a series of "staples" such as fur, fish, wood, wheat, mined metals and fossil fuels. Innis theorized that the reliance on exporting natural resources made Canada dependent on more industrially advanced countries and resulted in periodic disruptions to economic life as the international demand for staples rose and fell; as the staple itself became increasingly scarce; and, as technological change resulted in shifts from one staple to others. Innis pointed out, for example, that as furs became scarce and trade in that staple declined, it became necessary to develop and export other staples such as wheat, potash and especially lumber. The export of the new staples was made possible through improved transportation networks that included first canals and later railways.

"Dirt" research
In 1920, Innis joined the department of political economy at the University of Toronto. He was assigned to teach courses in commerce, economic history and economic theory. He decided to focus his scholarly research on Canadian economic history, a hugely neglected subject, and he settled on the fur trade as his first area of study. Furs had brought French and English traders to Canada, motivating them to travel west along the continent's interlocking lake and river systems to the Pacific coast. Innis realized that he had to search out archival documents to understand the history of the fur trade and also travel the country himself gathering masses of firsthand information and accumulating what he called "dirt" experience.

Thus, Innis travelled extensively beginning in the summer of 1924 when he and a friend paddled an 18 ft canvas-covered canoe hundreds of miles down the Peace River to Lake Athabasca; then down the Slave River to Great Slave Lake. They completed their journey down the Mackenzie, Canada's longest river, to the Arctic Ocean on a small Hudson's Bay Company tug. During his travels, Innis supplemented his fur research by gathering information on other staple products such as lumber, pulp and paper, minerals, grain and fish. He travelled so extensively that by the early 1940s, he had visited every part of Canada except for the Western Arctic and the east side of Hudson Bay.

Everywhere that Innis went, his methods were the same: he interviewed people connected with the production of staple products and listened to their stories.

Fur trade in Canada

Harold Innis's interest in the relationship between empires and colonies was developed in his classic study, The Fur Trade in Canada: An Introduction to Canadian Economic History (1930). The book chronicles the trade in beaver fur from the early 16th century to the 1920s. Instead of focusing on the "heroic" European adventurers who explored the Canadian wilderness as conventional histories had done, Innis documents how the interplay of geography, technology and economic forces shaped both the fur trade and Canada's political and economic destiny. He argues that the fur trade largely determined Canada's boundaries, and he comes to the conclusion that the country "emerged not in spite of geography but because of it."

In line with that observation, Innis notably proposes that European settlement of the Saint Lawrence River Valley followed the economic and social patterns of indigenous peoples, making for a Canadian historical and cultural continuity that predates and postdates European settlement. Unlike many historians who see Canadian history as beginning with the arrival of Europeans, Innis emphasizes the cultural and economic contributions of First Nations peoples. "We have not yet realized," he writes, "that the Indian and his culture was fundamental to the growth of Canadian institutions."

The Innisian perspective on the development of Canadian political, economic and social institutions was an early form of neo-institutionalism, which became an accepted part of the Canadian political science tradition well before American and European counterparts. The Fur Trade in Canada concludes by arguing that Canadian economic history can best be understood by examining how one staple product gave way to another—furs to timber, for example, and the later importance of wheat and minerals. Reliance on staples made Canada economically dependent on more industrially advanced countries and the "cyclonic" shifts from one staple to another caused frequent disruptions in the country's economic life.

The Fur Trade in Canada also describes the cultural interactions among three groups of people: the Europeans in fashionable metropolitan centres who regarded beaver hats as luxury items; the European colonial settlers who saw beaver fur as a staple that could be exported to pay for essential manufactured goods from the home country, and First Nations peoples who traded furs for industrial goods such as metal pots, knives, guns and liquor. Innis describes the central role First Nations peoples played in the development of the fur trade. Without their skilled hunting techniques, knowledge of the territory and advanced tools such as snowshoes, toboggans and birch-bark canoes, the fur trade would not have existed. However, dependence on European technologies disrupted First Nations societies. "The new technology with its radical innovations," Innis writes, "brought about such a rapid shift in the prevailing Indian culture as to lead to wholesale destruction of the peoples concerned by warfare and disease." Historian Carl Berger argues that by placing First Nations culture at the centre of his analysis of the fur trade, Innis "was the first to explain adequately the disintegration of native society under the thrust of European capitalism."

Cod fishery
After the publication of his book on the fur trade, Innis turned to a study of an earlier staple, the cod fished for centuries off the eastern coasts of North America. The result was The Cod Fisheries: The History of an International Economy published in 1940, 10 years after the fur trade study. Innis tells the detailed history of competing empires in the exploitation of a teeming natural resource, a history that ranges over 500 years. While his study of the fur trade focused on the continental interior with its interlocking rivers and lakes, The Cod Fisheries looks outward at global trade and empire, showing the far-reaching effects of one staple product both on imperial centres and on marginal colonies such as Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and New England.

Communications theories
Innis's study of the effects of interconnected lakes and rivers on Canadian development and European empire sparked his interest in the complex economic and cultural relationships between transportation systems and communications. During the 1940s, Innis also began studying pulp and paper, an industry of central importance to the Canadian economy. The research provided an additional crossover point from his work on staple products to his communications studies. Biographer Paul Heyer writes that Innis "followed pulp and paper through its subsequent stages: newspapers and journalism, books and advertising. In other words, from looking at a natural resource-based industry he turned his attention to a cultural industry in which information, and ultimately knowledge, was a commodity that circulated, had value, and empowered those who controlled it."

One of Innis's primary contributions to communications studies was to apply the dimensions of time and space to various media. He divided media into time-binding and space-binding types. Time-binding media are durable and include clay or stone tablets. Space-binding media are more ephemeral and include modern media such as radio, television, and mass circulation newspapers.

Innis examined the rise and fall of ancient empires as a way of tracing the effects of communications media. He looked at media that led to the growth of an empire; those that sustained it during its periods of success, and then, the communications changes that hastened an empire's collapse. He tried to show that media 'biases' toward time or space affected the complex interrelationships needed to sustain an empire. The interrelationships included the partnership between the knowledge (and ideas) necessary to create and maintain an empire and the power (or force) required to expand and defend it. For Innis, the interplay between knowledge and power was always a crucial factor in understanding empire.

Innis argued that a balance between the spoken word and writing contributed to the flourishing of Ancient Greece in the time of Plato. The balance between the time-biased medium of speech and the space-biased medium of writing was eventually upset, Innis argued, as the oral tradition gave way to the dominance of writing. The torch of empire then passed from Greece to Rome.

Innis's analysis of the effects of communications on the rise and fall of empires led him to warn grimly that Western civilization was now facing its own profound crisis. The development of powerful communications media such as mass-circulation newspapers had shifted the balance decisively in favour of space and power, over time, continuity and knowledge. The balance required for cultural survival had been upset by what Innis saw as "mechanized" communications media used to transmit information quickly over long distances. The new media had contributed to an obsession with "present-mindedness", wiping out concerns about past or future. Innis wrote, "The overwhelming pressure of mechanization evident in the newspaper and the magazine, has led to the creation of vast monopolies of communication. Their entrenched positions involve a continuous, systematic, ruthless destruction of elements of permanence essential to cultural activity."

Western civilization could be saved, Innis argued, only by recovering the balance between space and time. For him, that meant reinvigorating the oral tradition within universities while freeing institutions of higher learning from political and commercial pressures. In his essay, A Plea for Time, he suggested that genuine dialogue within universities could produce the critical thinking necessary to restore the balance between power and knowledge. Then, universities could muster the courage to attack the monopolies that always imperil civilization.

Although Innis remains appreciated and respected for the grand and unique nature of his later efforts regarding communications theories, he was not without critics. Particularly, the fragmentary and mosaic writing style exemplified in Empire and Communications has been criticized as ambiguous, aggressively nonlinear, and lacking connections between levels of analysis. Biographers have suggested that the style may have been a result of Innis's illness late in his career.

Influence in the 1930s
Aside from his work on The Cod Fisheries, Innis wrote extensively in the 1930s about other staple products such as minerals and wheat as well as Canada's immense economic problems in the Great Depression. During the summers of 1932 and 1933, he travelled to the West to see the effects of the Depression for himself. The next year, in an essay entitled, The Canadian Economy and the Depression, Innis outlined the plight of "a country susceptible to the slightest ground-swell of international disturbance" but beset by regional differences that made it difficult to devise effective solutions. He described a prairie economy dependent on the export of wheat but afflicted by severe drought, on the one hand, and the increased political power of Canada's growing cities, sheltered from direct reliance on the staples trade, on the other. The result was political conflict and a breakdown in federal–provincial relations. "We lack vital information on which to base prospective policies to meet this situation," Innis warned, because of "the weak position of the social sciences in Canada."

Innis's reputation as a public intellectual was growing steadily and, in 1934, Premier Angus Lewis Macdonald invited him to serve on a Royal Commission to examine Nova Scotia's economic problems. The next year, he helped establish The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science. In 1936, he was appointed a full University of Toronto professor and a year later, became the head of the university's Department of Political Economy.

Innis was appointed president of the Canadian Political Science Association in 1938. His inaugural address, The Penetrative Powers of the Price System, must have baffled his listeners as he ranged over centuries of economic history jumping abruptly from one topic to the next linking monetary developments to patterns of trade and settlement. The address was an ambitious attempt to show the disruptive effects of new technologies culminating in the modern shift from an industrial system based on coal and iron to the newest sources of industrial power, electricity, oil, and steel. Innis also tried to show the commercial effects of mass circulation newspapers, made possible by expanded newsprint production, and of the new medium of radio, which "threatens to circumvent the walls imposed by tariffs and to reach across boundaries frequently denied to other media of communication." Both media, Innis argued, stimulated the demand for consumer goods and both promoted nationalism.

Innis was also a central participant in an international project that produced 25 scholarly volumes between 1936 and 1945. It was a series called The Relations of Canada and the United States overseen by James T. Shotwell, director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Innis edited and wrote prefaces for the volumes contributed by Canadian scholars. His own study of the cod fisheries also appeared as part of the series. His work with Shotwell enabled Innis to gain access to Carnegie money to further Canadian academic research. As John Watson points out, "the project offered one of the few sources of research funds in rather lean times."

Politics and the Great Depression

The era of the "Dirty Thirties" with its mass unemployment, poverty and despair gave rise to new Canadian political movements. In Alberta, for example, the radio evangelist William "Bible Bill" Aberhart led his populist Social Credit party to victory in 1935. Three years earlier in Calgary, Alberta, social reformers had founded a new political party, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF). It advocated democratic socialism and a mixed economy with public ownership of key industries. Frank Underhill, one of Innis's colleagues at the University of Toronto was a founding member of the CCF. Innis and Underhill had both been members of an earlier group at the university that declared itself "dissatisfied with the policies of the two major [political] parties in Canada" and that aimed at "forming a definite body of progressive opinion." In 1931, Innis presented a paper to the group on "Economic Conditions in Canada", but he later recoiled from participating in party politics, denouncing partisans like Underhill as "hot gospellers."

Innis maintained that scholars had no place in active politics and that they should instead devote themselves, first to research on public problems, and then to the production of knowledge based on critical thought. He saw the university, with its emphasis on dialogue, open-mindedness and skepticism, as an institution that could foster such thinking and research. "The university could provide an environment," he wrote, "as free as possible from the biases of the various institutions that form the state, so that its intellectuals could continue to seek out and explore other perspectives."

Although sympathetic to the plight of western farmers and urban, unemployed workers, Innis did not embrace socialism. Eric Havelock, a left-leaning colleague explained many years later that Innis distrusted political "solutions" imported from elsewhere, especially those based on Marxist analysis with its emphasis on class conflict. He worried, too, that as Canada's ties with Britain weakened, the country would fall under the spell of American ideas instead of developing its own based on Canada's unique circumstances. Havelock added: "He has been called the radical conservative of his day — not a bad designation of a complex mind, clear sighted, cautious, perhaps at bottom pessimistic in areas where thinkers we would label 'progressive' felt less difficulty in taking a stand; never content to select only one or two elements in a complicated equation in order to build a quick-order policy or program; far ranging enough in intellect to take in the whole sum of the factors, and comprehend their often contradictory effects."

Late career and death
In the 1940s, Harold Innis reached the height of his influence in both academic circles and Canadian society. In 1941, he helped establish the American-based Economic History Association and its Journal of Economic History. He later became the association's second president. Innis played a central role in founding two important sources for the funding of academic research: the Canadian Social Science Research Council (1940) and the Humanities Research Council of Canada (1944).

In 1944, the University of New Brunswick awarded Innis an honorary degree, as did his alma mater, McMaster University. Université Laval, the University of Manitoba and the University of Glasgow would also confer honorary degrees in 1947–48.

In 1945, Innis spent nearly a month in the Soviet Union where he had been invited to attend the 220th anniversary celebrations marking the founding of the country's Academy of Sciences. Later, in his essay Reflections on Russia, he mused about the differences between the Soviet "producer" economy and the West's "consumer" ethos: "[A]n economy which emphasizes consumer's goods is characterized by communication industries largely dependent on advertising and by constant efforts to reach the largest number of readers or listeners; an economy emphasizing producer's goods is characterized by communications industries largely dependent on government support. As a result of this contrast, a common public opinion in Russia and the West is hard to achieve."

Innis's trip to Moscow and Leningrad came shortly before US–Soviet rivalry led to the hostility of the Cold War. Innis lamented the rise in international tensions. He saw the Soviet Union as a stabilizing counterbalance to the American emphasis on commercialism, the individual and constant change. For Innis, Russia was a society within the Western tradition, not an alien civilization. He abhorred the nuclear arms race and saw it as the triumph of force over knowledge, a modern form of the medieval Inquisition. "The Middle Ages burned its heretics," he wrote, "and the modern age threatens them with atom bombs."

In 1946, Innis was elected president of the Royal Society of Canada, the country's senior body of scientists and scholars. The same year, he served on the Manitoba Royal Commission on Adult Education and published Political Economy in the Modern State, a collection of his speeches and essays that reflected both his staples research and his new work in communications. In 1947, Innis was appointed the University of Toronto's dean of graduate studies. In 1948, he delivered lectures at the University of London and Nottingham University. He was elected an International Member of the American Philosophical Society that same year. He also gave the prestigious Beit lectures at Oxford, later published in his book Empire and Communications. In 1949, Innis was appointed as a commissioner on the federal government's Royal Commission on Transportation, a position that involved extensive travel at a time when his health was starting to fail. The last decade of his career, during which he worked on his communications studies, was an unhappy time for Innis. He was academically isolated because his colleagues in economics could not fathom how the new work related to his pioneering research in staples theory. Biographer John Watson writes that "the almost complete lack of positive response to the communications works, contributed to his sense of overwork and depression."

Innis died of prostate cancer on November 8, 1952, a few days after his 58th birthday. In commemoration, Innis College at the University of Toronto and Innis Library at McMaster University were named in his honour.

Following his premature death, Innis' significance increasingly deepened as scholars in several academic disciplines continued to build upon his writings. Marshall Poe's general media theory that proposes two sub-theories were inspired by Innis. Douglas C. North expanded on Innis' "vent for surplus" theory of economic development by applying it to regional development in the United States and underdeveloped countries. In addition, James W. Carey adopted Innis as a "reference point in his conception of two models of communication."

Innis and McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan was a colleague of Innis's at the University of Toronto. As a young English professor, McLuhan was flattered when he learned that Innis had put his book The Mechanical Bride on the reading list of the fourth-year economics course. McLuhan built on Innis's idea that in studying the effects of communications media, technological form mattered more than content. Biographer Paul Heyer writes that Innis's concept of the "bias" of a particular medium of communication can be seen as a "less flamboyant precursor to McLuhan's legendary phrase 'the medium is the message.'" Innis, for example, tried to show how printed media such as books or newspapers were "biased" toward control over space and secular power, while engraved media such as stone or clay tablets were "biased" in favour of continuity in time and metaphysical or religious knowledge. McLuhan focused on what may be called a medium's "sensory bias" arguing, for example, that books and newspapers appealed to the rationality of the eye, while radio played to the irrationality of the ear. The differences in the Innisian and McLuhanesque approaches were summarized by the late James W. Carey: "Both McLuhan and Innis assume the centrality of communication technology; where they differ is in the principal kinds of effects they see deriving from this technology. Whereas Innis sees communication technology principally affecting social organization and culture, McLuhan sees its principal effect on sensory organization and thought. McLuhan has much to say about perception and thought but little to say about institutions; Innis says much about institutions and little about perception and thought."

Biographer John Watson notes that Innis's work was profoundly political while McLuhan's was not. He writes that "the mechanization of knowledge, not the relative sensual bias of media, is the key to Innis's work. That also underlies the politicization of Innis's position vis-a-vis that of McLuhan." Watson adds that Innis believed very different media could produce similar effects. "For Innis, the yellow press of the United States and the Nazi loudspeaker had the same form of negative effect: they reduced men from thinking beings to mere automatons in a chain of command." Watson argues that while McLuhan separated media according to their sensory bias, Innis examined a different set of interrelationships, the "dialectic of power and knowledge" in specific historical circumstances. For Watson, Innis's work is therefore more flexible and less deterministic than McLuhan's.

As scholars and teachers, Innis and McLuhan shared a similar dilemma since both argued that book culture tended to produce fixed points of view and homogeneity of thought; yet both produced many books. In his introduction to the 1964 reprint of The Bias of Communication, McLuhan marvelled at Innis's technique of juxtaposing "his insights in a mosaic structure of seemingly unrelated and disproportioned sentences and aphorisms." McLuhan argued that although that made reading Innis's dense prose difficult ("a pattern of insights that are not packaged for the consumer palate"), Innis's method approximated "the natural form of conversation or dialogue rather than of written discourse." Best of all, it yielded "insight" and "pattern recognition" rather than the "classified knowledge" so overvalued by print-trained scholars. "How exciting it was to encounter a writer whose every phrase invited prolonged meditation and exploration," McLuhan added. McLuhan's own books with their reliance on aphorisms, puns, quips, "probes" and oddly juxtaposed observations also employ that mosaic technique.

Innis's theories of political economy, media and society remain highly relevant: he had a profound influence on critical media theory and communications and, in conjunction with McLuhan, offered groundbreaking Canadian perspectives on the function of communication technologies as key agents in social and historical change. Together, their works advanced a theory of history in which communication is central to social change and transformation.

Selected works

 * 1923. A History of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Revised edition (1971). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
 * 1930. The Fur Trade in Canada: An Introduction to Canadian Economic History. Revised edition (1956). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
 * 1930. Peter Pond, Fur Trader and Adventurer. Toronto: Irwin & Gordon.
 * 1940. The Cod Fisheries: The History of an International Economy. Toronto: The Ryerson Press
 * 1946. Political Economy in the Modern State. Toronto: The Ryerson Press
 * 1948. The Diary of Simeon Perkins: 1766–1780. Toronto: Champlain Society. [editor]
 * 1950. Empire and Communications. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
 * 1951. The Bias of Communication. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
 * 1952. The Strategy of Culture. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
 * 1952. Changing Concepts of Time. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
 * 1956. Essays in Canadian Economic History, edited by Mary Q. Innis. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
 * 1980. The Idea File of Harold Adams Innis, edited by William Christian. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

title: Harold Innis


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Progressive Socialist Party

The Progressive Socialist Party (الحزب التقدمي الاشتراكي) is a Lebanese political party. Its confessional base is in the Druze sect and its regional base is in Mount Lebanon Governorate, especially the Chouf District. Founded by Kamal Jumblatt in 1949, the party was led by his son Walid Jumblatt between 1977 and 25 May 2023. On 25 June 2023 the son of Walid Taymur Jumblatt was officially consecrated as leader of the PSP.

Origins
The party was founded on 5 January 1949, and registered on 17 March the same year, under notification N°789. The founders comprised six individuals, all of different backgrounds. The most notable of these was Kamal Jumblatt. The others were Farid Jubran, Albert Adeeb, Abdallah Alayli, Fouad Rizk, and George Hanna. The PSP held the first conference for the Socialist Arab Parties in Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and Iraq in Beirut in 1951.

From 1951 through 1972 the party had between three and six deputies in parliament.

The PSP in the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990)
Under Kamal Jumblatt's leadership, the PSP was a major element in the Lebanese National Movement (LNM), which supported Lebanon's Arab identity and sympathised with the Palestinians. Despite Jumblatt's initial reluctance to engage in paramilitarism, it built its own military wing, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) which proved to be one of the strongest private armies in the Lebanese Civil War of 1975 to 1990. It conquered much of Mount Lebanon and the Chouf District. Its main adversaries were the Kataeb Regulatory Forces militia, and later the Lebanese Forces militia (which absorbed the Kataeb). The PSP suffered a setback in 1977, when Kamal Jumblatt was assassinated. His son Walid succeeded him as leader of the party.

From the Israeli withdrawal from the Chouf in 1983 to the end of the civil war, the PSP ran the Civil Administration of the Mountain in the area under its control. Tolls levied at PSP/PLA militia checkpoints provided a major source of income for the administration, which provided social and public services.

The PSP played an important role in the Mountain War under the leadership of Walid Jumblatt: after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) retreated from the Chouf District, important battles took place there between the PSP/PLA and the Lebanese Forces militia. Both the Lebanese Forces and the PSP/PLA were accused of committing massacres and atrocities against one another as tit-for-tat (revenge killings). The PSP also systematically displaced many Christian civilians in the Chouf region by comiting massacres and mass executions.

During the war years, the PSP controlled the seaport at Jieh. In March 1989 General Michel Aoun established a blockade of the port which resulted in artillery exchanges between his forces and a combination of PSP, Amal and the Syrian Army in which at least 90 people were killed and several hundred wounded.

The post-war years
After the restoration of constitutional rule in 1989, the PSP was the major ally of Syria in Lebanon and its leader Walid Jumblatt was in close relations with the Syrian Army and intelligence generals in Lebanon, such as Ghazi Kanaan, and also with the Syrian Vice President Abdul Halim Khaddam. In the 1992 general election it won four seats.

In the post-Civil War period, Jumblatt was known for switching allegiances and acting as a kingmaker in deals between factions. The PSP participated in a number of governments, but, after the Syria Accountability Act and the UN Resolution 1559 and the change of the balance of powers in the region after the occupation of Iraq, joined the opposition and took up a position opposed to the role of Syria in Lebanon's politics. Unlike some opponents of the Syrian presence, Jumblatt did not oppose the presence of the Syrian army per se, but contended that the Syrian intelligence services were exerting undue influence.

Following the passage of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559 in September 2004, calling for a Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon, Jumblatt was particularly prominent in the opposition. However, he was opposed to the demand that Hezbollah be disarmed, and insisted on maintaining relations with the Shia Islamist party. Later, he has drifted into sharp opposition towards the group, and has decided to support their disarmament, claiming that Syria and Iran are trying to take over Lebanon through Hezbollah. After the assassination of Rafic Hariri in February 2005, Jumblatt joined the anti-Syria camp, despite his long support to Syria. As part of the March 14 Alliance, the PSP won 16 seats in the general elections held in 2005. It won eleven seats in the 2009 Lebanese general election and had three ministers in the 2009 First Cabinet of Saad Hariri (Ghazi Aridi, Akram Chehayeb, and Wael Abou Faour, all Druze). However, after the March 8 Alliance regained power in 2011, the PSP positioned itself in the political centre, and gave allegiance to the new government. Under the banner of the Democratic Gathering bloc, had three ministers (Alaaeddine Terro, Sunni, plus Aridi and Faour) in the 2011 Second Cabinet of Najib Mikati.

In late January 2011, Jumblatt declared not to support the disarming of Hezbollah. In 2013, it endorsed the 15 March alliance-led Cabinet of Tammam Salam (it had two ministers in this government, Faour and Akram Chehayeb). By 2015, the PLP was allied with the Future Movement and it had two ministers (Marwan Hamadeh and Ayman Shkeir) in the 2016 Second Cabinet of Saad Hariri, led by the Future Movement and two ministers again (Chehayeb and Faour) in the 2019 Third Cabinet of Saad Hariri.

With the onset of the Syrian civil war in 2011, Jumblatt and the PSP clearly showed their support for the Syrian opposition, and urged the Syrian Druze community to stand against the Assad government, and join the rebels.

At the ceremony marking the 40th anniversary of the killing of Kamal Jumblatt in Moukhtara on 19 February 2017, Walid Jumblatt symbolically gave his keffiyeh to his son Taymour Jumblatt, symbolically marking the generational shift in the party leadership. That year, Jumblatt again refrained from saying Hezbollah should be disarmed. In the 2018 Lebanese general election, the Democratic Gathering bloc, the PSP's parliamentary platform, fielded 10 candidates across the country. For the first time since 1992, Walid Jumblatt did not stand as a candidate, with Taymour taking over as the party leader. The party fielded candidates for 3 out of 4 Druze seats in Mount Lebanon IV, keeping with the tradition of leaving a seat uncontested to help Lebanese Democratic Party chief Talal Arslan get elected. PSP joined joint lists with the Future Movement in Beirut II, Bekaa II and Mount Lebanon IV, and with Lebanese Forces in Mount Lebanon III and Mount Lebanon IV. It dropped to just nine seats in the 2018 election. The party served in the opposition to the short-lived 2019 Cabinet of Hassan Diab, returning to power as part of the Third Cabinet of Najib Mikati in 2021, with just one minister, Abbas Halabi.

In late May 2023, Walid Jumblatt declared his resignation as leader of the Progressive Socialist Party after a 46-year tenure. Around 2,000 supporters gathered in Ain Zhalta, a Druze town in the Chouf mountains, where members of the Progressive Socialist Party named political heir, Taymour Jumblatt, as their new leader. Taymour was the sole contender.

title: Progressive Socialist Party