ABSTRACT
Del Toro's own explanation for his vision likely accounts for the critical inclination to interpret his use of phantasmagoria in terms of fascism. The opening lines of Pan's Labyrinth are narrated by a disembodied voice. The narration, which begins just as the blood recedes back into Ofelia's nose, situates within a graveyard, the "underworld," a place where neither "lies" nor "sadness" exists, where a king awaits the return of his daughter, Princess Moanna, who escaped long ago. The causality intrinsic to the sequence of acts, Carmen's prohibitions against reading fairy tales, her subsequent pregnancy-induced nausea, and Ofelia's fantasy production, warrant closer inspection. The film's unambiguous attention to the particles of floating pollen in the scene emphasizes Carmen's fecundity; because her queasiness obstructs the flow of the trip, it implies that something about her pregnancy relates to Ofelia's fantasy production.
