From ’60s TV to ’90s pop icons, Lori Goldstein, author of Becoming Jinn, looks at misrepresentation of the mystical wish-givers.
15 Portrayals that Give Jinn a Bad Name by Lori Goldstein
It all started with Anne Rice. And by all I mean my fascination with vampires. The Vampire Lestat sucked me in and primed me to dig my teeth into everything from The Lost Boys to Buffy the Vampire Slayer to my current ob-se-ssion, The Vampire Diaries. My devouring of the entire Stephen King catalog as a kid expanded my affinity for vamps to all things supernatural and paranormal.
It’s no mystery, then, why my book, Becoming Jinn, is a contemporary fantasy.
The magic is grounded in the world we live in. It’s squarely in the vein of what those authors I loved reading and the TV shows and movies I loved watching were masters at: mixing paranormal or supernatural elements into the modern world. Contemporary fantasies are the best kind of “what-if” because you can read and think “Maybe, just maybe this could really happen.”
Perhaps unlike epic fantasy, contemporary fantasies also allow for humor — something I think both Buffy and The Vampire Diaries excel at and that I aspire to make core to my books. While there’s loss and longing and deeper themes about what it means to be a part of a family and to live up to expectations and responsibilities, Becoming Jinn explores it all, while still hoping to make readers do a little LOL now and again.
The Jinn in my book are mostly “good Jinn.” But as my love of this genre has shown me, that’s a bit of an anomaly. Here are the top 15 portrayals in TV and film that give Jinn a bad name.
(And if you’re a Jersey girl like me, you’re reading this title with Bon Jovi’s wa-oo wa-oo, wa-oo playing in your head.)
1. ‘I Dream of Jeannie’
Our 1960s iconic genie falls in love at first sight with a dude whose sole purpose in life seems to be to stop her from using her magical powers. Ahem. She should have blinked and nodded her way out of there in season one.
2. ‘Clash of the Titans’
There were no Jinn in the 1987 original. If only the same could be said of this 2010 dreadful remake that sees the Jinn rebuilding themselves out of wood, riding scorpions, and blowing themselves up to defeat the enemy. #NotMyJinn
3. ‘Wishmaster’
This horror film makes run-of-the-mill evil villains out of the Jinn who basically want to unleash their evilness into the world and just be evil. Truly evil.
4. ‘X-Files’
In the 2000 episode “Je Souhaite,” a genie by the name of Jen is so jaded, bitter, and flippant that the wishes she grants tend to kill her human masters.
5. ‘Charmed’
Let’s just skip the one where Phoebe turns into Jinny the genie, blue harem pants, bra top, flowing scarf and all, and talk about how the genie sent by a warlock to trick the Charmed girls is the worst representation of the literal genie, where the exact wording of the wish is obeyed but the wish maker doesn’t get what they wanted: a wish for someone to “move on” makes that person age prematurely, etc. These genies ruin it for all Jinn, literally.
6. ‘Supernatural’
On several occasions, Dean and Sam have met with creatures who give Jinn a bad name: ones that feed on human blood, feed on human fear, and poison humans with their touch. Time for some Jinn rebranding right here.
7. ‘Once Upon a Time’
The Genie of Agrabah’s affections for the Evil Queen led to him being trapped in her magic mirror before the curse and trapped as her minion in Storybrooke, after the curse. All the magic one could want and the poor dude can’t win in either place.
8. ‘True Blood’
In retaliation for the killing of innocents during the war, in season 5, a Jinn in the form of an Ifrit, attacks, burning, smothering, and taunting, as evil Ifrit will do.
9. ‘The Smurfs’
Gourdy, the genie, lives inside a gourd. Loyal but magically inept. And yes, I said “lives in a gourd.”
10. ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’
Though called “vengeance demons,” this all-female species has the power to grant wishes, commonly done in the literal sense, as they punish those who wronged victims: a Jinn by any other name . . .
11. ‘Kazaam’
In this 1996 movie, Shaquille O’Neal plays a rapping genie who lives in a boombox. Nuff said.
12. ‘Pee-wee’s Playhouse’
Jambi the Genie: a disembodied blue head wearing a red turban that appears in a gilded box whenever Pee-wee or anyone else says a sentence with the word “wish” in it. His grating refrain of “Mekka Lekka Hi Mekka Hiney Ho!” is an insult to all Jinn everywhere.
13. ‘Aladdin’
Blue. The shape-shifting sidekick made a generation believe all genies were blue. And as hilarious as the late Robin Williams.
14. ‘The Return of Jafar’
Still blue. Less powers. Come. On.
15. Christina Aguilera
“Genie in a Bottle,” the song that rubs all Jinn the wrong way.
Becoming Jinn by Lori Goldstein is available tomorrow from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and your local independent bookstore.
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