Genies in popular culture
Genies or djinns are supernatural creatures from pre-Islamic and Islamic mythology.[1][2][3] They are associated with shapeshifting, possession and madness.[1][2] In later Western popular representation, they became associated with wish-granting[1][3] and often live in magic lamps or bottles.[2][3] They appear in One Thousand and One Nights and its adaptations, among other stories.[1][4] The wish-granting djinns from One Thousand and One Nights, however, are the divs of Persian origin, not the Arabian djinns.[5]
Terminology
Djinn is the original term. Genie was first used in the 1704 French translation of One Thousand and One Nights by Antoine Galland and is mostly associated with wish-granting djinns. The terms Ifrit and marid typically refer to evil djinns.[1]
History
Among the earliest depictions in fiction are the tales collated in One Thousand and One Nights. Following its translation into European languages in the early 18th century, djinns or genies started appearing in Western literature. These Western portrayals were often influenced by Orientalism. In the 20th century, djinns started appearing in film and television. The 1964 film The Brass Bottle and the 1965–1970 television sitcom I Dream of Jeannie it inspired represented a turning point in genies being portrayed more comedically.[1]
Attributes
Genies have been depicted in different ways depending on time and location.[1] A central trait is that of shapeshifting.[1][2] In Western portrayals in particular, they grant wishes, sometimes corrupting the wishes by interpreting them overly literally.[1][3] They are often depicted as living or being trapped in various types of containers such as lamps, bottles, or jars.[1][2][3] They are variously portrayed as good or evil.[2]
Depictions
Djinns and genies have appeared in diverse genres including comedy, horror, and musicals.
Films adapting or inspired by One Thousand and One Nights, such as the 1940 film The Thief of Bagdad, frequently feature genies.[4] Genies also appear in stories set in the present, including the 1945 film Where Do We Go from Here? where an inept genie repeatedly fails to fulfil wishes, the 1900 novel The Brass Bottle by Thomas Anstey Guthrie and its multiple adaptations, and the 1963 The Twilight Zone episode "I Dream of Genie" where a man wishes to become a genie.[1][3][4] Comedic portrayals of genies, popularized in the 1960s, later appeared in the 1996 film Kazaam where a genie lives in a boombox and the aforementioned 1992 film Aladdin.[1] Malevolent djinns appear in the 1987 film The Outing and several computer games.[1][4] The 1997 film Wishmaster depicts a malevolent djinn and outright rejects the comedic portrayals in I Dream of Jeannie and the 1992 version of Aladdin.[1][7]
Rachel Caine's Weather Warden series that begins with the 2003 novel Ill Wind depicts a human being resurrected as a djinn.[6] In the Bartimaeus Sequence by Jonathan Stroud, beginning with the 2003 novel The Amulet of Samarkand, a djinn has a human apprentice.[6] The 2008 novel The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak portrays two djinns—one good and one evil.[1] In the 2013 science fiction novel HWJN by Ibraheem Abbas and Yasser Bahjatt, djinns reside in a parallel dimension, and one of them has a romantic relationship with a human.[8][9]
See also
References
- ^ ISBN 978-1-4724-0060-4.
- ^ a b c d e f Clute, John (1997). Clute, John; Grant, John (eds.). "Genies". The Encyclopedia of Fantasy. Retrieved 2022-03-26.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-313-32952-4.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-4766-1230-0.
- ISBN 978-1-85958-156-8.
Those acknowledged by the Arabs differed from those of the Persians. The genii of "The Arabian Nights" were the divs of Indian legends adapted by the Persians to their romances.
- ^ OCLC 435778665.
- ISBN 978-0-313-08100-2.
- ^ Ahmad, Muhammad Aurangzeb (2017-06-28). "Sci-Fi and Speculative Fiction in the Muslim Tradition". The Wire. Retrieved 2022-03-31.
- ISBN 978-0-7556-0129-5.