Je Souhaite

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Je Souhaite (French for "I Wish") is a seventh season episode of The X-Files.

The plot revolves around the discovery of a Djinn named Jenn by a worker at a storage facility, where she is found wrapped up in an Oriental rug. While seemingly a benign young woman, her rescuer soon learns that dealing with a Djinn has serious consequences when wishes are made with less than specific description.

For example, her rescuer, wishing that his employer would just shut up, ends with the employer losing his mouth. This man eventually takes his case to the FBI, which involves the series' protagonists, Mulder and Scully.

It does not take them long to track a series of poorly made wishes to the djinn, and several of her less-than-innocent victims. The story moves toward a climax when Mulder gains control of the djinn, and begins to realize the consequences of his wishes, and must find a way out of his predicament without hurting himself or anyone else.

[edit] Further Background

A great deal of the plot parallels other stories regarding djinn (or genies) in literature and other fiction, but perhaps the closest recent parallel can be found in The Twilight Zone episode The Man in the Bottle, which recounts a shop owner discovering a lamp with a genie in it, and learns that making consequence-free wishes is very difficult.

The French title of this episode references Jenn becoming a djinn as a young woman in medieval France. She is transformed by a Moorish man (actually a djinn himself) after she wishes for power and a long life. This is a story she recounts to Mulder after she comes into his service.

The most famous portrayal of a genie in more recent media was the animated genie in the Disney film Aladdin. The genie in that film lists "raising the dead" as a wish he would rather not grant, stating that to do so would result in a zombie-like creature. The djinn in this episode also lightly warns against this, but ultimately grants such a wish, with the consequences promised by Disney's genie.

[edit] External Links

• Space.com review

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