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Stories always have a reason for being, but why does the 1997 film Wishmaster exist? It’s a really silly horror film and people like silly horror films, but what is the moral of the story? What does Wishmaster say about us as human beings? You might be laughing at me, but much like fairy tales, the horror genre exists to be a sort of playground for human psychology. The themes, characters archetypes, and outcomes of these films reflect a primal understanding of the moral zeitgeist. Watch Cabin In The Woods for a more entertaining explanation of this.

So, what I’m really asking is why are there so many terrifying tales that teach us to be careful what we wish for?

No one’s life is perfect. (Even Beyoncé had that trouble with her sister in the elevator last year.) So, naturally, it’s human nature to want to change our situation for the better. Why is that something we should be cautioned against? Because we don’t value what we have, or is there some kind of issue of class warfare at play here. These stories all warn us that if we wish for things to be better, we will suffer grave consequences. If we aspire to more, we will fail. If we seek to upend the status quo, everything good will go rotten.

It might be a leap, but it feels like propaganda to keep the disenfranchised down.

Of course, “genie” stories weren’t always cautionary. Ever since Scheherazade first told the tale of Aladdin and his lamp* (and that story “The Fisherman and the Jinni”) in One Thousand and One Nights, genies were powerful beings associated with magic, wish-fulfillment, and moral ambiguity. One Thousand and One Nights really introduced the idea that genies grant wishes, but often the plucky lower-class heroes of these tales used kindness, bravery, and cunning to evade the genie’s trickery and receive good fortune. They weren’t stories that told us not to make wishes; they were stories that warned us to be wary of who was promising to grant them.

Then, W. W. Jacobs wrote “The Monkey’s Paw.” The classic short story focuses on a family that comes across an enchanted monkey’s paw that grants three wishes. Each of these turns into a cruel and tragic joke. From there, a new trope was born that scared us into being wary of wishing. And yes, Wishmaster uses this idea to great — well, hilariously bad — effect.

You could argue that in Wishmaster, most of the villain’s victims are affluent people with very selfish wishes, so it really has nothing to do with class warfare, but “The Monkey’s Paw” was written by an Englishman in 1902. Within 20 years, there would be Civil War in Ireland, the Russian aristocracy would fall, and socialist ideas would sweep the world. If anything, Wishmaster is adapting a tradition for a modern context. Perhaps “The Monkey’s Paw” was stealthily suggesting that people should stick to their class roles, but modern day takes on this seem more interested in pointing out how greed is dangerous. The wishes in Wishmaster are born out of vanity and avaricious fantasy. [Watch Wishmaster now before it leaves Netflix on February 1st]

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJgl3uoxXc0]

*Technically speaking, the story of Aladdin didn’t appear in the original Arabic versions of One Thousand and One Nights, but the European adaptations added — and you know what? I’m only writing this because my boss brought up Wishmaster and I jokingly asked if these stories existed to suppress class warfare, and then I learned that you should be careful what you say about Wishmaster because you might have to write a whole blog post about your silly rhetorical question. Fie on you, Wishmaster!

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[Photos: Everett Collection]