Jupiter Ascending gets smart about fairytales

You might have heard a lot of noise about this movie Jupiter Ascending. You might have heard it's awful, it's poorly written, it's very very pretty, it's awful (but in the fun way). There's a common strain here. Because this movie is openly glittery, absurd, fantastic, and ridiculous, because it embraces its tropes and archetypes so wholeheartedly, nobody seems to take it very seriously.

So let's try taking it seriously.

I mean what the heck, right?

A few critics have called Jupiter Ascending a fairytale, a Cinderella in space. They're half right - it's a fairytale, but it's not Cinderella. Well, not entirely. It's also Tam Lin.

For people who didn't grow up around a bunch of Celtic folklore nerds like I did, Tam Lin is the classic tale of a lord's daughter who wanders into the Forbidden Wood (because seriously has anyone ever done literally anything other than wander into that place?) There she meets hunky knight Tam Lin, sleeps with him, goes home, finds out she's pregnant, goes back, finds out he lives there because he was enthralled by fairies an unspecified number of years ago, and finds out ADDITIONALLY that the fairy queen plans to kill him in about a month. One month later she steps out to meet him and proceeds to save his life by yanking him off a horse and wrestling him to the ground as he transforms into all manner of wriggling wildlife. She then hauls off  takes home her young shirtless nubile prize noble knight and marries him. The end!

Make no mistake - Jupiter Ascending is a fairytale. Even though they're technically human the Abrasax are fairies, and even though he's a shirtless doggie on SPACE ROLLER SKATES Caine is Tam Lin. That's important, because in fairytales - the old fairytales - fairies are monsters in their just as vicious and vampires and werewolves. And the Wachowskis understand them better than almost any creator I've seen barring Terry Pratchett (may he rest in peace).

At the core, every monster we imagine up represents something dark in ourselves. Vampires represent repressed desire. Werewolves represent repressed fury. And fairies...fairies represent privilege.

As beings of privilege, fairies are Better Than You, and they'll do anything to convince you of that - trick and tempt you, bedazzle and beguile you - because if they can convince that your place is at their heel, they've won. You're theirs.

But here's the secret. Fairies can't create. They can't build, they can't craft, they can't cook or weave or write. All they can do is consume, so they build a world of glamour to convince others to feed their hunger. That glamour is a lie of course, but it's a lie strong enough to build empires on.

Privilege is the fairies' power, but it's also their weakness, because they're bound to follow its rules. They have to behave gracefully and glamorously, or they lose their grace and their glamour. And once you can see beyond all that glitz and glamour and power...they're really not that impressive. You don't have to serve them anymore.

You're free.

Let's take a look at that word. Glamour. It's no coincidence that we use it, a word once used for the magic of lies, to describe the rich and powerful in our own society. Much as the fairies shape beauty and lies, our elites use their power and their privilege to shape the definition of beauty to their own ends. We see them in magazines and advertisements in all their glory, and we want to be like that - and we can. For just a small monetary fee right now, and a larger fee over time in the form our diminishing self-worth.

It's a glamour more real than any fairy could cast.

But it's still just a lie.