The DU Lounge
Related: Culture Forums, Support Forums“Jessica Jones”: Marvel’s newest show makes surviving trauma a superpower
Marvels Jessica Jones, the second Marvel Studios property to be led by a female character, is best described by explaining what it is not. Its a comic-book show, but its not your average comic-book show. It stars a superhero, but shes not your average superhero. And its about good guys beating up bad guys, but not in the classic caped-crusader airborne battle. Jessica Jones is instead a story of one superhero in a hostile worlda single characters slice in what is otherwise a sprawling, Technicolor supernatural universe. Even in the original comics the show is based on, Jessica Jones is defined by her difference from the rest of Marvels superheroes. She left the Avengers to be a private eye, starting her own detective agency, Alias Investigations. It helps that she can break padlocks with one hand, but her greatest asset isnt super-strength, its her tenacity. And she doesnt have a superhero alterego; if anything, she prefers the shadows to the limelight.
This is why, if youre a newcomer to comic books, or even just not that interested in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Jessica Jones, now available on Netflix, could still be for you. Aside from the fact that a few people in the story have extraordinary abilities, there are no costumes, no aliens and no easy answers. Jessica (Krysten Ritter, in the show) doesnt run around and save the day for other people; she works cases while trying to untangle the mess that is her own life. Much like Veronica Mars, that other cult-favorite noir-ish private eye, Jessica is carrying around a central, unspoken mystery, a horrible trauma that she is barely able to live with. The story of the first season of Jessica Jones is that the perpetrator of the traumaa mind-controlling psychopath named Kilgrave (David Tennant)is looking for Jessica, and has just finally found her again.
The show is not, unfortunately, perfect. Ritter is perfect, Tennant is perfect, and the bones of the storywhich come from the comics creators, Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Gaydosare still completely chilling. Kilgrave made Jessica his puppet for a whole month, making her his ideal and subservient romantic partner. The word rape is not used until Episode 8, but it is clear, from the start, that Jessica is a trauma survivor. She copes with alcohol and insomnia; no one gets close to her, and she doesnt get too close to anyone. The superpowers make the story bigger, broader and more tangibleKilgrave doesnt just bully people to doing what he wants, he gets into their heads and makes it sobut the story is very human, just the same. Jessica Jones is that rare genre story that uses the supernatural not to obfuscate, but instead to better illustrate a human story. And as a result, its an extraordinary meditation on violence perpetuated by men against women, whether that is rape, stalking, harassment or abuse. Kilgrave dabbles in all of them, and Tennants mad-happy performance conveys both the charisma and appeal of the abuser and his frightening, sudden ability to shift to violence.
Most horrifyingly, Kilgraves power is impossible to prove to the outside world. The wounds he causes are technically self-inflictedin one of his most horrible acts, he orders two attendants to rip the skin off of each others faces if he doesnt come back in two hours. Jessica spends most of the season trying not to stop Kilgrave but to prove that he is responsible; one of the most awful recurring themes of Jessica Jones is how unreliable the huddled masses are. The very people Jessica is trying to save dont believe her, and then quickly fall under Kilgraves spell. Jessicas life becomes a struggle to get anyone to believe that she was rapedall too familiarwhile her abuser somehow charms everyone around her into smiling acquiescence. And recovering from the nightmares, addiction and isolation of post-traumatic stress, in Jessica Jones, is not an internal struggle, but a car-tossing, body-slamming conflict. Kilgrave alternates between seductive and deadly, and in his quest to get Jessica willingly back to his sidelike most rapists, he denies having actually raped her, insisting she was into it on some levelhe tries to worm his way under her skin in other ways, creating horrible dioramas for her to walk into and deal with. At one point, he reconstructs her childhood home; at another, he walks her into a restaurant where half the occupants have nooses around their necks. Its a funhouse of horror; which is to say, it is the life of a trauma survivor.
http://www.salon.com/2015/11/22/jessica_jones_marvels_newest_show_makes_surviving_trauma_a_superpower/
Xyzse
(8,217 posts)I have gotten up to Episode 6 so far.
I watched more than I thought this weekend.
That is a testament on how well the show was made as I haven't been up for viewing shows lately at all, even if I am a notorious insomniac.