By Abby Lass
Managing Editor of Arts
It’s not difficult to see why heroes have managed to infiltrate nearly every media platform available over the past few years. The world is a scary place, and in these dark days it’s comforting to see a muscular male in tight pants cracking wise and taking names.
After a while, though, this patriotic pandering gives way to cynicism and boredom. The same threats — be it terrorists, robots, aliens, or our own need for security — loom for nearly two hours, then are predictably beaten back by the reluctantly assembled team of heroes. We’re overloaded with one-liners and explosions and exhaustive fight sequences that seem to involve teammates fighting teammates more often than teammates fighting the villain. After eye-roll inducing productions like The Avengers: Age of Ultron and the Netflix series Daredevil, it’s not hard to guess why people may be losing faith in the Marvel brand.
Now enter Jessica Jones.
This series, available on Netflix, is a complete shift from anything Marvel has given us in the past. Instead of nuclear attacks, we get panic attacks. We ditch watching entire cities implode to witness the horror in a person’s eyes when they realize they’ve lost control. Instead of an idealistic man with rippling muscles fighting to destroy a global threat, we are given a somewhat scrawny woman suffering from PTSD and alcoholism who wants nothing more than to claw her way out of the guilt and shame that has haunted her all her life.
When the show opens, it has been over a year since Jessica Jones (played exquisitely by Krysten Ritter) was able to escape from the clutches of the sociopathic Kilgrave (a riveting, multi-dimensional, and absolutely abhorrent David Tennant), but not before she participated in the unforgivable at his command — Kilgrave’s “ability”, as it is called in the show, is to compel people to do whatever he tells them. It has been 18 months of emotional trauma, binge drinking and questionably moral PI work, and Jessica still cannot move forward with her life.
Not until she’s given a chance to obliterate the man who nearly destroyed her, that is.
Jessica’s imperfections are not unique in the Marvel universe; some of the movies’ most beloved characters are the ones that are just a little bit broken. What sets her apart from the Tony Starks and Scott Langs of the world, though, is that half of the battles she is fighting are internal. We were given a taste of what PTSD looks like in the third Iron Man film, but Jessica Jones is not pulling any punches, literally and metaphorically.
In the very first episode of the series, we witness Jessica huddled on the floor of her apartment, her knees tucked up to her chest and her entire body shaking as she hyperventilates, unable to stop the same horrible thoughts from running through her head over and over again. It’s not pretty and it’s not heroic, but it’s a situation almost anyone with anxiety can relate to. Getting to watch Jessica stand up and dust herself off after one of these attacks, not pretending to be okay yet not even slightly deterred from her plans, will inspire me more than any act of chivalry or justice in any of the previous Marvel films every single time.
While Jessica Jones differs from other Marvel pieces in its lack of extended fight scenes (don’t worry, there’s still plenty of physical violence) and CGI, the most welcome change is the abundance of strong women that populate this show.
From Jessica’s resilience, to her best friend Trish’s (Rachael Taylor) refusal to let her ex-sergeant semi-boyfriend call the shots, to businesswoman Hogarth’s (Carrie-Anne Moss) sheer determination to win in every aspect of her life — not to mention the fact that she is an incredibly successful lawyer who is also an out and proud lesbian — this show is the first time in any Marvel production that we get to see women truly leading the pack.
That’s not to say the men of the show are particularly useless, but the majority of them are less dimensional, relatively weak willed, or overly stubborn, even if the majority of them are eye candy. Ah, how the tables have turned.
The one male character that rises above the rest is, of course, Kilgrave. I’ve heard him called “a walking trigger” and for good reason –Tennant’s portrayal of the posh, petulant, lovesick Brit is mesmerizing, but what makes this character so absolutely despicable is the fact that many of us can think of an equivalent in our own lives.
Obviously, most men are not walking around with the ability to command absolute obedience from everyone they speak to. However, the amount of influence men are able to exercise in our society, particularly over someone they’re in a relationship with, is absolutely terrifying. And more often than not, they aren’t aware of it.
Kilgrave is a yearning shell of a man who has been given everything he ever wanted except for a genuine challenge. His perceptions of reality are so warped by his upbringing that he sometimes cannot tell if he is compelling someone to do something or if they actually want to do it. He’s a fiend and a supervillain, of course, but in the end he’s a free spirit, able to act on his darkest impulses in a way that he knows we all sometimes wish we could.
I in no way condone any of his actions, but at the end of the day he, like many other people, simply does not realize the impact they have on others. He is genuinely stunned when Jessica accuses him of raping her because in his mind, he loved her and treated her well. Though aware of his powers, Kilgrave does not truly comprehend the depths that his manipulations can reach, even when he is not commanding her.
We live in a world where some are brought up to believe they are entitled to something, be it a job, a lifestyle or their partner’s body. One in five women and one in 71 men will experience sexual assault at some point in their lives. There is a very real war being waged on people’s rights to feel secure in their own body, and it’s not a war that you’ll see Captain America fighting in any time soon.
What makes Jessica Jones so poignant is that she is not leading the charge against a global superpower or an extraterrestrial threat. She is trapped in a trench, trying not to choke on blood and dirt as everyone around her is being blown to bits or is losing the will to keep fighting. She is not okay and she doesn’t want anything from anyone, but she’s doing the best she can to make it through another day. It’s a fight we can all relate to, a fight that requires unbelievable stamina and one that we won’t win every day — and neither does she.
Jessica Jones is an everyday hero, and that may be just what the world needs.
