Willfully Misinterpreting Jessica Jones

Due to the possibility of spoilers, our dear editor is sitting this one out. Be warned. 

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the comic series Alias, and it's upcoming adaptation to visual Jessica Jones. Jessica Jones is a risky proposition for Marvel Studios, not because of its female lead, but because of its subject matter. There's some seriously mature ideas being explored, both on the show and in the original books, and it's down to the finesse of the showrunners to handle those ideas appropriately. So, did they?

Did they ever not!

Jessica Jones is a highly, deeply problematic adaptation of a comic book that featured an almost non-existent female character in a male-dominated medium. Before Jessica Jones, there was no female comic book characters that didn't exist solely to serve as eye candy for a presumed white male audience. Problematic depictions of female characters were on every page of comics, with unrealistic breast sizes and vapid dialogue, constantly put in peril for the male protagonists to rescue. Then along came enlightened male author Brian Michael Bendis and gave us Alias, in which a working woman and survivor of trauma co-opted a traditionally male role as private investigator and did the job while dressing halal-protecting herself from the male gaze by dressing sensibly.

Manspreading! And this isn't even the worst! 

The series, however, is a trainwreck of harmful tropes, stereotypes, and dangerous ideas. Jessica herself, to start with, is nothing more than a Ms Male Character, with an abusive backstory and lack of agency being the driving force of the series. Jessica is defined by her trauma, unable to perform basic tasks like riding the subway without being visited by the mental ghost of her abuser, while at the same time using violence to solve her problems. Anything from a client getting physical with her to her alarm going off too early can be solved simply by smashing something. Jessica reeks of toxic masculinity, from her childhood scenes of being a tomboy 'not like other girls' to her modern habit of manspreading. The cinematography doesn't do her any favours, either, with the camera replicating the male gaze by lingering on her otherwise-sensibly dressed rear end longingly and thus invalidating her conservative wardrobe choices, and showing us lots of flashes of her in intimate positions in her scenes with Luke Cage.

MALE GAZE!

The series takes a dim view of minority characters as well. The protagonist and antagonist are, of course, white, but one of the main characters is a black man who is a junkie. There's only one Hispanic person in all of Hell's Kitchen, apparently, and she's a drug dealer. There are a whopping three lesbian characters, but one of them is an unfaithful spouse, the other the mistress of said spouse, and the last is cruel and vindictive in return. With so few LGBT characters, it's harmful to show a negative depiction like this, leading only to the stereotype of the promiscuous gay character. And when a support group is set up to help victims of the white male villain, Jessica steadfastly refuses to participate, painting her as someone who would rather keep her victimhood instead of seek help.

And finally, there's a heavy theme of domestic abuse in this show, which is reinforced by the relationship between Trish “Patsy” Walker and Officer Simpson. While 'allegedly' under Killgrave's control, he attacks her and tries to murder her, and mere days later he returns to apologize, irresponsibly providing her with a dangerous firearm, and she rewards him with sex. In fact, the series seems to simply revel in physically abusing its female characters. I have never seen such a misog

-sounds of a struggle-

Ok, I'm done with that part. Jessica Jones was really quite good, wasn't it? For anyone that's ever been in a miserably bad relationship, it'll be really hard but sort of cathartic to watch. The casting of Luke Cage was spot-on brilliant. I was a bit on the fence about Krysten Ritter having only ever seen her in Breaking Bad and a sort of terrible sitcom, but she really delivered here. David Tennant was wonderfully sinister. Much like other MCU properties, I feel it did a really great job capturing the spirit of the source material while telling a new story, and I sincerely hope there's a series 2, providing everyone's not so entirely exhausted from making the show to do it. It was certainly tiring, in a good way, to watch it.

I would also like to say that yes, I have read Anita Sarkeesian's take on the show. I tried not to replicate any of her ideas here, as I've had this one brewing for a while but scheduling conflicts and a social media flood of alternating anti-Muslim and anti-gun propaganda sent me into such a tizzy that I had to focus my efforts elsewhere for a short time. Next week I'll be analyzing a Huffington Post piece, tentatively, and outlining the idea of “not even wrong.”  

Jessica Jones: Who We Are and Who We Want to Be

We're a little over a week from Netflix's next Marvel Cinematic Universe outing as of today, and I'm more than a little excited. After how well Daredevil was done, I'm really looking forward to this. The reasons, though, are more than superficial this time.

I love the MCU. It's very flashy and exciting and fun, and while Daredevil was a departure from that, it still retained the overall quality and love of the source material that previous adaptations simply lacked

Jessica Jones looks to take the grim-dark of Daredevil and completely redefine it.



But there's a more personal slant to this, too. I've mentioned in the past how Barbara Gordon, aka Oracle and Batgirl, is a personal hero of mine: someone I look up to and semi-jokingly refer to as “waifu.”

Barbara Gordon is a character that refuses to stay down. She's intelligent, athletic, and driven. Seeing the Batman in action first-hand, she took that inspiration and made her own hero out of it, becoming a valuable member of the Bat-family. Life then proceeded to hit her, very very hard, when Joker shot her through the spine and paralyzed her, but she did not stay down. She refocused her skills from the physical to the mental, using her brains and wit and technical prowess to become Oracle, who ended up being an even bigger and more powerful asset of the DC Universe than Batgirl was. And when the DCU was rebooted years later and she was back on her feet as Batgirl, she refused to back down, even when terrified, when having to face off against the Joker again. In short, Barbara Gordon is everyone I wish I was.



Jessica Jones... is not. Jones was one of the first super-heroes of the modern age, but she was an unknown. A jobber. When you think of heroes, you think of Captain America, Ms Marvel, Iron Man, Scarlet Witch maybe, but not Jewel. And during one of her adventures, she faced a very evil man who could be very, very persuasive. He did horrible things to her and in front of her, and when she was finally free of him, she was very damaged. Life hit her, very very hard, and she did not get back up so readily. In fact, she stayed down for a very, very long time. 

I can't help but identify. Certainly not to the same extent -- I was never a superhero -- but that's how these stories work. They're exaggerations of real life, exaggerated people. I met a woman who was very persuasive and did horrible things to and around me. I was hit by life, very very hard, and I did not get up for a very long time. Even now I feel like I've maybe reached a sitting position, but am not entirely sure I'd trust my own two feet to stand on. Like Jones, my life revolved around what I could do to keep going long enough to reach my next drink. That part of my life is, more or less, behind me now, but I'm glad to see that a character that can't quite handle tragedy as well as the A-list of Marvel will be part of that world. It makes me feel a little more like I'm part of my own world still. In short, Jessica Jones is everything that I am, or at least was.

Much like Daredevil, I'll be providing my thoughts on Jessica Jones after I've seen all of the episodes. Until then, I recommend everyone at least give the show a chance. It's got a lot of positive hype behind it, but it's certainly not going to be quite as upbeat as an Iron Man film might be.  This will be a much more personal and painful story, and may provide a bit of catharsis to anyone who has been through something similar, if not on a smaller scale.