To be optimistic, in life, there is much to gain.
She must have been optimistic for example, Rosa Parks, when 60 years ago she denied her seat on the bus to a white man, because she believed that racial segregation towards African Americans would soon come to an end. Just as optimistic as the Welsh activist Siân James, when he decided to support the LGSM events that took place during the London Pride in 1985. And so I must have been optimistic too in my own little and nerdy dimension when, still traumatized by the first episode of Supergirl, I was all for the upcoming series on Jessica Jones. Specifically, I was hoping that sooner or later, even women with superpowers would be able to enjoy a worthy live-action adaptation on the screen.
If you are still unaware of the problem that surrounds superheroes, here is a list of sadly true audiovisual products: Supergirl (1984), Barb Wire (1996), Witchblade (2000), Catwoman (2004), Elektra (2005).
Artistic massacre. This flop simply led to the audience thinking that the superheroes genre is exclusive to heterosexual males (see the difference between the “straight” and the 2005 toned-down Constantine) and Caucasians, when comics at the time were already one step ahead: to stay on the Marvel theme, one simply has to talk about Northstar – first homosexual superhero created in 1979 – or the various Black Panther and Luke Cage, who winked at the then emerging movement of the Black Panthers. Going back to the previously mentioned flops, the thesis most commonly used to justify them, can be summarized in one sentence: “girls are not interested in superheroes”. Well, the vision of “Jessica Jones” completely denies this thesis, to therefore rewrite a much simpler concept: girls are not interested in superheroes; people are interested in good stories.
The context: in the spring of 2015, Netflix released the first season of “Daredevil”, 13 episodes with which the so-called Marvel Cinematic Universe tried to raise the bar of their qualitative television products after the previous “Agents of Shield” and, by us already reviewed, “Agent Carter”. This November, Netflix tries again coming back to the world (or rather, district) of the lucky “Daredevil” and devoting an entire series to Jessica Jones, the heroine of the recent Hell’s Kitchen – and by “recent” I mean created after 2000, date beyond which the elderly like myself have stopped reading about characters in tights because of something unspecified and never actually achieved called “maturity”.
“Jessica Jones” is a product of a superhero matrix but that, like the comic, is contaminated with the noir (it’s not a coincidence that the creator of the character is a specialist of the genre, the caliph Brian Michael Bendis by whom I read some of the best Spawn stories) and with other suggestions from the most-watched series of the moment.
First of all, I would like to specify that, since the aim of this article is to make you want to watch the series, I will try from now on to avoid any spoilers.
The story follows the adventures of Jessica Jones, detective of Alias Investigations. We immediately know that this woman has superpowers that allow her to have superhuman strength and jump so high she can almost fly (fun fact: a bit like the very first Superman by Siegel and Shuster), but also that for unknown reasons she refused to stick to the unwritten protocol stating that for great powers there must be great responsibilities: Jessica however didn’t choose, as most of her “colleagues”, to use these powers to help others. The already turbulent daily life of the protagonist is further upset by the arrival in the city (a New York honestly represented by a dirty sea port that it actually is) of an old nemesis of hers called Kilgrave. About Kilgrave we immediately know three things: she doesn’t have good intentions; she has the power to make people do what she wants; she has already used this power in the past on Jessica, causing a number of traumas which, at the beginning of the story, the protagonist is trying to unsuccessfully recover.
Having said this, the series unfolds with a highly linear narrative mode that renounces almost completely to the classic “subplots” and that makes it more like a long film that describes the evolution of the relationship between Jessica and her nemesis.
I will briefly open a parenthesis on Kilgrave, even though it would deserve a separate article for several reasons that would make me go off topic: Kilgrave is interpreted by David Tennant, in my opinion the best villain of the Marvel Cinematic Universe along with Wilson Fisk of D’Onofrio; I found out I had at home the comic where she first appeared, an old “Daredevil” of 1964, just after having finished binge watching (I realise that this information is less important, but I really wanted to tell you).
But returning to the series, here are three reasons why I believe “Jessica Jones” is a product that takes stereotypes and crumbles them with super strength:
1. It builds a sincere empathy for the protagonist
To highlight the first interesting point, I’ll cite the critic Aldo Fresia from the Italian cinematographic podcast “Ricciotto”: what he tells us is, in a really extreme summary, a history of stalking. Now, I hope that all who have a conscience consider staling something reprehensible, but it’s clear that all those who have not experienced it will not understand the deep malaise that being a victim of these situations can result in (I for example, a middle range male, am part of this group). In this case the series is extremely effective in making the audience empathise with the victims of the criminal – first with the protagonist – and does so without resorting to gimmicks that less skilled authors use when addressing issues of this kind, such as:
blackmailing or compassionate procedures (see any “serious film gone wrong”);
crude images as an end in themselves and complacent (see the series “rape and revenge”);
paternalistic/pedagogic approach (see “Rai – Radiotelevisione Italiana”).
The series does, however, tell the story really well and makes the audience literally feel the discomfort of a protagonist who never does anything to seem nice, but with whom the audience irremediably sides with because what she lived and is living is deeply unfair and disturbing.
2. It doesn’t trivialize the female characters
The series clearly attracts women, starting with the show runner Melissa Rosenberg (screenwriter for Dexter as well), moving onto the protagonist, ending with other major actors such as the childhood friend Trish Walker or the unscrupulous lawyer Jeri Hogarth (who in the comics is a male character). The series is directed to women, but it doesn’t state it and doesn’t want to be simply linked to that, and doesn’t want to become one of those products that only talk about women to women. The authors leave the audience to define the psychology of the characters and to determine what they are and what they do, allowing the audience to then have a panorama of varied personalities, whose genre or sexual orientation are to be revealed only as the story goes on. For example (I repeat: NO SPOILERS), the fact that Hogarth is a lesbian is not a key element for the development of the story or for the definition of the character, but it’s more important the fact that there is a wedding (in this case, a contract with another woman) and that she is looking for a way to divorce.
There is then an intelligent way to deal with the characters that doesn’t resort to the stereotypes of mainstream narrative: there is no “strong woman”, but a person who comes to terms with her own demons and tries to do the right thing; there is no ancestral dichotomy of “mother vs. whore”: the protagonists are presented as independent women, without the need to portray a man by their side to define their role in the world; the romantic storyline, when they are included, have no redeeming value; finally, we see a representation of women at ease with their sexuality without being hyper-sexualised: the authors tell us that Jessica can easily go to bed with whoever she wants if she wants, without the need to dress her in high heels and a latex red miniskirt.
3. It reinterprets the conflict between good and evil
Those who follow the superhero genre know how the path that leads the ordinary person to become a hero or heroine has a very tightly defined grammar:
A) I acquire the powers;
B) I use them to do good,
Between point A and point B, the authors over the years have built a number of variations on the theme, with the intent to characterize differently the characters: there are those who can jump automatically (like the first heroes of the Golden Age), those who do it reluctantly and find it painful (with the advent of the so-called anti-heroes), but generally we know that you can not escape from the necessity of the starting point and the end point.
Not even Jessica Jones basically escapes from this assumption, although her path – far more tortuous – appears as a relatively fresh and original reinterpretation of the figure of the super heroine, at least as we have seen so far on screen: we know that at some point in her life she acquired some powers, but they don’t tell us neither how, nor exactly when she began using them. It seems that she did try at one point (as seen in a flashback that shows an awkward blue and white costume that hints at the one that is actually worn by Jessica in the comics), but that her attempt was not successful and therefore she had given up.
The fact that throughout the series Jones ends up transforming into a super heroine is therefore not dictated by a conscious decision, but more by the intrinsic moral impossibility of her character to do any differently. To then increase the complexity of the conflict between good and evil, there is never in the events told by the series the idea that good has to be pursued, but rather many choices from which to choose whose result is just as unknown to the characters as it is to the audience: therefore choosing what one thinks is right doesn’t necessarily mean that one has made the best decision, albeit in good faith.
To sum up, the greatest value I’ve found in “Jessica Jones” is its ability to reinterpret a well-known genre – that of “the superheroes” – and at the same time establish a new qualitative canon for the representation of the female characters within that same genre.
An adaptation that, as I said at the beginning, has met my optimistic expectations, and has also faced a great response from the audience and the critics.
I think that cultural products, and to a greater extend those for entertainment, can play a key role in the promotion of social emancipation more than any teaching “from above” can do: this is because they allow the audience to empathize with the characters, getting to know them as people who have lived through something and not even the most heinous stereotype can debase.
Compared to the issue of representation of women one can see in recent years some serious progress, although in many major productions there is still a latent sexism that an addicted audience often can’t recognize. Hence here is my warm invitation to always demand for intelligence and inclusiveness from the series we enjoy the most, and not to think that certain discriminating representations are normal because “we have always done so”. Because if no one had ever bothered to question tradition and update it based on society’s progress – or based on simply the truth of the facts – today we would still have western movies where Indians are the bad guys.
So here I am asking you: what are you waiting for to watch Jessica Jones?
