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The highest compliment I can give Jessica Jones, the protagonist of her eponymous Netflix Marvel series, is that she reminds me of Philip Marlowe. She lives in today's New York, not prewar Los Angeles, and she's no big whoop with a metaphor, but she lives out Raymond Chandler's curious combination of cynicism and deep, knee-jerk righteousness in a way that feels natural and relevant. Which is to say, Jessica Jones is a misanthropic private investigator, hard-drinking, ungentle, attuned to venality, played by Krysten Ritter (and her eyebrows) in a state of casual disarray. She disclaims moral responsibility right up till the moment it chokes her, and then throws herself into the middle of things without any idea how to get out again. Where she departs from Marlowe are the key points in her story.
Because unlike Marlowe, her cynicism has an immediate, obvious cause: she's got all the traumatic backstory you could ask for. It's heavy stuff, thankfully exposited rather than shown, and she holds it all at bay like a bear cub scrambling up a tree. She's not the sort to talk about her feelings -- indeed, she mocks the people who do --, but it becomes clear that her line of business is one part confirmation of the worst of human failings to two parts the welcome distancing effect of the camera lens. We open with her dissatisfaction, her short, choppy conversations with a neighbor, a client, her estranged sister/friend, and the pleasure of the series is watching how those relationships improve despite her stated unwillingness to give a shit about them.
I should probably summarize the arc plot at this point, but why. There's a bad dude, he do bad things, blah blah conflict, blah blah stuff being set up for other Marvel series down the road. There are some smaller plots too, that fit within an episode, but honestly, plot is not the reason to watch the series, and episode-by-episode is not the right method. You're really best off marathoning all 13 episodes in big chunks, despite the part where snow-piles turn to cherry blossoms over the course of two hours as time passes in-universe, because the reason to watch the series is the emotional and ethical throughlines of all the characters.
Because every one of them is working through moral reasoning, well or badly, every day: cheating on spouses, browbeating brothers, stumbling zombie-like through addiction, deciding, as Luke Cage does, that being super-powered means a different approach to bar fights. A divorce turns ugly, and you watch as both parties indulge the worst in themselves, almost involuntarily. That's not villainy, not really, or not in the comic-book sense, but it's villainy enough that things eventually get out of hand, with the help of our actual villain, Kilgrave.
As portraits of villainy go, it's... venal. He's a man of amazingly small desires, considering he's got the ability to get anyone to do anything he wants just by saying so. He doesn't even live in his own penthouse, but in other people's, taking over their lives and their decorating choices rather than making his own. And as he exposits his manipulations to Jessica, complete with self-pitying -- and selectively true -- backstory, it becomes clear that his selfish entitlement doesn't even rise to the level of, you know, actual crazy. He's not crazy. He hurts people because he can, because he doesn't care about them, because they accidentally remind him that they're unwilling participants in his games. The narrative demonstrates the power of his voice: he tells you a sob story, and you have no reason to disbelieve it -- till an episode later. He's charming and reasonable, and people go along with the charming and the reasonable, till they find themselves trembling in their own kitchens, witness to what the charm hides. If Kilgrave were grandiose, if he tried to take over the world, or even to have his own skyscraper built out of gold, he would be distant, something unreal and entertaining, a Bad Guy. By making him just a bad person, by making him fit into the real world, he's much more effective, more unsettling, more unpleasant.
And compared to that, Jessica's clumsy, abrupt relationships grow rich: the snippiness she shows her sister Trish underlies their lifetime of commitment to each other. The designated victim, pregnant from rape, pursues an abortion with calm determination. Our zombie addict, Malcolm, blossoms into a person, full of regrets and sorting through the emotions around him. After an awkward beginning, Jessica and Luke stop lying to each other and develop a surprise simpatico. The beat cop who is controlled into trying to kill Trish comes back afterwards to offer clumsy apology, which turns into a spontaneous relationship. The annoying hipster neighbor consistently sees through Jessica's defensive lies. Even Trish's strained relationship with her mother, the true abusive counterpart to Kilgrave's lies about his own childhood, is shot through with mis-aimed affection.
The series isn't perfect: several characters' individual choices make little sense, some of the plot doesn't hang together, and the body count, while not entirely unnecessary, is a little excessive. Still, there's plenty of room to show us Jessica's mental toughness (she coaches more than one mind-control victim through literal, rather than figurative, enactments of Kilgrave's desires) and her cleverness (how do you knock out someone whose skin can't be broken?). And when one morally-upright character goes off the rails, driven to insane acts by the inflexibility of his worldview, what do Jessica and Trish do? They beat him half to death with a kitchen. Not in a kitchen, with a kitchen: Jessica delivers the coup de grace with a refrigerator.
The abiding image of the series is that very fight: Jessica and Trish trapped in a bathroom, with a belligerent man breaking down the door. They argue strategy, find a way, and rescue one another. Trish, with no superpowers beyond practice and tenacity (and maaaybe a touch of bullheadedness), insists on fighting to save their lives, because Jessica is there and can't do it alone. Foul-mouthed, abrasive Jessica, never with a kind or confiding word, grungy, life-falling-apart Jessica: Trish loves her, warts and all. How could you not love her too?
That's the superpower of the series, after all. Empathy for unlikable people as they struggle to be nicer to one another. Jessica gets into the news, and suddenly everybody with a sob story is calling her, begging her help. It's a terrifying commitment, acting out the collective conscience of the disempowered. Being a hero is awful not even counting the physical risk. Jessica can't even bear to listen to her voicemails all the way through, but that's all right: someone else sees her afraid, and picks up the phone to listen on her behalf.
I have moved mostly over to Dreamwidth. Please comment there if you can.
Because unlike Marlowe, her cynicism has an immediate, obvious cause: she's got all the traumatic backstory you could ask for. It's heavy stuff, thankfully exposited rather than shown, and she holds it all at bay like a bear cub scrambling up a tree. She's not the sort to talk about her feelings -- indeed, she mocks the people who do --, but it becomes clear that her line of business is one part confirmation of the worst of human failings to two parts the welcome distancing effect of the camera lens. We open with her dissatisfaction, her short, choppy conversations with a neighbor, a client, her estranged sister/friend, and the pleasure of the series is watching how those relationships improve despite her stated unwillingness to give a shit about them.
I should probably summarize the arc plot at this point, but why. There's a bad dude, he do bad things, blah blah conflict, blah blah stuff being set up for other Marvel series down the road. There are some smaller plots too, that fit within an episode, but honestly, plot is not the reason to watch the series, and episode-by-episode is not the right method. You're really best off marathoning all 13 episodes in big chunks, despite the part where snow-piles turn to cherry blossoms over the course of two hours as time passes in-universe, because the reason to watch the series is the emotional and ethical throughlines of all the characters.
Because every one of them is working through moral reasoning, well or badly, every day: cheating on spouses, browbeating brothers, stumbling zombie-like through addiction, deciding, as Luke Cage does, that being super-powered means a different approach to bar fights. A divorce turns ugly, and you watch as both parties indulge the worst in themselves, almost involuntarily. That's not villainy, not really, or not in the comic-book sense, but it's villainy enough that things eventually get out of hand, with the help of our actual villain, Kilgrave.
As portraits of villainy go, it's... venal. He's a man of amazingly small desires, considering he's got the ability to get anyone to do anything he wants just by saying so. He doesn't even live in his own penthouse, but in other people's, taking over their lives and their decorating choices rather than making his own. And as he exposits his manipulations to Jessica, complete with self-pitying -- and selectively true -- backstory, it becomes clear that his selfish entitlement doesn't even rise to the level of, you know, actual crazy. He's not crazy. He hurts people because he can, because he doesn't care about them, because they accidentally remind him that they're unwilling participants in his games. The narrative demonstrates the power of his voice: he tells you a sob story, and you have no reason to disbelieve it -- till an episode later. He's charming and reasonable, and people go along with the charming and the reasonable, till they find themselves trembling in their own kitchens, witness to what the charm hides. If Kilgrave were grandiose, if he tried to take over the world, or even to have his own skyscraper built out of gold, he would be distant, something unreal and entertaining, a Bad Guy. By making him just a bad person, by making him fit into the real world, he's much more effective, more unsettling, more unpleasant.
And compared to that, Jessica's clumsy, abrupt relationships grow rich: the snippiness she shows her sister Trish underlies their lifetime of commitment to each other. The designated victim, pregnant from rape, pursues an abortion with calm determination. Our zombie addict, Malcolm, blossoms into a person, full of regrets and sorting through the emotions around him. After an awkward beginning, Jessica and Luke stop lying to each other and develop a surprise simpatico. The beat cop who is controlled into trying to kill Trish comes back afterwards to offer clumsy apology, which turns into a spontaneous relationship. The annoying hipster neighbor consistently sees through Jessica's defensive lies. Even Trish's strained relationship with her mother, the true abusive counterpart to Kilgrave's lies about his own childhood, is shot through with mis-aimed affection.
The series isn't perfect: several characters' individual choices make little sense, some of the plot doesn't hang together, and the body count, while not entirely unnecessary, is a little excessive. Still, there's plenty of room to show us Jessica's mental toughness (she coaches more than one mind-control victim through literal, rather than figurative, enactments of Kilgrave's desires) and her cleverness (how do you knock out someone whose skin can't be broken?). And when one morally-upright character goes off the rails, driven to insane acts by the inflexibility of his worldview, what do Jessica and Trish do? They beat him half to death with a kitchen. Not in a kitchen, with a kitchen: Jessica delivers the coup de grace with a refrigerator.
The abiding image of the series is that very fight: Jessica and Trish trapped in a bathroom, with a belligerent man breaking down the door. They argue strategy, find a way, and rescue one another. Trish, with no superpowers beyond practice and tenacity (and maaaybe a touch of bullheadedness), insists on fighting to save their lives, because Jessica is there and can't do it alone. Foul-mouthed, abrasive Jessica, never with a kind or confiding word, grungy, life-falling-apart Jessica: Trish loves her, warts and all. How could you not love her too?
That's the superpower of the series, after all. Empathy for unlikable people as they struggle to be nicer to one another. Jessica gets into the news, and suddenly everybody with a sob story is calling her, begging her help. It's a terrifying commitment, acting out the collective conscience of the disempowered. Being a hero is awful not even counting the physical risk. Jessica can't even bear to listen to her voicemails all the way through, but that's all right: someone else sees her afraid, and picks up the phone to listen on her behalf.
I have moved mostly over to Dreamwidth. Please comment there if you can.