The verdict is in—Jessica Jones is awesome. I’m sure you’ve read it all in various reviews littering the web. There’s the superb depiction of rape trauma and PTSD, the excellent depression, the fabulous sex, and the best portrayal of Luke Cage both inside and outside of comics. Kyrsten Ritter and the supporting cast—sublime! And what about that snappy dialogue—not bad but maybe not as snappy as in that other show about a “rape” victim-superheroine, iZombie.
But there is one rather obvious problem with Jessica Jones. It’s stupid; massively dumb and bloated to boot. It’s the same old story, the desperation to love something, anything in this Golden Age of TV or at least find some reason to like the latest Hollywood craze—the superhero franchise. The publicity agents have urged us to like, nay love, sex and dragons, rotting flesh, and xenophobic paranoid CIA agents; and now they insist we venerate plain clothes superheroics.
Just like in the zombie apocalypse of The Walking Dead, Jessica Jones never lets logic get in the way of thrills, false dilemmas, and homilies about our decadent society. The remarkable zombie franchise embodies the deeply held American fantasy that the last will be first and they will need guns to accomplish this. It is the little people who will pull through and distill the human (let’s just call it the American) spirit to make the Fatherland great again (or least provide glorious entertainment). Certainly not the armed forces which are clearly the most poorly armed and least disciplined of all organizations
In his article at Quartz, Noah insists that Jessica Jones is (and I paraphrase here) a smart show but I think what he meant to say was that it’s a show with something (new?) to say which I guess is kind of an improvement over most things on TV which are generally vacuous, inane or some combination of both. So the “patriarchy” is violent, desirable, all consuming and almost irresistible—the hidden, unacknowledged evil running through society. Does this mean that Jessica Jones is Pilgrim’s Progress for feminists, and frequently just as tedious? Why didn’t they just send me the 1000 word memo Noah wrote instead? It was certainly more concise and less soporific. Oh, I know, it’s because Jessica Jones is meant to be an entertainment.
Noah has spent his binge watching hours screaming at poor Jessica to invest in noise cancelling ear phones or at least some thick cotton wool (answer in episode 10; it’s not the Killgrave of the comics we all know and love). He wonders why Daredevil or a hermetically-sealed Iron Man don’t come round to save the day. The answer to this last question, at least, is obvious. Marvel won’t let them. Or maybe this minor mass murderer is too insignificant for all the mutants, aliens, Inhumans, superheroes, or agents with futuristic weapons living in New York to bother with. And what about the mind control virus responsible for Killgrave’s powers? Probably a few steps down the Chain of Cretinousness from Midi-chlorians. The invention of Superman’s solar powered fuel cells seem like an act of prodigious sagacity by comparison.
Noah like so many others have wondered why it is so hard for people to believe in mind control in a world of galactic invasions and Asgardian Gods come to earth (with mind controlling abilities to boot)? Because if they did, we wouldn’t have this meaningful bash about rape trauma and violent revenge. Because it is all too clear that the makers of Jessica Jones have utter contempt for superheroics and the well tested internal logic which governs them. Which would be a most excellent thing if you weren’t accepting a paycheck from the overlords of the Marvel Universe.
Let’s be honest here—superhero comics are overwhelmingly idiotic. So utterly degraded that Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Gaydos’ first run of Alias (the comic in which Jessica Jones is introduced) was greeted like manna from heaven when it first hit the stands. Make no mistake, Alias is largely the kind of superhero police procedural Bendis has been fond of since his halcyon days on Powers; instantly forgettable and considerably inferior in almost every respect to the television adaptation. It should be noted, however, that all the central relationships in the television adaptation have been cribbed (and fleshed out) from the comics (Alias #24 to #28, “Purple” Parts 1 to 5).
One rather curious thing about Bendis’ Alias was his determination not to make Jessica Jones a rape victim. One suspects a half-conscious reaction to the plethora of female rape (and murder) victims in the 80s superhero renaissance initiated by Miller and Moore (see Watchmen, The Killing Joke, Born Again, The Dark Knight Returns et al). In fact, the Jessica Jones of the comics makes it a point to tell Luke Cage that she was not raped—in the traditional meaning of the word—though she was certainly made to watch rape and murder, and thoroughly mentally abused in more vivid terms than shown in its adaptation. I doubt if there is another “living” Marvel heroine who has undergone a more traumatic experience than Jessica Jones. The television adaptation is less interested in hideous spectacle and more focused on rehabilitation and recovery, and is much the better for it.
The inconsistencies, incoherence, and tumescence of the television series are all there to provide recurrent inconclusive confrontations as we await Killgrave’s inevitable demise in the final episode (he doesn’t die in the comics). The texture of the cloth seems fine but the presentation is nonsensical and aggravating. You have to be in the mood to give the creators broad license to throw away good sense in the name of preaching for you to enjoy this.
There is, however, one thing to say in Bendis’ favor (I think)—he’s not ashamed of the form. He bloody loves it. Jessica’s first case involves being tricked into spying on Steve Rogers (aka Captain America), and when she gets into trouble it is Matt Murdoch (aka Daredevil) who pulls her out of an interrogation session. Bendis has no truck with inconsistent power levels and Jessica doesn’t suddenly lose her ability to dish out measured love taps to humans without abilities; something which occurs in every other episode of the television series. Killgrave is in jail with lots of other super criminals in the comics and his utter vulnerability to Daredevil made fun of. As for Jessica Jones, it is her shame and embarrassment which prevents her from seeking the help of the Avengers more often (long story) and when Killgrave finally escapes, the havoc he creates is met by a response from the same team. A psychic defense trigger provided by an X-Man (Jean Grey) helps Jones defeat Killgrave.
Now let’s just sit back and think about this for a while. Can you imagine how stupid (not to mention impractical from a commercial perspective) all this would be for a “serious” TV show? You’d need a Class A creative mind to make all this work and also be intellectually stimulating, which is why something like Watchmen has become the perennial bat used to whack all comers who would label it undoable. How do you make a story about “real” life if there are superheroes and vigilantes running amok throughout America? The answer to this is quite simple—you can’t. They why they call it fucking fantasy, an altered reality in which all commonsense reactions to and explanations for everyday trauma go out the door. Contrary to what Noah writes in his Splice article, superheroes do in fact “change the world;” in myriad ways both harebrained and inventive. They just don’t do it on Jessica Jones.
Melissa Rosenberg’s debilitated answer to all this is a tincture of powers, the spoonful of fantasy to help the hard medicine of psychological stress (and the sermon of the day) go down. Because no one is going to binge watch a 13 episode series about a rape survivor but superheroes—they’re hot. If only we could make them more “serious.” The recipe involves choosing one or all from the following triumvirate, the foundation stone of this Golden Age of TV:
(1) sex (2) sexual violence (3) violence
We can forget about the superpowers and the superheroes whenever it becomes inconvenient for our agenda of earnest meditation on the unhumorous. Well, how about this for a suggestion—why bother making the damn superhero show at all.
Harsh!
This is fun to read; I’m glad somebody made the case against, since I’m not able to this time.
It sounds like (?) your main objection is to the logical inconsistencies…which aren’t really something that bother me a ton. I mean, they bother me a little, but if you’re suspending your belief for superstrength, etc., the rest doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch.
It matters more to me that it has something to say, and that the way it deals with trauma, patriarchy, etc., is often intelligent and moving. To me, it’s a lot more like a rape/revenge narrative than like a superhero one…which I think is overall a good thing. The sex/violence as markers of seriousness bother me less than they do in some shows, because the show is actually about sexual violence and recovering from sexual violence.
But it’s certainly not perfect, and not even great. It would have benefited a lot from being say 2/3 as long, from not being set in the broader marvel universe, and from someone doing the work to figure out Killgrave’s powers and limitations more thoughtfully.
Yeah this seems like a lot of energy poured into what basically could be summed up in a single sentence reading “I DIDN’T LIKE IT!”. I guess “It’s stupid and based off a comic which is stupid” also require expression, but I feel the point could have been made with less of a forked tongue. To each their own.
I think there’s a lot more there than “I didn’t like it.” Suat talks about failures of world building, gender stereotypes, differences from the source material, and problems with the critical consensus, among other things.
That’s a nice little crit of The Walking Dead nestled in a rant whose only only point against Jessica Jones is inconsistency. I thought the reason they didn’t bring the Avengers down on Kilgrave any more than the police force was that he flew under the radar: his powers are difficult to prove and his victims won’t come forward for fear of incriminating themselves. Also, it’s never stated in the Avengers movie that the Scarlet Witch and her abilities are publicly known.
What’s the point of watching Jessica Jones and complaining that Iron Man didn’t show up and save the day?
DC probably published 50 comics last month where Superman never shows up and saves the weaker characters.
I think I read a Spider-man comics once where Spider-man was in trouble and the Avengers never showed up to save the day. Oh wait, that’s like all of them.
@pallas
I think that’s one of the major problems with the Big Two, and the clashes between their publishing/business model and the narrative constraints of continuity as the Big Two adhere to them. Everything in their universes is pretty incoherent when you get down to the details. Even if you don’t, frankly.
But I think the bigger problem is just that there is not, and cannot be any narrative movement in Big Two comics. A large swathe of comics culture is so calcified as a hyper-conservative ball of juvenile angst and moralism that there is really no hope of either company publishing a really politically/culturally/narratively daring re-imagination of…well, anything, to my knowledge. That exists in tandem with the fact that comics continuity is, well, continuous, mainly in that nothing ever changes. I forget who said this where, but the sliding timescale for both Big Two continuities is about 5-10 years, and every single iteration of this has essentially the same cast of characters, with substantially similar or redundant relationships between them. Noah’s Splice article hits the nail on the head, but he doesn’t go as far as to note that most superheroes have the thematic and narrative dynamism of a cheap piece of office furniture.
…not sure my point there was cohesive or clear, but it’s buried somewhere in that small rant…
Hey Pallas. You could follow the link to my piece about Iron Man and Jessica Jones. I think it speaks to the superhero genre’s inherent conservatism, and inability to imagine a future different than the present.
Luke, remember that Loki uses mind control too. It’s unclear how public it is or isn’t, but the Avengers certainly know mind control works, and they’d be likely to take anyone with that power quite seriously.
OK, but Jessica and her pals don’t know that, and the Avengers aren’t portrayed as investigating every claim of paranormal activity in the news.
Sure. You’d think she’d give contacting them a try though, or that some of the folks around her who believe in it would. He’s killing dozens of people and appears to be unstoppable. Pick up the phone and try calling Iron Man; what do you have to lose?
But remember the main problem is exonerating an innocent person, and calling an extralegal international strike force isn’t going to help with the legal system. If defeating Kilgrave was the only problem she could just walk over with earplugs and punch his head off… which is the place she reaches in the endgame, but only after her efforts fail.
I think that’s pretty confused. The Avengers get him, they have the tech to easily demonstrate that he is in fact dangerous.
The bottom line is, in a world where the Avengers exist, Killgrave is just exponentially less of a threat than he is presented in that series.
Not so easily, because the show is preoccupied with the problem of proving mind control in a court of law and it’s difficult to create a compelling demonstration as long as Kilgrave refuses to cooperate. The movie Avengers aren’t legally recognized experts on superhuman physiology or whatever. They’re under a cloud because of events in the last few movies, they’re both a celebrity circus and shady government operatives… they’re not people you call to testify in court. They could restage the events of the show with added urban destruction, pretty much.
They could get Killgrave off the streets without much trouble. That’s what JJ tries to do with an awful lot of trouble.
Look, you’re working for a no-prize, here. Complicated explanations of why you couldn’t do this are kind of silly, imo, because it’s an obvious thing you’d think to try that the show never even brings up for a second, even to dismiss with a poor excuse. The reason she doesn’t go to the Avengers is that the show doesn’t want to take that route, for reasons that have to do with logistics, licensing, and presumably atmosphere, not with self-consistent world building.
Why don’t you just tell me my no-prize is in the mail? The complicated problem of legally proving mind control is the subject of the show. You’re pressing for the inclusion of thirty seconds of dialogue about calling Iron Man. We don’t get that, we only get dialogue about calling Daredevil, why are we scoffing at mind control in a world with the Avengers in it, Nuke doing the same thing the Avengers would do, every freaking character developing superpowers at some point… it’s like asking, why don’t they hire the law firm of Murdock & Nelson? Because they’re pretending it’s a world with more than sixty characters.
I admit, I instantly turned against this article when I read “It’s the same old story, the desperation to love something, anything in this Golden Age of TV.”
Call me crazy, but when someone argues that someone likes something just because they’re desperate to love *anything* I kinda bristle. Especially since this condemnation of any and every fan for somehow being fooled into enjoying the show is never backed up in any way.
I wasn’t talking about the fans, I was writing about the critics who seem to be on this treadmill of adulation whenever anything passable comes round. Yes, Jessica Jones is probably better than Arrow and The Flash (which gets praised nonetheless) but so what? Shouldn’t television critics have some standards?
Anyway, Louis, yes one of my complaints is that Jessica Jones is logically inconsistent with the universe in which it exist and also within the terms it lays out (i.e. Jones’ powers). Basically, the creators wanted to write about superheroes but hate the form (who can blame them). It’s as if someone was paid to write a romance novel but hated hugs and kisses. But it doesn’t end there.
(1) Jessica Jones is bloated and gets increasingly boring and repetitive towards the tail end.
(2) The science is dumb even for a superhero story. In fact one should never mention science as a rule in a superhero story. Once again, Alan Moore managed to get away with it.
(3) As a metaphor for patriarchal domination, it breaks down pretty quickly. It’s solution to this is individual and violent; not institutional, pacific, and legal. The reason for this is the false framework it brings to the superhero fantasy, which in turn is due to poor planning and a need for distended, bloody confrontation. In this it repeats the fallacy of The Walking Dead in which the wider world (in Jessica Jones’ case complicated by superheroes) and its power structures are largely ignored. Noah gets at this in his Splice article (and in comments above) where he also blames the genre as a whole.
Noah, does Jessica Jones really work as a rape-revenge fantasy? It seems like Killgrave gets to rape/kill everyone he meets until the final few minutes of the show. Which doesn’t seem like the template you prefer in I Spit On Your Grave. The revenge aspect seems slightly watered down. There doesn’t seem to be much gratification.
I’d say it definitely works as a rape/revenge. Rape/revenge is pretty various. The revenge part is relatively muted compared to some versions..but on the other hand, it’s not all confined to the end. Killgrave is repeatedly injured, hurt, and humbled through the show in various ways. There’s a back and forth, but he gets beaten and humiliated at various points, not just the end.
The little rape/revenge riff in Foxy Brown, for example, doesn’t take all that long. Not necessarily super extended in Last House on the Left either…Nor in Deliverance…
I’d say the focus on sisterhood (especially at the end) is also in line with some rape revenge films. And the very conscious theme of patriarchy. So yeah, it works. Not the best of the genre, but not the worst.
The solution being individual violence is also in line with rape/revenge…though a lot of rape/revenge films are more ambivalent about revenge as empowerment. I Spit on Your Grave the revenge can be read pretty easily as destroying Jennifer; violence against structural oppression in Ms. 45 is seen as satisfying but ultimately monstrous; in Stendahl Syndrome revenge again is futile and makes the revenger into the murderer, etc. JJ is more like Alien, where the kick ass female hero is straightforwardly empowered by violence.
“Jessica Jones is bloated and gets increasingly boring and repetitive towards the tail end.”
That wasn’t exactly my experience…I felt like there were subplots throughout that should have been tossed, and a general problem with pacing. It needed to be like three or four episodes shorter, probably.Still, much, much less painful to watch all the way through than daredevil.
I hadn’t thought much about the science, but you’re right there; it’s absurd. I don’t know what possible explanation could work for mind control; the Avengers’ films don’t even try to explain Loki or Scarlet Witch, which seems like the smarter choice.
@Eric Funny, that’s the sentence that made me love this piece.
This is great too: “It is the little people who will pull through and distill the human (let’s just call it the American) spirit”
To say that Ng’s main or only charge against JJ is “inconsistency” seems to me to be missing the point. Ng’s charge is basically cynicism, with the inconsistency serving as evidence: people who don’t like superhero stories are making one to get a bigger audience for the story they really want to tell.
Generally, I don’t find that to be the quite case when people who hate genre entertainment make genre entertainment. Instead the basic conviction seems to me to be that they’re doing the genre a favor, by making it tell the story that it always should have been telling, but didn’t because it was commercially compromised, or because the creators were sexists (it’s usually sexism when it’s anything socially relevant – there doesn’t seem to be as much of a market for racially revisionist genre, and of course nobody cares about poverty).
Suat’s position seems to be that every Marvel superhero story must be tangled up in the logic of the shared universe, or the writer is cynical and hates superheroes.
Kurt Busiek had a post here awhile back where he wrote “Shared universes are fun as long as they make reading comics more fun, and not fun when they start to tangle things up and mess with or distort the individual series concepts” under twisted logic Suat lays out, I guess Kurt Busiek is cynical and hates superheroes?
While Jessica Jones is easily the most enjoyable of the current crop of superhero tv-series, it’s also difficult to get through without making nerdy groans at all the inconsistencies. The article is quite correct: The people who made it obviously didn’t want to make a superhero tv series. I think they decided to make a more urban and “gritty” version of Buffy (starring Faith) instead.
In the (early) Buffyverse, the supernatural wasn’t known to the public, so making people believe in a mind-controlling super-villain would be difficult. In the Marvel Universe, weird stuff if known to exist, so why not? Jessica’s problems only makes sense if pretend you’re not in that universe in scenes where… plot is happening.
Which is fine! I haven’t watched the final three episodes yet, but I’m entertained. The casting is great, the cinematography is fine, and the lines the actors deliver mostly aren’t wince-inducing. And that’s not something you can say about, say, Arrow or The Flash.
If they had wanted to make a superhero tv series, then Jessica Jones would have applied superhero logic to the situation and worn some ear plugs, konked Kilgrave on the head, given him a ball gag and delivered him to Iron Man who could find out how he works (and gotten whatsername out of jail). Problem solved!
Then, next episode, Jessica could have fought Vulture. Unless he’s owned by some other company.
I’m not sure saying it’s embarrassed or uninterested in superheroes is quite right. Puncturing superhero tropes is so much a part of the superhero genre at this point that it’s practically it’s own subgenre. And it is quite true to the source material in most respects, isn’t it? I mean, the plot comes from the comics…
Doesn’t every adaptation get accused of coming from a place of hatred for the source material? The show doesn’t use costumes and code names, but it does have Patsy Walker/Hellcat, Luke Cage saying “sweet Christmas”, Night Nurse, a mind control setpiece in every episode, and the mailman turning out to be Nuke. I guess it’s a Vertigo/Marvel Max show, a 15-year old comic genre, but it’s ridiculous to say it’s not invested in superheroics and Marvel lore.
The cop (Will Simpson) first reference to his past was that he had done things unspeakable in the line of duty, “But ah nevah hurt womin'” … the next time he mentions his past, he talk about rendition … To me, this kinda suggest that he’d been part of the US torture program. Two seconds after he has mentioned rendition, Krish explain his natural use of that words with him being “a war hero”. I didn’t feel like watching the show after that.
Kasper, not that you should stick with the series if you don’t want to, but if your concern is that they present Simpson as overly noble…that is not something you have to worry about.
I missed the part about Will Simpson-Nuke’s involvement in a torture program. But the new origin story is obviously a way of humanizing the Born Again-Nuke who was intentionally drawn up as a caricature of the American military/black ops, as was the Garrett character in Elektra Assassin (the latter wants to nuke the world). Or at least it seems that way to me. I guess this is all part of the Zero Dark Thirty thing of saying that “torturers are people too.” It doesn’t exactly help Jessica Jones that Mr. Nuke turns out to be right in his analysis of the Killgrave situation (as in, we should kill him with extreme prejudice). With Nuke in play, the show could be taken as a metaphor for radicalization (Islamic, fifth column etc.) and how to deal with it.
I don’t know that Nuke is exactly in the right; he tries to kill Killgrave and totally fucks it up. It’s hard to see him as a guide to much of anything by the end; he’s presented pretty effectively as a dipshit.
Well the only reason why he fucks it up is because Jessica reveals his plan to blow up Killgrave. And doesn’t Jessica actually agree with this course of action? She just doesn’t want to do it just yet because it would mess up her chances of exonerating Hope. Once “Hope” is gone (yes, that was heavy handed), she decides to kill him.
And just to be clear, I do mean “right” from the perspective of the show.
Well, Jessica defuses the bomb not because of Hope, but because there are other civilians inside the house.I don’t think the show thinks that a big bomb with lots of collateral damage is the right thing to do there, no.
But the killing part is necessary and inevitable? Which sort of makes your rape-revenge diagnosis work. Don’t know if the comic avoids this because of some moral code or because they don’t want to waste a good villain. Funny how it’s never an option for the modern Batman the Alpha vigilante – fan service/consistency or something else?
Yeah; Killgrave is absolute evil, so killing him is okay. There’s a self defense element too, I think, in the way the show presents it; how else do you stop him (since you’re not allowed to call Iron Man)?
Ok – I can only blame myself for starting this conversation about superheroes. Both The Flash and Arrow have access to super-prisons.
Oh, Suat, when will you learn with superheroes? Watching you trying out the latest hyped superhero project (this, Hawkguy, I’m sure there’ve been others) is like watching Charlie Brown running at Lucy’s football.
I dunno, I think he kicked it pretty hard.
Ng Suat Tong, you mentioned ‘that other show about a “rape” victim-superheroine, iZombie’. I had to google this, since I somehow failed to notice that rather obvious rape-metaphor in IZOMBIE.
But this reminded me of the WHITE TRASH ZOMBIE book series, which is very similar to that show, albeit slightly better. Here, a very drunk woman leaves a bar with a guy. Later, she is found unconscious and naked by the road. Yes, she does now crave brains.
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I’m puzzled by all the folks who think JJ could ahave solved all her problems by calling in Iron Man to take out Kilgrave.
How the Hell would she do that?
Suppose I had a hideous problem in my community. The local library branch is going to close and a drug-smuggling gang linked to the Sinaloa Cartel has already bought the real estate. Suddenly I realise — Elon Musk/Bill Gates/Warren Buffett/ Navy S.E.A.L.S. can bail me out!
So I just phone up these guys? In your dreams, bubbelah.
Got to go through at least 10 layers of hierarchy before it’s even put before them. And then you’re only one of 100 beggars: good luck, chump.
That’s what you’d have to go through contacting Tony Stark.
Plus, New Yorkers in the MCU have been thoroughly traumatised by the huge death and destruction attending on the Avengers’ interventions. Sceptical isn’t the word.
Plus, what the heck can Iron Man do? Can JJ prove anything when Kilgrave innocently denies her accusations?
Plus — Tony Stark will want to force her to register with the government. Luke Cage too. Not attractive to such independant souls.
These are diagetic, i.e. “in-story” reasons to explain why JJ doesn’t call in the Avengers. The non-diagetic reasons have to do with viewers’/readers’ genre expectations.
Calling in Iron Man would be seen as cheating.
There was quite a bit of fan outrage a couple of decades ago when, in a Tony Isabella-scripted issue of Moon Knight, the hero beat the villain by phoning up the Fantastic Four who effortlessly overpowered him at the climax. Cheat! Cheat!
This applies to so many genres in so many ways. You don’t want a locked-room mystery to be solved by a psychic. If you have a romantic novel where the hunk refuses to commit because the male chauvinist pig can’t bear marrying a woman he can’t support…well, having him win big at the lottery is another cheat.
Let JJ be JJ without avengery maddling.
Other thought– I really like the look of JJ.
Think of the actresses who’ve traditionally been cast as superheroines. Athletic, glowing Uberfrauen: Linda Carter (Wonder Woman), Helen Slater (Supergirl), Halle Berry (Storm, Catwoman), Birgit Niesen (Red Sonja, the aborted She-Hulk). Heck, we believe it when robust Scarlett Johanssen (Black Widow) beats the shit out of everyone who looks at her cross-eyed;
JJ doesn’t have this “strength-through-glamor” vibe. She’s rather slight in frame, almost frail: which makes it a delight when she unloads her superstrength.
I also like her features. She’s pretty, sure, but everyday pretty, not Hollywood-via-fanboy-fantasies pretty. Dresses down.
Maybe only Buffy is comparable, and even then, Buffy was supposed to be a teenager.
“Let JJ be JJ without avengery maddling.”
The point isn’t that the avengers should come in. It’s that the shared world kind of demands they do, or raises the question. It’s why the superhero shared world is incoherent. A world in which the Avengers exists needs to be a very different world, one in which Killgrave is not nearly as much of a threat.
Suat’s not saying, the Avengers should save JJ. He’s saying superhero world building is innately stupid. And he’s got a point (imo.)
I’m not sure I exactly buy the idea that Krysten Ritter somehow pushes against accepted notions of Hollywood glamorous superheroes. She looks like a conventionally attractive television star, to me. I think she did a good job with the role, but it hardly seems like a blow for diverse body type representation.
Yeah that last thing. Ritter is a former Elite agency model. Though this shouldn’t mean that she doesn’t get to act on TV. If you want normal looking TV actresses I think you’ll have to look to Britain as far as the English language is concerned.
One of the few instances where the comic does it better. JJ is positively dowdy in the comic and a fashion trainwreck. You can’t do that on TV.
Noah, Suat,
Don’t be so cynical. An normal looking television actress can get all sorts of roles in Hollywood. For example, she could play the “wacky best friend,” or the “mean boss,” or she could appear as an extra… Sky’s the limit, really.
Suat and Noah,
I’ll take a stab at this: I think what people are trying to explain to you is that as long as the Marvel people are attempting to create the illusion that their shows and movies occur in a big, interconnected world, saying that JJ should call the Avengers would be like looking into our world through two magic windows and deciding that the SEAL team that took out Bin Laden would be perfect for handling some random woman’s stalker. And they would, in one way, but if the show is any kind of allegory for real peoples’ problems it reflects the way the force required to take such a person out is never the issue. The force exists, the problem is getting the authorities to apply it. The plot of JJ reflects the way that abusive, harassing behavior is often difficult to prove and leaves the accuser vulnerable to looking crazy. There’s no reason in the story world why JJ should consider the Avengers over the police, the courts, the FBI, or her own network of tough guys, or why a super commando team that’s getting in trouble with governments around the world would seem more available to her. Yes, from our perspective, we can observe that there’s a lot of mind control going on in those Avengers movies, so if they could just learn about JJ’s problem they would take it very seriously. And maybe some of the SEALs who took out Bin Laden could be persuaded to rough up a woman’s stalker, for whatever that’s worth, if they only knew. But JJ doesn’t know the plot of the Avengers movies and they don’t watch her show. There’s no reason the Avengers would spread the news of the existence of dangerous alien wands or their members’ propensity for brainwashing. From our perspective, we know that the only thing that’s really keeping the Avengers from solving everybody’s problems is intellectual property law and genre. But in their world, JJ’s visiting the Avengers would diminish, not heighten the realism.
Finally caught up with this and am reading the reviews/thinkpieces.
Aside from numerous logical in-universe reasons for not contacting the Avengers (or attempting to)
a) that doesn’t fit with JJ’s character
b) there’s an episode that deals with public mistrust of the Avengers, where JJ herself is disdainful of them
c) it sounds a bit like admonishing a rape survivor for not going to the police. She doesn’t fit the Ideal Victim role.
Still not really convinced. I don’t think anyone is blaming JJ for anything. The point is that (a) there’s no reason people woulnd’t believe in Killgrave’s power, given the other miracles happening regularly, and (b) if his power were taken seriously, the other miracle workers in the universe would want to stop him, and be able to do so without much trouble.
As Suat points out, the fact that the universe makes little sense is underlined by the fact that in the original comics, JJ does in fact get help from the other miracle workers.
Also, of course, the scientific explanation for Killgrave’s power is ludicrous, and makes no sense.