'Jessica Jones': Cheating at Feminism?

THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS

Rami Malek in Mr Robot

A few nights ago, I was happily watching the excellent Mr Robot when I noticed something seemed a bit off. This was it: all of the female characters spiral around protagonist Elliot (Rami Malek) like satellites to his questionable sex appeal. Think about it: Angela (Portia Doubleday) was set up as the primary love interest from episode one; Shayla (Frankie Shaw) is actually in a relationship with him; and Darlene (Carly Chaikin) has the oddly erotic habit of turning up in his flat unannounced.

In the light of the Oscars Race Row, I'd been reading about the Bechdel test, and possible equivalents which measure the under-representation of actors of colour, and came to the conclusion that there was something fundamentally wrong with the way we tell stories if everything has to revolve around white and male people.

This led me to recall my brief and intense affair with Jessica Jones, and think how this series got so many things right which Mr Robot got wrong. And then I thought about a possible feminist interpretation of the story arc, and got quite scared. In the world of Jessica Jones every relationship ends in some form of abuse. Literally. Jessica and Kilgrave; Trish and Simpson; Wendy and Hogarth; Jessica and Luke. It's quite alarming. Another thing, every single male lead is involved in abuse, i.e. Kilgrave, Luke, Simpson and even Malcolm to some extent. Yikes!

The original Jessica Jones  comic

To make things worse, the justice system is revealed to be woefully inadequate to deal with Kilgrave (just like the pitiable number of successful rape prosecutions), so in the end, the only option is to kill him. This is a pretty bleak world we're seeing here! The only relationship which is healthy, and does not end in one party trying to kill the other, is between Jessica and Trish. One small ray of light then.

Naturally I fled to the internet, to see if some people who were cleverer than me and knew more about feminism could help. The most interesting thing I found was the level of debate between writers like Brydie Lee Kennedy in The Independent, who praised the show's depiction of sexual abuse and Jessica as 'a survivor, shaped by her experiences but not crushed by them', and Megan McArdle, who controversially described the series as 'sort of cheating at feminism'.

Before I start to wade into it all, let me take this opportunity to reassure you that I am in no way attempting to convey my opinions as fact. The writers I am critiquing undoubtedly know more about feminism than I do, I just happen to disagree with some of the points they make specifically about Jessica Jones.

If you're going to talk about feminism and Jessica Jones, you've got to mention Kilgrave, played perfectly by David Tennant. McArdle described the villain 'as too small to be particularly interesting, or even scary', and Kwame Opam complains of his portrayal as 'a one-note embodiment of pure evil'. They couldn't be more wrong. Kilgrave is the most charming character in the series, and is perversely a very comic character. I couldn't help laughing when he tells a man to throw coffee in his face, even though I really knew I shouldn't.

David Tennant as Kilgrave

If you listen to Tennant talk about his character in interviews, you can see there are depths to Kilgrave that many people are missing. He is a man who has never been able to establish a moral code as no one has had the ability to say "no" to him. He, like many men out there, does not know the meaning of consent, and didn't even notice that he'd raped Jessica. This is why Lili Loofbourow has written in her particularly perceptive article for The Guardian that the series is 'extraordinarily sympathetic to the men who succumb to the temptations of power'. Kilgrave may be a monster, but he's also a victim. He is allowed to explain to the audience that there is no way for him to know if the people he surrounds himself with want to be with him at all. He's a deeply lonely man: fabulously wealthy, but never seen in a healthy relationship with anyone. When Jessica is essentially torturing him, we're almost invited to feel pity. Yes, he often engages in comic-style-violence, but this only shows how out of touch with reality he really is.

Krysten Ritter as Jessica

Of course, there's much more to the show than Kilgrave. McArdle has criticised Marvel for writing a characteristically male part and casting a woman in the role. I personally disagree with this, and McArdle could be said to be contradicting herself when she later criticises the way Jessica's fear of commitment is portrayed in the same way as  'the heroine of every bad teen romance and bodice ripper I read at summer camp'. To address the male-role-as-female criticism, aren't we a bit beyond saying "men are like this" and "women are like this"? Surely it's common to have 'masculine' women and 'feminine' men, although it's obviously down to individual viewers to decide how successful Jessica's characterisation is. The second criticism is more valid than the first, although if you had to put up with Kilgrave, I'd imagine you'd have some commitment problems too!

This is only a brief foray into a rich topic for discussion, and please do comment below if you want to contribute or think that I've got something hopelessly wrong. The main thing to take away from all this, I feel, is that watching Jessica Jones is highly recommended. Even if you think it fails in its portrayal of feminist issues, it's still an enthralling piece of television in its own right, even if you're not a fan of superheroes.