Let’s talk about Jessica Jones.
More specifically, let’s talk about Kilgrave.
This is going to be slightly different from my usual posts (also, um-- hey! yeah, it's been over a year. Sorry about that) because what I want to talk about here is not a review of the show (just watch
it; it’s phenomenal and I promise this won’t contain major spoilers) but why
this show left such a major impression on me.
In short, I have very rarely seen a piece of pop culture—especially one explicitly
designed to appeal to the masses—be so invested in critiquing white men.
Jessica Jones is, for the uninitiated, a Marvel Universe
television show about a private detective with super strength. The show itself has heavy noir influences,
and honestly the first episode reminded me so strongly of Veronica Mars I half
expected Keith Mars to show up and make an ill-advised “who’s your daddy?”
joke. Jessica, when we meet her, wears
her anger and sadness like armor, pushing everyone (except for childhood best
friend Trish Walker) away to keep them safe.
Kilgrave, the villain, is a shadowy presence for most of the first half of the season,
lurking in Jessica’s worst memories, tormenting her with new victims wherever
she turns, and relishing in his own superpower—mind control.
Kilgrave likes the finer things in life: pretty women, fancy
dinners, and expensive apartments. He
picks a victim—usually a pretty, young woman—and commands her to essentially be
his girlfriend. He takes her to those
fancy dinners and buys her nice clothes, and then rapes her. From the outside, she seems to have won the
boyfriend lottery. From the inside, it’s
a living nightmare from which she can’t escape.
Kilgrave himself thinks he’s doing these women a favor, even though he’s
very aware that they are being held against their will, because after all, it's not like he's one of those rapists. After,
his victims are left with no way to prove he forced them because “mind control”
isn’t something you can prove. In fact,
in one desperate episode Jessica Jones attempts to get herself locked up in
supermax so there would be video evidence of Kilgrave mind controlling guards
to get to her—a terrible plan, to be sure, but one that reveals the depths of
her despair because despite the fact that she knows his powers exist, Kilgrave
knows it, and dozens of other people around New York City know it, there is no
way to prove it incontrovertibly. His victims tend to face questions reminiscent of how our society treats rape victims: did you really not want to? Why didn't you fight harder? But he took you out for a nice dinner first-- are you sure this isn't just a case of morning-after regret? The parallels are stunningly obvious, but no less frustrating in Jessica's world than they are in ours.
It is because of how his victims are received that Kilgrave is probably most terrifying villain I’ve seen in the comic book genre. He is terrifying because he’s the most
realistic. Now wait a minute, you’re
saying, a man with mind control powers is realistic? Well, for one thing, he’s not an alien bent
on global destruction, so he’s at least more realistic than many other Marvel
villains.
But the reason Kilgrave struck a chord with me is that he is
a very specific type of terrifying when you’re a woman. He’s every guy that has followed you down the
block “complimenting” you (but also making sure you’re intimately aware that he
could hurt you at any moment); he’s every guy who has talked over you in a
meeting; he’s every shitty ex-boyfriend you have had who insisted that any of
your emotions that he found inconvenient were an “overreaction;” he is every guy that thinks "treating women with a bare minimum of decency" warrants a reward with sex.
Kilgrave is nothing less than White Male Privilege made
flesh.
“Now wait,” I can hear my white male readers saying, “I’m
not like him.” And sure, chances are,
you aren’t. But guess what? White Male Privilege is real, even if you
don’t see it. You probably take
advantage of your innate, unearned privilege all the time without even realizing it. Because women encounter Kilgraves every
goddamn day even though every single man in earth would swear up down and
sideways he’s not like that. Someone is
lying and I am here to tell you:
White dudes, it’s you.
What is so insidious about Kilgrave’s powers is they are
entirely invisible, and that is what makes Kilgrave a walking,
talking example of White Male Privilege.
Because every white man in the United States has this privilege, but
there’s no “evidence” it exists—because that evidence will always rely on the
testimony of women, and men will always be able to discount that
testimony. It doesn’t matter how many
women have stories of being followed on the street by hissing men (seriously
dudes, what is with the hissing?), or being dismissed in a conversation, or
being talked over, or lectured, or hit on repeatedly despite polite dismissals, or the hundreds of other microaggressions that women
navigate every day—a man can still look at all of that evidence and deem it
“not enough” because he didn’t witness it.
And here’s the thing: sometimes, that man did witness
it. But because it is so normal—because
white men are so used to being the undisputed centers of attention and bastions
of rationality and righteousness—they do not even realize what they saw. Like the police officers in Jessica Jones who
witness Kilgrave’s powers but still prefer hold his victims accountable instead,
white men don’t want to believe white
male privilege exists. It’s hard and
uncomfortable to admit that you are benefiting from an unjust system,
especially when that very system allows you to deny that the injustice exists
at all.
Watching Jessica Jones was both frustrating and cathartic
for me, because every woman understands just how powerless Jessica feels. Every woman knows a man who thinks catcalls
are harmless expressions of appreciation; every woman has had a man explode on
her because she politely rejected his affections; and every woman has recounted
these stories to men in her life only to have them tell her she’s exaggerating,
or that maybe she should be grateful she was getting attention, or maybe he was
just trying to be nice and she misunderstood.
Every woman has met a Kilgrave, and every woman has been
told she made it all up.
And to my white male readers—those of you who haven’t rage
quit from this piece yet—if this makes you uncomfortable…good. You should be. Watch Jessica Jones with this in mind, and
then the next time a woman in your life tells you about her experiences, do me
a favor:
Believe her.
