Notes
14 Representations of Rape and Race
Pree Rehal and Caitlynn Fairbarns
In 2016, CBS rejected the pilot for a series called Drew, which would have been the first series to depict the character Nancy Drew as a person of colour, despite it having tested well with audiences. This was because Drew allegedly “skewed too female” (Ahsan 2016). However, the success of contemporary shows like Orange Is the New Black (2013–19) and Transparent (2014–19), and films like Star Wars: A Force Awakens (2015) and Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), continue to prove that femme-centred narratives are capable of being relevant, interesting, and commercially successful. While Netflix conceals specific viewership analytics, third-party research from Symphony Technology Group (STG) provided an estimate of Jessica Jones’s viewership based on a sample size of fifteen thousand people (McFarland 2016). Between September and December 2015, STG’s automatic content recognition technology counted 4.8 million viewers of Jessica Jones over a thirty-five-day cycle, suggesting that shows with women in lead roles are relatable, and evidently lucrative. Although Netflix contested these figures, it nonetheless confirmed that it viewed Jessica Jones as a sort of gateway for its users to the wider lineup of Netflix Marvel television series. Vice-President Todd Yellin has stated that although Daredevil was the first Netflix Marvel show, the service’s data shows that most viewers began with Jessica Jones (Dumaraog 2017). Therefore, among these particular series, Jessica Jones might in fact be considered the most remunerative.
This chapter will analyze the ways in which Jessica Jones demonstrates feminist media progress, while problematizing the ways it creates the illusion of progress as a white feminist show. Dreama G. Moon and Michelle A. Holling argue that, “As a progressive intervention into patriarchy, feminism has traditionally centered (white) women’s experience, yet when sex and gender are combined with race, feminism tends to lose its progressive edge” (2020, abstract). In this way, the centring of women’s experience becomes a double-edged sword to the extent that it endeavours to advocate for all women while operating from a singular identity or positionality that consequently jeopardizes the feminist project. We’ll begin by contextualizing Jessica Jones in its genre, positioning ourselves as the authors, defining our terms, and further delving into the nuances of feminism in relation to the show. We do this by analyzing Jessica in the big picture before zooming in on Jessica and her relationships with racialized characters on the show.
Media Representation, Feminist Theory, and Jessica Jones
To further understand the important progress that Jessica Jones has made for superhero narratives, we must look at the work of influential comic book author Gail Simone, including but not limited to Deadpool (1997–2017), Birds of Prey (1999–2011), and Wonder Woman (2011–17). Simone compiled a selection of comic book superheroines who have been severely brutalized, raped, and murdered.1 Her work contributes to the discussion of how women have been constructed within comic books to further the story of men. The catalogue of names shows how violence against women is commonly written to drive the plot and character development of masculine superheroes. Gendered and sexualized violence is depicted in popular culture—specifically the comics industry—as a plot point that does not engage with or further the discussion of rape culture. Simone’s website shows that within the world of comics, violent acts are shown through the gaze of the perpetrator (and of the superhero who deals with the aftermath of the violence), rather than from the perspective of the victim. The constructed gaze of an assumed cisgender man has a large impact on the ways in which victims are depicted for media consumption.
Despite fan campaigns for more diverse and femme-driven comic content, Jessica Jones was the first Marvel television show with a woman lead. For the purposes of this chapter, “women” refers to trans women, cisgender women, and anyone who identifies as a woman (including queer, non-binary, and gender non-conforming folks who claim this label). Fans have been working and fighting hard for more nuanced representation. #WeWantWidow, an online campaign that took place in 2015, is an example of a community joining to fight for Black Widow to get her own television show or movie. It took years of protest for studio heads to do more than merely acknowledge such requests. The Black Widow film, starring Scarlett Johansson, was eventually released in 2020. Captain Marvel was the first Marvel movie to be released with a woman lead. Creators have stated that Captain Marvel is the strongest superhero in the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) (Buchanan 2016). While the movie earned $1 billion at the box office, it was met with sexist trolling, fake reviews, and bad Rotten Tomatoes ratings (Abad-Santos 2019). There was a lot of pushback against its success. This is because the future of women superhero stories was reliant on the financial and critical accomplishments of Captain Marvel in Marvel and Wonder Woman in DC Comics. Since Captain Marvel was the first woman-led Marvel movie ever, there was a lot of pressure for it to be successful. Due to Captain Marvel’s financial success, we can hope for a Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel story.2 Kamala’s story starts after Carol’s and is heavily reliant on the Captain Marvel origin story. While studio heads have not given us an exact date for when we will be introduced to Kamala, we need the story of a young woman of colour in the MCU. Especially in the current political climate, we need Kamala on the screen, to also tell the story of a Muslim woman superhero.
Looking at gender and media depictions of rape and sexual assault, this chapter uses Jessica Jones as a reference point in its discussion of rape myths. We use the term “rape myths” to define attitudes and beliefs about rape and sexualized violence that perpetuate rape culture. Rape myths are widely shared attitudes that perpetuate victim blaming and slut shaming while excusing or erasing the actions of the perpetrator. We explore how rape myths are commonly represented in media and how they inaccurately portray the reality of survivors and negatively affect consent culture. By engaging critically with Jessica Jones, we will investigate how her narrative dismantles rape myths that are commonly depicted within film and television.
In order to analyze this text critically, we find that it is important to begin by establishing our tone and voice. This chapter has been put together in a collaborative manner and the perspective used here is one of “we” and “our.” But although this chapter is written collaboratively, the use of “we” and “our” is not meant to imply any equivalence between our respective identities and privileges. As sexual assault survivors, we are approaching the Marvel series Jessica Jones with our own histories, experiences, and privileges.
As a descendent of settlers on Turtle Island, and as a brown-skinned, queer, non-binary person who is a survivor of sexual assault, I (Pree) acknowledge that I still benefit from many privileges. I acknowledge these privileges as a cis-passing, caste-privileged, visibly able-bodied person, without an accent that alarms xenophobes, in possession of a graduate education, and as a beneficiary of anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism as a non-Black person of colour (and settler). As a multiplicitous survivor, I contribute to this chapter so as to validate survivors and to hold space for nuanced conversations within fan studies and cultural studies.
As a cisgender, visibly able-bodied, white queer woman who is a sexual assault survivor, I (Caitlynn) acknowledge that my voice comes from a place of privilege. I am not subjected to the violence and oppression that trans, Black, Indigenous, and racialized folks experience, especially within the larger conversation on sexualized violence and whose story of violence gets to be told. Engaging with Marvel’s Jessica Jones, I am looking through a critically canonical feminist lens and am using sources that support queer experiences as such voices are often left out of conversations around sexualized violence.
Our chapter is written in solidarity with and in relation to intersectional feminists, and more specifically Black feminist and queer writers. We engage with Kimberlé Crenshaw’s (1991) theory of intersectionality to validate the multiple oppressions that Black women and other marginalized people face at the intersection of factors including race and gender. Crenshaw (1991) writes, “Although racism and sexism readily intersect in the lives of real people, they seldom do in feminist and antiracist practices” (1242). We recognize that these oppressions happen as a synthesized experience and are not suffered individually. As we discuss trauma, sexual assault, and rape, we write from our own histories and experience while still addressing stories that are not ours to include multiple voices in the discussion.
To analyze consumption, we will be invoking the concept of “the gaze” throughout this chapter. We will examine how the gaze affects stories of sexualized violence and how the gaze differs in Jessica Jones compared to other depictions of rape. Laura Mulvey’s work on the “male gaze” within cinema is used as a starting point for our exploration of the Marvel show. Mulvey explores the gaze in two different modes, the passive (feminine) and the active (masculine). Her work looks at how women in media are “looked at” by men, and how women are constructed for masculine pleasure and how this creates the idea of “looked-at-ness” (Mulvey 1999, 833–44). Although Mulvey’s ideas work within a gender binary, her theories are relevant to our research on how survivors of sexual assault are depicted for the “male gaze” within movies and television. To expand on “looked-at-ness,” we explore how viewers and consumers of media bear witness to sexualized violence. In consuming media of a violent nature without creating action, are we passive witnesses to the events? While watching Jessica’s story, are we active or passive viewers?
Throughout its first season, Jessica Jones engaged with rape unlike any other Marvel property that we have seen so far. Marvel comic books have portrayed sexualized violence in horrific ways—for example, in The Avengers no. 200 (1980) when Ms. Marvel is raped. The comic addresses sexual assault by illustrating incest, abduction, and abuse without addressing the consequences of violence upon the victim. Gender-based violence and assault was shown in Marvel’s movie or television properties until Jessica Jones. Very clearly and without hesitation, Jessica tells Kilgrave that he raped her (ep. 1.08, “AKA WWJD”). This is a critical moment of the show as we witness a Marvel superheroine define consent culture. In this scene, Kilgrave is confused as to how his actions could be classified as rape, and Jessica responds concisely by saying that she did not want “to do any of it.” Activist and popular culture researcher Roz Kaveney (2008) argues that,
Like pornography, superhero comics always teased, they always offered more than they could ever deliver, on splash covers where grinning villains played with our heroes and heroines as figures on a giant chessboard, or spun them on a wheel of death. Part of the thrill was always that, no matter how powerful superheroes were, they always managed to find themselves in a jeopardy commensurate with their strength. (2)
Jessica Jones stands out against other television shows because we do not often see victims given the opportunity to express their emotions or tell their own stories. Stories about gender-based violence are repeatedly portrayed in the perspective of the attacker or of the manly saviour while eschewing a greater dialogue about trauma and consent. Laura Hudson elaborates on this lack of victims’ perspectives in her article Rape Scenes Aren’t Just Awful. They’re Lazy Writing:
The same is true of rape scenes, which so often end up being stories about how men feel about women getting raped, rather than how those women feel about their own assaults. As one woman noted after creating a statistical breakdown of rape in Game of Thrones, although the rapes of 117 women have been described thus far in the novels, “only two rape victims in books tell their own story rather than having a man tell it for them—and they’re both villains.” Too often, women and their abuse are treated as a tool for inspiring feelings, reactions, and character development in men; the story of their rape is not about them, or how it affects them: It’s about a man, and how it affects him. (Hudson 2015)
When the media does not provide nuanced stories of sexualized violence and portrayals of survivors of violence, it perpetuates rape myths that reinforce ideas of hegemonic masculinity.
Entertainment Weekly and Variety have criticized shows like Game of Thrones (2011–19), Downton Abbey (2010–15), and House of Cards (2013–18) for their unnecessary portrayal of rape and for catering to common tropes of sexualized violence (Valby 2014). In her book Watching Rape: Film and Television in Postfeminist Culture, Sarah Projansky (2001) examines more thoroughly how tropes of sexual violence in the media normalize abuse and obscure the stories of victims:
Sexual violence is a normalized phenomenon, in which male-dominant environments . . . encourage and sometimes depend on violence against women, in which the male gaze and women as objects-to-be-looked-at contribute to a culture that accepts rape, and in which rape is one experience along a continuum of sexual violence that women confront on a daily basis. (9)
Projansky further highlights how the media socially constructs narratives around rape that do not reflect the reality of many victims and survivors. By creating women as objects to be looked at, it perpetuates rape myths that objectify women and reinforce victim blaming and slut shaming. Having women within media cater to ideas of the “male gaze” further enforces rape culture, which says that men are entitled to women’s bodies. We can see how the Jessica Jones narrative pushes against the normalization of violence by not showing acts from Kilgrave’s perspective. Within the show, there is no representation of how Kilgrave abused Jessica; rather, we only see how she deals with the repercussions of the abuse. The show follows her perspective and how she copes with trauma on a daily basis. Jessica’s behaviour illustrates how women suffer from and survive violence, rather than how men abuse women. We consume Jessica’s rape through her trauma and observe it as an ongoing violent process involving traumatic tremors and aftershocks—and this is shown from her own perspective, rather than through the male gaze.
One way to examine how we enter the gaze in this series is the quality of Jessica’s character development, and that of those with whom she interacts—most of whom happen to be women. The show attempts to resist the sexual objectification that we have come to expect with the likes of Scarlet Johansson in skin-tight pleather. However, one criticism we came across was Daniel Murphy’s piece for Pop Matters, where he identifies the following issues: “Jessica sleeps while wearing a full face of makeup, is conventionally attractive, and has a propensity to lounge around her apartment suggestively in revealing tank-tops while partially (and sometimes, very) intoxicated” (PopMatters Staff 2016). While we agree that Jessica still sports makeup and is attractive (read: thin and white), we argue that her brooding expression, hunched shoulders, and searing gaze subvert our ideas of what an MCU hero (and heroine) looks like. Generally, characters who are woman are visualized as busty but thin, well-dressed, with erect postures and brushed hair, and often with their posteriors in the eyeline of the camera, rather than as stylized badasses. From our point of view, Jessica’s at-home apparel doesn’t read as “suggestively revealing.” Instead, analyses like Murphy’s contribute to rape culture, and while he may be well-intentioned, suggesting that a woman is depicted as anti-feminist or as a sex object for wearing a thick-strapped tank top in her domain is bizarre.
From our perspective, Jessica looks like a real human rather than a sexy superheroine, but does the show grant other characters a feminist release from the white cis-hetero patriarchy as well? Spoiler alert: no. Nancy Fraser writes that “the feminist perspective is elitist, white, upper class” (1997, 117).
Disturbing Nuances of Rape, Trauma, and Their Media Representation
As television, film, and advertising continue to tell the same narrative around gendered violence, thereby perpetuating rape culture, specific imagery becomes associated with victims and perpetrators. A common rape myth is the idea of “stranger danger,” which implies that violent attacks on women are random or isolated incidents. According to Tina Mahony (2017), 82 per cent of sexual assaults happen with the victim knowing the perpetrator. Like most survivors, we already, unfortunately, know this to be true, and the point is that rape culture has already established an environment in which victims of violence don’t feel safe or comfortable coming forward with their experiences. By showing stories that fail to reflect 82 per cent of the population, mainstream media further isolates these victims.
Kwame Opam identifies why Jessica Jones’s depiction of rape, rapists, and their survivors are so revolutionary:
It’s easy to identify the monstrous, predatory rapists, and to depict them on TV. But when schools are creating consent classes because the topic is so poorly understood, the problem becomes all the more horrifying, not in spite of but because of its mundanity. Men needn’t be evil or superhuman in order to use their power to take advantage of women. They just have to live in a society that allows for it. (2015)
The fictionalized superhero story Jessica Jones reflects the type of experience that many others have gone through. From the moment he met her, Kilgrave controlled Jessica’s mind, forced her into being his “girlfriend,” and made her cater to his needs. Jessica represents a large number of victims who have felt manipulated and controlled in “relationships” where sexual acts lacked consent. The abuse Jessica experiences speaks to how rape is not only a violation of a person’s body, but also of their agency.
In season 2, we learn that when Trish was fifteen she was raped by Max Tatum, a forty-year-old film and television producer. It is revealed that Max has assaulted other young actors. Trish makes it very clear that there can’t be consent between a child and an adult. Discussions of coercion and abuse of power within the MCU are relevant, and while we initially wrote this chapter in 2017, we’re editing it in 2024, in a post-Weinstein and post-Cosby era, when we continue to learn that assaults within the industry are being committed by people that were once trusted and admired. That being said, “yet another example of (white) feminism’s penchant for marginalizing women of color is the whitening of #MeToo and #TimesUp, evident in their popularization and visibility extended to white women’s victimage. Only later was the founder of Me Too, Tarana Burke, a Black woman acknowledged, while testimonies of Black and Latina actresses were ignored” (Moon and Holling 2020, 255). And so, while watching Jessica’s post-traumatic stress, triggered memories, and alcoholism is difficult—it’s a struggle for many people to watch while wanting her to be better, be different—watching her prey on the Black husband of the Black woman she murdered is also disturbing. The show shows us an unsettling example of how hurt people hurt people. White women’s experience of sexual violence are allowed to be nuanced and complex, while the experiences of Black survivorhood is invisible in the show.
Luke Cage calls Jessica a “hard drinking short-fused mess of a woman,” but the audience struggles to watch our hero(ine)’s mess. Popular notions of the “right way” for a victim of sexualized violence to behave makes it hard to bear witness to Jessica’s life as it spirals out of control. A rape myth that needs to be criticized more is the idea that there is one perfect way for a victim to deal with rape and sexual assault. We are continuously shown that if a woman has made it out of violence and abuse alive, she has handled it well. If she reported the incident, she has handled it well. If she can move on quickly from the assault, she has handled it well. The myth plays into the idea that victims need to handle their trauma in a way that is convenient for others. Sadie Gennis (2014) further elaborates on this in relation to the shows Downton Abbey and Scandal (2012–18):
Anna’s rape and her attempt to hide it for the sake of her husband is reminiscent of Mellie’s recent sexual assault on Scandal, in which Fitz’s father rapes—and possibly impregnates—the first lady, but Mellie doesn’t speak up in order to protect her husband’s political career. Both shows frame Anna’s and Mellie’s decisions to stay quiet as noble, portraying them as martyrs for their husbands’ livelihoods. Because in the end, their assaults aren’t about providing commentary on rape culture or empowering these female characters as they find ways to overcome and heal. Their rapes are about their husbands and the honorable selflessness of women who do anything to protect the men in their lives.
In showing a “perfect victim” in the media, it’s illustrating that there is only one way to handle trauma, and it must be in a way that serves someone else. These constructs and ideas lack individual experience and are rape myths that unify all acts of sexual violence. There is no perfect way to behave, there is only one person’s reality and their way of coping. The process of healing is non-linear and individual. We should not be made to cope in a manner that serves someone else. Jessica Jones is about an individual’s way of coping and dealing with trauma, even if it’s hard to watch.
Victims are frequently presented as docile and passive, to be easily consumed for patriarchal ideas of sexualized violence. The passive woman after her abuse is more manageable for an audience to watch, specifically for viewers that are assumed to be heterosexual cisgendered men. Lindy West (2015) recently discussed the nuances of victimhood in the following terms: “Victimhood is passive. It is neutral. It is not shameful. It is not something you can choose to accept or reject, because it is imposed upon you by other people and outside cultural forces.”
The choice to create passive victims is not necessarily a bad thing, but when it becomes the dominant portrayal of survivors, it proliferates the idea that they have to be easily consumable for audiences. Media products that are created to share stories of abuse and to put the victim’s experience in the forefront place less stereotypical societal expectations on survivors to behave a certain way. Exploring post-traumatic stress that leads to alcoholism does require more complex examination and engagement, making it more difficult to mindlessly consume or binge-watch. When depicted, sexualized violence should be represented in a way that allows viewers to engage with the media and to create a larger dialogue around rape and sexual assault, as opposed to encouraging viewers to blindly accept the tropes that have been presented to them. A more complicated story that explores the psychological consequences of violence takes more time to make and more time to understand. Jessica Jones disrupts the current media representations of consent culture and amplifies the voices of victims.
Some showrunners have chosen to not have any sexual assault or rape in their shows because of the politics surrounding the issue (Valby 2014); this was the choice made by Bryan Fuller, for example, in the shows Hannibal (2013–15) and American Gods (2017–21). No matter what genre of media, one can frequently find narratives of trauma that are handled without the necessary care. Creating nuanced stories that reflect reality is a challenge, and a lot of showrunners have created victims that lack depth because it is believed that they will be easier for viewers to understand. Instead of engaging in the lifetime effects of trauma, storytellers cater to tropes that show victims as either passive or as “damaged goods.” Rape is complicated and includes various stories and perspectives that some creators are not ready to explore. Our observation as survivors is that rape is generally portrayed as an isolated event, in the same way a car accident would be, with little to no mention of its consequences once some time has passed.
As a series, Jessica Jones engages in discourses around rape culture in a productive and potentially less triggering way. Rather than employing onscreen sexual assault, the show uses emotional abuse, post-traumatic stress syndrome, and the politics of consent as vehicles for framing rape as an ongoing challenge in the lives of survivors. As a cancer survivor and a sexual assault survivor, I (Pree) can attest to the fact that these kinds of traumas become daily navigational issues. These can and often do lead to the kinds of addictive behaviour that we see in Jones. In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, executive producer Melissa Rosenberg commented on the way the show narrates rape in comparison to dominant representations:
It’s becoming ubiquitous, it’s become lazy storytelling and it’s always about the impact it has on the men around them. It’s like, “Oh his wife was raped and murdered so he’s going to go out and destroy the world.” That’s so often what it’s about, just this kind of de rigueur storytelling to spice up often male characters. It’s damaging. It’s just hideous messaging, and so coming into this, the events have already happened and this is really about the impact of rape on a person and about healing, survival, trauma and facing demons. To me it’s much richer territory. If you turn on any television show or, for that matter, film these days, nine out of 10 of them seem to open with a naked, tied-up, dead woman with her undies around her ankles. I think I’ve been calling them the NTSDs, which stands for naked, tied-up, dead, I can’t remember. They’ve just become so ubiquitous, it’s like numbing the audience to what is a horrific violation. (Fienberg 2015)
While Jones is not “NTSD,” she’s also not unscarred. Her trauma could (and potentially should) be held responsible for her alcoholism, toxic relationships, avoidant personality, trust issues, difficulty being truthful, and guarded personality. The one thing the different items in this limited list share is that these are valid and unpleasant—real human experiences and popular media doesn’t hold space for unpleasant women, especially as superheroes. Is Jessica subversive in being a superhero that is a shitty friend/person? Is she a generally unstable yet strong person while still being a badass? Well, yes, mostly, because why not? Batman is distant and traumatized, but he is also cool and sexy. No one questions the desirability of Batman (or Bruce Wayne), nor that of Ironman, nor, occasionally, Joker. Mainstream popular culture and its participants are generally harsh critics of women, and the culture itself can be a breeding ground for misogyny and the reduction of underdeveloped women characters to narrative tropes, sex objects, or accessories.
Outside of her own show, Jessica has been the victim of a narrative trope, specifically in the Marvel Netflix show The Defenders. The series represented Jessica along the lines of the “Smurfette” trope according to which the men on the team experience most of the action and adventure while the women are there for emotional support. Although Jessica was merely in an emotional support position, her role in the group was to focus more on support than leadership. Qualitatively and quantitatively speaking, Jessica and her backstory are assigned less screen time than her masculine pals. And while The Defenders did feature more women than initially anticipated, including Misty Knight (Luke Cage), Claire Temple (Daredevil, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist), Karen Page (Daredevil), and Colleen Wing (Iron Fist), these characters tended to provide support for their masculine counterparts and were not themselves the main focus.
Race, Representation, and (White) Feminism
Jessica’s interactions with Luke continue in the direction of the historical hyper-sexualization of Black men. The white gaze trained on Black folks reinforces hegemonic white colonial views of sexuality and Black masculinity. Although the narrative suggests the characters’ feelings for one another are reciprocated, the ways in which the camera shows them in relation to each other is historically violent. The framing of the dark-skinned Black character with this large, muscular body, in contrast to her small, white body, presents an intentionally racialized contrast. For example, when Jessica tears off Luke’s shirt (ep. 1.03, “AKA It’s Called Whiskey”), the lighting emphasizes the muscular contours of his body, while the camera traces the contrast of his dark skin against her whiteness. And things then get messy (read: violent), because Jessica continues to pursue a relationship with Luke, even though she previously murdered his late wife, Reva, a light-skinned Black woman. While our heroine was under Kilgrave’s spell when she killed Reva, murdering a Black woman who happens to be his wife and choosing to withhold all of this information from him deeply traumatizes and dehumanizes Luke. This is especially unethical and dehumanizing while Jessica continues to be intimate with and consume him. Withholding information like “I actually killed your wife” robs Luke of his ability to provide informed consent, and of the right to decide whether or not he wants to be intimate with his wife’s murderer. Within the limited confines of what rape is and can be, it would be easy to simply write this off and to say that Jessica did not in fact rape Luke. However, rape is about power and robbing the victim of consent and their own agency, and in this context, we argue, Luke is forced into a web of sexual violence, fetishism, and necropolitics—all harms that Jessica is materializing, and which were catalyzed by Kilgrave.
Jessica and Luke’s dynamic continues to flatten his experience of Blackness, masculinity, and survivorhood, and it subjects him to a colonial gaze that positions the viewer as a consumer of an anti-Black stereotype known as the “Magical Black Person” (MBP) trope. Similarly, Black queer scholar Kwame Anthony Appiah proposes the “Saint” trope. The Saint is “the noble good-hearted black man or woman, friendly to whites, working class but better educated than most class Americans, and oh so decent” (1993, 80). Appiah’s content analysis links this to roles played by Danny Glover in films like Lethal Weapon, as “the Saint’s macho incarnation.” And in reference to the Lethal Weapon movies, he writes that “in each of them [1987, 1989, 1992, 1998] it’s the white cop who’s crazy.” Sound familiar? In Jessica Jones we see this familiar duo replicated in the unhinged private investigator, Jessica, and our friendly boy next door, Cage, who invites shifty Jessica into the bar even though he just caught her creeping into the window yet again (ep. 1.01, “AKA Ladies’ Night”).
Appiah also highlights Morgan Freeman’s transformation from his role as a pimp in Street Smart (1986) to that of the Saint in Driving Miss Daisy (1989), Robin Hood (1991), and The Power of One (1992). Ten years later, Matthew W. Hughey defined “Magical Negro films” as “cinema highlighting lower-class, uneducated, and magical Black characters who transform disheveled, uncultured, or broken white characters into competent people” (2017, 543). In Hollywood, the MBP stereotype tends to be applied to same-gender relationships, with an overly committed Black man helping a broken white man. Freeman provides yet another example when he literally plays the role of God in Bruce Almighty (2003). And while he does indeed play the character of God, he commits to the side gig of being a personal as well as spiritual guide to Bruce (played by Jim Carrey). And so, in Jessica Jones, the crazy white man and Black Saint tropes are replaced with a crazy white woman, which is emblematic of white feminism at large, to say nothing of the two steps forward, one step back nature of Jessica Jones. The dynamic between Jessica (a white woman) and Luke (a Black man), in combination with their respective Marvel series (which carry very different tones), amplify the use of this trope. In reference to MBP films, Hughey writes,
These films all possess a mutual resemblance regarding how the positive and progressive attributes of strong, magic-wielding [B]lack characters [in this case, our bulletproof Luke Cage] are circumvented by their placement as servants to broken and down-on-their-luck white characters [Jessica Jones]. This on-screen relationship reinforces a normative climate of white supremacy within the context of the American myth of redemption and salvation whereby whiteness is always worthy of being saved, and strong depictions of blackness are acceptable in so long as they serve white identities. (2017, 548)
Luke is constantly shown as being saint-like, self-martyring in his inability to see past what Jessica presents herself to him as, whether as a love interest or a down-on-her-luck white character. Cerise L. Glenn and Landra J. Cunningham interpret Appiah’s use of the Saint trope as a category that “serves to offset the racial stereotypes that White audiences generally aim at the Black characters as well as draw upon the superior moral nature associated with the oppressed” (2009, 138).
Jessica Jones is praised for its feminism and representation of (white) women in various roles, but it is inherently a white feminist show that puts the agency and liberation of its Black characters on hold. One might play devil’s advocate and assume that the MBP still shows Black folks in a “positive” light. But Hughey explains that
The interracial cooperation between broken whites and MNs3 with exceptionally safe and happy attributes may appear progressive to some. If they are, then they concurrently represent a desire for audiences to solve interracial tensions via individual acts of black servitude, rather than through a rearrangement of racialized social structures or the contestation of dominant racial narratives. (2017, 557)
While the MBP trope may engender warm feelings among some viewers, it does nothing to challenge misogynoir, anti-Blackness, or the status quo more broadly. This chapter focuses on Jessica Jones; however, a dedicated content analysis contrasting depictions of race (and racism) in Jessica Jones and the Luke Cage series would be jarring. While this comparison is beyond the scope of this chapter, it’s safe to say the former is demonstrating “the underlying fetishistic . . . [desire to] transform Black-white friendship into a use-value commodity for white characters’ salvation” (Hughey 2017, 561). The choice to continue using and showing these racist tropes is harmful considering how Black folks continue to be treated. bell hooks argued that
Otherness has been so successful because it is offered as a new delight, more intense, more satisfying than normal ways of doing and feeling. Within commodity culture, ethnicity becomes spice, seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream white culture . . . fantasies about the Other can be continually exploited, and that such exploitation will occur in a manner that reinscribes and maintains the status quo . . . frank expression of longing, the open declaration of desire, the need to be intimate with dark Others. The point is to be changed by this convergence of pleasure and Otherness. (1992, 21–2).
The show disturbingly pushes Reva’s murder to the periphery, while Luke and Jessica’s relationship takes centre stage. Their dynamic is an extension of historical and contemporary violence rooted in colonialism and slavery, whereby white women sexually exploited Black men, and the romanticization of this violence in Jessica Jones, while not surprising, is nonetheless harrowing. In 1944, a fourteen-year-old Black boy, George Stinney, was wrongfully convicted of the murder of two white women (Garcia-Vargas 2014). Stinney was the youngest person to be executed in the United States, and his execution, like that of Emmet Till’s (who was also a child at the time of his state-sanctioned murder), is an example of the ways in which Black masculinity is viewed, even for teenaged boys.
There are many occurrences throughout history of white women falsely accusing Black men of raping them. In the antebellum South, the hyper-sexualization of Black men and boys reinforced white supremacy through sexual violence. Although these dynamics are rooted in colonialism and slavery, we continue to see them playing out in public today. As this chapter was being written, Lena Dunham had only recently apologized to Odell Beckham Jr. for her racially charged comment accusing him of not wanting to sleep with her at the Met Gala (Williams 2016). Dunham seemed to be assuming that Black men owe white women sex and that they should desire white women automatically. Lara Witt speaks further to this issue by commenting on how white women responded to the cast of the film Moonlight (2016) modelling for a Calvin Klein underwear campaign:
The objectification of black men by white women leaves such a lingering stench. I certainly can’t ignore it and find it appalling to hear white women dehumanize and lust after black dick and black bodies without ever seeing the irony of their justified demands for their own right to agency and lack of objectification by all men, but especially white men. (Witt 2017)
The sexualization of Black men by white women (and non-Black people more broadly) underwrites anti-Black racism. So, while Jessica Jones is transgressive in its white feminism and slightly subverts the problematic MBP stereotype (which generally involves a Black man being depicted as a token aid to a white man), it is responsible for further perpetuating racist stereotypes about Black masculinity. This includes Luke and Jessica’s one (yes, one) other Black friend, Malcolm. Jessica Jones is responsible for empowering the white survivor while framing Black survivors like Luke as impermeable and treating Black characters like Malcolm and Reva as disposable. We argue that these contrasts relegate both Luke and Malcolm to the status of beautiful, inspiring sidekicks who serve ultimately to empower their white pal.
This chapter has sought to show how the Jessica Jones series portrays sexual violence and consent while also problematizing its feminism by contrasting Jessica’s empowerment and Luke’s oppression and fetishization. What Jessica Jones does well is accurately portray the flawed realities of human beings who struggle with alcohol, PTSD, unresolved issues, and abuse through the lens of a white woman. That being said, the show is a white feminist (wet) dream and employs misogynoir and the MBP trope alongside technical choices that exploit Luke’s agency, and this reflects its anti-Black racism and understanding of sexual violence. What feminist audiences tend to overlook in their response to the show is how some of the survivors it portrays (namely, white women characters) are entitled to healing from their trauma while also engaging in further cycles of harm and abuse.
Notes
2 See the website Women in Refrigerators at https://lby3.com/wir/.
2 In the time since this chapter was first drafted, the MCU has grown to include the Ms. Marvel series on Disney+ (released in 2022). The series was met with particularly positive reviews of Iman Vellani’s performance of Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel.
3 As non-Black authors, we prefer to use the “MBP” shorthand introduced above, but we should note that Hughey’s text refers to this as the “Magical Negro” trope.
References
Abad-Santos, Alex. 2019. “Captain Marvel Is Officially a $1 Billion Box Office Hit.” Vox, April 3, 2019. https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/4/3/18287032/captain-marvel-box-office-one-billion.
Ahsan, Sadaf. 2016. “CBS’s Nancy Drew Television Series Remake, Starring Sarah Shahi, Cancelled for Being ‘Too Female.’ ” National Post, May 17, 2016. https://nationalpost.com/entertainment/television/cbs-nancy-drew-television-series-remake-starring-sarah-shahi-cancelled-for-being-too-female.
Appiah, Kwame Anthony. 1993. “ ‘No Bad N[——]’: Black as the Ethical Principle in the Movies.” In Media Spectacles, edited by Marjorie Garber, Jann Matlock, and Rebecca L. Walkowitz, 77–90. New York: Routledge.
Buchanan, Kyle. 2016. “Kevin Feige Says Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel Will Be the Strongest Superhero Yet.” Vulture. 21 October 21. http://www.vulture.com/2016/10/captain-marvel-movie-director-kevin-feige.html
Dumaraog, Ana. 2017. “Most Popular Viewing Order of Marvel/Netflix.” Screen Rant, August 27, 2017. http://screenrant.com/marvel-netflix-defenders-viewing-order-most-popular/.
Fienberg, Daniel. 2015. “ ‘Jessica Jones’ Boss on Losing Carol Danvers, Exploring Rape Responsibly and Season 2.” Hollywood Reporter, November 22, 2015. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/jessica-jones-rape-season-two-842318.
Fraser, Nancy. 1997. Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the “Postsocialist” Condition. New York: Routledge.
Garcia-Vargas, Andrea. 2017. “In 1944, We Executed a 14-Year-Old Boy. Why Did It Take 70 Years for Us to Exonerate Him?” Upworthy, December 17, 2017. http://www.upworthy.com/in-1944-we-executed-a-14-year-old-boy-why-did-it-take-70-years-for-us-to-exonerate-him.
Gennis, Sadie. 2014. “Downton Abbey and the Insensitive Portrayal of Rape on TV.” TV Guide. February 20, 2014. http://www.tvguide.com/news/downton-abbey-rape-plot-device-tv-1078013/.
Glenn, Cerise L., and Landra J. Cunningham. 2009. “The Power of Black Magic: The Magical Negro and White Salvation in Film.” Journal of Black Studies 40 (2): 135–52.
hooks, bell. 1992. Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston: South End Press.
Hudson, Laura. 2015. “Rape Scenes Aren’t Just Awful. They’re Lazy Writing.” Wired, June 30, 2015. https://www.wired.com/2015/06/rape-scenes/.
Hughey, Matthew W. 2009. “Cinethetic Racism: White Redemption and Black Stereotypes in ‘Magical Negro’ Films.” Social Problems 56, no. 3 (2009): 543–77. doi:10.1525/sp.2009.56.3.543.
Mahony, Tina. 2017. “Women in Canada: A Gender-Based Statistical Report.” Statistics Canada, June 6, 2017. https://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/89-503-x/2015001/article/14785-eng.htm
McFarland, Kevin. 2016. “Meet Symphony, the Company Calculating Netflix TV Ratings.” Wired, January 15, 2016. https://www.wired.com/2016/01/meet-symphony-the-company-that-tracks-netflixs-elusive-ratings/.
Moon, Dreama G., and Michelle A. Holling. 2020. “ ‘White Supremacy in Heels’: (White) Feminism, White Supremacy, and Discursive Violence.” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 17 (2): 253–60.
Mulvey, Laura. 1999. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” In Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, edited by Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, 833–44. New York: Oxford UP.
Opam, Kwame. 2015. “On Jessica Jones, Rape Doesn’t Have to Be Seen to Be Devastating.” The Verge, November 23, 2015. https://www.theverge.com/2015/11/23/9786180/jessica-jones-game-of-thrones-rape-consent-television-2015.
PopMatters Staff. 2016. “ ‘Jessica Jones’ and Gendered Forms of Seeing.” PopMatters, March 9, 2016. https://www.popmatters.com/jessica-jones-and-gendered-forms-of-seeing-2495451026.html.
Projansky, Sarah. 2001. Watching Rape: Film and Television in Postfeminist Culture. New York: New York University Press, 2001.
Valby, Karen. 2014. “Hey TV: Stop Raping Women.” Entertainment Weekly, February 27, 2014. http://ew.com/article/2014/02/27/tv-rape-scenes-downton-abbey-house-of-cards-scandal/.
West, Lindy. 2015. “Hi! I’m Lindy West, and I’m a victim.” Bitch Planet, no. 5 (September). Berkeley, CA: Image Comics.
Williams, Alex. 2016. “Odell Beckham Jr. Responds to the Lena Dunham Dust-Up: ‘I Have to Learn More about the Situation.’ ” New York Times, September 7, 2016. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/08/fashion/odell-beckham-jr-lena-dunham-met-gala-response.html.
Witt, Lara. 2017. “You Love Black Men’s Bodies but Do You Care about Their Lives?” Wear Your Voice, February 28, 2017. https://wyvarchive.com/love-black-mens-bodies-care-lives/.