JESSICA JONES.

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Yes! She plays the protagonist in the Netflix/Marvel series Jessica Jones. 

(I’m wayyy to attached to her character and that show, so this will probably be a long rant of a post, and might just be stream-of-consciousness because I’m too emotional about it to structure my thoughts well.)

Media Portrayals of Abuse Previous to Jessica Jones

Previous to that show, I was constantly really frustrated with the inaccurate portrayals of survivors. Every time they were either Permanently Damaged Victim™ or their trauma was literally their entire personality or they were the Perfect Victim™ who never did anything wrong in their life and everyone believes them, or they’re the Confident Badass Woman with a Tragic Backstory™ whose recovery was literally just leaving the relationship and suddenly they’re Empowered.  

Abusers are always portrayed as just blatantly physically abusive– all black eyes and misogynist slurs and yelling. It’s always obvious and once people find out he’s abusive, everyone hates him and it’s just a matter of catching him, no one takes his side, no one is convinced by him, no one else is abused by him, he never uses manipulation techniques– only blatant threats, etc. 

Rape is always depicted either on screen where the audience can sexualize it, which is absolutely horrifying, or it’s alluded to and implied but never shown/stated directly so it can be ambiguous, which allows people to sympathize with the rapist because they don’t see the reality of how cruel they are and they can compartmentalize. Both are very problematic. 

Just, so many portrayals are just full of inaccuracies constantly that feed into cultural misconceptions about abuse and the effects of trauma and the process of recovery that make it much, much harder for survivors to identify abuse and to be believed and to have others understand what they’re experiencing. 

Another thing I hate in most media is the huge emphasis on Forgiveness™ and Moving On™ for survivors and for the Tragic Past™ and the Redemption Arc™ for abusers. Every time, writers always want to show recovery as a process wherein the survivor is able to truly understand why the abuser became the monster they are and then forgive them and that show of selflessness inspires the abuser to truly change and become a healthy person after all. Which is straight up dangerous! 

That idea is not recovery, that idea is literally what keeps many survivors in abusive relationships. Survivors often start out excusing all the abusive behaviors because of their abusers’ past and because they think if they pour enough encouragement and love and resources into someone that they have potential to be a good person. 

However, my recovery– or at least starting the process of recovery– was defined by the moment when I stopped forgiving and stopped excusing what was done to me and realizing that I can’t save people and that some people genuinely are irredeemable. They’re just awful and dangerous and don’t respect me at all. And I owe them absolutely nothing. My recovery began the moment I could be angry. Being pissed off about having been violated was the healthiest thing I had experienced in years when I was able to once I first got out. 

It had gotten to the point where inaccurate portrayals of abuse and trauma were straight up triggering to me and I couldn’t handle them at all. It made me feel even more isolated, because non-survivors only ever saw these portrayals and so how everyone culturally learned to interact with me and understand me as a survivor was in these ways that made me feel deeply uncomfortable and unsafe. 

Why Jessica Jones is Different

I straight up love Jessica Jones. 

Originally I had zero interest in it because I confess to never really being a Marvel fan and not being into superheroes in general. But I read an article on Cracked called “5 Ways Jessica Jones Perfectly Portrays Being Stalked” (though the title has since changed).  In it, the writer describes parallels between Jessica Jones and her own abuse history and I was amazed that a show was apparently sidestepping all these pitfalls. 

Then I saw this scene posted on tumblr: 

Kilgrave: “We used to do a lot more than just touch hands.”

Jessica: “Yeah. It’s called rape.”

Kilgrave: “What? Which part of staying in five-star hotels, eating at all the best places, doing whatever the hell you wanted, is rape?”

Jessica: “The part where I didn’t want to do any of it! Not only did you physically rape me, but you violated every cell in my body and every thought in my goddamn head.”

Kilgrave: “That is not what I was trying to do.”

Jessica: “It doesn’t matter what you were trying to do. You raped me again and again and again—”

—Jessica Jones 1×08 “AKA WWJD?”

And God, I could literally imagine that conversation taking place between me and my rapist. 

So I googled it to make sure that Kilgrave doesn’t get away with everything (because I’m still fucked up over Breaking Bad because of that shit) and then decided to watch it for myself. 

And Holy Shit. They did everything right. The show begins a year after she got out of the relationship and she’s not magically fixed. She has PTSD and is an alcoholic and is struggling with depression. She wears the same pair of jeans for like two months straight and barely showers or cleans ever. But she’s not broken, either, she’s capable and funny and strong and smart. She solves problems. She tries to help people. But she’s not a perfect survivor either– she fucks up, she does selfish things, she’s problematic, she hurts people. But she doesn’t just become an abuser like some ‘cycle of abuse’ thing– she owns up to it and struggles with self loathing and tries to do better or make it up to someone after she fucks up. They just consistently made her a whole, well rounded person and a survivor at the same time. I’ve literally never seen that before or since. 

And not just Jessica Jones, either. Every single protagonist is a trauma survivor. Trish Walker is a survivor of childhood abuse perpetrated by her mother, and is faced with a physically abusive partner later on in the show. Luke Cage and Malcolm are both abused by Kilgrave. Hope is sexually abused by Kilgrave and is suicidal. Wendy was abused by Hogarth (portrayal of abuse in f/f relationships!). 

And they deal with trauma in different ways. One of the things I love about the friendship between Jessica and Malcolm is that they both react to boundary violation in totally opposite ways. 

Jessica reacts by just making way too many boundaries and making those boundaries ridiculously harsh– she tries to self isolate by being shitty to everyone she loves, she is rude to strangers to get them to stay away from her, she doesn’t trust anybody ever. 

Malcolm reacts by just not establishing any boundaries ever, which ends up with him getting drawn into dangerous and distressing situations that he should have never been involved with and getting drawn into relationships with people who aren’t treating him well. 

By the end of the show, their distinct recovery arcs bring them to the same place in opposite directions. Jessica establishes healthy boundaries by allowing herself to be vulnerable and telling Trish that she loves her. Malcolm establishes healthy boundaries by confronting Jessica about how she’s treated him and basically holding her accountable and being like look, this is shitty, do fucking better or I’m gone. And that was so, so important. 

The show also shows such a wide variety of abuse and of abusers. There are so many situations that I’ve lived through. There are so many lines in the show that I have literally said, or that my abuser has literally said. 

It’s just an amazingly powerful show to me and has the best survivor representation I’ve ever seen. It’s almost symbolic to me at this point, like a talisman of recovery and of supporting other survivors. 

That’s why I use gifs and images of Krysten Ritter as Jessica Jones everywhere when I’m talking about abuse. :) 

Thank you for asking!