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—”
Kilgrave: “How am I supposed to know? I never know if someone is doing what they want, or what I tell them to.”
Jessica: “Poor you.”
Kilgrave: “You have no idea, do you? I have to painstakingly choose every word I say. I once told a man to go screw himself—can you even imagine.”—Jessica Jones 1×08 “AKA WWJD?”
Marvel’s Jessica Jones is about rape. There’s no way around it. The comic book series Alias, in depicting the villainous Purple Man and his ability to make you follow his every command, skirts the issue. But the Netflix series tackles the subject matter head-on, using the word “rape” unflinchingly, asserting in nearly every episode what Kilgrave did to Jessica. How could it not? 2015 has been the year of rape in fiction and real life, from watching Columbia University student Emma Sulkowicz carry her mattress around campus to the triumph of Mad Max: Fury Road’s Wives using their own chains to escape Immortan Joe—witnessing survivors of repeated sexual assault and slavery take back their control.
But Jessica Jones isn’t just about a survivor getting retribution for her rapist’s crimes; it also presents us with her rapist, over and over, and his belief that he did nothing wrong.
Spoilers for Jessica Jones season 1 and Alias issues #22-28; content warning for rape and gaslighting.
In the Alias series, Jessica makes it clear to Luke Cage that the Purple Man never physically raped her, but he tortured her all the same: He made her watch him fuck other girls and cry while he did it; he made her beg him to fuck her every night, for eight months. He forced her to use her powers to kill innocent people and attack other superheroes. He eroded her identity, removed her sense of self. The TV series’ showrunners, led by Dexter’s Melissa Rosenberg, decided to make the rape physical while retaining the other mental and emotional abuse, and Jessica’s resulting PTSD. As Rosenberg explained in a recent interview:
Playing them as honestly as possible was very much the objective from the beginning. The tone is meant to be very grounded and real, so you have to be very grounded and real with whatever subjects you’re dealing with. So there was no glossing this over. It was really an exploration of a survivor and her healing, to the degree that she does, in facing those demons quite literally.
From the outset, it was really wanting to treat the matter as directly as we could.
I don’t even remember which episode Jessica first uses the word “rape,” because it’s there from the start—never a euphemism, never undercut or understated, but a direct, matter-of-fact statement. To be honest, I don’t know if the show would have been as successful if Jessica weren’t a survivor of sexual assault. Just as Jessica’s status as a survivor makes her the only person who can get through to Kilgrave’s mounting list of victims, TV audiences also need to peg that experience on her. Especially because Kilgrave’s character arc is so devoted to denying the truth of Jessica’s words.
I was going to title this article “Rape Apologists Need to Watch Jessica Jones,” but they already have. Various online discussions (which I’m not linking to, but will paraphrase) deride her as a one-dimensional heroine who can’t get past her identity as a rape victim and uphold the sympathetic, humanized villain. The latter part is what grips me with the greatest fear—the idea that people will see themselves in Kilgrave.
“AKA WWJD?” is one of the season’s most bizarre episodes, in that it has Kilgrave and Jessica playing house in her childhood home, eating breakfast on the porch and sharing tidbits about their respective childhoods. But after he uses his powers to humiliate a nosy neighbor and (by his reasoning) protect Jessica from the other woman’s judgment, Jessica explodes in the argument I’ve quoted at the top of this article. And Kilgrave has the nerve to play the victim—he acts like he doesn’t realize when he’s using his powers, as if we should feel sorry for him because he doesn’t know when someone genuinely wants to be with him. Stunningly, it brings to mind the defenses from men accused of rape: I didn’t know she didn’t want it. She didn’t say “no.” We were drunk. How was I supposed to know?
These men try to deflect and redirect blame, denying or failing to recognize their own power and responsibility—not mind control, but intimidating nonetheless: overpowering physical size or strength, the figurative upper hand in pressuring women to be sexual creatures, the expectation that sex is something to be cajoled out of a woman rather than granted by her consent. Much of this is privilege, but not all of it is recognized.
For the briefest of moments in that episode, I did sympathize with little Kevin Thompson, lab rat at the mercy of his scientist parents. His powers come as a side effect of their experimentation, with his first super-powered command captured on video for Jessica to see. He claims not to have understood the power behind his words, but a few episodes later, his parents corroborate that he clearly ordered them around like slaves, that he turned his tantrums into torture. Those tantrums continued into adulthood, as demonstrated by his interactions with Jessica—especially the flashback to Reva Connors’ death and the bus accident, where Kilgrave screeches, “Come back, Jessica. NOW, JESSICA!”
And the truth is, before and after this conversation, we’ve seen Kilgrave’s power at work. We’ve witnessed the incredibly specific, impossibly sadistic commands he gives: “Everybody, QUIET!” “Walk over to that fence and stare at it forever.” There’s no way he couldn’t know what he was doing.
Kilgrave: “I didn’t have this—a home, loving parents, a family.”
Jessica: “You blame bad parenting? My parents died. You don’t see me raping everyone.”
Kilgrave: “I hate that word.”—Jessica Jones 1×08 “AKA WWJD?”
Nearly a throwaway line, but one very telling of the writers’ intent to tie to current issues: A study in early 2015 found that men were more willing to admit to sexual assault if it isn’t called rape.
The thing is, Kilgrave’s question of “How am I supposed to know?” is rhetorical; he’s unwilling to find out the answer. Fear of rejection? Fear of handing over control to someone else? Until, that is, he started stalking Jessica again.
Narratively, episode 8 is about a halfway mark for the season, as Kilgrave reveals why he’s been compelling Malcolm to keep near-constant surveillance on Jessica, why he’s left a trail of victims for her to find: He loves her. And he wants her to be with him—but this time, he wants her to choose. Of course, that doesn’t stop him from employing all manner of manipulation to nudge her into the mindset he wants—most notably, buying her childhood house and recreating every detail, down to the CDs in her teenage bedroom. (“I used a magnifying glass on old photos”—the meticulousness of that is so creepy.) It’s worth noting that the house is the rare instance in which Kilgrave resists using his powers; he buys it for twice its worth as an incentive to get the homeowners to leave—all above-board. It’s meant to be a gesture of a genuine desire to change, but it’s offset by the fact that he keeps Jessica from wandering too far by forcing his staff to slit their throats or stand at the window unblinking if she doesn’t return.
If that’s not bad enough, the people on the other side—the cops, even Simpson and Trish—doubt Jessica when they learn she’s moved in with Kilgrave. It doesn’t matter if it’s only for a few days; it doesn’t matter if it’s all part of some grand plan. They just see a woman returning to the man she claims raped her… so, is she back on his side? In any other series where the heroine tricks the bad guy, her supporters would know it to be a sham; but because mind control and rape are involved, suddenly Jessica’s every move is questioned. (Emmet Asher-Perrin delves more into how the series handles gaslighting in this stellar piece.)
Jessica: “You’re a lot of shitty things, but I never thought you were delusional.”
Kilgrave: “Oh, I see things very clearly.”
Jessica: “Not if you think I could ever feel anything for you other than pure disgust.”
Kilgrave: “Well, that’s crap.”
Jessica: “I never, not for one second.”
Kilgrave: “No, not one second—18.”
Jessica: “In what universe?”
Kilgrave: “Ours. On that rooftop. You remember. It had been 12 hours. I timed it. I hadn’t told you to do anything. And then, for 18 seconds, I wasn’t controlling you, and you stayed with me. With me, because you wanted to.”
Jessica: “That’s why you thought you had a shot with me?”
Kilgrave: “You can’t tell me you don’t remember.”
Jessica: “I remember it vividly. I had waited so long for that moment, for one single opportunity to get away from you.”—Jessica Jones 1×10 “AKA 1,000 Cuts”
Despite the fact that episode 9, “Sin Bin,” has Kilgrave locked in a hermetically-sealed room, the most compelling exchange of that arc happened not when Jessica was beating the shit out of him, but in episode 10, after he’s escaped: He appears at her apartment, and they debate an 18-second moment from their “relationship.” This was also one of the series’ more difficult exchanges to watch, because it reminded me of debates I’ve had to have surrounding the Emma Sulkowicz case. When the lawyers defending Paul Nungesser—who was ultimately cleared of rape charges—brought forward Facebook Messenger conversations between Paul and Emma from before and after the night of the alleged assault, more than one of my male friends didn’t understand what they were reading. “If he raped her,” they asked, puzzled, “then why did she have sex with him at least one more time after the assault?”
I was floored. Here were decent, smart, liberal-minded guys, and they couldn’t wrap their minds around a notion that came second-nature to me, a woman: Of course she had sex with him again. Maybe she was trying to reclaim the experience; maybe she thought that if they had sex on her terms, it would erase the assault; maybe she didn’t feel safe enough to reject him immediately. I watched these guys cast aspersions on Emma’s motives, not unlike Kilgrave’s argument of “You had the chance to leave, and you didn’t.” Poor Jessica could barely take stock of where she was! She had absolutely no time to make a rational decision before Kilgrave caught her up in another command to come inside. Look at how limp and disengaged she is in his arms. And this is what he convinces himself is love, is desire, is a choice.
“With rape, I think we all know what it looks like,” Rosenberg explained to The L.A. Times regarding her decision not to actually depict rape on the series. “We’ve seen plenty of it on television and I didn’t have any need to see it, but I wanted to experience the damage that it does.” Yet I couldn’t help but compare her words with one of the most damning aspects of sexual assault: the fact that no one outside of the room, so to speak, knows what happened. (In many cases, even those in the room have conflicting or hazy accounts.) We have nothing but Jessica’s word to go on, and at first that isn’t even enough: Luke Cage, with his unbreakable skin, has trouble believing in a gifted individual with mind control, until he has his mind taken over. In fact, the only way for Jessica to convince people is to make them experience Kilgrave’s powers firsthand—effectively, to allow them to be violated, to join the survivors’ club.
Kilgrave: “What revisionist bullshit!”
Jessica: “I remember everything.”
Kilgrave: “You didn’t jump.”
Jessica: “Because I wasn’t fast enough. Getting you out of my head was like prying fungus from a window. I couldn’t think.”
Kilgrave: “I know your face. I saw you.”
Jessica: “You saw what you wanted to see.”—Jessica Jones 1×10 “AKA 1,000 Cuts”
Let’s talk about Kilgrave’s favorite command: “Smile.” It’s a constant refrain from him to Jessica, to all of the women he takes under his wing—show me you’re enjoying this—and the way that she first identifies one of his victims. Of course, Kilgrave commanding one woman to smile isn’t that different from commanding another to play the cello until her hands bleed: He purports to be celebrating female beauty in various forms, when really he wants to capture it and dictate exactly when and how it gets expressed.
As in most rape narratives, it’s not about the sex, it’s about the power. It’s about the knowledge that you’ve been violated, that the person who has taken control leaves a part of himself inside you. In Alias, Jessica explains that you can’t differentiate Kilgrave’s command from your own thoughts; you believe that you want the same thing, because his command is so clear and pure. Again, the series tinkers with this detail, by making the victims of Kilgrave’s control struggle against his imperatives. Even though he claims that he’s only enhancing their preexisting desires, it’s clear from their tortured expressions that they don’t want to do this thing, that they are gripped by a compulsion larger than themselves. When Kilgrave’s women smile, it’s an act of self-preservation.
And when it comes to power, Kilgrave isn’t content with puppeteering people within just a few yards; he wants to project his voice, and his control, as far as it needs to go to reach Jessica. We witness Kilgrave send messages through a chain of couriers to hide his location; set an entire hospital on a manhunt for Jessica; and channel it through a microphone in a music hall. But none of these work, because Jessica has broken his hold.
In Alias, striking Scarlet Witch (when she’s instructed to kill Daredevil) jars Jessica out of Kilgrave’s control; in the TV series, it’s punching Reva Connors so hard her heart stops. It’s the thing she most did not want to do, and while she can’t stop herself from killing Reva, it forcibly disconnects her from his command.
It’s ironic that Jessica Jones season 1 builds up to Kilgrave projecting his voice, because that actually mirrors the conversation around rape culture, steadily growing louder and louder. Emma Sulkowicz carries her mattress across the stage at graduation; Imperator Furiosa snarls “Remember me?” before killing Immortan Joe; New York Magazine publishes “35 Women and #TheEmptyChair.”
And yet, I’m still scared that men will watch Jessica Jones and side with the victimized man with all the power. To them, I say—please look at this man who twists gifts into weapons, who claims to misunderstand his control over others yet exploits it at every opportunity. Recognize that nobody always gets what they want, that just because you can force someone to do something gives you no right to demand it. Believe Jessica Jones and not Kilgrave.
Natalie Zutter thanks everyone who read this article through to the end. Poke her about Jessica Jones on Twitter!
I don’t see how any sane person could sympathize with Kilgrave. I can see how someone might with an actual rapist because you weren’t there, didn’t witness it and want to believe the best in people (note: I’m not saying this is right, just that I understand it) but we see all of Kilgrave and there is nothing there to sympathize with.
I think the reason for the confusion – yours at your friends and your friends’ at the situation – is really a power issue. As a straight white male who is (hopefully) pretty aware of other ethnic and social groups’ problems, I can see both sides. On one hand, it’s difficult for me to imagine myself making the same decision Emma made, but on the other I recognize that my reaction is coming from the internalized knowledge that the worst thing that could happen to me is that I could be forced into doing the thing I didn’t want to do; either way, there is no bigger threat looming over me, my life probably wouldn’t be in danger. So I understand the confusion, and it exists because it’s so damn hard to not only know but also internalize the fact that male power is a thing. It’s much easier to sympathize with and understand the poor, the hungry, and the ill since becoming any one of those is a possible scenario for men; becoming a female rape victim is much more difficult to imagine.
Not that I am excusing anyone here. This is an easy thing to get wrong, but it’s also something I have to believe is teachable and fixable.
It’s disappointing anyone could fall for Kilgrave’s line. It’s disturbing enough that Kilgrave believes it and he’s a fictional supervillain. It’s an interesting contrast with DareDevil as both Matt and Fisk (to a greater or lesser extent) struggle with the morality of their actions and what it means about them. That kind of introspection doesn’t seem to be possible for Kilgrave.
It’s disturbing enough that Kilgrave believes it and he’s a fictional supervillain.
Abd the thing is, I don’t think even he really does believe it, much though he wants to. His big how-am-I-supposed-to-know speech comes after two days of him constantly and effortlessly working around his powers, from tacking a casual “if you want to” onto any instruction directed at Jessica, to the scene in the beginning where he soothes her about the servants by ordering them to tell her whether or not they’re happy with their employment. If there’s ever been a person able to know for certain if he has someone’s consent, it’s Kilgrave; he just doesn’t want to take the risk that the answer might be no.
Paying twice what the house was worth wasn’t a sign of change, it was a sign that he didn’t want those people coming back to complain after his control wore off.
I thought Kilgrave found it difficult to operate without ordering people around. He almost slipped and just told the homeowner to sign and the moment he had full possession of the house he did mind control the guy to leave. There’s the “Hello, Hank” bit and his frustration at having to wait on Jessica for dinner.
I think he buys into his mythology of permanent ignorance because he believes it absolves him of responsibility for the reactions to his power. That he can establish consent is not something he wants to consider and so he believes it impossible. He might even be right, depending on how his intentions and thoughts influence his abilities or how consistent the division between a command and a question is. One of the first things he says to Jessica is, “you like Chinese, don’t you?” and it seems to have invoked his power.
I call bullshit. Having a super power of mind control is not the same as “intimidating stature”. If a girls says no it means no. But sometimes it means ask again later, or sometimes it means “convince me with words and good behavior”. Sometimes it’s a test to see if you will stop, then it turns into yes. It is complicated.
But here are a list of things that are not rape.
Bad sex is not rape.
Feeling pressured to haves sex, and allowing it is by definition, not rape. It’s your body, and it’s up to you to decide what happens to it, no one else can be blamed for your decision making process but you. If I am pressured to steal something by my friends, I am still the one who has to pay for the crime.
Saying no, then changing your mind is not rape.
Drunk sex is not rape if you are both drunk.
Regretting your decision to have sex is not rape
Being held down is not rape provided you can still speak.
But most importantly saying that a guy should have known you didn’t want it, even though you said yes, is not rape.
@7–Sam, you make some key points, several of which I agree with. I think there’s a lot of gray area around what does and doesn’t constitute rape, and that women should carry responsibility in terms of bad/regretful sex (which I would not characterize as rape).
The point I was trying to make here is that Kilgrave’s mind control power is akin to male privilege: something that he claims not to recognize yet utilizes. At the same time, more conversations about rape culture demand that men take on more accountability in learning how to understand where women’s mindsets are in terms of sex, and not take for granted that they’ll get what they want simply because they want it.
@Ymfon: I don’t know if it’s ‘effortless’ – as noblehunter points out, at the least Kilgrave had to ignore his ingrained habits – but yeah, he knows very well how to work around his power. Apart from anything else, it’s obvious. But that’s why the line is so well written:
“How am I supposed to know? I never know if someone is doing what they want, or what I tell them to.”
Kilgrave wants to distract with the ‘I can’t turn off my powers’ excuse while trying to slip that word ‘tell’ right past us. The answer is obvious: don’t tell, ask. And then listen to the answer. And that’s the core of the consent issue, summed up in a line.
Excuse me, Natalie.
The list of things #7 posted is a refrain from rape apologists.
There is an implication going in what he says – its about casting rape allegations as these potential alternate explanations.
But quite a few of the examples listed *are* rape.
“Feeling pressured to haves sex, and allowing it is by definition, not rape. It’s your body, and it’s up to you to decide what happens to it, no one else can be blamed for your decision making process but you. If I am pressured to steal something by my friends, I am still the one who has to pay for the crime.” ACTUALLY, legally, you’re wrong. Many police departments and state’s attorney’s can differentiate between those that are coerced and those doing the coercing, and will often waive charges for those that have been coerced.
Intimidating or threatening someone into sexual intercourse is RAPE. And this has been established for quite some time. Either Sam is ignorant or is willing to lie to and confuse people.
In addition, being coerced to steal something is not the same as being coerced to let someone do sexual things to you or your body.
“Drunk sex is not rape if you are both drunk. ” Something that happened to a friend of mine was a guy purposefully having enough drinks to get buzzed, while he gave enough drinks to his victim that she was unconscious, specifically because of this idea. It is dangerous and gives an out for sexual predators who plan and manipulate.
“Being held down is not rape provided you can still speak.” ITS STILL RAPE YOU WALNUT.
I find this very worrying that a TOR staff member gave an implicit agreement to these points that were made. I would suggest said TOR staff member should consult Legal for a correct definition of sexual assault.
@11 What if Kilgrave’s powers work even on neutral questions if he wants a specific answer? He may not actually be able to trust people’s answers. Which doesn’t excuse what he does or even make what he said true. It just means he has to spend even more effort to avoid using his powers on people. He’s clearly unwilling to try though.
Even Sam’s first point about ‘sometimes it means ask me later’ or ‘sometimes it’s a test to see if you will stop, then it turns into yes’…I mean, so what? That doesn’t mean you rape someone. If a person says no, you stop. If they change their mind in the future, let them be the one to initiate it. It’s remarkably easy to not rape someone, and this particular excuse of “sometimes a no really means yes” and “it’s complicated” is really, really tired and terrible. We’re all entitled to change our minds, and you can’t pressure someone into having sex on the assumption that you can predict that they’ll really mean ‘yes’ when they’ve said ‘no.’
The rest of that little list is equally wrong, but especially the one about being held down…because yeah, if someone holds me down and rapes me, without my consent, that’s rape even if they aren’t covering my mouth. Are you being deliberately obtuse or are you actually someone who thinks it’s okay to rape someone?
The show itself, the script, and the acting, all point to the fact that Kilgrave is an abuser, and a rapist, period. Not once did I ever believe he really loved her; she’s just the one that got away, she’s the one who didn’t respond, she’s the one he lost. He lost control, and he wants it back, any way he can get it. Someone I know said she thought he was really going to change, or that he at least had the potential. I don’t see how. Tennant plays him beautifully as a straight up sociopath.
Which means that he absolutely understands the difference between right and wrong, he just doesn’t care.
At no point does he ever intend to change. At no point he is serious about becoming a hero. It’s just if that’s what it takes to keep Jessica. Not because he loves her, but under his power.
The thing is, he actually brings up an intriguing thought–the whole idea of having to carefully plan out his every word. I would actually really like to see a character with his ability, but with a conscience. Someone who actually did care about the effect their words had on the people around them. But that character is not, and was never going to be, Kilgrave.
A really important point I’m not sure everyone will get is that even if his claims to victimhood were 100% true–even if his parents hadn’t been trying to save his life–it would not excuse his actions. Ever. It would not give him an out. It would not absolve him of the responsibility of the massive numbers of rapes, murders, abuses, thefts, and gods know what else he’s committed.
The only point I’d argue is that when Kilgrave buys the house, he doesn’t resist using his powers out of “a gesture of a genuine desire to change”. It’s more because the legalities surrounding home sales are complicated, and he couldn’t have the owners wake up twelve hours later and go, “Wait, what the hell did we do?” He needed them to be actually legitimately happy with the sale and walk away.
@12: Just to clarify, in no way was my response to #7 meant to imply agreement with all of the points that were made in that comment–I was simply attempting to make the aforementioned point about privilege a bit clearer. As you point out, many of the instances listed clearly, and rightfully, constitute rape. So if it wasn’t immediately clear to anyone following these comments: My attempt to engage with the isolated points I mentioned in my response was in no way intended to support the rest of Sam’s “calling of bullshit” on my original post and/or the spirit it was written in.
@14 noblehunter What if Kilgrave’s powers work even on neutral questions if he wants a specific answer?
I think it’s apparent that they don’t – at least, not if he truly is being neutral. If he says ‘you want this, don’t you?’, I can see how there’s an implicit suggestion there that can be taken as an instruction. But it’s possible for him to avoid that fairly easily, even if his power is not under conscious command, by an effort that’s no more than most of us need to navigate a tricky conversation at work or with a family member. As a last resort, he can always ensure that he’s specifically asking for an honest response.
In theory I guess it could have worked in such a way that his desires were communicated in some way over and beyond the words he says, so that he genuinely could not voluntarily avoid controlling people. In that case, of course, you’d be entitled to ask: so what have you done to fix that?
But that scenario, of course, would not have worked for telling this particular story, on many levels.
@16:
What you said here is interesting to me:
“Which means that he absolutely understands the difference between right and wrong, he just doesn’t care.”
Something about the way this is stated implies a finality, a fundamentality, to this character’s personality. The way the show is written, he just seems -evil-. He just doesn’t care. That’s it, that’s all the explanation we need. Now we hate him.
In a way, he is like all of us. We don’t care about what is right or wrong, not really. What we actually care about is the effect that seemingly ‘right’ things have in the world we live in versus the effects the ‘wrong’ ones have. Right and wrong are the labels we give to things that promote well-being and things that hurt (or things we believe help or hurt).
He just doesn’t care. That finality is false- the story started somewhere, and it is ongoing, changing. Every action has a motivation, a driving need. All readers know this intuitively- it’s why we can tell if a character seems fake, or off. I personally feel that way about almost every single written villain. Very few people are good at writing evil villains that are realistic. The reason for that is that they don’t actually exist, and never have.
All violence is a tragic expression of an unmet need. Until we realize that and start asking a genuine “Why?”, as opposed to a “How could you, you monster?”, we will never understand why people hurt others.
This show has a great opportunity to explore the needs behind violence and control, but I’m doubtful that it will. Instead, Kilgrave will simply be evil. A villain. Somebody we will be confused by and hate and condemn from afar. The story may continue, in interesting ways, with Kilgrave becoming more and more interestingly evil, but it will be entertainment, emotional war, mindless violence, teaching us nothing, except that which we already believe: Violence is bad. Those who hurt others are bad. They deserve to be hurt too.
And the violence will continue.
How is consent complicated? If you’re not 100% sure of an enthusiastic and ongoing “yes”, exercise your own right to say “no”, and take a cold shower.
There are no mitigating circumstances for rape. There’s no equivalent to violence in self defense, or stealing to feed a starving child. There is no need for sex, the way that there is a need for food or safety.
It’s no different from good manners for five-year-olds on the playground. If everyone isn’t enjoying the game, it’s time to stop playing, or find a different game, or someone else to play with.
What I think is particularly striking of the depiction of Kilgrave as rapist is that it’s not just the act of rape, but his reaction afterwards to being told that he had done wrong. As previous commenters have pointed out, it is perhaps not always clear to people when they have consent during sex and do not, but here’s the thing: a person who is truly interested in having consent, once they learn that they did not have consent, feels bad about their failure to receive consent and strives to do better in future.
Kilgrave, like many men who are accused of rape and feel that they are not perpetrators, decides to go for the other route, the one that shows that he doesn’t actually care about consent for the sake of the other person. His reaction is, “How was I supposed to know that I didn’t have consent?! I can’t believe that you were upset by the whole thing!” It’s simply a very different point of view, and one that, in my opinion, plays a huge part in how the other person is going to perceive the situation. The other person (Jessica, whoever) knows, or at least strongly suspects, that the perpetrator didn’t care about consent in the first place.
@20 I think the show did a pretty good job at showing why Kilgrave was violent; why he made the choices he did and why he continued to inflict the harm he did. Part of the reason why he’s as creepy as he is that his motivations are fairly ordinary. It’s just how far he can go with those ordinary motivations and his lack of ability or interest in restraining them.
@20: I don’t think that I agree with you. Jessica thought about whether she could stay with him and reform him. She didn’t think that she could. His damage was early and severe. What his parents did to him was torture, even though it was for the best of reasons. He was severely damaged by that. Having his power at so young an age also severely damaged him. It also doesn’t appear that he had a normal socialization, considering all of the treatments he probably went through. Further, getting his power at such a young age prevented any further socialization, plus made it unlikely for him to develop into anything but a sociopath because he could get anything he wanted by just telling someone to get it for him.
Hi Natalie, first of all – this is a really great article! Thanks for writing it.
I do have one slight thing I wanted to bring up though.
“But after he uses his powers to humiliate a nosy neighbor and (by his reasoning) protect Jessica from the other woman’s judgment, Jessica explodes in the argument I’ve quoted at the top of this article.”
That’s not quite how it happened, and I actually think the way it happens adds a little bit more to the discussion. The two actually share (as close to they ever will) “a moment” and she gives him a slightly natural smile. Then, he reaches over and touches her arm, and that physical contact is what causes her to explode (and for that moment where she let her guard down, she’s probably a little angry at herself + guilt because she knows how invasive the mind control felt, yet almost approved of it in that moment). I feel like that’s a statement on “nice guys” and how people think “well I did a good deed, now it’s time for physical stuff!” as if that is her only worth.
Also, I’m almost certain that explosion is the first time she actually says the word “rape” in the show. I think up until that point they’d done an intelligent job of insinuating and implying and talking about it without ever really saying it, and I was extremely impressed when she exploded like that and gave that big spiel.
I do also disagree slightly with the idea that people who don’t understand the show are rape apologists – I think some people just don’t get it, and I think a lot of it comes down to a lack of empathy. I’m always stunned at the large majority of people that are unable to put themselves into anyone’s shoes other than their own and contemplate the feelings and thought processes of others. One of my good friends has zero empathy, and so just doesn’t really get a lot of what the show is trying to do or say, but he is most certainly, not a rapist or rape apologist – just not very emotionally intelligent.
And finally, I do think Tennant is sympathetic in the broadest sense, but more in a pathetic sense. He is the same as any other young, childish rapist (i.e. not a serial rapist or someone who’s made a “career” out of it), they never learned the value of love, intimacy, or sex. He had powers from a young age that meant everything was worthless because everything is attainable – that’s why he’s so obsessed by Jessica, because she’s not – which is pretty much the ultimate amplification of privilege.
* One last thing – I do appreciate how you didn’t relate Nuke’s whole situation to MRA’s. I’ve seen a few authors do that, and while I definitely understand what they’re trying to say, I do think it’s overreaching slightly seeing as that’s what the character has been like in the comics for years, and cherrypicking the idea that the red pill is “power” is also ignoring the purposes of the white and blue pills, and their origin – the fact that they’re usually coupled with Nuke’s American flag facial tattoo, and general obsession with America.
Apologies for the massive comment, but thanks again for writing such an awesome, comprehensive article :)
I think one of the difficulties regarding the aftermath of rape is it almost seems more about the woman proving her innocence (“no I’m not lying”, “yes I said no”) than it is about proving the man’s guilt.
Jessica Jones addresses this wonderfully in having the majority of the characters doubt the extent of Kilgrave’s powers until they are controlled by him themselves. So many of the characters down play Jessica’s account of Kilgrave’s powers and dismiss them as her exaggerating. Jeri’s “I didn’t realize” statement to Jessica in 1000 Cuts summarized this perfectly. Jessica had warned Jeri (and others) over and over, but she (and others) didn’t fully believe.
It’s worth noting that the house is the rare instance in which Kilgrave resists using his powers; he buys it for twice its worth as an incentive to get the homeowners to leave—all above-board.
I think you are giving him too much credit here. Because stated outright in the episode why he bought it. ‘Sellers remorse’. He knows his powers only last 12 hours. If he coerced the owner into selling they could come back after his powers wore off and dispute the sale, bringing too much attention on Kilgrave. He can’t have the seller disputing his desire to sell.
So this is not a case of him changing, he’s still following one of his primary motives. To hide. Not bring attention on himself. He is extremely concerned with that.
The offset you speak of isn’t really there. He has figured out that she has a soft spot for innocents. He knows that he can control her to a point with threats to others. He is totally clueless about the possibility of burning that feeling out of her – that the audience can see.
Hi, all–in the interest of not getting too far off-topic, let’s try to keep discussion related to Jessica Jones and the scope of the original article. And–as always–please keep the conversation civil, and disagreements with other commenters respectful, as outlined in our Moderation Policy.
To #16
“The thing is, he actually brings up an intriguing thought–the whole idea of having to carefully plan out his every word. I would actually really like to see a character with his ability, but with a conscience. Someone who actually did care about the effect their words had on the people around them. But that character is not, and was never going to be, Kilgrave.”
We should actually get that later this year with AMC’s “Preacher”. Jesse Custer is given the power to command anyone to do anything, very similar to Kilgrave, and at least within the comics, he becomes *very* deliberate about what he does or does not say, for that very reason.
This is the biggest problem I had with Jessica Jones. I actually like the show and enjoy the premise but I was afraid people would try to use it for an allegory for real life, where it patently fails flat. In real life, people do not have mind control superpowers. Jessica Jones can’t be used to demonstrate something about culture, because it’s entire premise is based off of something which simply can’t happen. If anything, the show highlights the difficulty in proving or disproving consent, because this showcases a physically impossible case when the lack of consent is cut and dry, showing that in reality, it’s not that simple.
@22 Ursula
“How is consent complicated? If you’re not 100% sure of an enthusiastic and ongoing “yes”, exercise your own right to say “no”, and take a cold shower.“
Totally. If someone can come into court and state “yes, I was 100% sure he/she was 100% into it”, then it’s purely a matter of judging the credibility of the accuser against the accused, and if there’s a shadow of a doubt, then the accused should go free.
Not complicated at all, right?
I have sympathy for Kilgrave for everything that happened to him growing up, and the ambiguity he must live in every day of his life. I have no sympathy for the sociopathic manner in which he’s chosen to live, and he deserved to be punished for everything he did to all those innocent people.
I’m not an advocate of the death penalty, but I wouldn’t have even brought Jessica in to the station for questioning over killing this guy.
@Kaleb:
” In real life, people do not have mind control superpowers. Jessica Jones can’t be used to demonstrate something about culture, because it’s entire premise is based off of something which simply can’t happen.”
In real life, people can control other people through manipulation and emotional abuse, which is our real-world equivalent of mind control powers. The power of an abuser to gaslight, make his victim feel guilty, question their sense of reality, feel alienated, and question whether abuse is really abuse, is a way to twist someone’s mind and thoughts. Jessica Jones shows exactly the extent this can go to – it just does it more literally. The scene on the rooftop where he makes her begin to cut off her own ear, then hold her close and shower her with soothing “it’s all rights”? That is exactly what abusers do in our world, and that is mind control right there, because that time of behavior consistently makes you question reality and do what your abuser tells you, because you do not trust your own perception of reality enough to make your decisions or feel guilty towards the abuser controlling you.
There is no question of whether Jessica was raped, physically and emotionally. The question is how to prove it to those outside, because abuse is so insidious. Psycopaths can seem charming on the outside and beat their partners when they get home – or worse, completely warp their perception of reality and sense of self. That’s what Kilgrave attacked: it was Jessica’s sense of self, her identity, her sense of the reality around her. He did it with mind control. Abusers do this similarly in our world.
And your comment just proves the insidiousness of it – that if a woman stays with her abuser, she gets asked “why’d you stay? Why didn’t you leave?” even though if she leaves, her chances of being murdered by him are 1 in 7. If a man seems charming to outsiders, they won’t believe what’s happening inside the home. If there’s no physical marks visible outside, people assume there’s no emotional scars. That’s the whole point. That’s why it’s so dangerous, and the difficulty of proving that Kilgrave has mind control powers in the show can easily be equated to the difficulty of convincing people like you that in our world, mind control like that exists in the form of abuse and manipulation.
@Kaleb: This is the biggest problem I had with Jessica Jones. I actually like the show and enjoy the premise but I was afraid people would try to use it for an allegory for real life, where it patently fails flat. In real life, people do not have mind control superpowers.
Isn’t that what makes it an allegory?
One of the things I appreciated about the portrayal of Kilgrave is that he displays an almost identical refusal to acknowledge responsibility of his crimes when he’s talking about murder etc. as he does with rape. The fact that he clearly says ‘not my hands, I didn’t do it’ when we have seen the results of his words with our own eyes means that we don’t have to see Jessica and Hope being raped in order to believe that he is guilty, and that they are telling the truth.
What’s interesting about that is that, obviously he’s not correct with the “hang yourself” type deaths, which he’s done plenty of, but, technically his argument holds for the “take care of her” moment (I mean, he clearly intended that so he’s still responsible, and if she tried to do it another way he’d almost certainly have corrected her, but considering how his powers work, that command wasn’t to kill her).
Why does that moment break his control over her? I don’t think it’s just because she really really really didn’t want to murder (though it true she didn’t). Plenty of people have done things under his control that are against their strongest instincts, but they don’t become immune, so it seems to be that it needs something else. It could be some combination of that, the long term exposure building up immunity, and her ‘gifted’ abilities, but what if the true horror that snapped her over the edge was the knowledge that she COULD have followed his command a different way, but she’d moved over into the realm of “doing the things that she knew he wanted even when she didn’t have to.”
We see this in other cases where she gets people like Trish to follow his commands on a technical level, to not do what he wants but just what he says, and her fundamental revulsion/despair at failing at that made her immune, or contributed to it. Of course, heck, maybe her real immunity came from her realization, in the seconds after the murder, that she could interpret “take care of her” as “make sure the one responsible for this doesn’t get away with it.” or even to interpret the undefined “her” as Jessica, to take care of herself by getting away from him, and that became her new prime directive, hardwired in long enough to override his subsequent commands. Okay, all that’s a bit of a stretch. Or maybe the fact that Kilgrave said “take care of her” and she killed her was a mind-break of a different sort… she realized (again, belatedly) that she’d not only failed to do what he ordered, she’d deliberately done the exact opposite. She had, therefore, already resisted him. When that realization came, her body knew it was capable.
Such a great character and such an excellent performance. Kilgrave is evil and entertaining to the degree that you want him back on the screen now, now, now to hear the next amusing (yet awful) thing he says and does. That’s a super cool literary trick. I think of Hannibal Lecter and Tom Ripley. Yet there are online places I frequent where Kilgrave fangirls are getting some serious flack for their attraction to a fictional character that is specifically and carefully crafted to be the worst person in the world you are still attracted to. I think the idea is that the Kilgrave fangirls are all bad readers and viewers if they do not experience the show as an allegory where liking the bad guy equals liking real world bad guys.
Anastasia hit the nail on the head, to an extent. This relationship is a portrait of abuse, with rape as merely one element. The important thing is that Jessica feels manipulated and controlled by a person who claims to love her. Maybe Kilgrave is not at fault because he is a narcissistic sociopath. He is not emotionally or psychologically normal not as a man but as a human being.
I can understand why a normal man reading this article might be offended; I would be offended too if compared to a pathologically abnormal, destructive character. IMHO, anyone with the ability to feel bad about possibly hurting a human being doesn’t deserve to be compared to the character discussed here. While I do respect the provocative nature of the questions posed about blame and lack of accountability regarding sex, bringing the average, socially normal man into the equation is unfair. It is kind of the equivalent of comparing every prostitute to Aileen Wuornos. Most prostitutes are not psychotic killers. Most men have no interest in forcing a woman to have sex and should not be expected to be accountable for those that do. A sexual predator is just another expression of an antisocial personality incapable of empathy. There is no connection between the Y chromosome and psychopathy. If female psychopaths had penises they would rape too.
Whilst the show has a clear rape storyline from start to finish, I can’t help but feel that this wasn’t the main theme in the show. As someone who hates rape storylines, simply because of find them boring and predictable, I absolutely loved the show as there are many other layers to the plot. I personally feel this article focuses so heavily on how awful his sexual assaults are, that they lessen the severity of his more serious crime.. a string of brutal murders. I also feel that the loss of control and power is over her own life, leading to her becoming more of a murderer, is what drives Jessica’s need for revenge. More so than the sexual side of the assault. A prime example of this was the scene where his command to murder breaks his control over her.
As for feeling sympathyfor the character Kilgrave, I feel absolutely no shame in admitting I sympathised with him for briefe moments throughout the show, particularly during the scenes of his past and his time being tortured buy Jessica. These scenes, in my opinion, tips her character over the line from hero to villan as her acts of torture made her not much better than Kilgrave himself. This i think highlights the brilliant acting and script and reminds us that we are all walking a fine line between good and bad. And the fact that we are able to feel emotions other than just hate for Kilgrave highlights David’s acting ability as he was able to portray Killgrave, who is essentially and evil character, in such a way that there are layers to his personality and is not one dimensional as is the case with a lot of comic book villains.
I’d also like to add (and remind everyone that this is just my opinion and in no way wish to offend) that I feel no guilt in saying that I found Kilgrave to be an extremely attractive character. I’ve seen so many posts online saying that anyone who finds Killgrave attractive has some sort of rape fetish and is immoral or “f*ucked up” and maybe they are right but As a woman myself, I can honestly see no reason to have to hide my attraction towards a character in fear of being classed as unsympathetic. At the end of the day, this is a TV show, I in no way condone his actions but surly that’s the beauty of fiction. It allows us to explore feelings or fantasies without them spilling over into every day life. Just take the 50 shades of grey books. One of the best selling books of all time and contains nothing but romanticised abuse from start to finish. I’m getting a little off track here but I feel this article and many others on the Internet seem to look down on the many women who found his character to be sexually attractive. Rape fantasies are a very real thing, despite many people who have them feeling shame because of them and I think that this contributed to the success of the show. Anyone who doesn’t believe me should just type Kilgrave into twitter for the proof.