Gender Representation in Film and Television: An Analysis of Female Characters, Study notes of Construction

Download Gender Representation in Film and Television: An Analysis of Female Characters and more Study notes Construction in PDF only on Docsity! Punching, kickin', drinkin' and talkin' shit: The four essentials of being a superheroine. Representation of female characters in Marvel’s Jessica Jones Master’s thesis Iida Rautiainen University of Jyväskylä Department of Languages English August 2017 JYVÄSKYLÄN YLIOPISTO Tiedekunta – Faculty Humanistinen tiedekunta Laitos – Department Kielten laitos Tekijä – Author Iida Rautiainen Työn nimi – Title Punching, kickin', drinkin' and talkin' shit: The four essentials of being a superheroine. Representation of female characters in Marvel’s Jessica Jones. Oppiaine – Subject Englanti Työn laji – Level Pro Gradu Aika – Month and year Elokuu 2017 Sivumäärä – Number of pages 127 Tiivistelmä – Abstract Tämän tutkielman aiheena oli tarkastella naishahmojen representaatioita sarjakuvajätti Marvelin televisiosarjassa Jessica Jones. Tarkoituksena oli tutkia, kuinka naishahmot esitetään dialogin, ulkonäön ja käyttäytymisen keinoin, sekä hahmojen fyysisten ja juonellisten kontekstien kautta. Tarkastelun kohteena olivat sarjan neljä keskeisintä naishahmoa, ja aineistona käytettiin sarjan ensimmäistä kautta, johon kuului yhteensä 13 jaksoa. Tutkimus perustui pääasiassa laadulliseen analyysiin, jota varten sovellettiin aiempaa naisrepresentaatioiden tutkimusta sekä Pearsonin (2007) hahmonrakennusmallia, joka sisälsi kuusi keskeistä hahmonrakennuksen osa-aluetta. Jokaista hahmoa analysoitiin kuuden kategorian osalta, joita olivat: 1) hahmohistoria, 2) ulkonäkö ja visuaalinen konteksti, 3) psykologiset piirteet, tavat ja suhteet muiden hahmojen kanssa, 4) kielenkäyttö, 5) ympäristö, sekä 6) roolit juonen kannalta ja hahmonkehitys. Tavoitteena oli tarkastella kutakin hahmoa monipuolisesti ja syväluotaavasti. Analyysin aikana erityistä huomiota kiinnitettiin niihin representaation osa-alueisiin, jotka aiempi tutkimus on osoittanut usein ongelmallisiksi naishahmojen kuvaamisen kannalta. Tutkimus paljasti, että naishahmot esitettiin suurimmalta osin varsin erilaisina ja moniulotteisina hahmoina, jotka tekivät aktiivisia ja juonen kannalta merkittäviä päätöksiä toimintansa suhteen. Naishahmoja ei juuri seksualisoitu ulkonäön tai visuaalisen kontekstin kautta, mutta joidenkin hahmojen viehättävyyden merkitystä korostettiin dialogin kautta. Osa hahmoista myös esitettiin supersankarigenrelle tyypillisissä rooleissa pelastamista vaativina uhreina, mutta yhtäkään hahmoa ei esitetty niin yksipuolisessa valossa kuin aiempi tutkimus olisi antanut odottaa. Sarjan päähenkilö Jessica Jones osoittautui perinteisiä naissankarinormeja monin tavoin rikkovaksi kompleksiseksi hahmoksi, joka toimi usein miespuolisille sankareille perinteisesti varatuissa pääsankarin ja suojelijan rooleissa. Kaiken kaikkiaan tutkimuksen tulokset viittaavat naisrepresentaatioiden kehittymiseen monipuolisempaan suuntaan supersankarigenren osalta. Asiasanat – Keywords representaatio, naishahmot, televisio, supersankarit Säilytyspaikka – Depository Muita tietoja – Additional information 4.4.4 Speech .............................................................................................................. 106 4.4.5 Environment ..................................................................................................... 106 4.4.6 Function in terms of the plot and character development ................................ 106 4.4.7 Summary .......................................................................................................... 107 5 Concluding discussion .................................................................................................... 108 5.1 Summary of the main findings ................................................................................ 109 5.2 Findings in relation to previous research ................................................................. 112 5.2.1 Representation of women and the findings of this study ................................. 112 5.2.2 Jessica Jones in relation to superhero traditions ............................................... 115 5.3 Concluding thoughts ................................................................................................ 118 6 Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 121 5 1 Introduction In recent years, superhero films have become incredibly popular. When Marvel Studios released its ensemble superhero movie The Avengers in 2012, it became the fifth highest grossing film of all time (Box Office Mojo 2016). After The Avengers, superhero films have essentially dominated the box office with big blockbusters released every summer. So far, the popularity of these films does not show any signs of abating. Four out of the ten most financially successful films that came out in 2016 were superhero films (Box Office Mojo 2016), and several major film studios have plans for upcoming movies in the next couple of years (Faherty 2016). Following the success of the film industry, superheroes have also recently moved to the realm of television. The trend was started by a DC adaptation Arrow that first aired in 2012, and there have been several superhero television shows made after Arrow (Tassi 2016). It is, therefore, safe to say that the superhero genre has become an important part of popular culture, and it will most likely continue to be so for years to come. The most influential entertainment company of the current superhero trend is, no doubt, Marvel Entertainment, LLC. In 2015, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, known as MCU, became the highest grossing film franchise in the world, surpassing such famous franchises as Harry Potter and James Bond (Holmes 2015). The MCU is a shared fictional universe, which means that all of Marvel’s films and series take place in the same universe (Siede 2015). The first installment of the MCU was the 2008 Iron Man, and the universe has expanded to include 14 films and 5 television series (Marvel 2016). The MCU will continue to expand in the coming years, since Marvel already has plans for several films and television series (Marvel 2016). Although Marvel’s main rival DC Entertainment will bring such famous names to the big screen as Wonder Woman and Justice League in 2017 (Koch 2016), Marvel will most likely continue to be the most prominent company within the genre. Due to the massive popularity of superhero films, many fans and critics have paid attention to the way they portray women. Comic books, movies, and television all have long histories of representing women in questionable ways, which I will review in later chapters, and modern superhero films seem to have inherited many of the problems of these mediums. The problem that has probably received most attention is the under-representation of female characters. There are significantly fewer female characters in the MCU than there are male characters. For example, only two out of the eleven characters that form the two most well-known superhero 6 teams in the MCU, the avengers and the guardians, are women. In addition, Marvel does not yet have any female-lead movies in their universe despite producing 14 movies. The demand for more female superheroes is evident from the countless posts that fans have written on the internet, criticizing Marvel and other companies for the lack of female characters. In 2014, Marvel’s decision to not give a prominent role to a well-known character called Janet Van Dyne, AKA the Wasp, in their new movie Ant-Man sparked a social media campaign protesting the decision (McMillan 2014c). Following the online outcry and long-term calls for a female- led superhero movie, the president of the Marvel Studios addressed the lack of female leads and expressed hope for such a movie in the future (McMillan 2014b). Marvel has also received criticism for sexualizing female characters and injecting sexism into their movies (Baker- Whitelaw 2014). In addition, the existing female characters have sometimes been omitted from official movie merchandise by Marvel’s parent company Disney. For instance, the omission of the lead female character Gamora from Guardians of the Galaxy merchandise inspired fans to start a Twitter campaign #wheresgamora to bring awareness to the lack of female superhero merchandise (Pahle 2014). Despite these problems, Marvel movies have also received praise for subverting comic book tropes and portraying female characters as competent and strong (see e.g. Shepherd 2015 and Heroic Hollywood 2015). In addition, Marvel has released two female-lead television series and the company revealed this year that they plan to release their first female-lead movie, Captain Marvel, in 2019 (Eisenberg 2016). Awareness of the representation of women within the superhero genre is very important due to the genre’s considerable cultural impact. Films and television play an important role in shaping people’s perceptions and attitudes in western countries, and the gender representations that people are exposed to through popular media affect their views on gender. The way men and women are portrayed are, for instance, highly likely to affect our gender identities (Gauntlett 2008:1) The ideologies that are represented on popular media influence people’s beliefs about how men and women should look like and how they should behave in different situations and social relationships (see Gauntlett 2008:2-3 and Bogarosh 2016: 4-5). Superhero films and television series are no exception even though they usually portray unrealistic super humans. Seeing sexualized superheroines, for example, can lead to lower body esteem and more rigid gender role beliefs in women (Pennell and Behm-Morawitz 2015). Although gender representations on film and television have been studied quite extensively, superhero films and especially television series starring superheroes have received less scholarly interest. Since the superhero genre has become increasingly popular in recent years, especially among women, it 9 Gender became a topic of academic inquiry during the 1960s when proponents of second-wave feminism began to draw attention to the topic (Pilcher and Whelehan 2004:ix). The emergence of gender as a worthy subject meant that the existing gender inequalities in various aspects of life from personal to political became subjects of academic research and critique in ways they had not been before. Since women had previously been largely excluded from academic disciplines, feminist scholars advocated paying attention to women’s experiences, accomplishments, and identities, which led to the development of women’s studies (Pilcher and Whelehan 2004:176). In recent years, scholars have also begun to study men and develop theories on the construction of masculinities in addition to the research that has concentrated on women and the construction of femininity (see e.g. Hearn and Kimmel 2006: 53-70). While women’s studies and gender studies have much in common, the two disciples are not completely interchangeable in terms of their focus. Davis, Evans and Lorber (2006:2) summarize the distinction between the two fields by noting that gender studies is more “focused on the way the organization and structure of society itself and its cultural and knowledge productions are gendered”. Gender studies has, therefore, a wider viewpoint than women’s, or men’s, studies. All in all, the field has expanded hugely into various disciplines since its beginning in the 1960s. The issues that gender studies examines are varied, but they usually relate to the ways in which gender is either learned, expressed, experienced or represented. The fact that gender studies is an interdisciplinary field means that it can be utilized in relation to a multitude of contexts and disciplines, each with an emphasis on different aspects of gender research. Discourse analysis, for example, has examined the construction of gender identities through language use very closely (see e.g. Litosseliti and Sunderland 2002). Theoretical frameworks on children’s gender acquisition have been developed especially in the field of psychology (see Leaper and Friedman 2007). The most relevant research in terms of this study, however, concentrates on the topic of gender representations. In essence, representation refers to “the description or portrayal of someone or something in a particular way” (Oxford Dictionary of English 2016). In terms of films and television, representation refers to the way characters, for example, are portrayed through various multimodal means. The language, sounds and images that are chosen to create a representation communicate beliefs and attitudes (Ott and Mack 2014:14), which means that representations convey and construct meaning. Due to their ability to convey attitudes and evoke feelings through images, text, and sounds, media representations have been a popular topic of research in recent decades. In the next section, I will introduce some the ways in which 10 the representations of women on film and television have been analysed from the point of view of gender studies. 2.1.1 Films and television through the lens of feminism and gender studies Film and television have been a topic of interest within the field of gender studies roughly from the beginning of the discipline. In the 1960s, the developing film studies were influenced by feminist writers and scholars, and feminist research on television was not far behind (Benshoff 2016:151). The interest in examining films and television has been motivated by the ideological power that these two media possess. Films and television are two very powerful distributors of ideas and beliefs, especially in western societies. Benshoff (2016:150-151) describes film and television as “ideological state apparatuses that work to maintain the status quo of dominant ideology; in the case of gender, much film and television tends to uphold the dominance of patriarchy”. In feminist theory, the term patriarchy usually refers to a social system in which women are subordinate to men, and thus disadvantaged in terms of social power (Pilcher and Whelehan 2004: 93). Movies and television programs that propagate patriarchy will, therefore, likely emphasize that men and women are fundamentally different and they should express their gender in certain distinct ways (Benshoff 2016:150). Since film and television have been considered influential in terms of promoting or challenging the existing social order, they have continued to be widely studied subjects in gender studies. The portrayal of gender is an issue that has likely received the most attention in gender studies in terms of film and television. A considerable amount of research has been dedicated to examining how men and women are represented in various genres, and whether those representations critique or support existing gender norms (Benshoff 2016:152-153). In addition to analyzing representations in individual movies, televisions shows, or even genres, some researchers have aimed at examining possible patterns in gender representations on a larger scale. For example, one influential strand of research from feminist scholars has concentrated on revealing recurring patterns in Hollywood films through a method called image analysis (Benshoff 2016: 153). Image analysis has revealed that Hollywood tend to portray female characters in certain recurring ways (Beshoff 2016: 153). One example of these recurring patterns is the virgin-whore dichotomy, which refers to the division of female characters into good women and bad women who often suffer violent fates based on whether they exhibit sexual behavior or not (see e.g. Benshoff 2016: 152-153). These kinds of repetitive ways of portraying women are usually considered stereotypical, which means that they are a “a misleading and simplified representation” of women (Ott and Mack 2014 :196). The frequently 11 recurring patterns on film and television are also known as tropes, especially if they are considered overused or clichéd. Since tropes are usually familiar and easily convey plenty of recognizable information for viewers, they are used because to make story-telling easier (TV Tropes 2017). There are a host of gender specific tropes in films and television that relate to the portrayal of both male and female characters and their roles in different genres. One of the most discussed pattern regarding the representation of women on film and television is the pattern of objectification: representing women as sexual objects. The dynamics of objectification in films were theorized by Laura Mulvey in an influential essay called Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, which was originally published in 1975. Mulvey bases her theory on psychoanalysis, namely, Freud’s concept of scopophilia which refers to the pleasure received from looking at others as objects, and argues that part of the allure of cinema is that it satisfies the desire for pleasurable looking (Mulvey 1990 [1975]:30-31). In her essay Mulvey (1990 [1975]:33) introduces the term male gaze to refer to a way of depicting, or seeing, female characters as titillating objects on display for heterosexual male viewers: In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure, which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness. Mulvey (1990 [1975]:39) notes that the mechanisms of cinema contain three different types of looks or gazes, which are the look of the camera that films the actors, the look of the characters within the story, and the look of the spectator who views the final product on screen. She argues that the spectator of the final product is usually assumed to be male and wanting to identify with the male (main) character in the story. The different looks are, therefore, combined so that female characters are portrayed as erotic object both for the male characters within the story and the male viewers in the audience. This is achieved by using cinematic codes, which include such aspects of filmmaking as, for instance, lighting, editing, framing and camera movements. Filming female characters from the point of view of male characters blurs the line between the male characters and the spectator. (Mulvey 1990 [1975]:33-39). Since (heterosexual) men are the target audience, the camera focuses on aspects that are considered pleasurable for the assumed viewers, such as close-ups of a woman’s body. Although Mulvey focuses on classic Hollywood films in her analysis, the concept of the male gaze has been applied to other types of media as well, such as television shows and advertisements. All in all, it has proven a useful 14 to see male characters at work and actually working than female characters. Television has similar problems as films in terms of gender representations. When Lauzen, Dozier and Horan (2008:208-2010) examined prime-time programs from six American broadcast networks, they discovered that female characters were more often represented in relation to their interpersonal roles and male characters in terms of work roles. In the 2015– 2016 season, 39% of all speaking characters in American prime-time programs were women (Lauzen 2016a:2), which is a higher portion than the average for movies. In addition, 38% of all major characters on broadcast network, cable programs and streaming programs were women (ibid.). Female characters on television are less likely to be depicted in leadership positions, or working in general, than male characters, and they are still more often defined in terms of their marital status (Lauzen 2016a:3). This inclination towards domesticity is also emphasized by the fact that they are more often depicted having personal goals that relate to romantic relationships, or other interpersonal relationships, than male characters, who have more work-related goals (ibid.). Both male and female television characters are usually under 60 years old, but females tend to be notably younger than males. Most female characters are usually in their 20s and 30s, whereas most male characters are in their 30s and 40s (Lauzen 2016a: 6 and 10). The sexualization of female characters seems to also be prevalent on television. Smith et all. (2012:12) analysed 275 prime-time shows and discovered that 36.2 % of female characters wore revealing clothing, 37,5% were thin, and 11.6% were explicitly coded as physically attractive. In summary, women are often represented as more passive, younger, and sexualized than men on films and television shows. Female characters tend to have less speaking roles than their male counterparts, and they are more often portrayed in relation to their interpersonal roles than work roles. However, the portrayal of women seems to be slowly improving as the number of female characters is increasing and gender representations are becoming more diverse. 2.2 Women in the superhero genre Superhero fiction as a genre is very diverse, since it can feature any type of media that includes stories that have superheroes. Superheroes are commonly described as people with inhuman capabilities that are on some type of a mission to fight evil. Kaveney (2008:4), for instance, defines superheroes in the following way: A superhero is a man or woman with powers that are either massive extensions of human strengths and capabilities, or fundamentally different in kind, which she or he uses to fight 15 for truth, justice and the protection of the innocent. A substantial minority of people without powers as such share a commitment to the superhero mission, so they are generally regarded as superheroes in spite of the absence of such powers. Superheroes have been a prominent part of popular culture for decades. They first appeared on the pages of comics strips and books in the 1930s, and they have made several appearances, with various degrees of success, on film and television screens over the decades. For a long time, superheroes were considered a form of trivial entertainment that was mostly meant for children, until the in the 1980s and 90s comic books started to become a subject of academic research (Johnson 2012:2). Today, superheroes have permeated the American society and culture, and subsequently other westerns cultures, so thoroughly that they have become dominant cultural icons (Johnson 2012:1). Superheroes and their adventures can be considered modern day mythologies that are told on screens and on the pages of comic books. Superheroes serve the function of entertaining readers and viewers, but they can also help people to explain the world and their roles in it. Myths contemplate the big ideas that are an important part of any culture, such as the concepts of morality, justice, and love (Stuller 2010:3), and superhero stories achieve just that. Myths are also used to convey information about what cultural values are desirable or undesirable (ibid.), which has been a prominent feature of superhero comics as well. Throughout their history, superheroes have both reflected changes in American society and influenced American culture considerably (Johnson 2012: 1-2). The fact that superhero comics and other adaptations are products of their time and culture means that they often reflect the prejudices and biases of the American society. In terms of the representation of women, this means that they have often been portrayed in stereotypical and sexist ways. In the next sections, I will present the most salient aspects of the history of female representation in superhero comics from the birth of the genre to modern day. After the comics section, I will examine how comic books have been adapted to film and television in recent years, and how women are represented in these relatively modern films and television shows. 2.2.1 Women in superhero comics The era of superheroes began in the late 1930s when Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created Superman. Superman first appeared in an issue called Action Comics #1, which was released by DC Comics in 1938 (Johnson 2012:7). By the time of Superman’s debut, comic books starring detectives, magicians, masked heroes, and many other kinds of protagonists were becoming increasingly popular (Madrid 2009:3). Superman set itself apart from these previous heroes by combining many of the elements of traditional science fiction, pulp, and fantasy into 16 one superpowered crime fighter (Johnson 2012:11). The character quickly became popular and the hero received his own comic in 1939 (Johnson 2012: 11-12). The reason for Superman’s popularity can be traced back to the economic and social troubles that faced America at the time. The 1930s were an era of Great Depression, marked by high unemployment, poverty, and social unrest. In a time when Americans had lost their faith in the government and economic institutions, Superman provided readers a hero who battled familiar social ills, punished wrongdoers and protected the innocent. In short, he provided wish-fulfilment and escapism in a time of suffering. (Johnson 2012: 7-13). Superman’s popularity meant that a host of new superheroes were soon created to capitalize on the new trend (Johnson 2012: 27). Some of these heroes, such as Bob Kane’s Batman, would continue to capture readers for decades to come, but most of the early superheroes faded into obscurity relatively quickly. The first female superheroes, or superheroines as they are often called, were created a few years after Superman’s debut. The Woman in Red, Fantomah, and Red Tornado appeared in 1940, and they were vigilantes with secret identities, just like most male superheroes (Madrid 2009:4). Madrid (2009:6-16) divides the superheroines of the early 1940s into two rough categories: The debutantes and the partners. The debutantes were usually women from rich and affluent families who, purposefully or accidentally, adopted secret identities to fight crime. Famous debutantes included, for example, such heroines as Phantom Lady, Miss Fury, and Lady Luck. Adopting a secret identity allowed the debutantes to gain excitement into their privileged but often boring lives, and to obtain a level of freedom and independence that was not otherwise possible for them due to the gender norms of the era. In contrast, partners were women who were introduced to crime fighting by the men in their lives, and who usually acted as assistants to their vigilante boyfriends or husbands. The partners were generally portrayed as less powerful and competent than their male counterparts, who were often forced to rescue their well-meaning but ineffectual partners from various villains. While the tradition of portraying female heroes as assistants to male heroes often relegated them to the status of second-tier superheroes, it did ensure that they continued to exist in comic books. When the United States joined the Second World War, superheroes were adapted to support the war effort. They became a propaganda tool designed to promote patriotism and appropriate American values (Johnson 2012:37-38). New patriotic superheroes were created, and vigilantes who had previously been fighting government corruption became law-abiding citizens who encouraged people to support the servicemen and to change their lifestyles according to government recommendations (ibid.). Female superheroes were also used to increase support 19 she must abandon her career in favor of motherhood (Madrid 2009:57). Even the once exceptional Amazon warrior Wonder Woman became primarily interested in romance and marriage, and her origin story was modified so that she had a mother and a father (Stuller 2010: 23-24). Originally, Wonder Woman was formed out of clay and only had an adoptive mother, which was probably considered inappropriate. Most female superheroes were also depicted as somewhat incompetent sidekicks, who were often patronized and treated in a very sexist manner by the superior male heroes (Madrid 2009: 59-64 and Stuller 2010:24-25). The following summary by Stuller (2010:24) encapsulates the portrayal of female characters in the late 1940s and in the 1950s: During this backlash to the empowering images of Wonder Woman and Rosie the Riveter, women in comics were often little more than simpering girlfriends who shopped, fainted, cried, and were obsessed with marriage. During the 1960s, superhero comics became more popular again when the major publishers created several new male superheroes that captured readers’ interest. New superheroines, such as the Invisible Girl and the Wasp were also created, but they were mostly secondary characters that were either sidekicks or belonged to a team of superheroes where they performed less challenging tasks than the male members of their team (Donaldson 2013:142-143). In the battlefield, they settled for distracting the enemy, and at home they took care of appropriate domestic tasks, such as cooking, sewing, and decorating the team’s headquarters (Donaldson 2013:144 and 149). In addition to being given less important tasks than men, female characters were trivialized in many ways. In terms of numbers, female superheroes were very underrepresented, since men usually outnumbered women four to one in superhero teams (Donaldson 2013:143). They were also usually given quite passive powers, such as mind reading, shrinking or invisibility, whereas male superheroes were given powers that had more useful offensive applications, such as super strength or flame throwing. Due to their more ineffective powers, female superheroes usually ended up needing to be rescued by their male teammates or partners. (Donaldson 2013:143-145). In addition to their power levels and team roles, the characterization of superheroines was influenced by sexist notions about women. They were frequently portrayed as one-dimensional characters defined by excessive emotionality and romantic impulses (Donaldson 2013:146-147). Despite these problems, there were some positives in the representations of female characters as well. For example, many of the girlfriends of superheroes were portrayed as having successful careers (Madrid 2009:104). In addition, the 1960s were a time of political movements that changed the American culture 20 in profound ways (Stuller 2010:30), and some of those changes were about to once again be reflected in comics. In the 1970s, many of the problematic aspects of female representation persisted in comics, but the effects of second wave feminism brought more variability and depth to female characters. In addition, the comics industry went through changes as the genre grew more diverse and many retiring writers and artists were replaced by younger creators, who were more interested in making superhero comics grittier and more grounded on the real world (Madrid 2009: 151). The result was that female superheroes started to become more competent and self-sufficient. They were shown choosing career over romance and contemplating the implications of their new liberated roles for themselves and their loved ones (Madrid 2009: 156-159). The behavior of female characters was no longer motivated solely by the men in their lives, since they could decide to become crime fighters for their own excitement (Madrid 2009:156). Comics did not, however, unanimously embrace feminism. Some stories treated women’s liberation as a passing trend or even as a dangerous upheaval of the natural order of gender relations (Madrid 2009: 153). The fact that the both the target audience and the creators of most comics were men meant that feminism was sometimes a difficult subject for comics even if they tried to embrace its values. For example, writers sometimes ended up creating characters that just seemed mean and condescending when they tried to make confident and outspoken women (Madrid 2009:166- 167). At the same time when female characters were becoming more independent, the archetype of femme fatale returned to comics. The Comics Code had ensured the absence of sexualized female characters for over two decades, but the creation of Vampirella in 1969 ushered in a new era of sexual revolution in comics (Madrid 2009:147). The creators of comics started to draw superheroines in much more revealing clothing than before. The new sexier superheroines did reflect the sexual liberation of the 1960s and 1970s in America, but they were mostly used to attract male viewers. Madrid (2009:155) claims that the increased sexualization of female characters can be connected to the advancement of feminism since it made male readers more receptive to the new competent and self-sufficient superheroines. She argues that “A liberated heroine who still looked sexy would be less threatening to the male readers of comic books”. Despite these concessions, the 1970s started a slow and often rocky process towards more equal representation for female characters. The 1980s, and especially the Presidency of Ronald Reagan, represented a return to the values of fiscal and military conservatism and individualism for America (Johnson 2012: 126-128). Combined the general distrust of governmental authorities and a growing fear of crime, these 21 values led to a time of so called ultra-conservatism (Johnson 2012:148-149). Superhero comics had already become grittier during the 1970s, but the new decade marked a turn towards darker comics as both superheroes and villains became considerably more violent and individualistic than before (Johnson 2012:130-147). The world of superheroes became a corrupt and crime filled place, where justice could only be served through violence (Johnson 2012:131), which meant a grim time for superheroines as well. Many superheroines were either killed off or faced various violent hardships, such as rape, domestic violence and permanent injuries (Madrid 2009:221-222). It is worth noting that although male superheroes have certainly not been exempt from violence and death, female superheroes seem to be victims of brutality more frequently and for different reasons than their male counterparts. In fact, the phenomenon of violence towards women is prevalent enough in comics enough to be a trope. In 1999, Gail Simone coined the term “women in refrigerators” to describe a list of female characters in comics who have been “depowered, raped, or cut up and stuck in the refrigerator” (Simone 1999). The term was inspired by a Green Lantern comic from 1994, in which Green Lantern finds her girlfriend strangled to death and crammed insider a refrigerator (Vanier 2014). Since then, the term has evolved to describe the phenomenon of using violence towards female characters as a plot device to further the story of male characters (Venier 2014). Venier (2014) notes violence in comics is not problematic itself, but the fact that is used differently for male and female characters: The problem is that a disproportionate degree of violence – especially sexual violence – is leveled at female characters, and that it is seldom in the context of furthering the mythological development of those female characters. In addition, male characters who are victims of violence are often restored to health fairly quickly, whereas female characters are not (Vernier 2014). While the role of female characters is still often that of a victim, they can be quite violent themselves. The development of violent heroes in the 1980s included the creation of several morally ambiguous superheroines. (Madrid 2009:225-232). Additionally, the first ever all-female superhero team, Femforce, was created in 1985 by AC Comics (TV Tropes 2017). During the 1990s, the sexualization of female characters and the trend towards more violent superheroes led to the development of so called Bad Girls. Bad Girls were ruthless heroes, or anti-heroes, who looked like supermodels and fought crime in extremely revealing costumes (Madrid 2009:281-284). The increased sexualization of female characters was also not restricted to just these bad Girls, since many superheroines of the time received a make-over to 24 two female members and 4-6 male members depending on who one qualifies as an active member. Looking at the cast of the film on IMDb reveals that out of the 22 characters that are prominent enough to have a name, 16 are men and only 6 are women (IMDb 2017). Even the background characters in crowd scenes are usually male dominated in superhero films. In the Avengers, for instance, females make up 39% of the background characters at best (Graves 2014:3-4). It is, therefore, safe to say that women are very underrepresented in the superhero movie genre. Female characters in superhero movies are usually relegated to supporting roles, and even in the category of supporting characters and sidekicks they are significantly outnumbered by male characters. In addition to the lack of women, superhero films, and action movies in general, have been criticized for portraying female characters in very sexualized and stereotypical ways (see e.g. Stuller 2010:56-60 and Brown 2004: 47-70). In the next sections, I will present some of the most frequently occurring tropes and conventions that previous research has identified in relation to the representation of female characters in superhero movies and television shows. The one aspect of action and superhero films that has probably received the most criticism concerns the objectification of women, since action and superhero movie genres have tended to portray women in very sexualized manner to cater to male audiences. For example, Heldman, Frankel, and Holmes (2016) examined the sexualization of female protagonists in action films by examining 1,387 action films from the 1960s to 2014. They used the term “hypersexualization” to describe the phenomenon of portraying women in a manner that explicitly highlight their sex appeal, and classified the female characters as hypersexualized if they were “‘scantily clad,’ partially or fully nude, and/or presented as ‘‘sexualized body parts’’ through selective camera angles, during any scene in the film” Heldman, Frankel, and Holmes 2016:4). What they discovered was not only that female leads were very uncommon in these movies, but also that there was a trend towards increasingly sexualization of female leads in newer films compared to the older ones. While Heldman, Frankel and Holmes’s study did not specifically examine superhero films, it is reasonable to assume that similar trends have taken place in superhero movies as well, since they can be considered a subgenre of the larger action genre. The two superhero movies with female protagonists that have been made in the recent fifteen years have certainly been problematic in terms of sexualization of the female leads, since both Catwoman and Elektra wore highly revealing costumes. A more recent study that focused specifically on the representation of women in superhero films was conducted by Kinnunen (2016), who examined five superhero films that were made between 2012 and 2014. Kinnunen 25 (2016:112-113) discovered that the level of sexualization in terms of clothes and camera angles varied considerably from one character to the next, but most characters were not particularly sexualized in terms of their clothing, which suggests that the portrayal of female characters in the genre has evolved to some extent in recent years. The female characters in Kinnunen’s study were, however, all presented having a very similar body type, which was slim, curvy and not very muscular, and their physical looks were commented on quite often both implicitly and explicitly by other characters (Kinnunen 2016:112-113). These findings reveal that the attractiveness of female characters still plays an important part in how they are represented, and a certain body type is being promoted as ideal in these types of films. In addition to being sexualized, female characters have traditionally been represented in very stereotypical ways in the superhero genre and the wider action genre. One of the most common tropes regarding the role of female characters in these types of movies is that of the damsel-in- distress, which refers to female characters who have to be rescued by men from peril. The damsel-in-distress trope was especially prevalent in superhero films that were made during the first decade of the 2000s. Bogarosh (2013) touches on superhero films in her analysis of women’s roles in popular films and notes that the main female characters in six popular superhero movies from the early 2000s (The Spider-Man trilogy, The Dark Knight, and Iron Man 1 and 2) all had to be rescued by the male protagonists at some point. Bogarosh specifically mentions Mary Jane from the Spider-Man trilogy as a particularly glaring example of the trope, since she must repeatedly be rescued by the male hero from various perils, such as falling from great heights and being crushed to death (Bogarosh 2013:45). The trend of using the main female characters as damsels-in-distress is also present in other superhero movies of the era, since Gauntlett (2008:79) notes that the leading female characters of such movies as Batman Begins, Superman Returns do not actually do much in addition to needing to be rescued by the male protagonists. Another recurrent trope that closely relates to damsels in distress is the broader convention of portraying female characters mostly as plot devices. The phenomenon was documented, for instance, by Stoltzfus (2014) in a study that examined the ten most successful DC and Marvel movies that were released between 2002 and 2013. Stoltzfus (2014:89) argues in her analysis that the female characters in those films are frequently used as plot devices to further the stories of the (male) main characters, and she encapsulates their function in the movies with the following statement: Women are assistants to men––they are used to help the male leads reach their full potential, whether by being kidnapped and needing rescue or by encouraging the men to pause and 26 reflect on their actions. The problem with these prevalent tropes is that female characters are regularly written so that they are rather insignificant in terms of contributing to the plot beyond serving as objects and rewards for the male heroes to rescue and receive. They, therefore, presents women as secondary and even expendable characters, and portrays them as weak, passive, and one- dimensional. They also routinely portray them as helpless victims of violence, since female characters are often hurt or threatened by the villain(s) in an effort to compromise the hero. The passiveness and submissiveness that often characterizes women in films is also emphasized by the fact that they are rarely shown in leadership positions or inhabiting other positions of power (see e.g. Bogarosh 2013: 67-70). A recurring pattern in superhero films regarding the representation of women is also the virgin- whore dichotomy, which has been prevalent in films in general (see e.g. Benshoff 2016: 152- 153). Within the superhero genre, this dichotomy has often manifested as two types of female characters: the innocent damsels and the femme fatales, who use their sexuality to manipulate men to achieve their own goals. Stoltzfus (2014:81-83) notes that while the femme fatale characters have more agency than the damsel characters, their agency and power is based on their ability to influence men, which makes such women dependent on the male characters. In order to achieve a happy ending, femme fatale characters have to change so that they can become more like the damsel characters and thus win male characters’ loyalty (Stoltzfus 2014:84). Despite the prevalence of problematic tropes in superhero films, the stereotypical way of portraying women might luckily be slowly changing. The representation of women in these films has garnered a lot of attention, and newer superhero films seem to give female characters somewhat more active and complex roles than the older ones. Kinnunen’s (2016:116-118) research, for example, revealed that the female characters in five more recent films demonstrated diverse behavior patterns including ingenuity and leadership. In comparison to the male characters, however, the women were still noticeably disadvantaged in terms of power and leadership (Kinnunen 2016:117). Even though the female characters in Kinnunen’s study were victims of violence and had to occasionally be rescued by male heroes, they also demonstrated physical aggression themselves and most of them got to rescue male heroes as well (ibid.). The characters did not, therefore, fit into the stereotypical damsel-in-distress trope, and their roles and functions in terms of the plots were more multidimensional than serving as passive objects. A final point regarding Kinnunens’s research that is worth mentioning is that 29 complexity, change, conflict, and inner life. Round characters usually have complex personalities, accessible thoughts and they develop as characters as their stories unfold. Flat characters, however, are often simple, unchanging and used as plot devices. The flat/round distinction is a useful tool for my analysis, and I will return to it when I discuss the representation of women on film and television. For most people, the term character itself is probably relatively straightforward. The Merriam- Webster dictionary (2016), for instance, offers the following definitions for character: “one of the persons of a drama or novel” and “the personality or part which an actor recreates”. Among literary critics, however, the concept of character has been somewhat controversial. According to Culpeper (2001:6-9) there are two competing approaches to characters, which are called the humanizing approach and the de-humanizing approach. The critics who favor the humanizing approach view characters as representations of real people, whereas those who support the de- humanizing view do not see characters as anything other than textual. Proponents of the humanizing view might be interested in examining such factors as character motivations, beliefs, and histories, but supporters of the de-humanizing approach prefer to concentrate on analyzing just the actions of characters instead of their psychology (Culpeper 2001:6-9). Culpeper (2001:9-10) criticizes both approaches to for taking a one-sided view on characters and advocates a mixed approach that considers both the real-life knowledge that people use when they interpret characters and the textual elements that influence their interpretations. Culpeper (2001:28) states that “one’s impression of a character is formed in the interaction between the text and the interpreter’s background knowledge”. In other words, people form impressions of characters based on the complex social knowledge they have about real people, but they are also aware that the characters they see or read about are not actually real people and take that into consideration while forming their impressions. The mixed approach probably is, therefore, closest to the way most people interpret and understand characters, and it is also the approach that this study will subscribe to. I agree that the interpretation of characters depends on our knowledge of real life but find the idea of interpreting fictional characters similarly to real people implausible, since characters, for example, frequently behave in ways that are deemed acceptable in a fictional setting but would seem quite bizarre in the real world. The mixed approach proposed by Culpeper (2001) emphasizes a cognitive view of character formation. In order to create coherent character impressions, people utilize stimulus driven bottom-up cognitive processes and concept driven top-down processes (Culpeper 2001:28). The top-down cognitive processes rely on the prior knowledge that an individual has about real 30 people and fictional characters (Culpeper 2001:36). Within cognitive psychology, a common concept used to describe the ways in which knowledge is organized within the human brain is called a schema. According to Eysenck and Keane (2000:276), a schema is “a structured cluster of concepts; usually, it involves generic knowledge and may be used to represent events, sequences of events, percepts, situations, relations, and even objects”. Schemas guide the way people comprehend the world around them, since they, for example, guide our expectations and inferences of people, events, and objects (Eysenck and Keane 2000: 277-278). The accumulated knowledge that people have about other people and social situations in general is organized into social schemas, which link social categories together (Culpeper 2001:76). Perhaps the most prominent feature of social schemas and social categories is that they enable us to categorize other people easily and, therefore, make navigating the world relatively simple. Social categories are variable and often overlapping, but they can be divided into three broad groups that are called personal categories, social role categories, and group membership categories (Culpeper 2001: 74-76). Categorizing someone as a woman, for instance, might activate a gender schema that includes not only the group membership category of sex, but also personal categories and social role categories, such as kinship roles, traits, and occupational roles, that are usually associated with women in one’s culture (Culpeper 2001:77). Social schemas also include evaluative beliefs about social categories that determine whether the categories are considered positive, negative or something in between (Culpeper 2001: 77-78). It is reasonable to claim that these complex schemas guide people’s interpretations of fictional characters as well as real people. However, people also have schemas about fictional characters that include, for example, knowledge about genre conventions that guide their expectations and inferences (Culpeper 2001: 36). In the case of film and television characters, knowledge about genre conventions can, for example, include information about such aspects as common character traits, plot devices, narrative structures, and dialogue features. Characters are, therefore, often analysed in similar ways as real people, but the process is not identical since analysing fictional characters requires knowledge about their context as fictional characters. 2.3.2 Constructing a character People form character impressions based on various cues that they believe to reveal something relevant about a character’s identity. In fact, people can be quick to make inferences and judgements about a fictional character based on factors that would not be sufficient to evoke character judgements in real life. This close attention to characterization cues is caused by the assumption that the creators of characters are deliberately trying to construct their characters so 31 that their every action reveals something important about them. Culpeper (2001:145) states that “any character behavior is part of an act of communication between the playwright and the audience/reader, and as such we can assume that character behavior has additional significance or relevance”. Although Culpeper is talking about characters in plays, the same principle applies to movie and television characters. Since characters are scripted, it is justifiable to assume that character behavior is designed to reveal something about them. Kozloff (2000:14), for example, notes that scripted dialogue is purposefully “designed to communicate certain information to the audience”. As characters communicate with each other, they also communicate something to the audience. In the case of film and television characters, dialogue is especially important for characterization. Kozloff (2000:33-44) states that dialogue is deliberately designed to carry information about characters and lists anchorage of the diegesis and characters and character revelation as two of the six main functions of television and film dialogue. At its simplest, dialogue is used to make characters distinguishable from each other by giving them distinctive ways of speaking (Kozloff 2000:43). On a more complex level, however, the most important function of dialogue in terms of characterization is to reveal something about the characters’ thoughts. Kozloff (2000:43) asserts that dialogue serves to create substantial characters by giving at least limited access into their minds. Piazza, Bednarek and Rossi (2011:5-8) also argue that the way characters talk to each other allows viewers to gain insight into their inner lives. Characters can explicitly reveal information about themselves or others in conversations, but often character revelations, such as their attitudes or interpersonal relations, have to be inferred from the dialogue (Kozloff 2000:44-47). This means that viewers can interpret a piece of dialogue in very different ways because they have different background knowledge (Bubel 2006:56). However, film and television dialogue usually aims at representing real life discourse conventions (Piazza, Bednarek and Rossi 2011:9), which means that the viewers and creators of characters often share enough cultural background knowledge to make roughly similar inferences from character dialogue. All in all, dialogue can reveal something about characters through its content and its form. The concrete characterization cues that people utilize to create coherent character impressions involve the speech, behavior, appearance, and context of characters. Culpeper proposes a range of textual cues that are important to characterization in plays (2001: 163-234). The textual cues can be divided into explicit and implicit cues, so that explicit cues refer to information that is provided by characters about themselves or others and implicit cues refer to information about 34 and motivation comes from our instinctive analysis of their behavior as conversational partners”. How characters negotiate turn-taking and whether they conform to common conversational rules or not communicates information about characters’ relations and personalities (Kozloff 2000:73-77). Common conversational rules generally include, for example, being cooperative and polite. The conversational rules for being cooperative are summarized in the maxims of Quantity, Quality, Relation and Manner in Grice’s Cooperative Principle, which state that one’s contributions to conversations should be appropriately informative, true, relevant, and clear (Grice 1975: 45-46). Being polite in conversations includes avoiding or mitigating face threatening acts, such as criticism, orders, and insults (see Brown and Levinson 1987). The last two elements in Pearson’s taxonomy are the environment and biography of a character. The environments in which characters spend their time influences the viewers’ perception of them. Like real people, characters are usually shown behaving in different ways depending on whether they are, for example, at home or at work (Pearson 2007:46). In addition, a character’s physical and human surroundings can tell viewers a lot about that character’s personality and social roles (Culpeper 2001:226). Places of work, homes, and favorite hangouts give insight into characters’ lives. Culpeper (2001:226) also remarks that the settings a character chooses to spend their time in can express their emotional state. Lastly, the sixth element of the taxonomy, a character’s biography, serves to flesh out character traits and create plot lines for them (Pearson 2007:47). Knowing the biographical details of a character often makes them more relatable and lifelike. The six elements introduced above interact to create complex and convincing characterizations. In the case of film and television characters, scriptwriters and production crews work to combine the elements so that they create characters who seem like real people (Pearson 2007:48). It is worth noting that this process of creating (and interpreting) characters is heavily influenced by the culture in which they are created. Character construction often relies on “readily available cultural tropes” that are shaped by cultural ideologies (Pearson 2007:48). Constructing a character is, therefore, a process that depends on a wealth of individual and cultural knowledge about both real and fictional people. For the purposes of this study, Pearson’s taxonomy and the supporting research on character formation provides a template that guides my analysis of the characters in Jessica Jones. Being aware of the elements that combine to form believable characters makes it possible to analyse them thoroughly. It enables one to examine what kind of choices the creators of such characters have made and what kind 35 of characters are achieved with those choices. In addition, understanding how people usually interpret characters helps to guide the focus of my analysis to those aspects of character formation that are especially relevant in terms of the character representations that come across to the viewers of Jessica Jones. 2.3.3 Characterization and superheroes Like many literary and cinematic genres, the superhero genre has traditional ways of portraying characters that are in some way distinctive from the character traditions of other genres. These traditions have led to well-established character types that keep reoccurring within the genre. Superheroes do not, of course, exist in a vacuum, and the character types that are common within the genre are constantly influenced by other genres. Superhero comics have been heavily influenced by various myths and literary traditions throughout their history, and superhero films and television series have adopted many character traditions from the action and science fiction genres among many others. The superhero genre is, therefore, extremely large and varied, but there some typical trends regarding characterization that can be identified. In this section I will examine some of the characterization trends of the superhero genre. I will begin by introducing some of the common themes and character tropes that have historically defined superheroes. After presenting the most common character features of a superhero, I will examine how of the one biggest comic publishers, Marvel, has approached their characters. The superhero genre has several well-established ways of constructing characters that relate to the various aspects of building a character. In other words, the genre has a plethora of frequently used character tropes that together form characters that are considered typical for the genre and, therefore, easily recognizable as superheroes for readers and viewers. These character tropes relate to characters’ motivations, behavior, interactions, biographies, and visual appearance. A central theme in the superhero genre is the fight between good and evil, and superheroes are portrayed in terms of this struggle. Superheroes are usually motivated by a devotion to justice and a desire to help the innocent (Gaine 2011:113 and Kaklamanidou 2011:62). Most of them dedicate themselves to crime fighting and protecting other people from various evil forces. A devotion to justice is not, however, always depicted in terms of a devotion to the law, since a significant portion of superheroes operates outside the law even if they strive to uphold both the law and the proper social order (Gaine 2011:113). For many superheroes, the dedication to justice is caused by some transgression that happens to them and makes them desire revenge (Burke 2015:100). Especially in superhero films, the protagonists are often depicted as people 36 who first suffer some type of an injustice and then become the only person who is capable of exacting revenge for that injustice due to their skills or abilities (Burke 2015:101). Another major theme that is important in terms of the characterization of superheroes is their distinctiveness from other people and the world around them. Gaine (2011:114) considers the exceptional nature of superheroes one of their defining characteristics and argues that superhero characters “must operate on the borders of society” to uphold their exceptionality. Superhero characters are usually set apart from society and the people around them due to their abilities or skills. They are often given character biographies that emphasize the fact that they have been distanced from society from a young age. For example, such a great number of superheroes have backstories that include losing their parents that the orphan hero character has become a common trope within the genre (see e.g. Gaine 2011:113). Even though superheroes characters are portrayed as somehow distinct from others, they are not usually depicted as complete outsiders. Superheroes often operate to uphold a peaceful social order, and they have friends and loved ones that connect them to society and the audience. For instance, a significant portion of superheroes have supporting characters that could be described as sidekicks, who are the heroes’ loyal friends and helpers that are often used as foil characters to highlight the hero’s flaws and strengths (TV Tropes 2016). If the hero is presented as a distant or otherwise unlikable character, the sidekicks also serve to provide an emotional connection between the hero and the audience that makes the heroes appear more sympathetic (Emkay 2016). Since heroes are distinct but not isolated from society, they must navigate both the normal world and the abnormal “super” world that their powers open up to them, which means that they exist between two spaces in what Gaine (2011:114) call a “liminal state”. This liminality, alternating between the ordinary and the extraordinary in terms of identity and actions, is central to many superheroes, and it often provides opportunities for creating narrative tension (Gaine 2011:123). A common way to symbolize the alternation between the two states is to have the superhero character adopt an alter ago for crime fighting that is usually named after their abilities. A very recognizable visual cue is commonly used to signify the superhero character’s transition from the mundane to the extraordinary, and that cue is the superhero costume. The routinely theatrical costumes have become a symbol of the genre, and they serve as a distinct visual way of marking a character as a superhero. Most superheroes wear some type of costumes to signal the transition from their everyday personas to their work personas (Gaine 2011:123). Even those superheroes who do not have alter egos to protect their real identities usually put on some type of costumes when they fight crime, because the costume serves as a visual signal that the 39 passive victim to active character who manages to use their skills and powers to beat the villain, who, in turn, usually receives some sort of a comeuppance at the end of the narrative (Bainbridge 2009:70). In addition to making the audience feel positive emotions towards the protagonist, the struggles they go through serve to portray their advancement from regular people to heroes. Bainbridge (2009:70-71) excellently encapsulates the Marvel approach to heroism by stating that “Marvel heroes must work through their heroism—a heroism which is based in ideas of individual advancement, of enduring trials and emerging, virtue restored, at the other end.” In other words, heroism in the Marvel universe emerges from overcoming adversity. 3 Set-up of my study 3.1 Aims The purpose of this research is to examine how female characters are constructed and represented in the television series Jessica Jones. My analysis will focus on examining the representations of female characters, but the concept of character construction is crucial for this study because it relates closely to representations. The elements that are used to construct a character form the representations that are conveyed to the viewers, so paying attention to the different aspects of character construction can help to form a more detailed analysis of the aspects that also significantly affect the constructions of representations. I chose this particular topic due to the attention the series has received for its portrayal of women. Jessica Jones has been praised for subverting stereotypical ways of portraying female characters, with many online writers complimenting the series for depicting multiple complex and meaningful female characters (see e.g. Ganesan 2016 and Williams 2015). Since the series is relatively new, it has not yet received much scholarly attention. I wanted to take the opportunity to have a closer look at the construction of female characters in the series to reveal how the characters are really represented. Jessica Jones is a series that is heavily influenced by action, detective, and superhero genres, all of which have often underrepresented and stereotyped female characters. It is, therefore, interesting to examine how the female characters are constructed and to evaluate whether those constructions form stereotypical ways of representing female characters. The overall goal of my study is to answer the following question: • How are the female characters represented in the television series Jessica Jones? 40 In order to be able to answer this main question, I have a more detailed research question to guide my analysis, which is as follows: • What is the male to female ratio in the series, and how are the major female characters portrayed through dialogue, behavior, appearance, and context? My analysis will include a very small-scale quantitative inquiry regarding the number of male and female characters with speaking roles because women have been significantly underrepresented in the superhero genre, and in television and movies in general, in terms of giving lines to female characters (see e.g. Graves 2014, Lauzen 2016, and Smith et al. 2013). Jessica Jones is already an exceptional superhero show due its female lead, but examining the male-female ratio regarding speaking roles will reveal whether it also takes a more equal approach on the number of male and female characters than previous adaptations in the genre. Then I am going to analyse the four most central female characters in more detail to form a general view on the construction of the most important female characters in the series. The characters were chosen either due to their status as main characters or due to their salience in terms of the plot. All of the four characters appear in at least half of the episodes that comprise the first season of the series. 3.2 Data My data consists of the first season of Jessica Jones. The season has thirteen episodes and each of them has a run time of roughly 50 minutes. The episodes are available on Netflix for all members, and I accessed them via the streaming service for the purposes of this study. The series has only one season so far, and the second season is rumored to come out on 2018, which means that my analysis will be limited to the 13 existing episodes. The main character, Jessica Jones, appears in all thirteen episodes, and the number of episodes that the other three characters appear in ranges from twelve to seven. In practice, I conducted my analysis by viewing the 13 episodes repeatedly and making notes about relevant aspects in terms of my research aim. I first watched the series to get a very general view of the female characters and their storylines, and watched it several times more to make detailed notes about each character and their relationships with other characters. My analysis will be based on these notes and it will include transcribed parts of the dialogue to support and demonstrate my arguments. 3.2.1 The TV series Jessica Jones and its female characters In terms of style, Jessica Jones blends together elements from the superhero genre, the film noir genre and detective shows. The main plot of the series focuses on Jessica trying to bring a 41 superpowered villain to justice, which is a very common theme within the superhero genre. In addition to her superpowers, however, Jessica uses her skills as a private detective to achieve her aim. The show also utilizes plot devices that are common in film noir, such as voice over and flashbacks, to make the show look like a detective series that just happens to have a superhero as the detective protagonist. In this section, I will briefly introduce the main storyline of the first season and the four female characters that I will be examining in my analysis. The series begins with Jessica Jones working as a private detective in New York, which mostly consists of taking pictures of cheating spouses and uncovering compromising information about people. Jessica has super strength and limited flight abilities, which she sometimes uses while gathering information for her cases. In the first episode, Jessica is hired by Bob and Barbara Shlottman to find their missing daughter Hope, who has been acting strangely recently. While searching for Hope, Jessica finds out that she has been taken by a man called Kilgrave, who can control people’s minds by simply giving them verbal orders. Before becoming a private detective, Jessica spent a period of time as Kilgrave’s personal slave and only managed to escape during a bus accident that supposedly killed him. Finding out that Kilgrave is alive, therefore, shocks Jessica, and she seriously considers leaving New York to get out of his reach. Instead of immediately escaping, however, Jessica decides to find and rescue Hope before fleeing the city. She tracks Hope down to a nearby hotel and takes the young woman to her parents, unaware that Hope has been ordered by Kilgrave to kill them. Hope ends up shooting her parents in an elevator at the end of the episode, which prompts Jessica to stay in New York and start bringing Kilgrave to justice. The rest of the season focuses on Jessica’s attempts to catch Kilgrave in order to prove his mind control powers and thus release Hope from prison. Kilgrave, on the other hand, is obsessed with Jessica and getting her to admit to having romantic feelings for him. Since Jessica has become immune to his mind control powers, he executes grand manipulative schemes to win her compliance and kills everyone who gets in his way (or even mildly inconveniences him). As the season progresses, it becomes apparent that getting Kilgrave imprisoned will be impossible, and Jessica is finally forced to kill him to prevent him from hurting more people. In this study, I will examine the four most prominent female characters of the series. The majority of my analysis will focus on Jessica because she is the most important character in the series as its name suggests. As the main character, she is at the center of the show and the events are mostly portrayed from her point of view. As the first modern Marvel superheroine to receive her own television adaptation, Jessica also presents an interesting topic of analysis regarding 44 personalities are mostly formed when they interact with others. The kind of relationships that they have and the behavior patterns that they exhibit in interactions really form the viewers’ impressions about the characters’ personalities. I will, therefore, combine the two categories in my analysis to achieve a more comprehensive view on how the characters are portrayed regarding their personalities. The physical characteristics that I will be considering in terms of the characters’ visual appearance includes their body types, attractiveness, and clothes. My goal is to examine what kind of traits or allusions the characters’ appearances evoke. In this category, my analysis will also pay close attention to those aspects of female representation that previous research has regularly found to be problematic: sexualization of female characters and highlighting their attractiveness. Female characters in films and television have historically been more likely to be sexualized than male characters via clothes and visual context, and significantly more emphasis has been put on their attractiveness compared to men (see e.g. Heldman, Frankel, and Holmes 2016 and Smith et al. 2012). I will examine whether the four characters in Jessica Jones are portrayed in ways that highlight their sex appeal by focusing on how they are dressed and filmed. According to my criteria, a character is portrayed in a sexualized manner if she wears sexy or revealing clothes and/or if she is filmed so that the camera depicts her as an object on display for heterosexual male viewers. In principle, a character’s clothes will be categorized as sexy if they are tight and alluring, and they will be considered revealing if they expose her breasts, midriff, or upper thighs. In practice, however, clothes and possible nudity will be analysed in relation to context because exposed skin does not automatically equate with objectification. I will also include the concept of the male gaze into my analysis by looking at whether the way the camera shots are framed and angled accentuate the female characters’ bodies. Camera angles will be considered objectifying if they highlight characters’ body parts in ways that can be viewed as titillating. In terms of highlighting the characters’ attractiveness, I will pay attention to whether their looks are explicitly or implicitly commented on by other characters in the show. In terms of the speech characteristics category, I will examine features that Kozloff (2000:95) and Culpeper (2001:182-22 and 215-221) have identified as relevant regarding characterization, which include character lexis and character voice. I will also pay attention to the conversational structures of character dialogue, because both Culpeper (2001:172-173) and Kozloff (2000:73) highlight the importance of examining how characters behave in conversations to infer personality traits and power relations between characters. My aim is to see what kind of patterns 45 these conversational factors form, and how they contribute to the formation of the characters’ personalities. In terms of character environments, I will look at the places where the characters spend most of their time and analyse what kind of impressions those places form about them in relation to their psychological traits. Character biographies are also briefly examined to see how they contribute to characterization. Lastly, I will look at the characters’ function in terms of the plot and whether they go through any character development during the season. The purpose of this is to pay attention to the broader character roles and behavior patterns that characterize the central ladies of Jessica Jones. I included this aspect in my study because I wanted to see whether the characters are portrayed in terms of the common roles and tropes that have dominated the portrayal of women in comic adaptations and action films, such as the role of the damsel-in-distress. In this category, I will also look at such aspects as the characters agency and development, which affect how round or flat the characters seem. All in all, the goal of my analysis is to construct a comprehensive view of how the characters are portrayed. 4 Analysis As a foreword to my main analysis, I will first very briefly introduce my findings regarding the overall male to female ratio regarding speaking roles in the series. In terms of the number of speaking roles, Jessica Jones turned out to be surprisingly equal between male and female characters. The criteria that I used to define a speaking role was that the character has to say something recognizable so that it is clearly possible to tell who said the line. I, therefore, did not include those instances where someone says something unintelligible on the background or the person whose line is heard is not possible to identify certainly. I chose not to include such unclear instances in my analysis because it was not always possible to accurately tell whether the character who is speaking is male or female. According to my criteria, the first season of Jessica Jones features altogether 250 characters with speaking roles. Out of those 250 characters, 133 are male and 117 are female. The gender ratio varies between episodes so that some episodes have more men speaking and others more women. Overall, however, female characters comprise 46.8% of all characters with speaking roles, which means that the gender divide is very small even if there are slightly more men than women speaking. According to my brief analysis, Jessica Jones, therefore, fares well in this aspect of female representation even regarding the minor and background characters. 46 In the next sections I will present my detailed analysis of the four most prominent female characters using the methods discussed in the previous section. I will first analyse each character individually in terms of their appearance, behavior, speech, and context within the show. I will begin the analysis of each character by presenting their biographies in order to introduce them to the reader. After the character biography, I will analyse the character’s visual appearance and context, which will then be followed by an examination of the character’s psychological traits and habits. Because interaction with other characters is crucial for the formation of characters’ personality traits, I will include the analysis of character interactions in the same section with psychological traits. In addition, I will take a look at each character’s closest relationships at the end of the that section. After psychological traits and relationships, that I will analyse relevant character formation features in the following order: speech, environments and characters’ function in terms of the plot. Throughout my analysis, I will use transcribed excerpts from the characters’ speech as examples to support my findings. The result will be a thorough examination of who the characters are and what kind of roles and functions they play in the series. 4.1 Jessica Jones Jessica Jones is the protagonist of the show and, therefore, the most important character in the series. She is played by Krysten Ritter, who is a white American actress in her mid-thirties. Jessica’s age is not mentioned in the first season, but she is most likely meant to be somewhere in her early thirties or at least in her late twenties. 4.1.1 Character biography The essential aspects of Jessica’s background are revealed via dialogue and flashbacks during the first season. She was a normal child until she lost her parents and her little brother in a car accident that put her in a coma for a while. While in coma, a woman called Dorothy Walker adopted Jessica as a publicity stunt to advance the public image of her famous child actress daughter Patricia. Jessica and Patricia, or Trish as she likes to be called, were classmates before the accident, and Dorothy believed that adopting an orphaned acquaintance would be good publicity for her daughter’s career and the Walker brand. After Jessica woke up from the coma, she went to live with the Walkers and discovered that she had developed inhuman strength that was most likely somehow caused by the car accident. Trish found out about Jessica’s abilities almost immediately but promised not to tell anyone about them if Jessica kept the fact that Trish was being abused by her mother as a secret. Despite her promise not to try to save Trish from 49 mostly nude, and she only undresses in situations where it makes sense in terms of the actions that she in engaging in. When Jessica is in the shower, for example, the shot is framed so that only her shoulders and a bit of her chest are visible. Therefore, the scene does not actually reveal much of Jessica’s body even though the implication is that she if fully naked considering the situation. Secondly, the scenes are usually filmed so that the camera stays stationary instead of panning her body. In the first episode, for instance, viewers see Jessica removing her jeans and going to bed to get some sleep. The scene is filmed so that the camera films the room from the doorway as Jessica walks in and takes off her jeans and then films from the opposite side of the room as she goes to bed and gets under the covers. The fact that the camera stays stationary makes the shot seem like the camera is simply documenting the event instead of highlighting the character’s body. Thirdly, Jessica does not in any scene pose in ways that could be considered gratuitous and meant to simply appeal to the “male gaze”. In the aforementioned bedroom scene, for instance, Jessica undresses by unceremoniously showing her pants down and shuffling them off by lifting her legs. She does not bend in ways that would highlight parts of her body to the camera or stop to pose in ways that would accentuate her curves. Viewers also only see her in her underwear for only a very short time, so her state of undress is not emphasized in terms of time either. All in all, Jessica is depicted partially nude in several scenes, but the nudity is quite limited and can be considered appropriate for the context. Seeing Jessica in situations that are a normal part of life such as showering and changing clothes can even serve to add to the feel of realism and relatability for viewers, so such scenes can be considered an important part of character construction instead of means to sexualize the character, although the alternative view would not be completely baseless either. The last point regarding Jessica’s visual appearance that is worth pointing out is her lack of superhero costume. Jessica always wears her regular clothes and reveals her face when she is investigating and using her powers, which makes her a quite unusual character in the superhero genre in terms of appearance, since most superheroes no matter the medium have some kind of costumes that they wear when they assume the identity of their alter egos. In the original Alias comic, Jessica is shown wearing a very tight and revealing white superhero costume, but the television Jessica balks at the idea of wearing something so revealing and flashy. The question of a superhero costume is addressed in a hilarious scene where Trish tries to present Jessica with a costume that closely resembles the one Jessica used to briefly wear in comics. Jessica firmly refuses to even consider wearing Trish’s suggestion, and she comments on the costume by stating that” the only place anyone is wearing that is trick-or-treating or as part of some 50 kinky role-playing scenario” and “if I wear that thing, you're gonna have to call me Cameltoe”. This scene makes fun of the flashy outfits that superheroes wear, and it can be interpreted as explicit criticism towards the genre’s tendency to portray female heroes wearing highly sexualized costumes that are also quite impractical and unrealistic as Jessica’s comment about a “cameltoe” points out. With this scene, the series quite explicitly aims to distance itself from the conventions of hypersexualization that have long dominated the visual representation of female characters in superhero and action genres. This non-stereotypical approach regarding the visual representation of female characters seems to be applied to Jessica’s visual appearance in practice as well, since she does not seem to be sexualized in terms of her clothes or suggestive camera angles. 4.1.3 Psychological traits, habits, and interaction with other characters The character traits that form Jessica’s perceived personality arise from the ways in which she behaves when she is alone or interacting with other characters. The format of the show, thirteen 50 minutes long episodes, allows the construction of a very multifaceted but still consistent character personality. During the first season of the show Jessica is portrayed as a person who has many character flaws and personal struggles, but who is ultimately a good and self- sacrificing person. One of the defining features of Jessica’s personality is her quite cynical attitude towards other people and life in general. She often believes the worst of people, and does not appear to have much sympathy for people she does not care about, which includes most people she meets. Her cynicism becomes evident right from the beginning of the first episode, when she describes her job as a private investigator in a voiceover sequence: Example 2 (episode 1) Jessica New York may be the city that never sleeps, but it sure does sleep around. Not that I'm complaining. Cheaters are good for business. A big part of the job is looking for the worst in people. Turns out I excel at that. Clients hire me to find dirt. And I find it. These are the first words that viewers hear from Jessica so they are important in terms of providing the first impression of who Jessica is as a person. The voiceover serves two functions: it establishes Jessica’s profession and reveals Jessica’s attitude towards her clients and other people in general. She is someone who is good at finding the worst in people, and whose job has most likely made her rather cynical towards others. Her rather negative attitude towards others is further affirmed when she later remarks that she usually simply avoids other people altogether due to their flaws: 51 Example 3 (episode 1) Jessica People do bad shit. I just avoid getting involved with them in the first place. That works for me. Most of the time. If operating on the borders of society in a liminal state is central to superhero characters like Gaine (2011) argues, then Jessica’s job as a private investigator is certainly a suitable profession for achieving just that since her job reveals the hidden underbelly of the society. Jessica’s targets have their regular, socially acceptable lives, and then they have their hidden lives filled with unsavory secrets. Jessica moves between these two states, the public and the hidden, as she uncovers people’s secrets. In addition to having a cynical attitude towards other people, Jessica is also often quite rude when she is interacting with people she does not care about. She does not have much of a filter when it comes to her words, actions, or facial expressions, and lets people know exactly what she thinks of them (which is usually something negative). The first episode, for example, has a scene that encapsulates how Jessica interacts with people she finds annoying. When Jessica is investigating Hope’s disappearance, she goes to interview Hope’s best friend to gather information about Hope’s past actions. Hope’s friend, however, is living with a male roommate who is filming everything that happens to him with a go pro camera that is attached to a headband. Jessica dislikes being filmed and resorts to forcibly taking the camera away from the roommate when he does not stop filming: Example 4 (episode 1) Jessica Stop shooting. Roommate I'm making an experimental time lapse film of a year in my life, so... Jessica (sarcastically) Riveting. Hope’s friend I found him on Craigslist. I suddenly needed a roommate, so... (Turns towards roommate’s camera) Thanks a lot, Hope. Jessica You're pissed at her. (Turns to look at filming roommate) Seriously, lose the camera, Coppola. Roommate I can't, it's a continuous shot. That means that there's no cuts. (Jessica snatches the camera from the roommate’s head and throws it away) Jessica Look at that, I found a cut. Roommate Oh! You destroyed my art! Jessica Mercy killing. Where's Hope's stuff? Jessica clearly has no qualms about being assertive and giving orders to other people. Instead of asking the roommate if he could stop filming her, she simply tells him to stop shooting and to lose the camera. She also does not hesitate to inform the roommate that she finds his hobby 54 Jessica You are looking for him? Trish Simpson is. I found Kilgrave's new security team. Jessica No. You tell Simpson to back off. He's gonna get himself killed. Trish He'll call us in when he finds Kilgrave, just let us handle it until... Jessica Until what? Until I come home and find my landlady choked out in my bathtub? Or I find you bludgeoned to death with my vacuum cleaner? Trish We both know you don't own a vacuum cleaner. I won't let you go to prison. You're not a murderer. Jessica Yes, I am. Trish You're still punishing yourself for that woman's death? Jessica And now more people are dead. Hope Shlottman's parents, Ruben, Reva, and someone has to give their families closure. And until the real killer shows up, that's gonna be me. I have to pay. The fact that Jessica states that she is a murderer and indirectly gives an affirmative answer to Trish’s question about punishing herself shows that she thinks she is at least somewhat culpable for the death of the woman she was ordered to kill. While she understands that Kilgrave is “the real killer” she also thinks that she should shoulder the blame for the deaths of Kilgrave’s victims until he is brought to justice. Jessica’s guilt also manifests in self-loathing comments, such as such as seriously describing herself a “piece of shit” a couple times: Example 7 (episode 7) (Jessica is thrown out of a bar due to being too drunk) Jessica Get off me! Bartender You're cut off! (Jessica falls on top a pile of trash bags) Jessica I was just leaving. You didn't kick me out, I left. Homeless man You stink. Jessica Well, I'm a piece of shit, and shit stinks. Although Jessica’s quilt manifests as self-loathing, it still also serves as a positive characteristic in the sense that it depicts her as a good person. Even though Reva’s death was by all rational accounts her fault, Jessica still feels extremely bad that she played a part in an innocent person’s death. Jessica mostly seems to deal with her trauma and quilt by consuming copious amounts of alcohol. She is shown drinking whiskey or other alcoholic drinks in ten out of the 13 episodes, and her place usually has several empty or half-full bottles in various places. Out of the three episodes where she does not drink on screen, she is still visibly drunk in one episode and opens a bottle to of liquor in another. Jessica’s drinking is clearly maladaptive, which is highlighted 55 especially well by a scene in episode six where Jessica sits alone on the floor of her apartment drinking from a bottle while repeating street names. Since repeating street names is a technique she uses to calm herself down during a panic attack, the fact that she drinks at the same time strongly suggests that drinking alcohol is another coping mechanism for her. Jessica herself admits she has a drinking problem, and says to Kilgrave at point that “it's the only way I get through my goddamn days after what you did to me”. Although flashback scenes show that Jessica’s has always been somewhat confrontational, her trauma has also increased her asocial behavior. Trish, for instance, notes that Jessica has a habit of intentionally driving people away from her when she discusses Jessica’s plans regarding her love interest Luke: Example 8 (episode 12) Trish Look, he obviously has feelings for you, and you definitely have feelings for him. Jessica I do not. Trish Please, the chemistry was jumping off of the two of you. And you can't say he's not hot. Jessica Fine, he's hot. And if Kilgrave weren't trying to kill me... Trish You'd push him away like everybody else. Jessica I can't think about that right now. Trish Okay. But just... When this is over, when you win this thing, I... I hope you finally allow yourself some happiness. Trish’s comment about Jessica allowing herself some happiness suggests that Jessica has been distancing herself from relationships due to guilt. Jessica’s rudeness and cynical attitude towards other people is, therefore, portrayed as a coping mechanism for her negative emotions and not just a personality trait. Despite being generally quite self-deprecating due to her emotional problems, Jessica is proud of one thing, which is her ability to be a good private investigator. Jessica is an excellent private investigator in terms of getting results and she does not shy from stating it to others. When Jeri tells Jessica in the first episode that her law firm has hired another private investigator due to Jessica refusing a full-time position, Jessica states confidently that “whoever he is, he's not as good as me.” Later during the same episode Jessica introduces herself to Luke for the first time, and the two have a conversation where Jessica says that her job is the only thing she really excels in: Example 9 (episode 1) Luke You're a P.I.? Jessica I'm just trying to make a living. You know, booze costs money. Usually. Luke There's better ways to hustle than digging in people's business. Jessica It's the only thing I'm good at. 56 Luke How good? Jessica A natural. These exchanges establish Jessica’s job as an important aspect of her identity early in the series, and her job continues to play a significant part in the series in terms of character construction throughout the first season. The way she investigates cases for her clients or follows leads to find Kilgrave reveals a lot to viewers in terms of Jessica’s morals and personality traits. Firstly, she is willing to use illicit and otherwise shady means if they help her investigations. She repeatedly uses her strength to break into various places, such has buildings and lockers, when she thinks it is necessary to access those places. She also lies to get information about people, and sometimes pretends to be a whole another person to achieve her goals. For example, she steals a nurse’s scrubs and pretends to be a new employee in a hospital to gain access to their patient records. When she is hunting Kilgrave, she resorts to even more drastic measures since she thinks they are justifiable due to what is at stake. She uses her drug addicted neighbor and friend Malcolm to steal a surgical anesthetic from a hospital because the drug can make Kilgrave unconscious and thus shut down his powers. Jessica says to groggy Malcolm that she is taking him to the emergency room, but then uses him as a distraction to gain access to the drugs. Even though Jessica and Malcolm are not very close, the action shows that she is ready to sacrifice one of her very few friendships in her quest to bring Kilgrave to justice. Secondly, Jessica is very smart and resourceful, since she comes up with inventive ways of doing research and adapts to changing situations very quickly. In order to find a missing young man, for example, she goes through his trash bin and upon finding lottery tickets she calls the man’s number leaving a voicemail that says he has won an Xbox One that need to be collected soon. She then stakes out the collection spot and follows the man who shows up for the prize to find the missing person. Jessica’s ability to come up with quick solutions even in very stressful situations is demonstrated especially well when Kilgrave sends a mind controlled police officer to kill Trish. She tricks the officer into thinking he has managed to kill Trish by injecting Trish with a surgical anesthetic that she stole and then plants her phone on the officer so that she can listen to what he tells Kilgrave while she follows him. The fact that Jessica is able to form a plan to find Kilgrave’s location while her best friend is almost murdered depicts her as someone who is able to think on her feet. Jessica utilize every opportunity that she encounters, sometimes even selfishly like when she accepts bribe money form a night club owner when she pretends to be licensing inspector. 59 since Jessica has not yet told him about Kilgrave and her own role in the death of his wife Reva. Jessica seems to feel guilty about it afterwards when she comes across Reva’s photo in Luke’s bathroom cabinet, and she leaves in hurry. She tries to distance herself from Luke for a while, but the two end up sleeping together again when they find out about each other’s powers and get excited about them. Afterwards they go on a date, and Jessica continues to associate herself with Luke without revealing her past to him. Eventually she is forced to tell Luke about herself and Reva when he tries to get revenge on an innocent man he erroneously considers responsible for Reva’s death. Luke is shocked by the news and admonishes Jessica for pursuing an intimate relationship without revealing the truth to him: Example 13 (episode 6) Luke You slept with me. Jessica (crying) I didn't plan that. It just happened. Luke You made me think... I could get past it. Did Kilgrave force you to do that? (Jessica shakes her head) Luke You let me be inside you. You touched me with the same hands that killed my wife, while you knew. Jessica I'm so sorry. Luke If I never found out about Charles, would you have ever told me the truth? (Jessica is silent for a while and then closes her eyes) Luke I was wrong. You are a piece of shit. While Jessica apologizes for her actions, she does not really own up to her mistakes since she defends herself by saying that her actions were impulsive. The fact that she does not answer negatively to Luke’s questioning about telling the truth suggests that she would have kept her secret indefinitely if she was not forced to do otherwise. Jessica’s action after the confrontation show that while she behaved selfishly, she recognizes her actions as wrong and feels incredibly guilty for them. Her guilt unfortunately causes her to behave in erratic ways, such as getting drunk and threatening Wendy while revealing her self-disgust to her: Example 14 (episode 7) (Jessica grabs Wendy by her labels) Jessica Do you know what shame feels like, Wendy? Wendy Of course. Jessica No, I mean real shame, Wendy. You know, when you've done something... You've hurt, disgusted someone so completely... that you can see it in their eyes. The black, oozing shit inside you. You sweat it through your skin but it keeps spreading... until you would do anything... not to feel it. Anything. Wendy You're crazy. 60 Jessica and Luke’s relationship does not end in the grand reveal, because Luke goes after Kilgrave by himself and ends up mind controlled and used to lure Jessica to Kilgrave. Before Jessica finds out Luke is mind controlled, the pair grow closer together again. When Jessica meets Kilgrave the next time, he orders Luke to kill Jessica when he realizes he cannot mind control her even though he has grown stronger. Luke attacks Jessica, who is forced to fight for her life against another superpowered person. In the end, Jessica is forced to shoot Luke with a powerful gun under his chin. Jessica only shoots Luke when it becomes clear that it is the only way to save her own life, and afterwards she reacts with horror when the shot knocks Luke unconscious. Unable to let doctors help him in a hospital due to his powers, Jessica takes Luke home and convinces a nurse to help him. While Luke is unconscious, Jessica must continue the fight against Kilgrave, but lays down next to him for a moment and and tells him that he is special to her in terms of romantic relationships before leaving for the final fight against her nemesis: Example 15 (episode 13) Jessica I thought about you. I mean, I knew it would never happen. But I couldn't help... picturing us. Like, on an actual date. Bowling. Normal shit. You're the first person I ever pictured a future with. You're also the first person I ever shot in the head. If you... When you wake up... I'm not gonna be around to screw up your life anymore. Probably because I'll be dead. But maybe Kilgrave will be dead, too. This instance reveals that Jessica has developed deep romantic feelings for Luke, which is apparently uncharacteristic for her. She does want a future that is more normal than her current situation in life, but she does not think such a future will be possible. Jessica is, therefore, depicted having romantic goals, but they play quite a small part in her life and do not define her as a character, which is often the case regarding female television characters (see e.g. Lauzen 2016a). Even though her feelings for Luke are as deep as she admits, Jessica puts her mission before him and leaves him in the hands of the capable nurse. Jessica and Luke’s relationship is interesting in terms of characterization because Jessica’s actions towards Luke show a more romantic and caring side of her, but they also portray her as profoundly selfish. Jessica searches for Luke to make sure that he is alright after his wife’s death, and does her best to protect him when he is in danger. However, she also pursues a physical relationship with him while withholding crucial information and acts in ways that occasionally put Luke in danger. All in all, her relationship with Luke depicts Jessica as a person who mostly has good intentions, but who also has deep seated emotional problems and sometimes acts in terribly inconsiderate ways. 61 An interesting aspect of Jessica and Luke’s relationship that is worth consideration is how their superpowers compare to each other. Female superheroes have a history of being given more passive or ineffective powers than male superheroes (Donaldson 2013:143-145), and Jessica and Luke both subvert and follow that trend. They both have super strength, which is a power that is highly useful in terms of fighting. It is suggested that they are roughly equal in strength, and Jessica is able to restrict Luke’s movements when they playfully test their powers on each other for the first time. Whenever they fight, however, Luke seems to have the upper hand both in terms of strength and vulnerability. Jessica is not helpless in fights and can hold her own against Luke for a while, but Luke’s invulnerability means that he will eventually win in physical confrontations. While Jessica’s ability to fly for short distances is useful, Luke’s unbreakable skin is more a more applicable power in terms of fighting. Jessica does have better endurance and healing abilities than normal people, but she can still get hurt whereas Luke usually cannot. In addition to being unable to really hurt Luke, Jessica seems to have to excert more physical effort in fights than Luke does. She has to use both hands to block Luke’s one- armed swings and skids backwards when Luke pushes her. Jessica does throw and kick Luke through walls, for example, but she looks to be struggling with it more than he does. A part of Jessica’s slightly weaker powers can be attributed to her getting injured before fighting Luke, but she seems to be in a weaker position even in a confrontation that takes place before her receiving any major injuries. All in all, while Luke and Jessica’s powers are in many ways similar, Luke’s superpowers seem a bit stronger and they have more useful offensive applications than Jessica’s, which continues the trend of male superheroes having more aggressive powers than their female counterparts. 4.1.2.1.2 Jessica and Kilgrave Jessica and Kilgrave’s relationship is very abusive from Kilgrave’s part. He used to mind control Jessica and force her to do his every bidding while pretending that they were in a mutually romantic relationship. In addition to psychologically tormenting her, Kilgrave used his powers to physically abusive to Jessica. He forced Jessica to sleep with him and impulsively ordered her to physically hurt herself by when she displeased him. When Kilgrave lost control of Jessica, he became obsessed with gaining his control over her back. Since Jessica has become immune to Kilgrave’s powers, he tries to get her to comply by emotionally manipulating and blackmailing her. He hurts people around Jessica to pressure her to behave like he wants and tries to make Jessica feel responsible for the fate of those people. He even tries to make Jessica 64 Jessica does not seem very scared of Kilgrave anymore since she makes bold threats about physically injuring him. Jessica’s increased boldness causes Kilgrave to give up on trying to manipulate Jessica, and he starts simply attacking her verbally like he does in the previous example. The role reversal between Kilgrave and Jessica becomes complete when Kilgrave is forced to run from Jessica, who decides to kill him when it becomes apparent that he cannot be brought to justice. In the end, Jessica manages to get near him and breaks his neck, killing him instantly. The power dynamics between Jessica and Kilgrave are quite typical in terms of Marvel’s villain-hero relationships. The villains are often more powerful than the heroes (Bainbridge 2009:69), and Kilgrave is certainly depicted as more powerful than Jessica for most of the season. While he is physically weaker than Jessica, Kilgrave can control everyone around him effortlessly with a single word, which makes him an incredibly powerful villain and extremely difficult to fight. He holds mental power over everyone else, which allows him to control everyone physically as well until Jessica becomes the exception. In her antagonistic relationship with Kilgrave, Jessica is the underdog who must beat unfavorable odds to win. 4.1.2.1.3 Jessica and Trish Jessica and Trish share a very close bond as friends and sisters. They have shared history and they know all of each other’s secrets, which means that they can be more relaxed around each other than around any other character. Their relationship does have its problems since they occasionally bicker and fight, but it is made clear that they love and respect each other very much. Jessica is significantly closer to Trish than any other character in the show including Luke. Trish is Jessica’s only long-time friend in addition to being her adoptive sister. She is also the only person who Jessica seems to feel truly comfortable with. The pair jokes a lot when they interact, and Jessica is shown hanging out with Trish in a more relaxed manner than with other characters in terms of body language. In a couple flashback scenes Jessica is shown smiling widely while she makes jokes with Trish and lounging relaxedly on Trish’s couch while the two characters banter back and forth. Jessica and Trish also show physical affection to each other that shows they are close. For example, when Jessica gets injured, Trish tends to her injuries and then covers Jessica with a blanket as she lays on a couch. The pair also hugs whenever one of them is worried about the other. While Jessica is usually reluctant to talk about her emotions to anyone, she does tell Trish how important she is to her by making statements 65 that indicate that she important to Jessica. In the final episode, Jessica also tells Trish that she loves her when the two wait in a car and get ready to confront Kilgrave: Example 20 (episode 13) (Jessica opens her door to get out of the car and Trish starts to follow) Jessica Trish, don't! Trish I'm finishing this with you. Jessica I was gonna say, wait until I call for backup. Teamwork, right? I read about that somewhere. Trish Okay, I'll wait here. Just... text me. Jessica You won't know if I'm a minion of evil. Trish Well, we need a signal. Something you would never say, like... "sardines" or "pickle juice." You say it, you're still you. Jessica Something I never say… like, "I love you." (Jessica gets out of the car) Trish (to herself) That'll do. The conversation suggest that Jessica is not completely comfortable with discussing such deep feelings, even with Trish, because she gets out of the car before Trish has time to react to her statement. Her actions give the impression that she forces herself to tell Trish that she loves her because she wants to make her feelings clear in case the confrontation with Kilgrave ends badly for her. While Jessica definitely cares for other people besides Trish, Trish is the only one she admits to loving. Due to their closeness, both Jessica and Trish act quite protective towards the other. Jessica protected Trish from her abusive mother as a teenager, and as an adult she tries to do her best to keep Trish safe from Kilgrave. In the first episodes of the season, Jessica tries to distance herself from Trish because she believes it will prevent Trish from catching Kilgrave’s attention. The following exchange between them shows that Jessica literally believes that being around her will endanger Trish’s life. Example 21 (episode 2) Jessica I'm life-threatening, Trish. Steer clear of me. Trish I don't do that. Jessica Please. I can't risk you. Jessica’s answer to Trish also portrays Trish is as someone special to Jessica, since she cannot risk losing her and is willing to plead for her to stay safe. During the season Jessica protects Trish in physical ways as well, saving her from people who are trying to hurt her. Trish, in her part, is protective of Jessica as well, although her protectiveness manifests more in in terms of 66 defending her verbally when other characters make unflattering remarks about her. A conversation with she has with her new boyfriend Simpson when he tries to pry information about Jessica illustrates Trish’s protectiveness: Example 22 (episode 5) Simpson So, uh, she get her powers in that car accident? What exactly can she do? Trish You won't find that on Wikipedia. Simpson Well, you know, she's strong, that's for sure, and I'm guessing she has other powers? Trish If you want to know about Jessica, why don't you just talk to Jessica? Simpson I don't think she likes me very much. Trish She's protective. She doesn't like any of the guys I date. Simpson Right. And you approve of all of her boyfriends? Trish They never stick around long enough for me to form an opinion. Simpson Yeah, she probably scares guys off. Trish You should stop there. Firstly, Trish refuses to reveal much information about Jessica to someone she has only known for a short while even though she that someone is a good person. Secondly, she very quickly puts an end to Simpson’s musings about Jessica’s relationship struggles by indicating that he should stop talking about Jessica in a rude manner. In addition to defending Jessica in conversations, Trish protects her in a physical manner as well, when Jessica is injured and incapable to fight against an attacker. She risks her life by taking a drug that enhances her fighting abilities, so that she is able to defend Jessica against her attacker. Despite their protectiveness, both Jessica and Trish also trust each other’s abilities. Trish, for example, encourages Jessica to stay in New York and save Hope from Kilgrave by stating to her that “you are far better equipped to deal with that animal than some innocent girl from Omaha”. After Jessica’s attempt to distance herself from Trish fail, she treats Trish as a partner in her quest to bring Kilgrave to justice. In the season finale, Trish even participates in the last fight against Kilgrave, which suggests that Jessica knows she need Trish’s help and trusts her ability to defend herself from Kilgrave’s minions. A noteworthy aspect of Jessica and Trish’s relationship is Trish’s tendency to consistently call Jessica out on her self-destructive or otherwise ill-advised behavior. Trish acts as a voice of reason when Jessica pushes herself too far, reminding her that “you're strong, but even you can break”. As the following example demonstrates, Trish also does not tolerate Jessica trying to isolate herself in an attempt to handle everything by herself: Example 23 (episode 2) 69 Jessica Thank you for the diagnosis. Example 27 (episode 5) (Jessica prepares to kidnap Kilgrave with the help of a policeman called Simpson) Jessica It's time. If Kilgrave gets me... Simpson I'll take you out. Jessica I was gonna say, "Dart gun me." But sure, shoot me in the head. While Jessica delivers sarcastic comebacks no matter who she is talking to, her quips are more biting and personal when she talks to or about people she greatly dislikes. Her comments are, therefore, most scathing when she talks about Kilgrave. For example, when she finds out that Kilgrave is trying to increase his powers to be able to control Jessica again, she retorts that “you can't improve on an asshole by making it bigger”. Despite the sarcastic nature of her humor, Jessica is not always biting when she makes humorous remarks. She also engages in self-irony and makes more lighthearted jokes like when Jeri accuses her of acting paranoid about a client and Jessica answers with a joke about her paranoia: Example 28 (Episode 4) Jeri You need to pull yourself together. You are coming across distinctly paranoid. Jessica Everyone keeps saying that. It's like a conspiracy. All in all, Jessica’s way of speaking portrays her as someone who is very honest about her thoughts and emotions to a degree that is socially unorthodox. While her language use is very crude, her quick retorts and creative insults also depict her as quite intelligent since they demonstrate verbal competence even if that competence manifests in a rather hostile manner. 4.1.4 Environment During the first season, Jessica is shown in various environments in New York ranging from upscale apartments to dirty back alleys. The majority the locations that Jessica visits are shown once or twice, but there are a few central locations that she spends more time in. My analysis will mostly examine a few more long-term environments that are important to Jessica, but I will also take into brief consideration the various changing locations she visits. The environment where Jessica spends most of her time is, unsurprisingly, her apartment. She lives in a small, one-bedroom apartment in a block of flats somewhere in New York. The building is not in a very good shape, since the hallways have dents in the walls and the doors are flimsy. The apartment itself is also quite shabby: there are tears in the wallpapers, the paint on the door frames is chipped and a cockroach even crawls out of the bathroom sink at one 70 point. Jessica does not keep the place very tidy either, since there are dirty dishes in the kitchen and empty bottles in various places all over the apartment. What Jessica’s apartment reveals about her is that she is most likely relatively poor and does not have the interest or energy to keep the place in a good condition. If the apartment reflects her mental state then she is not in a good place emotionally, which is likely given her nightmares and panic attacks. She also does not care about keeping up the appearances, since she receives clients in an “office” that consists of a table and a desk in the living room of her apartment. As the season progresses, Jessica’s apartment gets increasingly damaged due to fights that happen there so that the place is completely trashed and riddled with holes towards the end of the season. The fate of her apartment can be considered a reflection of the turmoil that Jessica herself goes through as she tries to catch Kilgrave. The events that she goes through cause her to become increasingly stressed until she is close to the end of her rope, so to speak, towards the end of the season, and the destruction of the apartment can be viewed as a visual metaphor for her state of mind. In addition to her apartment, Jessica is shown spending some time in Trish’s apartment and Luke’s bar, both of which differ from Jessica’s own place in significant ways. Trish’s apartment is very carefully furnished, cozy, and located in an upscale building. While Luke’s bar is not a fancy place, it is well organized and inviting due to warm lights, laughter, and music. Jessica is shown having a good time in both places, and they seem to represent safe and pleasant environments for her. They are places where she likes being but does not really think she belongs to. These places also highlight to the viewers how bleak and uninviting Jessica’s own apartment is in comparison. The fourth location that is significant for Jessica is her childhood home, which is a two-story house in a nice suburban area. The house is spacious and tidy, and it reveals that Jessica spent her childhood in a comfortable middle-class environment. The difference between her childhood and current home also highlights that something very bad happened to Jessica for her to have gone from such well-kept house to her shabby apartment. In essence, the house represents a happy childhood, and it holds a lot of dear but also painful memories for Jessica. It also serves to represent the depth of Kilgrave’s obsession with Jessica, because he buys the house and refurnishes it to look like it did in Jessica’s childhood all the way down to the smallest detail. For a while, Jessica ends up essentially being a prisoner in her childhood home that looks like it did in the past but does not feel like home anymore. In the end, the cozy little house ends up becoming even more distressing environment than her dingy apartment. 71 During the season, Jessica also visits a wide variety of urban environments. She is shown walking the busy streets, taking the subway, and going to shops and bars. During her investigations she also visits hospitals, morgues, parks, abandoned buildings and many other places. She is shown sitting on fire escapes or climbing the side of buildings a couple of times to spy on people through windows both for work and for personal reasons. Jessica manages to talk her way into places where she should have access and breaks into places where she cannot talk her way in to. The fact that Jessica goes into environments that could be potentially dangerous, such as abandoned buildings, reveals that she feels quite safe even in those places. All in all, the changing locations, and the ease that Jessica navigates those environments with, show that the city and its streets are her workplace just as much as her office is. 4.1.5 Function in terms of the plot and character development As a protagonist, Jessica is quite exceptional among female Marvel heroes since so few of them have received their own films or television shows. Since Jessica is the protagonist of the series, she is unsurprisingly crucial for the development of the plot. The events are mostly shown from her point of view and her decisions affect the other characters and push the story forwards. She makes the key decisions in the series, such as deciding what to do with Kilgrave and how to proceed with the process of bringing him to justice. Most the supporting characters also center around her and exists mainly in relation to her so that they usually only meet each other due to their connection to Jessica. Jessica’s trajectory in terms of agency roughly follows the common Marvel formula of evolving from a more passive victim to an active agent who takes control of their destiny. When Kilgrave first starts tormenting Jessica, she becomes a victim of his schemes for a while. While Jessica very quickly decides to fight against Kilgrave, he clearly has the upper hand for a while and Jessica is forced to endure one blow after another, unable to predict Kilgrave’s schemes let alone stop them. As the season progresses Jessica starts to become increasingly able to actively fight Kilgrave, and by the last episode she is the one in control. In a true superhero fashion, her actions and ingenuity eventually defeat the villain. Even though Jessica suffers due to Kilgrave’s actions, she is by no means presented as a damsel- in-distress even when Kilgrave still has the upper hand in their relationship. She is not rescued by male characters even once in the show, even though a couple of them try to. When she is forced to momentarily live with Kilgrave in her childhood home, for example, Trish’s boyfriend Simpson tries to rescue her from the house as he plants a bomb there to kill Kilgrave. However, 74 Finally, Jessica is highly important for the development of the plot because she makes most of the important decisions that propel it forward. All in all, Jessica’s personality, motives, and other features are delineated comprehensively during the first season, and she goes through some character development as the season progresses. She is, therefore, constructed into a multifaceted and round character. 4.2 Trish Walker Patricia “Trish” Walker is Jessica’s best friend and adoptive sister, and the main supporting female character in the first season of the show. The character is played by Rachael Taylor, a white Australian actress and model. Taylor was in her early thirties when the show was filmed, and her character is supposed to be the same age as Jessica so it is likely that Trish is somewhere around 30 years old. 4.2.1 Character biography Like Jessica’s background, Trish’s biography is constructing both through dialogue and flashback scenes that show her adolescence. She grew up with a single mother, Dorothy Walker, who worked relentlessly to promote her daughter’s acting career from an early age. The pair lived on a small income, until Trish’s career as a child actress started to take off. When Trish got her own television show called It’s Patsy, she became so popular that she became the “highest paid child star in television history”, which meant that she and her mother could afford a much more luxurious life style. Trish did not, however, like playing the Patsy character because her mother demanded that she essentially had to always pretend to be the character when in public. All in all, Trish’s relationship with her mother was very problematic since Dorothy was abusive and highly controlling towards Trish. Trish ended up developing a drug and alcohol problem, which Dorothy tried to hide from the media by adopting Jessica and focusing the media’s attention on that. After Trish and Jessica became friends, Trish at some point publicly and privately cut contact with her mother and worked to establish her own career away from her mother’s influence. She worked hard and managed to get her own radio talk show Trish Talk which became very successful. Throughout this time, Trish and Jessica maintained a close friendship, and Trish is aware of both Jessica’s powers and the things that happened to her with Kilgrave. 4.2.2 Visual appearance and context Regarding visual appearance, Trish has long blond hair and a tall, slender figure. Trish is very attractive according to conventional beauty standards. Her looks are not commented on as 75 explicitly by other characters as Jessica’s looks are, but there are instances where her appearance is the topic of conversation, such as when a fan tells Trish that he misses her red hair from the time when she was a television star. During another, more inappropriate fan encounter, a man tells her that he used to masturbate to her television show as a teenager by stating that “Patsy taught me how to hold a remote with one hand, and box the bald-headed bishop with the other”. These comments demonstrate that Trish has been objectified by some of her fans from a young age and continues to be objectified as an adult. However, the commentators are presented in a quite negative light, which highlights their inappropriateness. The man who talks about masturbating to Trish, for instance, is called an asshole and made to apologize by Jessica. Trish’s outfits usually look quite expensive and elegant. She dresses more casually at home, but most of the clothes she wears when she goes out are very stylish, professional looking, and appear to be made from high quality materials, such as silk. She usually has some simple piece of jewelry, such as a necklace, as a part of her outfit. In contrast to Jessica, who always almost wears black or other dark tones, Trish favors white and bright colors, such as red and blue. She only dresses in all black clothes when she participates in a scheme to kidnap Kilgrave and, therefore, wants to look inconspicuous and unidentifiable. In addition to her clothes looking expensive, Trish’s wardrobe seems to also be rather sizable, since she is shown in more varied outfits than the other female characters. All in all, Trish’s clothes indicate wealth, professionality and a distinct sense of style that serves as the character’s trademark. In terms of sexualization, Trish is obviously portrayed as a very attractive woman but she does not seem to be objectified much by her clothes or the way she is filmed. Since the style of Trish’s usual clothes could be described as business casual, they are not very revealing or alluring. They fit her body well but are not overly tight, and her shirts, for instance, often have long sleeves and moderate necklines. The most revealing outfit that Trish is shown wearing is a silk nightgown that reaches her mid-thigh and is most likely meant to be alluring, but the nightgown is worn in only one scene and the camera in that scene is positioned so that Trish’s thighs are not visible for most of the time. Trish is also shown in a state of undress twice during the first season when she has sex with her love interest Simpson, and one of these scenes provides an interesting topic of analysis in terms of objectification. In one sex scene, Trish is mostly covered with a sheet, but in the other viewers see her naked back and glimpses of her breast. On the one hand, such a revealing scene is not really necessary even in terms of showing that sex is happening, so one could argue that the scene depicts Trish in a gratuitous way. 76 However, the scene has two things in its favor that challenge that assertion. Firstly, the camera does not focus alone on Trish or her body during the scene. Instead it includes more views of their hands and of Simpson than it does of Trish. In fact, the camera focuses on Simpson’s face for an equal amount of time during the act than it does on Trish’s body or her face, roughly 15 seconds for both characters. The scene also includes Simpson lounging on the bed shirtless so that the focus is on him, so the level of depicted nudity is quite equal between the two characters. Overall, the scene is filmed so that it assumes both Simpson and Trish to be the focus of the viewers’ attention instead of just Trish’s body. Secondly, it can be argued that the scene serves to tell viewers something about Trish’s character, which is mainly that she is confident and assertive in this area of her life as well as others since she takes control of the situation. The scene, therefore, performs a part of character construction instead of just serving as titillation for viewers. All in all, while Trish is depicted experiencing objectifying in the series, the series does not itself portray her in an objectifying manner. 4.2.3 Psychological traits, habits, and interaction with other characters As the main supporting character, Trish gets a considerable amount of screen time, and she is, therefore, developed in to a quite round character personality wise. Trish is generally portrayed as a very good and confident person, who strives to help other people. She is an intelligent and capable woman with a flourishing career and a desire to turn the world into a better place. However, she also has her faults and problems arising from her abusive childhood, which makes her a more complex character. Trish is portrayed as an overall very moral person, and one of the core aspects of Trish’s character is her desire to do good. Whereas Jess reluctantly helps others because she feels she must, Trish is the kind of person who would want superpowers just so that she could make a difference. In fact, when Jessica uses her powers on rather trivial things, Trish tells Jessica that she would become a superhero immediately if she only could: Example 29 (episode 5) (Jessica and Trish sit in a bar talking) Trish You could use your abilities for something more useful. I mean, you can fly...well, jump. Jessica It's more like guided falling. Hey, I have an idea. Why don't you put on a cape and go run around New York? Trish You know I would if I could. Jessica I don't get you. You have money, looks, a radio show, creepy, if not adoring, fans and you're a freaking household name. What more do you want? Trish To save the world, of course. 79 shocked but promptly takes a gun from her purse to point it at Malcolm in case he is the murderer. These instances portray Trish as someone who can think quickly even when she faces surprising or shocking situations. She is perceptive as well, since she notices very quickly when, for example, her love interest Simpson starts acting out of the ordinary due to using drugs or when Jessica is trying to lie to her. Since she is confident in her abilities, Trish does not like when other people doubt them. Simpson, for example, expresses doubt at the idea of Trish being able to act as a getaway driver when kidnapping Kilgrave, and Trish curtly informs him that she does not want his input on the topic: Example 32 (episode 5) Simpson Wait, Trish is the driver? Trish I'm in. Simpson No, no, no. One of my boys from my old unit will drive. Jessica The hell he will! Simpson But we need someone who's trained, not a talk radio host. Trish Hey, last night was fun, but that doesn't mean I want your opinion. Jessica I know I don't. Simpson You're right, I'm out of line. I'm sorry. Trish’s willingness to act as a driver indicates that she thinks she is good enough for the job, and her curt retort to Simpson suggest that she does not like being patronized, especially when Simpson has never seen her drive and bases his opinion on assumptions. Trish is smart, knows her worth, and does not tolerate her abilities being unjustly questioned. Despite her general confident attitude towards life, Trish is depicted having some underlying fears that stem from her past. They become evident from an exchange between her and Jessica in episode three, when Jessica visits Trish’s apartment and discovers that Trish has taken up self-defense as a hobby and changed her apartment into a safer place: Example 33 (episode 3) (Jessica and Trish walk into the living room. Trish takes her sweater off, revealing large bruises) Jessica Jesus Christ, Trish! Trish Oh! It's nothing. Jessica Who's doing that to you? Is your mom back? Trish Just calm down, will you? Jessica Okay, is this why you have the video surveillance and the steel-reinforced door? Trish And bulletproof windows, a safe room. I made some upgrades. Jessica You... What you made is a fortress. Trish, what are you afraid of? Trish Not much, anymore. Except clowns. But that's just common sense. (Trish and Jessica enter Trish’s gym room) 80 Jessica You turned my room into a gym. Trish I needed a place to train. Jessica By "training," you mean getting beaten purple. (Trish throws Jessica on the floor) Trish No one touches me anymore unless I want them to. I let you fight my battles for too long. When you left... Jessica You became a ninja? Trish Krav Maga. More brutal. Jessica (rubs her shoulder) Well, can you back off? You're scaring me a little. Trish (smiles) I'll make sandwiches. Jessica Thanks. This exchange reveals that Trish has gone into considerable lengths to turn her apartment into what Jessica accurately describes as a fortress. Some of the upgrades make sense considering Trish’s fame, such as video surveillance and reinforced door, but others cross the threshold into paranoid, such as bulletproof windows in an apartment that is not even located near the ground level. Combined with the fact that Trish practices Krav Maga so intensively that she has bruises all over her body, Trish’s modifications make her look like someone who is very afraid of something. Trish’s line about no one touching her without permission anymore reveals that her fears stem from her bad experiences, most likely her abusive childhood. The exchange also reveals that Trish used to rely on Jessica to alleviate her fears and to protect her, but Jessica leaving forced her to find another way to deal with her problems. The indication that Trish decided to tackle her fears by learning to defend herself as best as she could portrays her as someone who is very determined and wants to be self-sufficient. Trish’s efforts seem to have worked since she jokes about only fearing clowns anymore, which suggests that she now trusts her ability to protect herself. Trish’s confidence in herself is not always just a positive thing because it occasionally leads her to act in impulsive or stubborn ways that either put her in danger or strain her relationship with Jessica. Most notably, Trish publicly lambasts Kilgrave in her talk show by calling him, among other things, perverted and impotent, which prompts Kilgrave to send mind controlled Simpson to kill her. Trish is saved by Jessica, and she must publicly apologize in her show to get Kilgrave to stop trying to kill her. This event demonstrates that Trish overestimated herself and underestimated Kilgrave’s dangerousness despite Jessica’s warnings about him. In a less serious example, Trish sends a man to repair Jessica’s broken door even though she has not been able to warn Jessica about it. Jessica then comes home to find a strange man in her apartment and roughly demands to know why he is there. When Jessica calls Trish to ask her 81 never do something like that again, Trish refuses to apologize and stubbornly maintains that she did the right thing because Jessica herself would just let the door stay broken. Trish’s stubbornness and inability to realize that her actions caused Jessica unnecessary stress even if they were logical and smart leads them to have a bad argument. These events show that Trish’s confidence sometimes turns from an asset to a problem. When Trish is interacting with other people, she is usually very nice to them and often acts as a negotiator in conflict situations. She especially must act as a negotiator between Simpson and Jessica who do not like each other very much and make it known. When all three of them are in a van, for instance, getting ready to execute their plan to get Kilgrave, Jessica and Simpson start bickering and Trish has to end it quickly: Example 34 (episode 5) Simpson If anyone walks up, just pretend to be on the phone. Do not engage. Jessica She's a celebrity, she's used to dealing with weirdos. Usually. Simpson Yeah, well, she's dealt with you all these years, so... Trish Okay, let's go back to tense silence, I think. Jessica’s last word “usually” is meant to suggest that Simpson is a “weirdo” who Trish is not dealing with properly, and Simpson retaliates by suggesting that Trish has learned to deal with weird people by being around Jess. Trish ends the argument quickly with a humorous but blunt order about going back to silence, which achieves the task of preventing the argument from escalating without lecturing the pair while still making Trish’s opinion about their behavior clear. Overall, Trish is usually the person who stays calm and collected when others around her starts losing their temper. As Trish’s way of diffusing tensions between Simpson and Jessica demonstrates, Trish also has a humorous side to her. Trish’s humor is mostly presented through little jokes that she incorporates into her interactions with others. Most of her jokes take place in conversations with Jessica, such as when she makes a dig at a jewelry designer that is Jessica’s client: Example 35 (episode 4) Jessica Look, I'm with a client right now. Sort of. Trish How can you trust any client after what happened with Hope's parents? Jessica I don't, which is why I've been following her since dawn. Trish Following who? Jessica A jealous wife. Trish Jess, come on, I need the distraction. Jessica Fine. A jewelry designer. Audrey Eastman. 84 The conversation soon turns to their past when Trish reminds her mother that she is not her manager anymore: Example 38 (episode 12) Trish I'm not your client. Dorothy As you made abundantly clear years ago, to me, privately, publicly, internationally... Trish I didn't want you getting your claws into another starlet. Dorothy Fair enough. I was a god-awful mother back then. Trish And not now? Dorothy How would I know? You never gave me another shot at it. Trish I'd like you to leave now. Dorothy Fine. I'll just... scream at some nurses on the way out, to lift my spirits. Dorothy admits that she was a bad mother to Trish, which suggest she feels guilty for the way she behaved towards her daughter. Her statement about Trish not giving her another chance, however, seems like it is meant to make Trish feel guilty about not wanting to be in contact with Dorothy. Dorothy is, therefore, trying to manipulate Trish to give her another chance at building a relationship, but Trish maintains her boundary and firmly asks Dorothy to leave. Despite Trish clearly indicating that she does not want see her mother, Dorothy later goes to Trish’s apartment to give her some files that Trish is interested in: Example 39 (episode 12) Dorothy You're welcome to come home and go through all my files. Trish It's not home for me anymore. Dorothy Well, it is as far as I'm concerned. And besides, everyone would love to see you. Remember Sabrina? She just asked about you. In fact, she's looking for someone to endorse her bottled water division. And for every bottle sold, they give water to places that need it. One for one. Trish I'd forgot how good you were. Dorothy You also forget that one-room apartment we used to live in. You don't piss on money, Pats. It's an insult to those of us who had none. Trish Thank you for the information. I'd like you to go now. Dorothy The files will still be waiting for you. Trish and Dorothy have a somewhat civil conversation, which Dorothy soon turns into an opportunity to advertise her friend’s business to Trish. When Trish realizes that her mother is already trying to benefit from Trish, she calls Dorothy out on her manipulation, which leads to Dorothy angrily defending herself. Dorothy tries to use her poor past to excuse her behavior towards Trish and to admonish her for being ungrateful about the things Dorothy has done for her. Dorothy’s behavior suggests that while she might actually regret some her actions in the 85 past, she mostly wants to repair her relationship with Trish because it would benefit her economically. Dorothy is a very manipulative person, but Trish recognizes her tactics quickly and refuses to engage with her past that. This indicates that Trish is not willing to forgive her mother as long as she continues to act in her old ways. Trish’s firm treatment of her mother also reveals that she is not afraid of her mother as a person and knows that the power balance in their relationship has shifted in her favor since her childhood. 4.2.4 Speech Trish usually speaks in a quite standard casual way when she is with her friends. She does use swear words occasionally to emphasize her words or express her emotions. Trish can be, for instance, heard uttering such expletives as “goddamn”, “screw it”, and “holy crap” when the situations calls for it. The use of such expressions is, however, relatively rare for her, and most of the time she speaks in a confident but calm manner. When she is at work, Trish adopts a somewhat more formal way of speaking that is suitable for a radio talk show host, including intonation and phrases that fit that position: Example 40 (episode 11) Trish We've been listening to Diane Masagi talk about her autobiography, Behind the Scenes With a Rock Flautist, and as a treat, Diane has agreed to give us a live sample of her work. Take it away, Diane. A noteworthy aspect of Trish’s speech is also that she can speak fluent French. In one episode, she makes a reservation to an upscale restaurant using only French. This skill is mostly likely meant to portray Trish as an educated and cultured person. When Trish is dealing with her fans, she always talks in a very polite manner even if the situation is not very pleasant for her. For example, after she is attacked by mind controlled Simpson, she has to deal with an unwelcome fan encounter the next day. When Kilgrave’s mind control wears off, Simpson thinks he has for some unfathomable reason killed an innocent woman and returns to check her apartment with another police officer, who turns out to be a fan of Trish: Example 41 (Episode 4) (Trish and Jessica open the door to the two police men bounding on it) Officer Are you all right, ma'am? Trish I'm fine. Officer Any violent incidents we should know about? Anybody try to hurt you? Trish I think I would know if I'd been attacked. Officer We're real sorry for the disturbance, Ms. Walker. Uh, by the way, really big fan of your show 86 back in the day (starts singing the tune of Trish’s television show) It's Patsy! I really wanna be your friend... Trish That's sweet. Thanks for watching. During this exchange, Trish is still reeling from Simpson’s attack from the night before, but she has to lie that everything is fine due to the circumstances of the situation. Even though she is not happy to be dealing with a fan at that moment, Trish still politely thanks the officer for being a fan. In an another unfortunate fan encounter before Simpson’s attack, a man walks up to Trish from behind and grabs her shoulder to get her attention as she and Jessica are leaving her work place after Trish has lambasted Kilgrave on radio. Trish reacts by punching and kicking the man because she thinks he is one of Kilgrave’s mind controlled slaves. Example 42 (episode 3) (The man writhes in pain on the floor) Trish (panicked) He grabbed me. (Jessica notices the man has Patsy Walker magazines and other fan merchandise) Jessica Oh, shit. Trish He's a fan? Man Autograph? Trish (mortified) You're a fan. Oh, I'm... Oh, my God, I'm so, so sorry. Man I miss your red hair. Trish Sorry, I... Jessica Okay, come on, we have to go. Come on, we have to go. Trish I gotta go, I'm sorry! Trish is clearly mortified by her mistake and apologizes for it many times. Jessica has to remind her that they are in a real hurry to get to a safe place when Trish seems like she will stay and keep apologizing to the man. These encounters portray Trish as someone who values her fans and is courteous to them even when they come up to her at bad times. 4.2.5 Environment The environment that is probably the most important to Trish is her apartment. She lives somewhere on the upper floors of a building that is upscale enough to have a doorman. Her apartment is fairly large, especially for one person, since it has at least five rooms in addition to a big kitchen and a spacious balcony. The place looks modern and it has been carefully designed and decorated. There are art works on the walls, the furniture looks new and comfortable, and everything is in its place. Trish is often shown in her state-of-the-art kitchen grabbing a drink or talking to people. The fact that her apartment is so big and upscale indicates that Trish is quite wealthy, which is not surprising considering her fame as both an actress and 89 careful and realistic person. As the season progresses, Trish also adjusts her morals to a degree. She comes to realize that sometimes hard decisions that go against her morals, such as killing Kilgrave, are necessary. She, therefore, develops from idealistic to a more realistic direction in terms of her personality, and adopts slightly more relativistic morals than before. 4.2.7 Summary To recap, Trish’s biography is developed almost as much as Jessica’s, because the two characters have a shared history. Trish’s background is interesting because it depicts the character in two opposing ways. As a child star, Trish lived a life of luxury and privilege, but she was also a disadvantaged victim of her mother’s emotional and physical abuse. It also serves to show how much Trish has changed from her youth, since she has turned from a tightly controlled child star with a substance abuse problem to a well-adjusted and confident woman who has built herself a successful career. Trish’s biography, therefore, reveals a significant amount of character development and makes her appear as a person with rich life history. Trish is depicted as very attractive in terms of her appearance, and she has a somewhat similar slim but curvy physique as Jessica. Her clothes are usually not very revealing or alluring, and although she is shown partially nude in a couple scenes, she is not sexualized to a greater degree than the male character who she shares the scenes with. Trish also receives approving comments about her looks that highlight her attractiveness, but the more explicit comments about her appearance are depicted as inappropriate. Trish is, therefore, objectified by other characters, but that objectification is not endorsed by the show itself. Instead, it is portrayed as sleazy and annoying. Regarding her psychological traits, Trish’s personality is portrayed as very friendly and confident. She acts very polite even towards people who are bothering her at inconvenient times, and she always remembers to thank her fans for watching her television show. In arguments, she often tries to act as a negotiator and usually manages to stop the arguments from escalating without hurting anyone’s feelings. While Trish likes to believe the best of people and is willing to go to great lengths for the people she cares about, she not tolerate people crossing her boundaries in relationship whether they are Jessica, Simpson or her mother. When others behave poorly towards her or her loved ones, Trish does not hesitate to inform them that their behavior is not appreciated. In terms of her intellect, Trish is depicted as smart because she demonstrates ingenuity and quick thinking several times. She also has high morals, and she tries to steer others in what she thinks is the right direction. Even though Trish is generally 90 portrayed as very emotionally balanced, especially compared to Jessica, she has some deep- seated fears and insecurities that stem from her youth and manifest in the way she modifies her apartment. She can also be stubborn and impulsive in her actions. These problems and flaws add another layer to the character’s personality and make her more relatable. As a character, Trish fulfils the role of a supporting sidekick to Jessica. She provides emotional, physical and material help to Jessica, and mostly follows her plans and decisions regarding Kilgrave. She also serves to make Jessica’s character traits more noticeable and to make her more likable to the viewers. Even though she could be characterized as a sidekick, Trish is also shown acting independently and her decisions and actions influence how the plot progresses. Overall, Trish is constructed as a complex character that undergoes notable development during the season. If she had some more screen time, she could even be described as co-protagonist. 4.3 Jeri Hogarth Jeri Hogarth is a supporting female character who appears in ten episodes of Jessica Jones. She works as a lawyer for a firm called Hogarth, Chao and Benowitz, and hires Jessica to do various tasks for the firm. The character is played by Carrie-Anne Moss, who is a white Canadian actress. The age of the character is not specified, but she is most likely meant to be in her forties since the actress portraying her was in her late forties when the series was made. 4.3.1 Character biography Not much is explicitly revealed about Jeri’s background, but some aspects of her character biography can be inferred from the dialogue between her and other characters. It is revealed that she went to an unnamed law school and has since managed to build a very successful career as a lawyer in New York. She is married to a doctor called Wendy Ross-Hogarth, and it is implied that the couple has been together for a very long time since Wendy makes remarks about paying for Jeri’s law school and having built their lives together. At one point Wendy states that she worked double shifts every day to pay for Jeri’s school, which suggests that Jeri came from a family that was either unable or unwilling to pay for her law school. Wendy also reveals that Jeri bribed a juror during her first capital case, which implies that Jeri has used illicit means in addition to hard work to build her career. It is also worth noting that sometime before the events of the show, Jeri apparently fell in love with her secretary and began an affair with her. All in all, Jeri’s background is kept quite vague, but it offers just enough information to give the viewer the impression that the character has some life history, which makes the 91 character appear more realistic and multifaceted. In addition, Jeri’s biography serves to strengthen some of the character traits that are built throughout the series. 4.3.2 Visual appearance and context In terms of physical appearance, Jeri has short, black hair and a curvy figure. Her body type is not as thin as Jessica’s or Trish’s, but she still appears to be quite slim. Jeri almost always wears black sheath dresses with long or short sleeves and dark high heels. Sometimes she also wears a beige or grey coat over her dress, but otherwise she favors black. Jeri’s knee-length dresses are figure-hugging, but not overly tight, and they never reveal any cleavage. Jeri’s clothes seem to be very high-end, and Jessica makes a couple disparaging comments about Jeri that highlight her fancy tastes. She, for instance, describes Jeri as “a sack of dark oozing shit in an expensive suit” and threatens to “kick her Armani-covered ass”. Jessica’s insults are the only time anyone comments on Jeri’s looks during the show. Jeri’s visual appearance seems to be carefully chosen to emphasize two things: professionalism and power. The fact that Jeri is a successful and respected lawyer means that she has to dress the part. People’s appearance is connected to their perceived competence since more attractive people are, for instance, often considered smarter and more disciplined than less attractive people (Rhode 2010:26-27). Being too attractive can, however, be detrimental since very beautiful or sexy women in upper-level positions are often considered less intelligent and competent due to their appearances (Rhode 2010:31). Jeri’s dresses seem to achieve the balancing act of being flattering without being too sexy: they accentuate her figure but do not reveal too much to be considered in any way unprofessional. Wearing high heels is also a part of appearing like a professional lawyer, and expensive designer clothes work as status symbols that connote wealth and success. The color black is associated with powerfulness and high quality in many cultures (see e.g. Amsteus et al 2015), so Jeri’s consistent use of black sheath dresses can be interpreted as a signal of her social and professional power. There were no instances of sexualizing Jeri either via or clothes the way she is filmed. 4.3.3 Psychological traits, habits and interaction with other characters Jeri’s personality is portrayed in a rather negative light throughout the series. She first appears at the beginning of the first season when Jessica goes to ask for a gig to earn some money. The scene consists of Jessica and Jeri discussing Jessica’s employment while walking through the hallways of Jeri’s law firm into her office. When Jessica asks Jeri if she has any gigs for her, Jeri expresses surprise and reminds Jessica about their troubled relationship: 94 Example 47 (episode 3) Jessica Kilgrave leaves a trail of broken people behind him. Get some of them to testify. Jeri You get them, I will use them. Jessica I am busy trying to bring Kilgrave in. Change public perception and victims will come forward. Jeri If I go public, I undercut my credibility, which will hurt any argument I bring to trial. Jessica Oh, so you're a cheat and a coward. Jeri Careful, Jessica, because I am the only other person who is trying to save Hope's life. Jessica (sarcastically) Your compassion is overwhelming. Jeri’s ambition also manifests as determination to make things go her way even if it requires using illegal or deceptive means. In other words, when Jeri decides she wants something, she usually makes it happen. As a top lawyer, she demonstrates a significant amount of leadership and power by making her cases go as she likes. Jeri is described as smart and pragmatic by other characters during the season, and Trish at one point calls her “a force of nature”. Jessica, in turn, describes Jeri as “One of New York's sharkiest lawyers” and “the best shark in town”, which refer to Jeri’s ruthless and efficient way of handling cases. Jeri is resourceful and intelligent, and she has no qualms about lying and manipulating other people to suit her own agenda. When Jessica pesters her about publicly defending Hope, Jeri agrees to set up a radio interview with Hope on Trish Talk to defend Hopes case, but then instead baits Trish into defending Hope’s story on air so that she does not need to. When Jessica first tells Jeri about Kilgrave’s mind control powers, Jeri remarks that “If there really was a man who could influence people like that, I would hire him to do all my jury selection.” The statement is intended as a joke, but when Jeri later learns that Kilgrave can really control people’s minds, her first idea is that she could use his abilities for her own gain: Example 48 (episode 4) Jeri Kilgrave wanted a leather jacket, live cello music, and the flattering smile of a pretty girl. What a waste. He could solve so many problems with his gift. Jessica Gift? Jeri I just meant, if... if he was on our side. Later when Hope is pregnant with Kilgrave’s child, Jeri assists Hope with getting an abortion, but secretly sends the remains of the fetus to be investigated in the hopes that Kilgrave’s powers could be replicated and, presumably, used to benefit her. Jeri’s actions show that she is very good at utilizing situations for her own benefit. She is also perceptive and recognizes how she can react to surprising situations quickly. When she first meets Hope in prison after agreeing to be her attorney, the two have the following short conversation about Kilgrave’s victims: 95 Example 49 (episode 2) Jeri Jessica Jones sent me. There is a possibility that your claims might be corroborated by another victim. Looks like you're a mascot for a macabre club. Hope (surprised) There are others? Besides Jessica? (Jeri is silent for a moment, looks to the side and down like she is thinking) Jeri Why don't you walk me through it, yeah? Prior to this exchange Jeri does not know that Jessica has history with Kilgrave, so Hope’s comment that labels Jessica as one of his victims comes as a surprise to Jeri. She takes a couple seconds to think about the situation, but does not reveal to Hope that she has said anything remarkable. Then she directs the conversation so that she can get Hope to reveal as much as possible about Jessica and the situation with Kilgrave without revealing that she is giving Jeri new information. She is, therefore, able to use the situation to her gain without revealing her ignorance, which shows that she can think quickly and smartly. Jeri stays calm and circumspect in most interactions with other people, but she does have a temper that appears when things do not go according to her plan. Frustration occasionally makes her say imprudent things that she quickly regrets since they usually hurt her position. One instance of such loss of control takes place when she is talking on the phone with Wendy about their divorce: Example 50 (episode 9) Jeri Wendy, even if you take all of my money, it will not change how I feel about Pam. Wendy No... but it'll hurt. I won't be the only one left bleeding on the floor. Jeri And you call me the heartless one. (Wendy laughs disbelievingly) Jeri Wendy, I'm sorry, I take that back. I know we can agree on a number... (Wendy hangs up the phone) Jeri Wendy? Jeri’s retort about Wendy’s heartlessness is meant to be biting, but she instantly realizes that angering Wendy will only hurt her more so Jeri quickly tries to backpedal on her comment. The conversation demonstrates Jeri’s instinct to lash out when her temper flares, but also her desire to protect herself over all else. She is willing to apologize, but her plead about agreeing on a number shows that her apology stems from a desire to improve her situation and not from actual guilt over saying something cruel. 96 4.3.3.1 Relationships 4.3.3.1.1 Jeri and Jessica Jeri and Jessica share an unfriendly but mutually beneficial relationship. Jeri seems to associate with Jessica mainly due to her efficiency as a private investigator. Jeri provides Jessica with cases and legal help, and Jessica deals with clients and cases that are difficult to handle or other private investigators cannot solve. Neither really likes the other, however, since Jessica thinks Jeri is unpleasant and morally corrupt, and Jeri finds Jessica untrustworthy and ill-mannered. During the season, both characters do some questionable things to the other in an effort to help themselves. In addition to scheming with Hope’s abortion and tricking Trish into defending mind control on radio, Jeri causes Kilgrave to escape from a cell that Jessica and her team have managed to capture Kilgrave in. She does not do it deliberately, but she has tampered with Kilgrave’s cell after being swayed by his promises to help her and stays quiet about it, which eventually enables Kilgrave to escape and hurt other people in the progress. Jessica is not exactly innocent herself, however, since she tricks Jeri into arriving into the building where Kilgrave is kept, therefore exposing Jeri’s face to Kilgrave and forcing her to help her extort a confession out of him. Neither Jeri or Jessica have much reservations about manipulating the other if it is needed. Despite its rockiness, Jeri and Jessica’s relationship provides an opportunity to redeem Jeri’s character at the end of the season. After things go horribly wrong for Jeri, she helps Jessica to avoid a murder charge for killing Kilgrave in the final episode. This action is the only instance where she is shown genuinely admitting her mistakes and selflessly acting to help someone. It serves to tell the viewers that Jeri is not an evil person even though she is very selfish and exploitative. 4.3.3.1.2 Jeri, Wendy, and Pam The love triangle between Jeri, Wendy and Pam lets viewers see both Jeri’s cruel side and her softer side. Overall, Jeri treats her wife Wendy very coldly throughout the season. She takes a mistress and continues the relationship until Wendy finds out and only then starts divorce proceedings. When Wendy starts making the divorce difficult, Jeri gives Jessica the task of discovering some information about Wendy that can be used to force her to agree to the divorce. As the situations escalates, Jeri gives Jessica permission to do whatever it takes to get Wendy to sign the papers.