Super heroine with super hair draws me in

EXTRAORDINARY how compelling a super-heroine can be. While amused by Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman of recent memory, the simple fact of the matter is that this was a kiddie movie, filled with child-focused morals and cultural gestures.

On the other hand, Jessica Jones (Netflix), a woman with moderate super powers, is very much in the adult realm. She suffers, she drinks, she has family problems, she endures various damaging modes of personal rejection.

In short, what we have here is a well-formed tragic heroine, thundering through her daily existence in pursuit of catharsis and allied socio-emotional spinoffs. What’s not to love?

Not very much. A considerable part of the time, Jessica Jones endures responses located somewhere between polite dislike and murderous loathing, regardless of the social class of her network.

So what’s the story? It seems that sometime in the past, Jessica Jones was the unconscious victim of a medical researcher who rewired her capacities. These include semi-flight (jumps high, jumps far) and great physical strength. As a private investigator she has a sidekick researcher crouched over a Mac, but otherwise, except for her enemies and a worried sister, she is alone.

There are encounters with advanced versions of strangeness and, inevitably, the cop-criminal axis of evil. Through these, she sticks to her quest to find, punish and (this is a guess) destroy the source of her dismays.

From the titles and musical theme, this show engages.

There’s a layer of grime across everything, the grit of a crumbling cityscape, the emotional pollution spread unevenly across many in the lineup, the fact – or illusion – that, regardless of dop-soaked scenes, blood-soaked violence and sweaty sex events with both participants standing up in deeply unattractive small spaces, our heroine’s super powers seldom seem to require a change in clothes. Her hair always looks good. She may be short of money, sleep and appropriate nutrition, but kicking ass demands great hair.

There are many dongas to cross. Not least among these are those interior to her mind, including doubt in the accuracy her memories, post-traumatic stress terrors from past experience and the strong belief that horror is one step behind and sometimes ahead of her.

Her personal life provides its own snares and tripwires; she drinks to excess, engages in brief and damaging sexual contacts, has a temper with a very short fuse. And running through all this mess is the motivational imperative to solve her life mystery regardless of the personal cost.

All these things contribute to a well-drawn character, occupying a specific and favoured intellectual niche enhanced by virtue of a dazzling set of scripts plus an intense characterisation by the actor. Both of these – script plus performance – allow a noir detective format to build on cliché and hence advance the welcome rituals of scene and behaviour that emerge. We, the huddled television masses, become aware that this, the second series, is taking us to art’s true destination: social and political commentary that must lead to change.

In parallel with the massive reaction against abuse dominating US news, Jessica Jones makes her mark, not least in her choices but also by the humanity she reveals in her struggle.