Notes on Simpson (Jessica Jones)

This isn’t a Favorite Characters post, because Simpson isn’t a favorite, not even in a “fascinating to watch” way.  He does interest me, but it’s more to do with the ideas that Jessica Jones explores through him, and that’s what I want to talk about today (Simpson-related spoilers.)

The show flips the script on Simpson almost immediately after we meet him.  It’s hard for us (or the characters) to forget the sight of him brutally trying to murder Trish; the scene is visceral and disturbing, and we’re obviously rooting for Jessica to hand his ass to him.  And yet, from the very first, we know he’s been Kilgraved.  We know he has no control over what he’s doing, and, just like Jessica when she was under Kilgrave’s thrall, there’s nothing he could do to prevent it.  As soon as Kilgrave’s hold over him is broken and he realizes what he’s done – even worse than that, since Jessica initially lets him think he killed Trish so Kilgrave’s directive won’t send him back to finish the job – he’s absolutely horrified.  Appalled.  Sick with himself. 

Simpson is immediately desperate to make it right, and even though everyone knows he had no choice in the matter, it still takes a long time for Trish to be able to trust him, not to tense up when he’s near her and flinch every time he moves.  Her fear, and his knowledge that, voluntary or not, he was the cause of her fear, tears him up, and he throws himself into trying to help Jessica and Trish in any way he can.  He insists on having a hand in taking down Kilgrave, both to redeem himself and to destroy the man who forced him to do what he did.

Then, much more gradually, the script gets flipped again.  Simpson starts out as an ally to Jessica, but not one like Trish or Malcolm.  He doesn’t want to contribute to the mission.  He wants to run the mission, insisting on doing things his way, wanting to do all the heavy lifting himself, and going off-book when he thinks Jessica’s way of doing things isn’t fast enough (to be fair, Jessica is also very “my way or the highway,” but a) it’s her show, and b) she is the one with superpowers.)  As he and Trish become closer, he wants her less and less involved, continually trying to edge her out of the way “for her own safety.”  In the end, his drive to take out Kilgrave sends him down a dark path he’d escaped once before, abusing experimental drugs that amp up his strength and endurance but severely warp his mental state.  He winds up, not an ally but an enemy, an unstable short fuse who distracts from the mission of getting Kilgrave.

The reason I love this character trajectory is because, strange as it may seem, it feels like such a clear throughline from where Simpson starts to where he finishes.  In Simpson’s first scene on the show, he’s violated by Kilgrave in such a sick way:  like Jessica, like Malcolm, like so many in the series.  Everyone responds to this violation differently, but with Simpson I think we see the reaction of a man who doesn’t know how to deal with being victimized because all of his experiences have told him that something like that isn’t supposed to happen to someone like him.  Men (especially white men) don’t get violated, don’t get taken advantage of, don’t become someone’s twisted plaything.  In the wake of that horrific experience, he tries to double down on being that “take-charge” tough guy, as if he could have kept it from happening if he’d just been more of a man.  And so he tries to telling Jessica what to do, even though it’s her mission, and he tries to dictate the extent to which Trish is allowed to help, and he ultimately gets lost down this rabbit hole of adrenaline-fueled, full-throttle senseless violence, which just screams the height of toxic masculinity.  Because his society has lied to him and told him victimization is for other people.  Because it suggests that experiencing it makes him less of a man.  Because it’s given him no tools to even begin to address his feelings about what happened.  And that’s awful.

*          *          *

I don't really want to talk about what went down yesterday, but I'll just say this: the Muslim refugee kids that I work with at the school where I interpret are awesome.  Funny, smart, cool, exasperating, insecure, impulsive - you know, kids.  That's my America, Mr. Trump, and it's gonna take a lot more than a "let's all make nice now" speech to make me believe you know it's yours, too.