rEvvED up!
The steamy sex on ‘Jessica Jones’ is awesome — and important
U P until this fall, the closest thing to an edgy sex scene in the Marvel live-action universe has been an allusion to a bromance between Tony Stark and Bruce Banner. Not anymore. Netflix’s newest Marvel show,“Jessica Jones,” arrived on Nov. 20, earning high praise from fans for finally bringing a fully fleshedout feminist superhero show to the world of male-dominated Avengers.
In the first episode, superstrong Jessica (Krysten Ritter) meets Luke Cage (Mike Colter), the man with unbreakable skin, and their romp in the bedroom is rough, but they’re both loving it.
“Often, we see this dichotomy of these powerful women who are kicking ass in the boardroom and somehow still revert to this sex-kitten type in the bedroom,” says Tristan Taormino, an author and sex educator in Los Angeles.“But Jessica keeps her sexual power.”
That romance sits on a back burner; the central relationship of the show is between Jessica and her foster sister Trish (Rachael Taylor). It’s not every day on-screen women ditch their male partners in favor of female friendships.
And then there’s the central metaphor of the show: the villainous Kilgrave (David Tennant), who uses his powers to coerce people into doing his bidding — including acts of sexual violence against women.
“Yeah, it’s called rape,” Jones tells him in one scene, in which he tries to justify having sex with Jones while she was under his control. Critics cheered that scene for not tiptoeing around the word.
“It was so clearly called out,” says Kira Manser, who heads the Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health in Rhode Island.
Since it sets the bar for honesty in TV, Taormino hopes other shows will follow its lead:“That’s pretty radical television.”