You deranged prick. You’ve never loved anyone in your repulsive life.
I fucking love this. This is perfect.
Why? Because Kilgrave is a complete monster. Everyone knows it, including the narrative of the show. He is stated to be a rapist. Those who survive their encounters with him have PTSD. Some are wrecked beyond their ability to recover, physically or emotionally. He is a destroyer of lives…and the show demonstrates this by taking the toxic trope of the alpha male to its logical extreme.
Zebediah Kilgrave fits the mode of the alpha male amazingly well. He’s rich. He’s physically attractive. He has a Tragic Past in that he has been poor and unloved. Most of all, whatever he wants people to do, they do. They cannot help but obey. This is his defining characteristic. You want to do this, he tells people. You love Chinese food. You want to invite me in. You want to play your cello for me–or donate both kidneys. You want to commit murder. You want to kill your parents and smile.
And he stalks, emotionally abuses and rapes the heroine…while he frames his behavior as loving and romantic. It does not occur to him that taking away a person’s will and compelling them to eat what he wants, wear what he wants, move as he wants, and fuck as he wants are all violations. The last example is literal rape; the rest is psychological.
More often than not, the rich alpha male with the Tragic Past who falls for the seemingly ordinary person (who is, of course, actually extraordinary) will be treated as the romantic hero. Look at Hannibal. Look at the Fifty Shades series. What does it say when so many romances in books, movies and TV present controlling the other’s behavior, manipulating their thinking, and relentlessly pursuing someone who clearly wants either a break or to flee outright as protective, guiding and passionate? What does that do to the audience’s perception of what love is supposed to be like? How much toxic entitlement do those stories reinforce?
Aside from his mind control being literal instead of figurative,
Zebediah Kilgrave is not unusual. He is an example of a common type in fiction The only unusual thing about Kilgrave is that–for once–such toxic behavior is not normalized, and the narrative presents him as the destructive, damaging, manipulative monster that he is.
This is the first time that I can recall not only having the narrative agree with me that a person like Kilgrave is primordial slime, but also having it point out that the media reinforces the image of control, manipulation and emotional abuse as loving. Entitled assholes like Kilgrave are scum…but they are not operating in a vacuum.
SAY IT LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE SHIPPING JESSICA JONES WITH HER FUCKING RAPIST