Warning: Spoilers below
My girlfriend and I have been
watching and enjoying the first season of Jessica
Jones. Jessica Jones is cut from the
crime drama, suspense-thriller cloth.
The protagonist of the is Jessica Jones, a private investigator who
suffers from PTSD as a result of being enthralled by the primary antagonist of
the show, simply known as "Kilgrave."
The show takes its source material
from the comic book heroine of the same name.
It's produced by Marvel Studios, and major characters in the show have
superpowers. What's interesting in this
show is that it's not so superhero-y.
Jessica tends to downplay her extraordinary abilities, and the use of
such abilities is sporadic.
However, this isn't the case with
Kilgrave, and this is what I want to focus on in this post. Kilgrave has the power to make people do
whatever he tells them to do, and he uses this ability quite frequently
throughout the show. I've thought a bit
about how this power is supposed to work and I suppose writing it out will me
make sense of it. A small disclaimer
before I proceed. I'm ten episodes into
a thirteen episode season, so it is possible that some things are revealed in
episodes eleven through thirteen that might answer some of the questions I have
below.
As I just mentioned, Kilgrave's
power is that he can make people do whatever he tells them to do. Let's unpack this a little more. What happens is that Kilgrave utters a
sentence in the imperative mood, and the individual to whom the sentence is
directed at is irresistibly compelled to perform the action commanded by the
imperative sentence. This raises
questions, some of which are answered in the series, others left unresolved.
Several constraints on Kilgrave's
power are made explicit during the series.
First, Kilgrave's power apparently doesn't work if his voice is
transmitted via some medium. So, for
instance, Kilgrave can't order someone to do something over the phone, or over
some PA system. I'm guessing that he
can't use a bullhorn either, or two cans attached to a string. (There's apparently a "scientific"
explanation to this, but it comes across as very bullshitty, akin to the whole
midi-chlorian nonsense that you get in the Star Wars prequels.) So, Kilgrave has to be within earshot of the
individual that he wants to control.
A second constraint on Kilgrave's
power is that its effects wear off over
time. I believe the time frame is
roughly twelve hours, after which an individual feels no longer compelled to do
what Kilgrave commanded them to do.
Let's grant these constraints and
set them aside. There are other
questions afoot as to how exactly this power is supposed to work.
Kilgrave's power is delivered via
spoken language, more specifically via sentences in the imperative mood. All imperative sentences have a verb as its
main predicate. However, not all verbs
are the same. For instance, some
commands are specific enough such that they can only be carried out in one
way. For example, the command "Sit
down" is fairly specific, and we usually have in mind one action that
satisfies that command, i.e. the action of immediately sitting down. Other actions are more ambiguous, and can be
carried out in a myriad of ways. For
instance, the command "entertain me" can be successfully carried out
in more than one way. We don't usually
think that there is just one action that corresponds to that command. Thus, there is also a distinction between specific
and general commands.
Why does this matter? Well, one recurring theme in the show is the notion
of action and responsibility. If
Kilgrave commands you to do something, and you do it, are you morally
responsible for that action? Can you be
blamed for doing it? At different points
in the show, different characters insist that you are not responsible for
actions you commit while under Kilgrave's command. However, it's not so simple. This is where the notion of a general
commands comes into play.
In the show, Will Simpson, a police
officer, is commanded by Kilgrave to kill Trish Walker. This is not a specific command. Murder can be carried out by a variety of
actions. We don't see a scene where
Kilgrave explicitly gives the order to Simpson, so we don't know the exact
phrasing of the command. Suppose the
phrase was simple, i.e. "Kill Trish Walker." We might agree that Simpson should not be held
responsible for the attempted murder of Trish Walker, but what about the means
by which he attempted murder? In the
show, Simpson tries to deceive Walker into letting him into her apartment so
that he can carry out his unfortunate task. Did Simpson freely choose this way of
carrying out Kilgrave's command? Was
this his idea? If so, should he be held
responsible for deceiving Trish Walker?
This leads us to general questions about the scope of Kilgrave's power
and the scope of moral responsibility.
How much control does Kilgrave have over an individual? Is their free will completely overridden? The extent to which their free will
compromised seems to vary positively with the extent to which we would hold
them morally responsible.
There are other interesting
questions to ask about Kilgrave's power.
We can ask about the extent to which Kilgrave can order people
around. For instance, Kilgrave order
someone to do something that they are not capable of doing? It's probably true that Kilgrave can command
an individual to do something they are not physically capable. They'll probably try and try for twelve hours
to do it, but fail to carry out the action.
Kilgrave could order me to slam dunk a basketball on regulation height
basket. I'll pathetically try to do this
for twelve hours, but will fail to succeed.
Okay, so commands involving actions that an individual is physically
incapable of performing seem fairly straightforward. However, there are other sorts of commands to
consider. Another category would be commands
related to mental states. Can Kilgrave
order someone to feel or believe something that they don't currently feel or
believe? Most would agree that these sorts
of mental states are not under our control.
If I don't believe that there is life on Mars, then I can't make myself
come to believe that claim. I can
pretend to believe it, but there is a difference between pretending to believe
and actually believing. The same goes
for emotions and other sorts of mental phenomena. I can't directly will myself to be angry if
I am not currently angry, nor can I directly will myself to feel pain. Furthermore, I have no direct control over my
preferences or desires. If I don't like
the taste of anchovies (which I don't), then I can't will myself to like
them. If I have no desire to go outside
and job, I can't create that desire out of thin air.
Of course we do have some control
over all of these things, but the control is indirect. If I want to
believe that there is life on Mars, then I might go rooting around for other
pieces of evidence, which may ending up convincing me that there is life on
Mars, thus forming a belief. I can't
make myself angry, but I can certainly expose myself to stimuli that might
elicit that emotion. The same goes for
pain. Preferences and desires work in
the same indirect way. We're all
familiar with the concept of acquired tastes.
I may not initially like anchovies, but maybe I can come to like them
through repeated exposure.
Back to the question about
Kilgrave's power. Can Kilgrave order
someone to directly acquire some
mental state? There's an interesting
scene in the show that seems to suggest that the answer is yes. In this scene, Kilgrave is at the local
police station. He's ordered everyone to
point their weapons at everyone else. As
he leaves he gives the following paraphrased order: "Once we leave you
will all put down your weapons and think that this was all a hilarious
joke." Sure enough, after he leaves
they all put down their weapons and start laughing. What this seems to suggest, then, is that
KIlgrave's power is greater than what I had initially been led to believe. Kilgrave has, in some significant sense, the
ability to control minds.
This leads us to some more
interesting questions about the individuals under Kilgrave's control. When they are ordered to carry out some task,
are they aware that they are carrying out that task? The evidence from the show seems to suggest
that the answer is yes. What happens
when the task conflicts with their own desires or values? What's going in the person's mind then? At one point Kilgrave orders Simpson to jump
off the roof of a rather tall building, which would most likely result in his
death. What is Simpson thinking at that
point? He is not normally a suicidal
individual, so the order has to conflict with his core desires and beliefs. What does it feel like to be under Kilgrave's
control?
All this leads me to form the
following half baked theory. Kilgrave's
power is the ability to plant mental states into an individual's head that last
for twelve hours. Usually these mental
states come in the form of desires. In
the literature on free will and moral psychology, there is a distinction made
between first and second order desires.
First order desires are the cognitive mechanisms that drive your
everyday behavior. Second order desires
are desires about your first order desires.
If your second order desires are incompatible with your first order
desires, then you may experience internal conflict. Take the familiar example of dieting. I have a first order desire to eat foods like
ramen, fast food, and ice cream. This
explains why I eat the way I do.
However, I also have a second order desire not to have this first order
desire. I realize that eating like this
is unhealthy, so I really don't want to continue eating this way. So, I eat a bunch of junk food, yet I don't
really want to eat this kind of food, leading me to try to diet. This is the kind of internal conflict
explained by the distinction between first and second order desires. If I didn't have this kind of conflict going
on, then I wouldn't be dieting. We find
plenty of these kinds of examples when it comes to addiction. Usually addicts know that their addiction,
i.e. their first order desire for some substance, is bad. They don't want to have that desire, yet they
find themselves succumbing to that first order desire.
What Kilgrave's power basically
does is to plant a very strong first order desire into your head. It turns you into a kind of temporary addict
(This theory is interesting given the Malcolm sub-plot. Malcolm is a neighbor of Jessica's and also a
drug addict. He was also a delivery guy
for Kilgrave.) You feel a compulsion to
carry out the command Kilgrave gives in a manner similar to the compulsion an
addict feels to take a certain drug. In
many cases our second order desires are able to at least temporarily override
our first order desires. This is why we
are at least temporarily successful at dieting.
However, it seems that the desires implanted via Kilgrave's power are so
strong that they cannot be overridden by second order desires.
This might explain why Kilgrave's
victims feel guilt after doing something that they thought was morally
wrong. Even though they were compelled
to act in the way they did from an external source, to them it really did feel
like they wanted to perform that act. It
really felt like their desire, and so it would be hard for them to distance
themselves from the act, and from the emotional consequences of that action.
