The Marvel comics character Jessica Jones has a dark backstory, which is what inspired producer Melissa Rosenberg to create a TV series about her; in the documentary "Song of Lahore," a group of Pakistani musicians use a jazz standard and You Tube to find a global audience; Pandora will enter the on-demand music streaming business.
'Jessica Jones': Netflix's even darker spin on Marvel superhero noir
Here's a question you may not have considered: What's the psychic toll of being a superhero? It's probably no wonder that the only ones who seem to really enjoy themselves in these universes — apart from dry, semi-nihilistic wits like Iron Man — are the villains. How do you process the carnage and paranoia that comes with the job?
Marvel's "Jessica Jones" answers: not very well. The new series, set to be released on Netflix on Nov. 20, is the second installment in a four-series plan that debuted with the hit "Daredevil." And it looks like "Jessica Jones" will present an even darker, more psychologically rich spin on superhero noir.
Jessica Jones was created in 2001 by Brian Michael Bendis as part of the intentionally adult-themed Alias series, whose storyline weaves around the interconnected Marvel universe. The Netflix series picks up, more or less, in medias res.
Jessica Jones is now a private investigator trying to leave behind her seriously dark days of superhero crime-fighting, which have landed her with a crippling case of post-traumatic stress disorder. A man named Zebediah Killgrave, otherwise known as the Purple Man, seems to be the main culprit. Jones spent months under his mind-control, fulfilling his violent bidding.
The Netflix series hints that its main plot will involve Jones confronting her former tormenter.
Melissa Rosenberg, writer and executive producer of the Netflix series, has been trying to get "Jessica Jones" produced for years. She spoke with The Frame's John Horn about the story and what drew her to the character in the first place.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
One of the things that pulled me to this character, and one of the reasons I love writing for the show, is to be able to create and tell stories for women who are multi-leveled, complex, sexual beings. They are, in other words, human beings, and fully developed characters. So often in film and television, the woman is relegated to the role of wife. That’s her dimension. Or Sassy Cop. Or Madonna Whore Thing. You get one or the other and that’s who you are. Being able to push beyond those boundaries was always attractive, and that goes for the sexuality as well.
Jessica Jones herself is far from perfect. She is an alcoholic. She suffers from horrible traumas. She is not a poster child for good behavior.
No, she isn’t, which is incredibly fun to write! The original source material, written by Brian Michael Bendis, drew such an incredibly complex, deeply flawed character. The kind of character that he initially introduced was very much along the lines of the characters in television that I had been loving, but had been written pretty exclusively for white men. You know, the Tony Sopranos, or Walter White, or Dexter even, or Vic Mackey — these very deeply flawed, interesting, sometimes morally ambiguous characters. I’d been dying to do the female version of that forever.
When "Jessica Jones" became a Netflix series, how did you change the approach? Obviously, you can do more with language and violence and sex. What did that change in distribution mean to you as a storyteller?
The biggest difference in telling a story for Netflix versus network television is you don’t have commercial breaks. You don’t have a week in between episodes. So you don’t have to spend any real estate recapping. So this is like a 13-hour movie. You have more real estate, but you have to push it further.
When you hear the name of the show, a lot of people would rightly assume it’s a superhero story. But you seem very intentional in not making it one. We don’t see a lot of Jessica Jones’s powers. As you were coming up with this show with your staff, were you talking about it as a superhero story or as film noir? What are the words you’re using?
We talked about it being a character portrait. I was less interested in the sexy fight scenes, the stuff of “Daredevil,” which they do quite beautifully. What’s most interesting are the characters and the relationships. I loved using her superpowers as a metaphor, but also very much in a matter-of-fact [way], very much how we treat the sexuality — it just simply is what it is.
She has powers but they’re not the A-plus powers. It’s fun that she has these B-level powers. She’s strong but she’s not the strongest out there. She can jump but she can’t necessarily fly. Even her powers have flaws.
Before this, you wrote the screenplays for all of the “Twilight” films. What did “Twilight” mean to your career and how did you go from film to television?
Actually I went from television to film to television. I’d had a good 15-year career in television. The last show I was on was "Dexter." I’ve always been a fan of TV, and it’s my favorite kind of storytelling – continuous storylines. Interestingly, “Twilight” was a continuing storyline as well. If you’ve created a character or a world that’s interesting enough, it would kill me to just end that in two hours. Hopefully it has endless possibilities.
On this show we’ve talked a lot about gender equity in Hollywood. From your perspective, do you think you need to be a woman to run a show with the woman as the lead character?
Absolutely not. No more so than you need to be a white man to run a show with a white male lead. That seems to be the thinking a lot of the time. Apparently white men can write anybody, but an African-American should only write African-Americans and women should only write women. There’s quite the disparity there.
Do you think that’s the problem, that maybe men who are make the hiring decisions don’t trust or employ women because they think they can only do a certain kind of show?
I think that’s part of it. There are a lot of factors. Part of it is this idea that women are brought in — I’ve often gotten this call from my agent — they want the “female perspective.” Well, alright, that’s clearly the thing that I bring to the table. Well, what about the perspective on any character? When there’s some ethnic diversity in there they bring in this person who has the “urban” voice. [Laughing.] That’s the other.
Meaning the black voice.
It still goes on a great deal. It’s disturbing.
All 13 episodes of "Jessica Jones" will be released on Netflix on Nov. 20.
In 'Song of Lahore,' Pakistani musicians fight social stigma to play the music they love
The quest for YouTube notoriety isn't just for teenagers. In 2011, Sachal Studios — a coalition of traditionally-trained musicians in Pakistan — posted a video of their rendition of "Take Five" by the American jazz master Dave Brubeck. The musicians were in search of a wider audience because their own country had become alternatively hostile or indifferent to their work.
The video was a hit. It earned the attention of Dave Brubeck himself — and then of jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, who is also the artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. Marsalis invited the group to travel to New York City and perform a concert in collaboration with his orchestra.
Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy — who has won two Academy Awards for her short film — and Andy Schocken documented the musicians' journey in "Song of Lahore," which is now playing in theaters.
Obaid-Chinoy and Schocken spoke with The Frame's John Horn about the film and about the musicians' wider significance to Pakistani culture. Obaid-Chinoy, who grew up in Pakistan, reminisced on the social climate that made an organization like Sachal Studios a rarity.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
Obaid-Chinoy: There are no formal music institutions in Pakistan. The way music is carried down is from father to son, uncle to nephew, in people’s homes. We had a very vibrant film industry. We had concerts, clubs, and cabarets. On Sundays on the streets musicians played. And then at the very end of the 1970’s, we had a general that took over the country, General [Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq], who decided that the Islamization of Pakistan was very important. Suddenly, the music industry started collapsing.
Because it was considered sinful.
Obaid-Chinoy: Yes. [Zia] closed off all the avenues that existed for musicians, and dried them, so they had no ways of earning money. The film industry collapsed. Clubs shut down, alcohol was banned. Cabarets were deemed illegal. And suddenly this industry that had existed no longer did.
No one ever said, It is illegal to play music. What they said was, If we take away all the avenues that are available to them to play music, no one will be able to listen. So they did it far more cleverly than banning music.
And also musicians are perceived to be in a lower social caste, so there’s a stigma against being a musician.
Obaid-Chinoy: Pop musicians are wealthy. They have this level of protection about them. But these are poor musicians that play instrumental music, and they live in sequestered neighborhoods where people do frown upon music. Where if you hear music, you’ll hear a neighbor — he might just come up to your door and say, This is un-Islamic. I don’t want to hear it.
So something happens in 2004 where a bunch of these musicians found Sachal Studios.
Obaid-Chinoy: Izzat Majeed is the founder of Sachal Studios. He is a philanthropist and a businessman. A Pakistani who lived outside of the country for many years, and came back in 2004. He wanted to preserve some of these instruments and these great masters who were dying. There are so many instruments in Pakistan where people can no longer play them, because the great masters have passed away and not passed it on.
So he came back to try to revive and find an avenue for these musicians to record their music. That’s when he set up a studio in the city of Lahore.
How does jazz fit into the narrative of what the musicians are trying to create?
Andy Schoken: At Sachal Studios they were putting out folk albums, traditional music. [But] they didn’t have a local audience . . . They basically decided that they were going to look West, and find an audience located outside of Pakistan.
In the 1950s the U.S. State Department had a program called Jazz Ambassadors. They sent some of the great jazz masters around the world — Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Dave Brubeck. And Dave Brubeck came through Lahore in 1958. The founder of the studio had been at the concert and he’d always been struck by that. So he thought, why don’t we try to integrate some of these Western harmonies into our music? As a way of keeping our instruments vital, and a way of keeping in touch with our classical roots, but in a contemporary format. So that’s when they first recorded their rendition of “Take Five.”
And what happens when they record a video of this song?
Obaid-Chinoy: They put it on their website, on YouTube — the single goes up in the digital charts. It becomes number one. Dave Brubeck heard this rendition and wrote to them and said it was the most interesting rendition of “Take Five” he had ever heard. And then Quincy Jones wrote to them. Then Wynton Marsalis and Jazz at Lincoln Center heard about these musicians, and then invited Izzat to come to New York and figure out how they were going to have a concert and a collaboration.
So they these musicians come to New York. What happens when they go back to Lahore?
Obaid-Chinoy: Firstly, they made headlines. All the newspapers carried articles about them. Suddenly, all the television channels were interested in them. But more than that, I think Sachal always wanted to cultivate new audiences, and they wanted avenues to play their music. And once they went back to Pakistan, they were able to play a concert.
To them it kind of a bigger deal to play Lahore than to play New York because they’re playing for their own people. I remember one musician turning to the other and saying, “I hope somebody comes to the concert today.” And then outside when we walked in, until my eye could see, thousands of people [were] lined up. When the doors opened, and when the musicians walked out, the kind of response — the thunder of applause. So welcoming.
So what’s happening in the nation itself? Is it more accepting of music now?
Obaid-Chinoy: Well, with the Sachal musicians, and the kind of instrumental music they play, I think what they were able to do was make it cool.
But “cool” is still at odds with fundamentalist Islam.
Obaid-Chinoy: So, any music is at odds with fundamentalist Islam. But there is a huge push in Pakistan against fundamentalist Islam, especially in the last 18 months. The number of terrorist attacks have gone down exponentially. A number of avenues have opened up for artists and musicians that didn’t exist before. And I think that if we are able to hold the terrorists at bay, and that fundamentalist ideology, you will see some of this flourish again.
"Song of Lahore" is currently playing in select theaters. This segment was first published in November 2015.
Pandora gets into 'on-demand' music streaming with its purchase of Rdio
It’s so easy nowadays for music fans to listen to whatever song they want, whenever they want. But the field of streaming services is getting a little crowded.
You’ve got Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Tidal — and now Pandora is getting into the game of what’s called “on-demand” listening.
Pandora is essentially a curated radio station. You choose an artist and you hear a playlist that Pandora has assembled. But the company announced yesterday its acquisition of the streaming service Rdio, which allows listeners to choose the specific songs and albums they want to listen to.
This will put Pandora in direct competition with others in the $2 billion-a-year streaming business. The Frame's John Horn talks with Amy Wang, a reporter for Quartz, about what this means for Pandora.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
Pandora already has the largest audience among streaming services. so what will its purchase of Rdio make possible?
What's interesting about Pandora is that up, until now, it marketed itself as a radio services whereas services such as Spotify and Apple Music go for "on-demand," which is when users can just log on and type in a song. [With] Pandora, you have to just wait for your song to come on or let them choose the experience. So it's more of a passive listening experience.
The acquisition of Rdio makes it so that they will be able to have this "on-demand" experience as well and compete with Spotify and Apple Music directly. Which is something they haven't done so far because they thought they could differentiate in such a way that they wouldn't need to. But now it seems pretty clear that the streaming field is really crowded and they're going to have to compete in that way.
In its most recent earnings report, Pandora seems to be hurt the most by the launch of Apple Music. Why have they been hurt more than other streaming services?
Pandora's service is not necessarily that distinct from Apple Music right now. Apple has this sort of Spotify "on-demand" program, and they also have a radio service where you can do the exact same thing you can do on Pandora. So people are saying, Why would you do Pandora if you can just do Apple Music?
What separates Pandora from the other streaming services?
Pandora has done the radio thing a lot longer than Apple Music or anyone else has. So they know their service better. And it turns out that people are a lot more interested in broadcasting than they used to be. Radio is still doing pretty well. [Pandora] is so good at radio, but they also [will] have this new service, so people can choose songs they listen to when they want to. It's not going to be their main feature, but it's something that will let people get over the frustration of having to wait for their favorite song to come on.