Ecos do passado: a representação do trauma e dos estados mentais em Marvel’s Jessica Jones

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes how the series Marvel’s Jessica Jones employs narrative and stylistic resources to represent the protagonist’s trauma and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The research focuses on the first season of the series and investigates elements such as the autodiegetic narration, fixed internal focalization, and the use of flashbacks and repetitions that convey the impact of trauma on the protagonist’s subjectivity. It also examines ontological markers, expressed through visual and sound resources that signal the crossing between different levels of reality, with emphasis on the color purple, associated both with the villain—responsible for the character’s traumas— and with the persistence of traumatic memories. Furthermore, the study considers the work’s relationship with the noir genre, which enhances the complexity of the protagonist by situating her in a universe marked by moral dilemmas, ambiguity, and experiences of violence. The results show that the series does not merely thematize trauma, but inscribes it into its very narrative structure, through temporal fragmentation and the overlapping of memory, past, recollection, trauma, and present. It concludes that Jessica Jones demonstrates how audiovisual storytelling can give form to the marks of trauma through narrative and stylistic strategies, contributing to reflections on subjectivity, memory, and character construction in serialized narratives.