In viewing the roles she has had, one would get the impression that Jessica Alba was a person friendly to mutants, fascinated by zoology, and dedicated to careful advancement, ethnic and otherwise. Does she live her roles, or otherwise identify with them?

Probably the Internet fan site that is most integral to the study of her career is James Marshall's. He gives the impression on his site that Hollywood is hard to contact. Probably it would be difficult to obtain answers to the questions science fiction has to raise about the actress' science-fiction role (the DARK ANGEL television series) and the quasi-sf role (the FLIPPER television series, which had its origin in a science fiction topic crossing over into the mundane “slick” magazines). Also, there is an extreme protective aura existing around Ms. Alba; even the fan-site mentioned has a tight contract for its users wherein they must guarantee that there will be no ethnic slurs in their postings and chats. The site does not allow postings until this contract has had a formal agreement. However, there are a lot of ethnic slurs and other things not allowed by the contract posted on its forum board, nor has a removal service been getting rid of these violations. The users are not sticking to their terms. Probably there are a lot of worse postings that have, in fact, been omitted from the board. One gets the impression of the DARK ANGEL series having come to life at that and other sites, except for the inaccessibility of its star at the site.

Her placement in entertainment is archetypical, representing a new type of young woman, possibly an emerging woman with a different outlook. Certainly science fiction would be a different outlook. The series is, however, somewhat of a fable pertaining to such places as New York City's Lower East Side, San Francisco's Fillmore District, and even Watts in Los Angeles. In fact, from a news perspective, much of the topicality of the show comes from the news focus on the Watts riots, picking up on the Motown aspects of the Detroit conflicts as it went along. News stories investigating the location of these riots became bizarre, and that's the nature of the show. Plus that, the LES and the Fillmore were the setting of the new hip psychedelic culture, which figures into the show and is of a science-fictional interest in its new-cultural aspect and aspirations (not to mention some background); and Watts was near unto the origins of United Mutations, which evolved the Freak-Out Culture which is so similar to the milieu of the show. You might make no mistake if you called DARK ANGEL a topical allegory. She is, anyway, in the series, typically on the side of the mutants and beneficial to them. The “Angel” concept is topical in that it is a reference to the Hell's Angels, well-signified by the presence of motorcycles in the drama, and a part of the culture out there. The Hell's Angels are, in turn, associated in the popular mind with the Apocalypse, cf. Lawrence Lipton's THE HOLY BARBARIANS and also as may be seen by the mythological connotations of their name; Los Angeles is also the “City of Angels,” or the “City of Lost (or Fallen) Angels,” and in beat generation literature (we may be certain of the presence of the Beat Generation in all this) the term “angel” connotes a mystic with socially disengaged qualities. Certainly this is a press viewpoint—the newspapers are where all of these social tendencies were correlated and exploited and then this viewpoint was encroached into the other news media and thereafter into all publicity outlets, something the apocalypse might well do.

All of which is very relevant to the topic of its star. Why is she a “dark angel” and why is the series called that? Ms. Alba is seen as an enigma as an actress, an unapproachable mystery, and the role exploits this, though which produced the other is an unanswered question, and the feeling is that there might be some amalgamation involved, a perception which is emphasized by the connection of the plot with genetics—truly a New Breed being involved. Here you have the allegory, it is not an exact representation of what is going on. Not that United Mutations has never mentioned genetics labs. And Jessica Alba, as an archetype, poses the inscrutable mystery of what this has to do with life as it is lived on this earth. Hence she is preserved carefully as a figure of mystery and the exploitation of the mystery is a careful one. Just recently, after a multiplicity of anarchic television interviews, she has lapsed into non-approachability. The figure of this DARK ANGEL has been proposed, and now must be pondered.

This is not being done, as yet, but in the view of the star presented here we do our best to institute further consideration of this mythos as it has been presented. As yet the commentary on this series is reactive, does little interpretation of the show. It's up to the television viewers to do that, the Magog of the Beat Generation has already done its speaking and is now reacting to its own forays.

So we take a look at what we know of the featured actress in this series. The biographical information about her is standardized and one reads exactly the same facts wherever there is a website or a magazine article. She was born in Pomona, California, in 1981, and then as an infant moved to Biloxi, Mississippi, then three years later back to California, then Del Rio, Texas, settling finally in southern California at the age of 9. She took an acting class when she was 12, and, apparently already marked for recognition and predestined for her position in social affairs, appeared in a film called “Camp Nowhere” (it has a Mickey Mouse Club background, signifying Disney's hand in this phenomenon) at that same age. Then she did some advertising appearances, including modeling for JC Penney (the internet asserts that this is the background of many of the Celebs they present) and started in TV in 1994, at the age of thirteen, in THE HIDDEN WORLD OF ALEX MAC, whose title has both SF and Disney in it, and also played the role of Maya in FLIPPER. Laid back for a while thereafter, her next really significant appearance seems to have been DARK ANGEL, although there were a few other movie appearances in that time. Apparently she now lives in Beverly Hills and has relaxed somewhat from her career, which has been a relatively sparse one.

Science fiction appreciators are wondering openly whether they will see her in a science fiction or fantasy role again. Viewers of the photos on this page will not be left wondering why.

She is quite an actress, and able to change her entire appearance and personality in a posed shot, as her publicity pictures show. This tends away from the mystery image, though, that is central to her career. And it is this mystery image that has raised much interest in her among followers and appreciators of science fiction and fantasy. We hope this article is a good first step in providing answers to that curiosity. It has all the information about her in it that is presently available. We can only wonder if there will be future changes in this general image.

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