I have just finished watching Michaela Coel's magnificent 12 part series I May Destroy You, and while it is rare for television shows to live up to such extraordinary hype, this one certainly does. It has everything that excellent TV in recent years has incorporated and uses them to make something completely new. The story centres around London-based writer Arabella who is spiked and sexually assaulted on a night out, taking a simple whodunnit premise and forcing the viewer to confront the thorniest and most controversial issues that we now face. It's hard for TV to shock these days, as sex and drugs and crime pepper our most prolific shows, yet Coel has managed to shed light on all those drak tricky parts that the entertainment industry - indeed society as a whole - likes to ignore, giving us the perspective we have been lacking for so long. To completely dissect the show would be to spoil it for those who have not yet watched, but in a post MeToo world it still feels fresh, unique, and above all necessary.
For starters, Arabella is not the 'perfect victim'. She does not embody the qualities our culture associates with the ideal pure, innocent woman, the kind we imagine would have been mistreated and abused by men. She gets drunk, uses recreational drugs, has casual sex with inappropriate men, leaves her work deadlines to the last minute - in other words she is us. Her experience mirrors the lives we lead, the freedoms we love, and also the world that we fear. Because this could be us. Our cheeky night out could descend into terror without us ever realising the full extent of it. Even if it is clear a crime has been committed the chances of an attacker even being identified, let alone serving time in prison, remain extremely slim. Closure becomes an illusion. The victims of these crimes are the ones who must serve the sentence as our society continually chooses to focus on their actions rather than those of the perpetrator. What were they wearing? Had they been drinking? Did they already have a relationship with their supposed assailant? If someone leaves their car parked on their street overnight and it is broken into, is their integrity ever questioned for one second? Well, what did they expect, leaving it outside like that? It shouldn't have looked so nice. They should have known someone would try to steal it.
Rape is rarely as clear cut as a woman being dragged off the street violently by a deranged stranger in a dark alleyway. Many attackers are known to their victims, possibly even someone they have consensually slept with before. A form of rape highlighted by the show is stealthing; two partners have consensual sex with a condom only for the partner wearing the condom to remove it during the act without the other person knowing. It is an undeniable abuse of trust, as well as potentially exposing the victim to serious diseases and unwanted pregnancy. But it also illustrates the main motivation for rapists - power. If there is anything that stealthing proves it is what those in the know have been trying to explain for years. It is a common misconception that rapists and abusers do what they do for sexual gratification, and in a way this is true, but they are not driven by their attraction to their victim. What they want is for them to be completely and inescapably submissive, totally under their control. A stealther is able to have consensual sex with their partner, yet this is not enough to satisfy that need for domination over the other person. We are not taught about this in schools. We have never seen this before on television. Many victims may not ever know a crime has been committed - even the perpetrator may view removing a condom as merely ridding themselves of an inconvenience. In I May Destroy You we are finally allowed to see it for what it really is.
Through the character of Arabella Coel takes us on a journey navigating the minefield of sexual assault; how consent and trust can be abused, the process of reporting it to the police, how her employers react to the news, and every trial that comes along the way. The focus expands throughout the show to confront the issues that the BIPOC community, women and the LGBTQIA community must deal with on a daily basis, from the microaggressions to the blatant abuse. It is easy to see why so many choose not to report these crimes when they are forced to relive that experience in police interviews, have every inch of their body scoured for evidence, and are far too often left disappointed by the lack of a conviction or even any strong leads. The flashbacks in the show help to contextualise her story, but more significantly they convey how every confrontation we have with abuse and mistrust and deception leave an imprint on our psyche. I do not wish to say more for fear of giving too much away but while we may still struggle to rectify these wrongs in our society, there is hope we can start to have more conversations about what we show, what we watch and who should be writing it. Because Michaela Coel is a voice we need right now.
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