Clare Simon
Trigger Warning: Sexual Assault, Rape
Michaela Coel has been widely regarded as a rising star since the success of her show Chewing Gum, a British sitcom running from 2015-2017. While writing the hit series, Coel was sexually assaulted. This experience served as her inspiration for writing I May Destroy You, which has already been hailed as one of the best shows of the year by critics, airing on HBO in June of 2020. The show has been called "brave and delicate [while] touching and quietly hilarious."
In the first episode we are introduced to Arabella, a young author in London struggling to meet her publisher’s deadline for the manuscript of her second book. She decides to pull an all-nighter to finish the book, but is quickly hit with writer’s block and the ever-present allure of procrastination. She decides to meet up with her friend Simon for a drink. Once they get to the bar, they meet strangers, drink, and dance; however, it is clear to the viewer that Arabella has been drugged. She stumbles, she can’t see, and she can’t talk. The scene then cuts to the next morning, where Arabella is back in her office with a cut on her forehead and a shattered phone screen. She returns home and both Arabella and the viewer are shocked by a jarring and unexplainable flashback from the night before. The viewer watches Arabella’s journey from the moment she realizes she was raped.
Michaela Coel does not shy away from making the viewer question what they know about sexual violence. The show deals with instances of sexual coercion and sexual assault, asking the audience to question the forms of sexual violence which society often deems “not that bad” or “not really sexual violence.” In one episode, Arabella’s best friend Terry engages in a threesome with two men she meets in a bar who she assumes don’t know each other. It is only after she sees them leaving together that she realizes she was tricked by the two men who set up a plan in advance. Although Terry later tells the story as “the most freeing thing she’s ever done,” it is clear that the experience has made her feel violated. Terry was tricked and lied to, as well as sexually coerced.
Coel also asks the viewer to consider the ways in which all of us are capable of sexual violence, even in ways we might not anticipate. After her friend Kwame is sexually assaulted, Arabella locks him in a room at a party with another man. Kwame hadn’t told Arabella that he was assaulted, but Arabella's actions indirectly increase his trauma. In an effort to feel in control of his sexuality again, Kwame meets with a woman from a dating app and is later pressured into sex. Only after his date uses a homophobic term does Kwame reveal that he is gay. Arabella blames Kwame for having sex with a woman without telling her the truth about his sexuality. She ignores the fact that his date pressured him into sex despite Kwame’s reluctance and that Arabella’s actions at the party were also harmful. Arabella’s trauma forces her to draw strict lines between who can perpetuate violence and who can’t. However, this is not how the real world works.
The show also delves into race and class in modern London. As a white woman, I can’t fully dissect the ways in which this impacts the show. However, the show has been praised for its Black-centred cast and its nuanced portrayal of Black characters, as well as the way characters make mistakes, heal, and endure trauma. As Coel said in an interview in Elle magazine, the show is not about one thing, “It’s about friendship. It's also about race. It's also about consent, but it's also about being an individual and being away from your tribe. Whether it be your race, your gender, your economic background.”
Coel wrote, stars in, and co-directed the show. She turned down a deal with Netflix to protect her creative freedom, and it paid off. I could go on and on about instances where the show forces its audience to reckon with race, sexual violence, and the non-linear path of healing. The acting is superb. The story-line is rich, and the symbolism that permeates the episodes will mean that viewers will take away something new every time. It is difficult to watch, sometimes even painful. But it also has moments of humour that remind the viewer that even though sexual violence is one part of the story, it is not the whole story. If you can bring yourself to watch it, I May Destroy You is the show about sexual violence that the moment demands.
To read the full Elle magazine interview with Coel, click here: https://www.elle.com/culture/movies-tv/a33370293/michaela-coel-i-may-destroy-you-interview/
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