![]() ![]() ![]() Given that Black and women story tellers are too often excluded from sharing their experiences in the mainstream and under-represented on TV, I May Destroy You is an important example of the brilliant, thought-provoking work that is created when Black women are given the space to speak their truths. "She also succeeded in making Arabella a deeply flawed character who we want to shake in one moment, but protect her by all means necessary in the next," she added. Metro's Cydney Yeates gave the show four-and-a-half stars, saying Coel "manages to capture the fraught anxiety of Arabella's circumstance." TV critics have widely praised the series, with many giving glowing four and five star reviews. Across the 12 episodes she learns that allowing herself to disassociate from what she struggles to accept can have unsavoury consequences." "Arabella must understand that everything is connected, that she is connected even to the thing she despises the most: her trauma. On the subject of the character's journey over the 12 episodes, Coel added: Beyond her work she lives in a two-bed flat-share in Hackney and has a cool group of friends, also trying to find themselves within this little concrete jungle." She’s now got an agent, and there’s a sudden professional demand for her writing. After a spontaneous piece of writing of hers goes viral on the internet she receives a commission to write a book. Life is usually rather more spiky than that, with some victims defending possible assailants through delusional loyalty or imagined ‘love’."Arabella is Londoner, a lover of life and a lover of Twitter. I May Destroy You Powered by Reelgood Fans of Michaela Coel’s cringe comedy Chewing Gum already know how talented she is as an actor and writer, but others may have only known her from. Furthermore, there is no easy bonding between victims, as fictional drama likes to depict. Instead, they are a disparate lot, from the successful, independent, wise-cracking Arabella through to her nurturing friend T and jokey flatmates to the dodgy Simon and his frustrated, threesome-seeking girlfriend. The black characters aren’t overcoming ‘adversity’ or ‘gang culture’ – the patronising racism of low expectations. So often, the victim is plagued by self-doubts – ‘Did I do enough to stop it?’ or ‘Was it partly my fault because I was out of my head?’.Īt last, it seems, the BBC is relaxed enough to screen a drama without making it wooden with Guardianista ‘lessons’. And it’s easy to see from this why so many victims do not report non-consensual sex. ![]() But of course, this is no excuse as far as consent is required. Coel doesn’t resort to cartoonish evil in her characters – as in real life, those overstepping the boundaries of consent are often people who tell themselves they simply got ‘carried away’. Her heart-shaped face, all-pink hair, prominent cheekbones and sensuous lips, are all compelling to watch, and the way she initially waves off her concerns, in an attempt to grasp normality from the confusion, will be familiar to many who have suffered trauma of any kind.ĭuring the third and fourth episodes, the theme of sexual consent is examined more widely, but always within the context of believable interactions. ![]() But Coel also turns in an electric performance. It’s that fog of bewilderment that is so unnerving. It is both sensitive and intuitive not to show repeated gratuitous scenes of rape, as in The Fall, but to present what victims actually experience – shards of memory that are often mistaken for dreams that inability to write or speak cogently, or carry out usual mental or physical tasks. It’s a relief not to have the usual clichéd TV scenes of a charming stranger showing an ugly psychopathic side – after all, most sexual assaults are not committed by strangers. We follow the experience of Arabella, puzzled by blanks in her memory, initially with no awareness of what happened at all. What actually happens that night is not depicted, which is a stroke of genius. ![]()
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