![]() ![]() And it is in this space that the series does some of its most rich and compelling work. It also involves detours through her friendships, her career, a recent romance, and her relationships with her family, a sort of unconscious game of connect-the-dots for both audience and subject. On the surface, this involves her trying to piece together the night of the crime, an effort that serves as a plot to drive the series forward. Through 12, half-hour episodes, I May Destroy You winds through Arabella’s attempts to process what’s happened to her. Facts are elusive, the truth a memory Arabella constantly chases. She is a complicated protagonist, and this is a series where moral quandaries and psychic pain hang in the air thick and hazy as smoke. The act of seeking justice doesn’t bring Arabella any real closure - either in practical or emotional terms. It’s a step few women of a generation prior would be willing to take.īut for all the progress that moment suggests, the show is not interested in a tidy narrative of female empowerment. As soon as the protagonist, Arabella (played by creator Michaela Coel), realizes that she was drugged and assaulted the night before, she goes to the police. I hope Michaela Coel heals and continues to use her talents as she has in this.To viewers over the age of 40, I May Destroy You, the new HBO series about the life of a young millennial in the aftermath of her rape, may be striking in its bracingly modern approach to both sex and sex crimes. You’re ultimately left to handle it with who you trusted before or during it. The people you look up to that benefit from your pain. The pressure she feels to produce work all while she’s left vulnerable-disappointment on how people are or can be. ![]() It’s ultimately human, and it should be raved and championed for a reason. It’s David Lynchian, somewhere between reality and a nightmare. The last episode launches you into a spiral. I May Destroy You got much acclaim, and for good reason. Not only was she black and poor, but she’s a woman who has felt violated. There’s ownership of it that Michaela swings around like an ax. The black characters are unapologetically black. ![]() Steps are taken to show these characters closer to humans than just outlines. Survivor of abuse are represented in many different faces throughout. How her story differs, not only having accused someone of rape after being thought of as a “slut”, but we later discover her mother made Theodora accuse her father of sexual abuse to keep full custody of her. Theodora (Harriet Webb), a school acquaintance of Arabella and Terry, leads a support group for sex abuse survivors. Her best friend Terry (Weruche Opia) has a threesome that she believes was sporadic, only to deduct the two other men knew each other. There are different stories intertwined with each other, all connected to Arabella. It exposes how sexual assault police units can be not only racist but homophobic and, as a result of thinking, perhaps engaging with a straight woman only to wound her along the way. Kwame (Paapa Essiedu), one of Arabella’s best friends, experiences being violated and then questioned how he was a victim if he had consensual sex with the person and wasn’t penetrated. She’sShe’s left navigating through unknown waters, asking herself if there’s any way to stop herself from becoming a victim. After being drugged, Arabella (Michaela Coel) also finds out that it’s considered rape if your partner removes their condom without consent, which happens to her later on as she tries to regain her strength. It goes through different categories of what consent is in this confusing world. The plastic wrapping that could’ve shielded them has been removed, and we are allowed to witness all of their imperfections. Arabella goes through stages of grief, but she is not the perfect victim that the media tends to want to portray. However, there is no shying away from the subject of being who she is. Michaela does us the benefit of adding comedy into the mix, much like adding sugar into medicine to make it palatable for your senses. Confused over the details, she thinks it’s all false until it becomes clear that she has been violated. On a night out with friends, she’s drugged and sexually assaulted. I May Destroy You follows the storyline of a young writer who is struggling with writing a draft for her second book. Neon lights, levels of trauma that lay on top of the other. If you’re a fan of Michaela’s prior work, Chewing Gum, there is a stark contrast to it. Obscurity swirls around the storyline that is raw and vulnerable. ![]() Will she destroy her friends? Her enemies? Her career? Herself? The title of the show questions who it is that Arabella (Michaela Cole) might destroy. It’s a heartbreaking mini-series written by Michaela Coel, who should’ve gotten all the praise but was snubbed for any Emmys when it was released in 2020. ![]()
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