More importantly, Coel gives her protagonist the power to choose her own ending. The path from damage to recovery is different for each character in this unabashed narrative about the healing of sexual trauma.
She decides it’s time to move on and let go. She’s the one that’s been repairing herself for a year, and her attacker’s life is no longer relevant – he doesn’t deserve that power over her. However, she begins to question what that sort of closure would look like, wondering what she would do if she came face to face with her attacker.Īfter envisioning multiple scenarios of revenge and disempowerment of her rapist, Arabella decides that none of these conclusions are satisfying– for nothing will ever change the fact that the rape occurred. In the powerful finale, we learn that Arabella has been returning to Ego Death, the bar where she was raped, for a year to stake out and hopefully confront her rapist. In doing so, the audience is led to acknowledge these issues within our communities, and we’re reminded that coping looks different for every survivor. With the inclusion of often overlooked aspects of assault, characters and viewers are purposely forced into a place of discomfort. Coel employs skillful manipulations and crafted misunderstandings to highlight how gaslighting blurs the survivors grasp of narrative and reality, placing the goal of healing even further out of reach. Doing so gives voice to survivors that have experienced a situation where it’s uncertain if a crime has occurred, but they still feel violated. I May Destroy You seeks to dispel the so-called “gray area” of consent– and more specifically, the transgressions that occur when it’s granted under false pretenses. Through inventive storytelling and character development, Coel introduces new voices and perspectives that are often relegated to the margins of broader cultural discussions. In witnessing characters experience sexual trauma throughout the series, survivors of sexual assault gain long-overdue representation.
#I may destroy you stealthing scene series#
Because if something feels wrong, it likely is.ĭepicting such issues on a premium series positions I May Destroy You to destigmatize discussions of sexual assault on a mass scale.
It’s uncomfortable to openly speak about consent, sexual assault, and rape in public forums, but that makes it all the more necessary. These pacing and editing techniques present the audience with a distorted timeline and a murky sense of reality, intentionally jarring viewers.Ĭoel trusts her audience to recognize and empathetically connect with the show, which sheds light on a number of imperative societal changes. When Arabella’s trauma is portrayed on screen, the established visual rules of the show are broken, and the structure of her reality suddenly vanishes. Slowly, images of the night in question begin to flood back to Arabella in bits and pieces. Rapidly cut flashbacks of Arabella’s rape in a bathroom stall are frequently seen from an uncomfortably low angle, at times envisioning different rapists. I May Destroy You uses jumpy non-linear editing to represent trauma visually before knowingly obscuring it from the audience.
Throughout the series, each member of the trio must learn to trust their own feelings as they restore their life and sense of self in the aftermath of an assault. These characters’ distress and reactionary behavior exhibit how complex dealing with matters of consent and sexual coercion can be. She grapples with recurring flashbacks, struggles to finish her book under a fast-approaching deadline, and leans on the familial bonds established with Kwame and Terry for support.īella, Terry, and Kwame are all highly dynamic characters but not without fault themselves. All of these events are breaches of consent and cause emotional trauma that manifests differently for each character.įor Aribella, we see this play out in a number of ways in the aftermath of her assault. Protected sex that becomes unprotected after the stealth removal of the condom. For viewers, this underscores the lack of protocol to processing a sexual assault and the impending impact on a victim.Įxpanding in scope, I May Destroy You keeps Arabella’s wavering recovery at the forefront while paralleling her experiences with her best friends Terry (Weruche Opia) and Kwame (Paapa Essiedu), who also have concerning sexual encounters: A supposedly random threesome that was actually planned by two men pretending to be strangers. On an impromptu night out before a big deadline, Arabella is drugged and raped at a club– a scene that draws inspiration from Coel’s own experience with sexual assault.Īrabella’s response to the realization that she was raped is fragmented. Coel plays Arabella, a Twitter-famous up-and-coming author.