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In a time where we are too often encouraged to think in absolutes, it makes her work singular.īy refusing to tie itself up neatly, I May Destroy You forces viewers to sit with ideas that are difficult, and at times soul-destroying. But many appreciated it as a work that provoked tricky thoughts. Some viewers were confused, others angered. Instead, Coel posits questions many of us would rather weren’t asked at all, without necessarily seeking to provide the answers.
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Many wanted the show to deliver a definitive statement on how to process sexual assault. The third involved them having consensual sex.
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And Coel’s ending for the series was unapologetically ambiguous it featured Arabella tracking down her rapist and playing out three possible conclusions. Be it the character arc of Zain (who took his condom off during sex without Arabella’s permission) to Theo (a white woman who falsely accused a black classmate of rape when they were at school and goes on to run a support group for survivors of sexual assault) several outcomes are not just surprising but deeply uncomfortable. But as I May Destroy You progressed, the only thing that became clear was that Coel resides firmly in the grey. While largely positive, the response demonstrates a popular expectation that even the most thorny issues be presented as black and white. At times, I couldn’t help but wonder if we’d be so willing to project what we thought Coel should be saying if she wasn’t a black woman who had been open about her experiences of sexual assault. Though the character made salient points, the scene was more immediately a critique on the perils of social-media validation and virtue signalling. “Did you know crash test dummies don’t factor in breasts?” Arabella says correctly, simultaneously drunk on wine and the serotonin from likes. Her livestreamed breakdown on Halloween was similarly cheered by some viewers. But to me, the scene itself reads clearly as an almost satirical take on the weaponisation of identity. “I’m not Afro-Caribbean, I’m actually African.” It has been applauded on social media as a takedown of the conflation between black identities, which is a valid point. In one scene, for example, Arabella at her most navel-gazing and self-destructive chastises a bemused doctor for using the term Afro-Caribbean to describe her. At times it felt like some of the most salient points it made were missed: viewers reacted first to their expectation of what Coel as a black woman who is outspoken on many of the issues the show addresses should be as opposed to what was actually being said (or not said) on screen. It was a fantastic, frustrating watch I found myself getting as riled up by the messiness and moral ambiguity of the characters as I did by the commentary online towards the show. Photograph: Natalie Seery/BBC/Various Artists Ltd and Falkna Residing in the grey areas … I May Destroy You. As well as period sex, we see the efforts of a black, gay character, Kwame, to report a non-penetrative sexual assault to the police, and the stigma and shaming that stop so many from doing so.

As with Chewing Gum – a chirpy coming of age story set on a council estate fronted by a sex-mad Christian – I May Destroy You goes where very few series have ventured.
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A particularly devastating scene depicts a kindly police officer helping an in-denial Arabella process the memory: it is because she had been situated below her assailant that she recalls his nostrils appearing “large and flared”.Īnyone familiar with her work will be well aware of Coel’s ability to defy expectations – firstly as a young, black, working-class British woman who continues to dominate the international TV landscape, and then again through what she creates. She regains consciousness in the early morning, the night’s events a blur other than a vision of a man looming over her in a toilet.

The day before her deadline, she decides to pull an all nighter but soon ends up drinking with friends in a bar called Ego Death. Coel plays the vexing but enchanting Arabella, a Twitter-famous author of the bestselling Chronicles of a Fed-Up Millennial who is failing to finish the first draft of her followup. Its forensic and unflinching look at race, dating, social media, sexual abuse, consent and friendship is equally harrowing and hilarious.
