I May Destroy You and Closure Fantasy

It’s pretty impossible to describe the subject matter of the show I May Destroy You. The exploration of sexual assault, victimhood, and consent in their many nebulous forms.  An act of catharsis from trauma or the exorcism of the false narrative of catharsis. A look at the mind on trauma, stuck in a groove, looping on closure and healing. It centers on the sexual assault of the main character Arabella Essiedu, but it is also about her life, friendships, and psychological state after the assault.

Another show might have portrayed someone who had been drugged and raped as a one-dimensional victim, but Arabella goes on to leave people in sexually unsafe situations (locking Kwame up after his own assault) and to violate others’ space (breaking into Biagio’s home.) Whether as victim or survivor, the emphasis of every situation is her identification with her trauma and she has to relearn (via Ego Death which is, incidentally, the name of the bar where she gets raped) that being a victim doesn’t make you incapable of inflicting pain on others. Another show would have portrayed supportive friends, but while Terry is an incredible friend to Arabella, we learn later that she may be compensating for the guilt she feels for her perceived role in Arabella’s sexual assault. Her own storyline covers the grey area of consenting to a threesome under false pretenses. Even though she suspects deception, she speaks about the threesome socially as if it were an empowering sexual experience and not a degrading one. Choice makes all the difference.

Kwame is raped by a man immediately after having consensual sex with him. After this assault, he is terrified of men and decides that he wants to try having sex with a woman. After their date, they have consensual sex before she uses a homophobic slur, leading him to out himself and the truth of the situation to her.

Arabella joins a survivor’s support group run by Theodora, who, as a troubled white teen falsely accused a Black boy of rape in high school. Can we trust Theo in her current role as the person running a sexual assault survivor’s support group? I found myself holding my breath, waiting for the moment when Theo would get her revenge against Arabella, who, in high school, was the one to tell the school officials that Theo’s accusation was false. And yet, in the last episode, Theo is celebrating Terry’s commercial with the rest of Arabella’s close friends. In a time when cancel culture and Karens are both trending, it is radical to see a white woman who has not only genuinely changed, but who has also been given a chance to show that she has changed.

Truly, none of the characters could be reduced to being simply a good person or a bad person. (Except Ben who is forever, “a general nice.”) Michaela Coel is somehow able to play a woman who understands only the periphery of those around her, herself, and her interactions while being the omniscient creator and writer of the series. Based on a real sexual assault that happened to her, it is, like too many things, a wonderful gift and piece of art that is predicated by Black trauma. It is a show that is as much about what we understand as it is about what we do not understand. From my own traumas, sexual and otherwise, I recognized so much that I’ve never been able to put into words. The general confusion, the surreality of everything, the inability for things to cohere, for time to consolidate. But also how there is still a lot that can be good, that there are still friends, things that are fun and that you look forward to, and you just have to play along and hope that you forget that you are performing living.

The last episode aired a couple of nights ago and it has been hard to think of anything else. It is essentially, a trauma loop in search of closure. Three fantasies, each purporting closure of a different kind. Or maybe all of these fantasies are necessary to get somewhere new. They can be seen as choices, but also as a process. Specifically the diagram her therapist drew in Episode 9. A for Arabella, an X for everything she needs to process, and a line between them. At the end of the session, Arabella writes the A, puts the X on top of the A, and strikes a line through it. The last episode is the psychological embodiment of that drawing.

Fantasy 1- I May Destroy You literally.

I will do unto you what you did to me. Arabella, Terry, and Theo (dressed to kill, I might add) enact the traditional revenge fantasy, one could even say the traditionally toxic male revenge fantasy, by drugging him and killing him. For most of this revenge fantasy, the viewer isn’t aware that it is fantasy. And while it seems extreme, it isn’t a total surprise as we’ve watched Arabella exhibit increasing signs of vengeance fantasy in the public outing of Zain as a rapist and her subsequent social media activity and interest in doxing. Arabella then has to hide the body and takes the bus home with his dead body beside her. A fellow passenger looks at her rapist’s bloody face and remarks, “boys will be boys!” She shoves him under the bed where the blood starts to pool. It is a horrific catharsis; a solution that presents more problems. The value in this fantasy is that it is a narrative in which she is no longer victim or even survivor, but assailant and murderer. She has reversed roles with him, but living as a perpetrator, a murderer, doesn’t seem any easier.

Fantasy 2- I May Become You mentally.

Arabella fakes being drugged and confronts him when they are alone in the stall as he is trying to rape her again. David/Patrick the rapist has a breakdown and Arabella empathizes with him. She takes him home and listens to him. In the end, Terry has gone through with the plan and the police come to arrest him. While this is a surprising turn of events, it is believable because of Theo and Arabella’s relationship. Through Arabella’s ability to trust Theo, we know that she is hugely capable of forgiving and forgetting. Empathy on this level is difficult to rationalize, and I certainly don’t condone confronting your rapist in person, sympathizing with him, and bringing him home, but it’s a common response to try and make explanations for the people who have hurt us. To think of scenarios or life circumstances that could lead someone to assault you can be a way of making sense of your life, or even of taking or ceding control, whichever you need. I would be remiss if I did not mention that I find this kind of empathy dangerous, no matter how necessary it might be to someone’s personal healing process. Empathy is rarely practiced by the ones who need to do it most and usually rely on the oppressed to do the work. 

The first two fantasies center around justice and empathy which makes sense in a world where it is increasingly the burden of the individual to practice both when the systems that are meant to serve us don’t. 

Fantasy 3- I May Become You physically.

Same location, same place. But this time, only Terry, Tariq (the rapist’s accomplice), David/Patrick, and Arabella are at Ego death. This time, Arabella asks to get her rapist a drink and then whispers in his ear. They go to the bathroom and start making out. The camera pans away from their kissing to the bathroom sign of a man and woman connected at the head. This last fantasy does away with duality completely, exploring the dissolution of self that happens when you truly empathize with someone. The bathroom sign connecting man and woman brings to mind the drawing her therapist made. The dissolution of boundaries, between herself and those things she would like to repress, as well as the dissolution of gender. Arabella takes her rapist home. At first, I balked at this fantasy because it too easily supports the rhetoric that rapists are victims because they are denied the love or sex that they, as men, are entitled to. But then, this is someone else’s process… and incredibly private and intimate thing that isn’t usually explored and shown. And maybe in the pursuit of healing, everything must be explored and shown. Arabella (consensually) penetrates him. She has reversed physical roles with him. In the morning, she wakes up and David/Patrick is smiling at her. ‘Were you hoping I’d creep out in the night?’ He says.‘No’ she replies.A moment of earth-shattering honesty that admits how hard it can be to imagine who we are without our trauma. Easier, and so, more desirable to let it stay an intimate part of us. The thing that defines us, to ourselves and to others. ‘I’m not gonna go unless you tell me to.’‘Go,’ she says.‘Ok.’

He leaves and the dead him from Fantasy 1 walks out behind him with the garbage bag of evidence from the night he raped her. 

Reality- I May Destroy You mentally.

Arabella at the end of each fantasy has been writing on a notecard and putting it up on the wall, to see if it has potential to be the end. Of her trauma and of this show. This time she hesitates and looks at the card (and scene) she uses as a starting point for all of the fantasies. Ben-garden it says. She goes into the garden and instead of going out, she stays with Ben. Sometimes meeting the person isn’t helpful, as we saw from Kwame and Nilufer. She closes the door on closure. Death of Ego Death and death of trauma and its’ grip on the ego, its’ ability to overtake an individual’s identity.
‘I’m not gonna go unless you tell me to.’
’Go,’ she says.
I May Destroy You, may being a permissive word. For those survivors of trauma, closure may be the biggest fantasy of all. For Arabella, the only way to move on is to decide that she can.

Some favorite moments.

• After Arabella publicly outs Zain as her rapist, she feels powerful for a short time before a conversation with Biagio in which he blames her for her sexual assault. She cries in her bed before taking a few selfies and posting one. She immediately gets affirmation from people online, the likes accumulating into a giant purple heart emoji that comes out of the screen. I’m not sure yet what it is about this moment that moved me so much, but I think about it often. As a society, we are constantly warned against the seeking of validation through likes and followers. It can be extremely mentally unhealthy and not representative of anything real about someone’s life. What I appreciated about this moment was the lack of critique or commentary about social media, choosing instead to portray with absolute honesty the joy and meaning that can come from that kind of attention.

(Though the moment did highlight the simplicity of social media in contrast with human interactions in a way that flips the script on the usual complexities shown about online interactions thus becoming commentary…)

• Arabella finds out that Terry told Simon to leave her the night of her assault.
  ‘She’s the one who gave me approval to leave. She’s the one who forced me to lie and tell you I walked you home.’
  Simon says, revealing the truth.
  Arabella and Terry meet up and Arabella tells her she gave Simon his jacket.
  There is a long silence as Terry realizes that Arabella knows the truth.
  Her eyes fill with guilt and sadness and fear.
  ‘You’re amazing’ Arabella tells Terry at the same moment Terry apologizes, drowning out her apology.
  ‘Thank you for being a really great friend and looking after me this past year.’
  Arabella absolves Terry.
  They never mention anything beyond that. But it hangs there, in the air, and they are both emotional.
  Weruche Opia and Michaela Coel are particularly stunning in this scene. There is only ever one person to blame for sexual assault and that is the perpetrator. It’s a total 180 from the Arabella we’ve seen, the one who is quick to take down even those closest to her and to relish doing so. It shows immediate growth in an episode where she has learned about her own complicity in hurting others, particularly her father. She is full of gratitude for the person who has been there through it all, who, despite Arabella’s imperfections which are newly apparent to her, has always loved her.

We can choose to reduce everyone in our lives to their mistakes or the things they’ve done accidentally or thoughtlessly, or we can choose to see them for the people they actively choose to be.

I have a separate post about my favorite music from the show… the moments they accompany are among my favorites as well. You can find it here

Some favorite quotes.

• ‘Why am I allowed to sit on your bed? It’s not right. Why aren’t you scared? It’s like… it’s like if you’re not scared, I don’t know how I’m meant to be, you know?’ - Rapist

• ‘Even if you never find the answer, I think it is really cool that you are asking yourself the question’ - Kwame

• ‘Control what you can, no more no less’ - Arabella