Abstract
This paper examines the representation of trauma recovery in the television series I May Destroy You (2020). Research on rape in fictional television programmes overwhelmingly focus on rape myths or how rape is represented. There is scant research on recovery from rape trauma in television drama. This paper contributes to scholarship on rape in fictional television, through a focus on the process of trauma recovery. Michaela Coel’s portrayal of the struggle to recover from the traumatic experience of sexual assault, makes a nuanced contribution to debates on sexual violence, victim behaviour, and black British identity.
Introduction
Michaela Coel’s groundbreaking television series, I May Destroy You, premiered in June 2020, becoming an instant critical success. It received Emmy awards for Outstanding Writing for a Limited Series and Outstanding Music Supervision, and BAFTA awards for Best Mini-Series and Best Leading Actress (ATAS, 2021; BBC, 2021a; BBC, 2021b). The success of the series, which examines a black British woman’s experience of recovering from the trauma of rape, marks a significant moment in contemporary British popular culture. The programme premiered during a period of intense public debate about racism and sexual violence, marked by the #MeToo, #TimesUp, #BlackLivesMatter, and Rhodes Must Fall movements. Coel famously turned down a $1 Million offer from the television streaming giant Netflix to retain creative control over her work. Coel’s rejection of Netflix’s offer and her retention of creative control through a deal with the BBC and HBO, highlights her participation in the ‘politics of representation’ (Hall, 1988: 224). The focus on the process of trauma recovery, in I May Destroy You, also makes a distinctive contribution to the representation of sexual assault in television drama. This essay aims to examine the nuanced synergy between these two crucial thematic aspects of the show. It commences with a survey of the scholarship on fictional television rape. That is followed by a discussion of trauma theory, before turning to the analysis of how trauma is represented in the series through a focus on victim behaviour and trauma recovery. Finally, the paper considers Coel’s engagement with the politics of representation in her re-articulation of contemporary black British cultural identity through trauma recovery.
In the 1980s, Stuart Hall (1988) identified the end of the innocent notion of the essential black subject as an important moment in popular culture. During the 1970s and 1980s people of African, Caribbean and South Asian origin could uncontroversially refer to themselves as black as an assertion of collective solidarity in their struggle against openly violent racism (Earle and Phillips, 2013: 115). The shift away from this form of political blackness marked the end of resistance based upon the binary of negative whiteness and positive blackness. Coel’s representation of black Britishness, principally through the perspective of a woman who asserts her African ancestry, registers significant demographic changes over the last 40 years. Caribbean cultures are no longer hegemonic within representations of black Britishness. The British African population has grown to more than double that of the British Caribbean population. The series draws heavily on black British popular music, featuring tracks by black British Caribbean and black British African rappers and singers. The inclusion of songs by Paigey Cakey, Little Simz, and Arlo Parks highlight the contribution that black women are making in contemporary British culture.
In the same year I May Destroy You was premiered, the Independent Office for Police Conduct’s (IOPC) Director for London, Sal Naseem, stated that he was deeply concerned about the issues arising from an investigation into the taking and sharing of photographs of two murdered ethnic minority women, Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry, by two male police officers. Later that year, the intimate strip-search of a black school-girl (Child Q) by two female officers, led to further debate regarding discrimination based on race and sex within policing. Since the series was first broadcast, public debate on sexual violence in Britain expanded to include the role of police officers in violence against women, prompted by the rape and murder of Sarah Everard by Wayne Couzens in 2021. The use of the term ‘institutional misogyny’ in debates about the policing of sexual violence can be seen as a response to, and development of, the concept of institutional racism used in Sir William MacPherson’s report of the inquiry into the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993. The articulation of sexual violence with racism in public debates is crucial for understanding the moment in which Coel makes her nuanced and provocative contribution to British popular culture.
There is a tension between the specificity of I May Destroy You’s representation of Coel’s character, Arabella, and some aspects of contemporary feminist debates. In the wake of the rape and murder of Everard there has been a renewed focus on the perpetrators of sexual violence and failings within the criminal justice system. However, the series turns the audience’s attention towards the victim. Instead of focusing on the rapist, the criminal justice system, or the act of rape, I May Destroy You focuses on the victim and their attempt to tell the story of their trauma. In an interview with Harper Lambert, Coel states that her aim is to challenge the narratives that victims have about themselves and their lives: I’m trying to give other people the chance and the time to correct the narrative that they have made about themselves, about their perception of the world, rather than saying, “This is the narrative of a rapist, let’s correct it.” That isn’t my focus or my interest. My interest is always about the victim of the trauma, the survivor of the trauma, and the narratives they tell themselves. (Lambert, 2021: 29)
Watching Rape on Prime Time Television
This survey of the literature on rape on television focuses on studies on fictional programmes. Most scholarship on the representation of rape on television is concerned with the issue of proportionality. These studies generally focus on television news or engage with both factual and fictional representations of sexual violence. While the proportionality and representativeness of reports of rape in television news is an important consideration for studies of media and crime, these issues are less relevant when concerned with fictional forms. Feminist scholars Cuklanz (2000) and Moorti (2002) argue that fictional programmes are often able to represent victims more sympathetically and explore rape in greater depth than news programming.
A number of scholars have approached television representations of rape through qualitative analysis of rape myths. Brinson’s study of prime-time drama examines the use and opposition of rape myths in television story lines. She argues that an overuse of rape myths reinforces beliefs that women rather than men are responsible for rape: ‘our culture tends to blame the victim for her rape’ (Brinson, 1992: 373). Similarly, in her discussion of soap opera rape narratives, Buhl Dutta argues that the genre ‘actively popularises the rape myths of patriarchal culture’ (1999: 35). Hogan's (2022) analysis of secondary victimisation scripts identifies important changes, over a sixty-year period, in the representation of how the trauma of rape may be exacerbated through the criminal justice system. Hogan highlights how sexualised images of the rape victim and uncritical representations of victim blaming in Anatomy of a Murder (1959) contrast with the critical representation of police officers’ treatment of rape victims and of violence perpetrated by police officers against women in Unbelievable (2019). Rader et al. (2016) conduct one of the most in-depth quantitative analyses of the portrayal of victims in crime drama. Using a representative sample of crime dramas, they examine the depiction of victim blaming in 124 crime shows over a seven-year period. Their study reveals valulable insights regarding the representation of victim blaming in these programmes, including that for ‘sexual assault, overall, victims were most likely to be portrayed as blameless (62.8%)’ and female victims of sexual assault were more likely to be portrayed as blameless than male victims of sexual assault (Rader et al., 2016: 66).
In their studies of police procedurals and legal drama Cuklanz and Moorti identify historical shifts in the representation of victims of rape. Cuklanz (2000) observes a transformation in the representation of victims from relative passivity towards the exercise of agency in her examination of prime time television portrayals of rape between 1976 and 1990. In her discussion of television representations of rape in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Moorti argues that ‘prime-time rape narratives contain rather than enlarge discussions about power and violence’ (2002: 113). Although she highlights that a variety of social issues are explored through cop shows and legal drama, Moorti (2002) suggests that the generic conventions of these programmes limit their social critique. This observation is significant to the present study. By using a serialised format, Coel is able to engage in narrative experimentation in a manner that would be impossible in a police procedural or a legal drama. In their analysis of Law & Order: Special Victim’s Unit (1999-present), Cuklanz and Moorti argue that this programme ‘integrates feminist insights’ (2006: 302) but nevertheless maintains an ‘anti-woman sentiment’ (2006: 306). Although they acknowledge that Special Victim’s Unit offers an ‘unequivocally feminist understanding of sexual assault in its depiction of power imbalances as causing rape’ (2006: 310), they refer to the lack of solidarity amongst women as an example of the limitations of television feminism. Digital streaming has brought about new ways of watching television. Havas and Horeck (2021) suggest that Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (2015-20) and Unbelievable are examples of a new era of television feminism. They highlight how these shows explore and challenge established tropes of representing rape, arguing that the manner in which they ‘address rape culture is closely tied to their use of the serialised format and its links to the practice of binge-watching’ (2021: 251).
Along with Cuklanz’s Rape on Prime Time (2000), Projansky’s monograph, Watching Rape (2001), is amongst the most substantial studies of the representation of rape in popular culture. One of the significant contributions that Watching Rape makes to debates on media representations of rape is its analysis of the rape of black women. Projansky argues that considerations of racism tend to be excluded in post-feminist representations of the rape of African American women. However, Projansky’s position that the use of therapeutic discourses in rape narratives ‘contribute to a postfeminist emphasis on the individual and her experience’ (2001: 109) which operates in opposition to feminism’s emphasis on collective activity, denies the possibility of exploring the links between the personal and political in media representations of rape. I suggest that I May Destroy You locates individual responsibility and victim behaviour within a wider context of racial and gender relations, and thus moves beyond the limitations of Projansky’s framing of postfeminist representations of rape.
Horeck’s Public Rape has also made an important contribution to the study of on-screen sexual violence. Horeck’s conception of public rape as ‘representations of rape that serve as cultural fantasies of power and domination, gender and sexuality, and class and ethnicity’ (2004: 3) is relevant to this essay’s engagement with the role that fantasy plays in I May Destroy You. Horeck critically engages with feminism’s distrust of fantasy in relation to sexual violence, arguing that ‘feminist stories and analyses of rape are always linked to public fantasies of not just men and women, but white and black’ (2004: 41). The role of fantasy in the arrangement of desire (Horeck, 2004) is an important aspect of Coel’s representation of trauma recovery. Although this article principally focuses on Arabella’s (Michaela Coel) experiences, the representation of her friend Kwame (Paapa Essiedu) and his sexual assault by another black man, contributes to the programme’s exploration of black Britishness, gender, sexuality, and the process of recovery.
Several studies highlight the role that fictional television representations can have on public debates on rape. Van Vuuren’s (2018) analysis of the South African historical drama, Feast of the Uninvited (2008), identifies how this programme challenged the figure of the heroic Boer. The representation of the rape of a Boer woman by a Boer man problematised the archetypal figure of the Boer hero and ignited a controversy, with audiences complaining to the broadcaster and on social media. Kaya’s (2019) discussion of the representation of rape in Turkish television serials critiques the glamorisation of violence against women while also acknowledging the potential for some forms of representation to bring about social change. In particular, she highlights how television portrayals of child marriage and the use of the legal system to find justice contribute to public debates on women’s rights.
While most studies on rape in television fiction focus on crime drama in the US, several scholars have examined British representations. Berridge’s study of British teen dramas situates the representation of sexual violence within the context of the genre’s emphasis on ‘teenage independence, rebellion and nihilism’ (2010: 181). She highlights that the representation of rape and the threat of rape in the genre is brief and with little exploration of how victims are affected emotionally. Berridge sees this as a part of the ‘antimoralistic tone of British teen drama’ (2010: 191), in which the issue of vulnerability is a peripheral concern and the ‘seriousness of these narratives is diffused through humour’ (2010: 205). Byrne and Taddeo’s analysis of rape plot lines in period drama places the genre in relation to the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements. Byrne and Taddeo argue that in the years prior to the global popularisation of these movements the subject of rape was most commonly explored ‘not on mainstream US television, but in … British period drama’ (2019: 380). They also argue that ‘the serial nature of most small-screen period dramas … afford writers and actors the possibility to investigate the long-term effects of rape, such as victim trauma and recovery’ (2019: 385). Despite recognising these possibilities, their analysis focuses on the representation of rape myths in Poldark (2015-9), Outlander (2014-present) and Banished (2015). Although they acknowledge that rape survivors were consulted in the making of Outlander, and that victims of sexual assault may be given hope through witnessing a character’s recovery from rape trauma, when Byrne and Taddeo turn to the issue of trauma in Outlander, they analyse the trauma experienced by a male rape victim, Jamie (Sam Heughan), instead of Brianna (Sophie Skelton).
I May Destroy You has stimulated a turn within feminist media studies towards trauma recovery. Keating (2022) places the series within the context of the rape-revenge genre, highlighting how feminists have debated the use of the terms ‘victim’ and ‘survivor’ to describe those who have experienced rape or sexual assault, and argues that in rape-revenge narratives ‘both identities are necessary as their transformation from one to the other is an integral facet for the progression of the plot’ (2022: 63–64). Although she acknowledges Coel’s concern with trauma and that I May Destroy You differs from other rape-revenge narratives, Keating’s focus on this genre limits her engagement with how Coel explores trauma recovery by drawing on a number of other genres and techniques. I suggest that Coel both invokes and rejects the conventions of the rape-revenge narrative, to foreground the experiential narration of trauma recovery. Indeed, Benson-Allott’s discussion of the series’ artistic inventiveness highlights how its ‘elliptical, associative approach to narrative mimics the alinear process of recovery’ (2020: 104). Coel’s representation of Arabella can be seen as a critical engagement with the themes of independence, rebellion and nihilism that Berridge identifies in teen drama. This is developed through the ‘precarious-girl comedy’ trope of young women ‘remaining stuck in adolescence’ (Wanzo, 2016: 42). There is a gap between studies of television rape and studies of trauma, and a dearth of research on the representation of recovery from rape trauma in television drama. I address that lacuna through a focus on Arabella’s narrative of trauma recovery.
Representing Traumatic Memory, Theorising Trauma
While media studies of rape in television drama have given substantial critical attention to the use of rape myths and victim’s experiences within the criminal justice system, there has been little engagement with the representation of victims’ experiences of trauma. Two notable exceptions to this are Spallacci’s discussion of the representation of rape trauma in 13 Reasons Why (2017-20) and Sharp Objects (2018) and Boyle’s analysis of Westworld (2016-22) and The Handmaid’s Tale (2017-present). Spallacci, draws on trauma theory to explore the ‘unrepresentability of trauma’ and the representation of ‘traumatic memory’ (2019: 1–2). She criticises attempts to solicit empathy or disgust through the use of rape scenes in the films Monster (2003), Room (2015) and Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011), and in 13 Reasons Why, as focusing on rape as an event. Spallacci argues that, in order to change rape discourse, film and television need to shift ‘towards a representation of traumatic memory’ (2019: 7). She states that Sharp Objects employs this approach, using representations of traumatic memory to explore the gendered discourses and behavioural practices through which sexual violence is inscribed in the culture of the fictional town Wind Gap. Spallacci suggests that through this approach popular culture may ‘support shared suffering and witnessing’ (2019: 9). Following on from Spallacci, Boyle examines ‘the aftermath of gendered violence, trauma and its effects’ (2023: 1345). Her analysis of Westworld and The Handmaid’s Tale highlights how ‘trauma informs not only character and narrative content but the series’ thematics, aesthetics and the structural logistics of the storytelling’ (2023: 1345). Boyle’s discussion of Maeve’s (Thandiwe Newton) fight for her right to motherhood in Westworld, highlights the slow process of reconstruction and recovery (2023: 1351), which is of particular relevance to my discussion of trauma recovery.
The distinction between representing an event and representing traumatic memory that Spallacci identifies is crucial to understanding Coel’s contribution to black British popular culture. In I May Destroy You, Arabella’s rape is depicted in detail only at the end of the penultimate episode, ‘Would You Like to Know the Sex?’ (E11) and is viewed from Arabella’s perspective, through the ‘female gaze’ (Benson-Allott, 2017). Prior to that episode, viewers engage with the rape through Arabella’s flashbacks and the journey that she undertakes to come to terms with and narrate her experience. In this way, Coel moves on from debates concerning the eroticisation of rape in popular culture (Kaya, 2019) and privileges the representation of the process of trauma recovery. In contrast to the representation of Arabella’s experience of sexual violence, Kwame’s assault is depicted from a third person perspective. After we see him engage in consensual intercourse with Malik (Samson Balogun), in Episode Four (‘That was fun’), Kwame dresses and tells Malik that he’ll wait outside. Malik pushes the door shut to stop Kwame from leaving, forces him to the bed, and assaults him. Although we do observe Kwame’s sexual assault, the series maintains its focus on trauma recovery through the contrast between his and Arabella’s experiences.
Trauma theorists are indebted to Freud, who, in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, noted that ‘it is a distinctive feature of the dream-life of patients with traumatic neurosis that it repeatedly takes them back to the situation of their original misadventure, from which they awake with a renewed sense of fright’ (2003: 51). The intrusiveness of the traumatic event and its relation to memory is significant. Caruth, drawing on Freud, highlights that ‘the vivid and precise return of the event appears … to be accompanied by an amnesia for the past’ (1995: 152). There is a paradox between trauma survivors’ inability to remember all or part of what they experienced and the return of the traumatic event in flashbacks and dreams. According to Caruth ‘this suggests that what returns in the flashbacks is not simply an overwhelming experience that has been obstructed by a later repression or amnesia, but an event that is itself constituted, in part, by its lack of integration into consciousness’ (1995: 152). Bistoen et al. argue that what ‘characterises trauma is the absolute incommensurability between (the memory of) a horrible experience and the preceding psychological make-up of the affected person’ (2014: 834). The victim does not fully experience the traumatic event as it happens. Such events are outside the range of the subject’s normal experience, and the event takes place before one is prepared to take in the stimulus (Caruth, 2016: 64). Neuroscientists, Van der Kolk and Van der Hart state that ‘dissociation of a traumatic experience occurs as the trauma is occurring’ (1995: 168). Such events are recorded in the brain in a different way to ordinary memory (Radstone, 2007). In the repeated reenactment of a traumatic event through dreams or flashbacks, trauma victims are forced to continually confront the possibility of their death, an ‘attempt to master what was never fully grasped in the first place’ (Caruth, 2016: 64). These ‘traumatic memories’ are the unassimilated recollections of overwhelming experience, which the subject is yet to integrate (Van der Kolk and Van der Hart, 1995: 176).
The process of trauma recovery, then, is to integrate the traumatic experience into ordinary memory and narrative language. Trauma victims ‘refashion their identities in the repeated retelling of their lives’ (George, 1996: 58). Bistoen et al. identify, assimilation and accommodation, as contrasting forms of incorporating traumatic experiences: whereas assimilation refers to the incorporation of the trauma information into the existing schemas through a re-appraisal of the event, accommodation points to the revision of the mental schemata to fit the new information. Therefore, the latter process is associated with “psychological growth” as it produces mental schemata that are viewed as more realistic, effective, functional, or adaptive compared to the pre-trauma schemata. (2014: 835)
While the theme of rape culture is addressed in the series (Benson-Allott, 2020), Coel also advances a critical engagement with victim behaviour through Arabella’s narrative of trauma recovery. I want to distinguish this engagement with victim behaviour from ‘victim blaming’ (Brinson, 1992; Buhl Dutta, 1999; Masser et al., 2010). The overwhelming emphasis on rape myths and victim blaming in studies of media representations of rape has resulted in a neglect of victim trauma and recovery. There is a substantial evidence base regarding the traits of individuals who experience repeat victimisation (as Arabella does) particularly in relation to risk taking. Turanovic and Pratt (2014) identify that low self-control and continued participation in risky behaviour are strongly associated with repeated experiences of assault. Research on sexual victimisation by Walsh et al. (2020) highlights that repeat victims are more likely to report frequent and heavy alcohol consumption in comparison with singly victimised individuals. Testa, Hoffman and Livingston’s examination of the role of risky sexual behaviour and risky alcohol consumption in women’s sexual victimisation found that ‘even women without existing risk factors increase their vulnerability via risky drinking and sexual activity’ (2010: 256). In Episode Two (‘Someone is Lying’), after Arabella’s medical examination, she meets Shirley (Rebecca Calder), a repeat victim of sexual violence. Shirley’s reappearance in the final episode ‘Ego Death’ (12) draws attention to Coel’s concern with repeat victimisation. I May Destroy You invites the audience to consider the issues of risk taking and responsibility in the narration of trauma recovery.
Beyond the cautionary tale: representing risk, responsibility, and rape
Episode One of I May Destroy You, ‘Eyes, Eyes, Eyes, Eyes’, opens with a view of Arabella’s bedroom. From her perspective, standing on her bed, the audience sees the post-it-notes that outline the structure of the book she completes at the end of the series. We then cut to Italy, with Arabella and Biagio (Marouane Zotti) waiting for her ride to the airport. Biagio is clearly not committed to the relationship she wants with him. When she asks ‘So are you gonna miss me?’, he responds ‘I don’t like this sort of conversation’. As he departs he tells her ‘when I’m ready to call you, I call’. The episode later introduces us to her friends Terry (Weruche Opia), Kwame, Simon (Aml Ameen) and her flat-mate Ben (Stephen Wight). Arabella breaks off from writing the draft of her book to meet Simon at a bar. She takes cocaine with him, before they move on to the Ego Death bar, where she drinks with her friend along with several strangers. The shot of alcohol we see her being given, has been spiked. We observe her growing disorientation. Following clips of her dancing energetically with her friends, to Sweet Female Attitude’s ‘Flowers’, there is a shift to the non-diegetic singing of Milton Brunson’s ‘It’s Gonna Rain’ by The Thompson Community Singers. The disjunction between the tempo of her dancing and that of the music signifies her changed consciousness. We then see her standing still at the bar. She begins to sway, falls over, then staggers past other patrons towards the door. The episode ends with her first flashback of being sexually assaulted by David (Lewis Reeves), one of the men she met at Ego Death. Burgess et al. (2009) argue that public perception of drink spiking in Britain tend to exaggerate the risk of drug facilitated sexual assault and Moore (2009) argues that media representations of the crime function as ‘cautionary tales’. In this television drama, the drug facilitated rape functions as the moment in which the preexisting order of Arabella’s life is disrupted.
The flashback is repeated in the opening scene of the second episode ‘Someone is Lying’, as Bella chats with Terry in a cafe. When she first discusses the ‘thing in my head’ with her friend, her description reveals her dissociation from the traumatic event of being raped: ‘This guy, he’s in a toilet cubicle, and he’s like - I don’t know. It seems like he’s doing something a bit dodge. He’s panting and sweating. He’s got really big nostrils and it’s like he’s blocking the door’. Van der Kolk and Van der Hart highlight that ‘writers about the human response to trauma have observed that a feeling of helplessness, of physical or emotional paralysis, is fundamental to making an experience traumatic’ (1995: 175). During both Arabella’s and Kwame’s assaults the characters are unable to take action that would prevent the attack. Whereas Arabella’s loss of control is due to having had her drink spiked, Kwame is physically over-powered. The remainder of Episode Two follows Arabella, as she tries to find out what happened to her and comes to the realisation that she was raped.
There is a self-reflexive engagement with the representation of rape throughout the series. At the writing summit, in Episode Five (‘It Just Came Up’), Arabella’s publisher, Susy Henny (Franc Ashman), states that the ‘writer is left in a position of great responsibility: to ensure that there is intention in every word’. Similarly, the theme of personal responsibility is also invoked in Episode Three ‘Don’t Forget the Sea’, during Arabella’s conversation with Terry. Terry complains to her, saying that as an actor ‘we are completely reliant on other people’s choices. They have all the fucking power. Everybody knows that’. Arabella responds with the challenge ‘So you’ve got zero responsibility, over your own career, not one shred?’ When Terry acknowledges that she does have some responsibility for herself, Bella follows up with the assertion ‘that shred is everything.’ In this moment there is a recognition that, while we are all subject to wider power relations, we also possess a degree of responsibility for the course of our lives.
Following this conversation, Arabella leaves her friend at a table in the nightclub, meets a group of strange women with whom she takes drugs and dances, and Terry eventually departs from the club alone. Arabella reminds Terry of this moment in their lives at the end of Episode Two, comparing Terry’s departure from the nightclub with Simon leaving her at Ego Death: ‘we should make a pact, never to disappear’. Although she implicitly acknowledges the risky behaviour she participates in, at this stage of the narrative Bella attempts to emphasise others’ responsibility, rather than her own.
Trauma Recovery and Victim Behaviour in I May Destroy You
Episode Ten (‘The Cause The Cure’) provides important insights into Arabella’s family background and her behaviour. The opening scene reveals how she idolises her father, Kojo (Yinka Awoni). However, the audience are able to observe his neglectful treatment of his family. Although Arabella believes her father’s promise to take them out to eat, her younger brother Nick (Oluwadamilola Enamejewa) does not and eats before Kojo turns up late. During his brief visit, Kojo says he’ll take them to McDonald’s ‘next time’, leaves a takeaway, tells Arabella ‘love you’, then departs. In adulthood the same scene is replayed with Arabella reassuring herself and her brother that her father will arrive for their mother’s birthday dinner. However, he again selfishly keeps them waiting, without apology. Arabella’s willingness to accept this inconsiderate behaviour as loving is replayed in her adult relationship with Biagio.
As they sit around the dining table the conversation turns to Arabella’s school days. When Kojo holds her responsible for his home being burgled, his comment triggers Arabella’s memory of how she would surreptitiously enter his house through the window. Her chewing slows and eyes widen. As she begins to recollect her memories, the programme cuts between the dinner scene and the scene of her discovering a woman in her father’s house. Arabella leaves the table to sit in her room and face her childhood trauma of finding that her father was unfaithful. She realises that he is emotionally abusive towards the family; her family is imperfect; and she may safely be herself with her mother (Michelle Greenidge). She is then able to disclose to her mother the rape and accept support from her. Her mother acts as a witness to Arabella’s testimony. Following this Arabella ceases to idealise her father and develops a more compassionate and nuanced relationship with those around her.
Van der Kolk and Van der Hart (1995) emphasise that the traumatised person must not only know how to tell the story of what happened, but also know how to put it in its place within their life-history. Her mother’s witnessing of her testimony enables Arabella to integrate the trauma ‘as a known event and not simply an overwhelming shock’ (Laub, 1992: 57) into her life history. By placing her adult experiences of being raped and her toleration of the relationship she has with Biagio in the context of her childhood fantasies around her father and the reality of his neglectful and abusive behaviour, Arabella comes to recognise the need to change her view of the world and take responsibility for her (previously risky) behaviour.
The end of the innocent black subject
In Hall’s discussion of the end of the innocent notion of the ‘essential black subject’ (1988: 224–5), he identifies two moments in black cultural politics, that can both be seen at play in I May Destroy You. The struggle over the relations of representation and the politics of representation are depicted through the process of writing and publishing a creative work, which structures the narrative of the series as a whole. As Arabella struggles to work through her trauma and complete her writing project, she reads to her agent ‘prior to being raped I never took much notice of being a woman. I was busy being black and poor’. Although she talks about institutionally racist policing in the same scene, the cultural politics at play in I May Destroy You goes beyond highlighting the multiple identities that we all possess. It articulates the representation of black Britons and black popular culture, with the process of trauma recovery.
Coel explores trauma recovery through a critical engagement with the diversity of black experience and the dialogical processes through which our identities are formed. Recalling his comments on the end of the essential black subject, in 1993 Hall argued that it is to the diversity, not the homogeneity, of black experience that we must now give our undivided creative attention. … The point is not simply that, since our racial differences do not constitute all of us, we are always different, negotiating different kinds of differences -- of gender, of sexuality, of class. It is also that these antagonisms refuse to be neatly aligned; they are simply not reducible to one another; they refuse to coalesce around a single axis of differentiation. (1993: 111–2) The survivor no longer feels possessed by her traumatic past; she is in possession of herself. She has some understanding of the person she used to be and of the damage done to that person by the traumatic event. Her task now is to become the person she wants to be. In the process she draws upon those aspects of herself that she most values from the time before the trauma, from the experience of the trauma itself, and from the period of recovery. Integrating all of these elements, she creates a new self, both ideally and in actuality. (1992: 202)
In contrast to the expulsion of the rapist that Berridge (2010) identifies as a convention of British teen drama, Zain (Karan Gill), a writer who has been asked by their agent to help Arabella complete her book, plays a pivotal role in the development of her narrative about herself. Speaking at a meta-textual level, Coel’s character informs Zain in Episode Five (‘It Just Came Up’) that ‘I thought if we both knew you were a rapist it might change us’ but also cautions him that she ‘can’t tell you how helpful what we do is.’ When, at the writing summit, she publicly reveals Zain’s act of ‘stealthing’ (Brodsky, 2017) and declares him to be a rapist, ‘not “rape adjacent”, or “a bit rapey” - he is a rapist’, the Cambridge educated British-Indian man is made accountable for removing a condom during consensual sex and shamed in the presence of the community of writers. The sharing of this event via social media heightens Arabella’s profile and foregrounds the role of digital technologies in ‘feminist affective solidarity and communication’ (Horeck, 2018: 583). By retaining Zain within the narrative, Coel raises the issue of the position that abusive individuals have within our society and the need to accommodate ourselves to their presence. It also highlights the role of assimilation and accommodation in post-traumatic growth. Later in the narrative, Zain follows Susy Henny’s suggestion to adopt the feminine pseudonym ‘Della’ so that Henny House are able to publish his work. His willingness to help Arabella work towards the completion of her book, after she contacts ‘Della’ on social media, enables him to work through his shame and for Arabella to integrate her experience with him into her understanding of herself. However, this moment of integration follows Coel’s engagement with female solidarity.
In Episode Six (‘The Alliance’) Arabella finds solidarity with other survivors of sexual exploitation in a support group organised by Theodora (Harriet Webb), who she had known during her childhood. Coel’s depiction of trauma recovery reveals how this process can produce identification between women of diverse ethnicities, even as it draws attention to Kwame’s exclusion from the survivors group. As a homosexual male, Kwame’s experience as a victim of sexual assault is marginalised both by police officers and the ‘survivors group’, highlighting resistance to men’s experiences of victimhood and the lack of support available to them (Boyle and Rogers, 2020). Through participation in the group Arabella begins to reflect on her behaviour as well as to critique the behaviour of the men who have victimised her and the other women in the group. She begins to befriend Theo, a white working-class woman, who she had challenged at school for falsely accusing one of Arabella’s friends of rape. Theodora’s position in the survivors group, Kwame’s exclusion from it, and the third person representation of his sexual assault, foreground the antagonisms and complexities that constitute this form of solidarity.
Female solidarity is further explored in Episode Nine (‘Social Media is a Great Way to Connect’) in which Arabella uses her social media presence to express feminist political outrage. While Horeck argues that ‘new media devices such as the smartphone and the laptop are central to how TV crime dramas attempt to mobilise affective response to the event of violence against women’ (2018: 572), I suggest that I May Destroy You employs new media devices to offer a critique of social media echo chambers and to represent Arabella’s confrontation with the end of her innocence. After learning of her friend’s troubling encounter with the homophobia of a woman he had just had sex with, Arabella tells Kwame ‘I’m just saying right, if you paint things to make it look like you’re a victim and I find out that isn’t entirely the case, it makes me question who you are.’ This confrontation with Kwame ultimately leads her to retreat from social media and political outrage, cease her judgemental attitude towards others and explore darker aspects of her own complex identity.
In the final episode ‘Ego Death’ (E12), the audience witness Arabella’s fantasies of revenge and forgiveness. While according to Herman, ‘feelings of rage and murderous revenge fantasies are normal responses to abusive treatment’ (1992: 104) the series escapes the conventions of the rape-revenge narrative (Keating, 2022) by drawing attention to fantasy as part of the process of recovery. In the first of these Arabella, Terry and Theodora work together to drug David. After they follow him from the bar, Arabella sexually assaults him, before she and Theo beat him to death. In the second, Arabella feigns being drugged by him, and then confronts him when he attempts to rape her. David responds with a barrage of insults, revealing his own experiences of violence, trauma and systemic oppression (Keating, 2022), as the focus of the insults shifts from Arabella to himself. After taking him to her home, she listens to him and comforts him before the police arrive to take him away. Although Arabella eventually releases herself from her repetitive fantasies, I want to pause for a moment on the third fantasy presented in this episode.
In this final fantasy Arabella explores the economy of her sexual desires, the relations between masculinity and femininity within herself, and possibilities of alternate sexual and racial relations with others. Hall argues that dominant ‘ethnicities are always underpinned by a particular sexual economy, a particular figured masculinity, a particular class identity’ (1993: 112). I May Destroy You explores the subversion of this economy through fantasy. As David’s friend dances for Terry, the audience witness Arabella approaching her abuser and initiating a sexual encounter with him. During this encounter she explores both subordinate/passive and dominant/active positions in relation to this white British man. In the shift from adopting the missionary position to ‘pegging’ (Williams et al., 2023) her rapist and bringing him to climax during consensual sex, Arabella imagines alternative sexual and racial relations through the process of trauma recovery.
It is at the end of this fantasy encounter that Arabella tells David to go, letting go of her trauma, while retaining aspects of her experience that she values. Her decision to take the ‘Garden - Ben’ post-it-note, as she leaves this fantasy, and to remain at home with her flat-mate Ben instead of returning to the bar, indicates how Arabella retains this aspect of her recovery in her self-refashioning. The series ends in the moment in which Arabella begins to narrate her story to a multi-ethnic, mixed gender audience at her book launch. The cover of her independently published book represents Arabella’s integration of the darker aspects of her personality, through overlaying the letters A and X upon one another. Crucially Zain/Della’s help in finding the book’s structure and his retention within the narrative is part of that integration.
Conclusion
In his essay, ‘What is this “black” in black popular culture’, Hall argues that ‘as popular culture has historically become the dominant form of global culture’ it also has become the space ‘where control over narratives and representations passes into the hands of the established cultural bureaucracies, sometimes without a murmur’ (1993: 108). Coel’s negotiations with Netflix, HBO and the BBC can be seen, alongside her representation of Arabella’s relationship with Susy Henny, as a decision to ensure that engagement with cultural bureaucracies takes place with a clear statement regarding where control over black cultural representations should reside.
I May Destroy You self-reflexively engages with the representation of rape and traumatic memory. Coel anticipates concerns regarding victim blaming, and squarely locates responsibility for sexual assault with the perpetrators. However, criminal justice is not the central concern of the series. Instead, I May Destroy You sensitively invites us to witness a victim’s reflection on her trauma and her behaviour. It makes an important contribution to television feminism through its insistence that victims have both rights and responsibilities. In following Arabella’s journey from the trauma of her rape through to her recovery, the audience witness the production of shared interests and identifications across the lines of gender, sexuality and ethnicity, through experiences of post-traumatic growth. This representation of black popular culture marks a moment in which the innocent subject has escaped death but has nevertheless experienced an overwhelming shock. By retaining Zain within her narrative, Arabella lets go of fantasies of her innocence, acknowledges her complex character, and takes responsibility for herself. By foregrounding questions regarding victim behaviour and responsibility, I May Destroy You presents trauma recovery as a model through which to fashion resilient, responsible subjects and to imagine a diverse and inclusive society.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
