TW: this article mentions sexual assault, rape and violence.
It has just been over two years since Michaela Coel’s ‘I May Destroy You’ premiered on BBC One and HBO, and ever since I watched it two years ago, I continue to recommend it and praise it to the highest degree.
The show centres around Arabella, a brash, energetic and imperfect twenty-something black woman, who comes to terms with a night in which she was spiked and raped. Whilst she searches for justice and answers, her friends Terry and Kwame re-evaluate the multifaceted meaning of consent within their own storylines.
The show is praised for how it tackles the meaning of consent in a variety of different forms and scenarios, as it prompts us the viewer to re-evaluate the normalized rape culture inherent in society. Although for me, what remains especially unique and ground-breaking about this series was how it showed a black woman’s specific experience with sexual assault, and how it fundamentally differs from a white woman’s experience. It cleverly showcases the intersection between the two elements of racial and gendered oppression, expressing the multifaceted nature of a woman of colour’s identity.
Image - Teen Vogue
This is eloquently expressed in episode six ‘The Alliance’, where a young Terry and Arabella deal with a white classmate (Young Theo) falsely accusing their black friend of rape at school. Undoubtedly, the white classmate knew that her accusation would hold weight and used racial power dynamics in her favour (Drawing on racial stereotypes of a vulnerable white woman and a predatory black man). (Hence young Terry comments ‘’White tears have high currency’’.) This episode highlights the everyday racism black teens were faced with, but also the complex and unique experience Arabella would have with rape accusations given her experience with them having racist tendencies. Whilst also expressing her real rape accusation in later life, would not hold as much weight as a false accusation from her white counterpart.
Interestingly the phrase ‘the alliance’ is firstly used by young Terry and young Arabella in this flashback episode, expressing the alliance of young black teens against racism but then is used in a later episode to describe the alliance between women against sexual assault. This double-meaning symbolises the multi-faceted nature of black women's oppression and their constant need to think not just of being a woman in patriarchy but also of being a black person in a racialized society.
Intersectionality strives to emphasise that Arabella’s experience as a woman is intrinsic to her experience as being black, as she is a black woman. However, the historic failure of gender emancipatory movements in incorporating the intersection between these different oppressions, is perhaps why Arabella separates her struggles (in perhaps one of the most powerful quotes of the series) she states, ‘I hadn’t thought of being a woman, I was busy being black and poor,’. Consequently, expressing the failure of her identity to be fully represented and acknowledged holistically and connectivity.
Image - HBO
Intersectionality is explored in several other ways within this show. For example, an older Terry is sceptical of an older Theo being recruited into their alliance against rape culture, due to Theo’s history of racism. Emphasizing the pillars of intersectional feminism, and that an anti-sexist fight must be an anti-racist fight.
Overall, through a closer analysis of I May Destroy You, it is clear the show represents the complexities of a woman’s experience by carving out a space for the representation of black women. This show allows a form of representation away from the exclusivity of white feminism, and away from tv shows which have homogenized women’s inequality through basing it on a white woman’s experience.
Image - BBC
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