I May Destroy You | A Critically In-Depth, Analytical Essay | Part II
The number of emotional triggers in this TV show alone have made me conclude that white producers are only interested in allowing black creatives to produce content if it is dramatically traumatising enough for white people to be interested in. I think this is offers a wider view of britain as a whole, the joy and successes of black people are seldom depicted on screen which indicates that it is simply something they do not want to see nor think exists. Although there were countless disturbing scenes throughout, most of the scenes that were difficult to watch were crammed in to episodes 11 and 12 where it felt like I was revisiting an endless nightmare of violence against the black female and black queer body.
Kwame revisits the sociopathic white woman, Sarah (Tor Clark), in a restaurant to try and make amends for not being comfortable enough to disclose the fact that he has sex with men when initially ‘hooking up’ with her. Sarah, still disgusted by him, rejects his efforts to make peace and I’m astounded yet again by the way in which the script Michaela has written favours the experience of the white woman. The onus is somehow on Kwame to apologise first for “his behaviour” making it seem as though protecting an aspect of his identity, from someone he clearly doesn’t feel safe enough disclosing it to, makes him the one in the wrong.
As Michaela says in her McTaggart lecture, “I was making a story about the world from my view”, and this view of her world is a cis-heteronormative one which favours the world-view of cis-heterosexual individuals first. While in the restaurant, Kwame calls his hook up with Sarah “an experiment” which just seems so wrong. It invalidates the spectrum which sexuality and gender both lie, reducing the hook up to a mere experiment where Kwame wanted to see what it would feel like to have sex with a woman. Needless to say, this script writing is highly unrealistic and damaging for queer black people who may identify as bi-sexual or pan-sexual.
During this scene, Sarah is hostile and does not once apologise for fetishizing Kwame and using homophobic language toward him when they first met up. Instead, she tells him “yeah I guess anything that you might have found offensive, you wouldn’t have heard had you not stepped into my house under a fake identity.” For some reason, Kwame does not seem to respond in a way that acknowledges how damaging her words and actions have been and continues to apologise saying “he’ll never even contemplate doing anything that way again”, to which Sarah bluntly responds, “you did it once…you shouldn’t fucking get away with that shit but the reality of life is that predators and criminals never face justice.”
Kwame is reduced to a predator and a criminal for being a homosexual and not disclosing it. I felt like I was being taken back to times of british colonial rule where it was made a crime and unlawful to identify as homosexual or queer, a law still prevalent in many African and ‘formerly’ colonised countries. It baffles me that someone as talented as Michaela is capable of writing such a horrifying script narrative for a black queer character. Then again, it’s important to consider that this script is written for the BBC.
Instead of seeing a reality depicted where Kwame is experiencing a healthy queer relationship with his new lover, we are thrown in to a terrifying reality where he is incapable of being understood by a white woman. The last thing I want to see or imagine when watching television. Paapa Essiedu described the script as being “difficult to read” saying it was because “it’s so confrontational and frank”, but it seems obvious to me that it was difficult to read simply because it had so many terrible things happening to the black characters that are central to the show. Has Michaela successfully followed the criteria of Ofcom’s report by making television exhibit the “full range of perspectives and characteristics of different backgrounds”? Most definitely not.
In a very timely keynote lecture recently delivered by David Olusoga for the James McTaggart Edinburgh Film and Television festival, he mentions the failure of Ofcom to take accountability for following through with correctly assessing their representation and portrayal reports. David states that “when it comes to diversity Ofcom has a history of giving the broadcasters a clean bill of health, or at worst a cursory note that they could do better, but with no consequences attached or even suggestions as to what better would look like.” He then goes on to say that “if Ofcom is not able or not willing to hold the industry accountable on diversity and inclusion, or able to use its power to set minimum standards, then the [Department for Culture, Media and Sport] should set up a new body willing to do so.”
I couldn’t agree more with David Olusoga’s sentiments since everything he is saying is applicable to the lack of accurate portrayal of the black characters in this television show and so many others.
Having to witness Terry’s mortified countenance as she discovers that the man she’s having a dinner date with is transgender only adds to the ever-growing list of disturbing scenes in this show. As a black, queer, non-binary individual who also identifies as transgender I actually find Terry’s reaction quite realistic of black, cis-heteronormative people. With my own parents ashamed of my non-binary gender identity, it leaves me saddened to see that the same negative experience towards gender-non-conformity has to be exhibited on screen. This is another attempt from Michaela “to make a programme appear more diverse” by tokenising the only black, trans character and completely leaving out the depth of his personality and his community just like she neglected to portray Kwame and Alissa’s queer black community.
Ben is depicted as the introverted character we are supposed to feel sorry for as he watches a video about loneliness next to his plants, while Arabella leaves the house to continue piecing together the events of her traumatic night out. We then witness the harrowing, nauseating scene of Arabella’s memory being jogged as she recounts the entire night that she was raped. We see a white man carrying her out of the ‘Ego Death’ bar and in to a basement bar where he rapes her in a toilet as Derae (Ansu Kabia) watches on, enabling the rape to happen. Just when I think I’ve seen the worst on this show, episode 12 continues the ruthlessly triggering scenes.
The assault scene is repeated at the beginning of the episode, creating even more nausea than I thought I already had, and Terry silences Arabella telling her, “stop trembling you look like a crack head!” even though she’s clearly experiencing PTSD. The friendship dynamics in this show are entirely questionable and portray a lack of caring community within black people in the UK.
I watched on, aghast, leaning against my friend for physical support as I tried to comprehend what exactly I was viewing, what it all truly meant. As Arabella interacted with her rapist, Patrick (Lewis Reeves), while comically throwing the alcoholic drink he bought and spiked for her over her shoulder, wearing a platinum blonde, short wig and black latex outfit, leading herself back in to the same position she was in the first time she was assaulted. Incapacitated and in a vulnerable state. With the rape scene reminiscent of Patsey (Lupita Nyong’o) and slave owner Edwin Epp’s (Michael Fassbender) traumatising rape scene in Steve McQueen’s ’12 Years A Slave’, Piers Wenger was not joking when he told Michaela to “make this as near to the knuckle and honest and as true to (her) voice as (she) wants”.
These white cis men’s role in churning out the traumatic content that Michaela “had to go to very dark places” in her mind and “go in to the trauma as if it is still happening” while being “sent to the middle of nowhere” to write, almost in solitary confinement, is reflective of the deep lack of care for the mental wellbeing of the BBC’s own content producers.
As Arabella begins to relocate his body on the bus to the soundtrack of dreamy harps and violins, I am beginning to realise that these scenes may have been written in the form of a daydream as the scene returns to Ben who is talking to her whilst she’s dissociating and reflecting on destroying her rapist. The continual playback of Patrick’s bemused, sociopathic face, as she confirms the events of her assault are honestly too triggering to continue watching.
When she calls herself “deranged” it also further perpetuates the trope of the black dysfunctional female who is forever incapable of thinking calmly or validating the incessant trauma they have endured.
Arabella bumping cocaine to the blaring sound of Prodigy’s ‘Firestarter’ genuinely makes me wonder how this influences younger black audiences. She is seen to continually interact with her rapist, even drinking the spiked drink he gives her. My heart is jumping out of my chest as this is replayed over and over again like a never-ending psychotic meltdown.
During watching this episode, I wonder; how could this happen? We have had to revisit two gruelling scenes of her rape all in the quest to jail her rapist without any mention of transformative justice. Then we are returned to the mind-numbing scene of Arabella conversing with Ben in their shared garden.
The third scenario presented of Arabella interacting with her rapist uses the same opening lines in the previous scene, then proceeds to her slowly whispering in his ear and looking longingly in to his eyes. All while Derae is dancing on Terry in a twisted replayed version of the assault.
The scene of Arabella having consensual sex with her rapist is also nauseating. It appears that she’s pegging him consensually or is also fantasising about having a penis. Both of them are experiencing pleasure from the experience in this depiction. They awake to each other in the morning, fresh faced and sleepy as if nothing had happened. At this point I’m still unsure if this is supposed to be a real event or dream.
By the end of the episode, all the characters are presented sitting together in the living room, including the trans man whose narrative we didn’t even get the chance to see, watching a commercial advertisement of Terry who is featured in an advertisement on TV. It’s soul-crushing to understand that the only measure of success in this show (and wider society) is depicted as gaining close proximity to capitalist opportunities, as opposed to anything else of non-monetary value that can be celebrated in community such as being able to rest and take restorative breaks.
With the white writer / journalist, Sion (Ellie James), conducting Arabella’s book reading to an audience I’m reminded of the lack of black presence in the writing industry. And the reason why this essay is so important.
The content produced by Michaela Coel, especially in this episode, is utterly destabilising and traumatizing to have to bear witness to on TV and has actually negated all criteria stated in Ofcom’s representation and portrayal report for the BBC — which I’m sure was never intended to be followed in the first place. It’s so unsettling to me how normalised this kind of content has become to viewers, who fail to question why these narratives are allowed to appear on our television screens at times such as these; where people within the BIPOC and QTIBIPOC community are losing their lives, as well as their will to live, in a brutal, individualistic and unaccountable culture.
The standard of television shows, even when created, written, produced and directed by a black woman like Michaela Coel can still leave a lot of room for error and damaging misrepresentations where there are no other black people behind the camera that share similar intersections with the characters being displayed in front of the camera. It is also clear that Michaela wasn’t mentally stable or in a position to focus on her healing from her own experiences of sexual assault when she focused 2 years of her life writing this programme for the BBC. The harm caused to people like me by her lack of opportunity to take rest and gain a deep understanding of what happened to her saddens me, and I can only hope that she uses her time away from writing to take space and reflect on her work more.
To end, I would like to quote the literary, non-binary, reality-bending god, Akwaeke Emezi aka the ‘visual log of nonhuman flesh / the ogbanje’ who perfectly clarifies my sentiments about the purpose of writing for underrepresented voices.
“I do very much believe in the importance of books that do show what’s happening now but one of the things in writing stories about underrepresented characters is that it’s not just who the story is about but it’s also who the story is for. So you can absolutely write a story about a black trans girl that is not actually for black trans kids… and I know a lot of people think this is how you build empathy but I personally don’t believe in courting empathy from people who don’t really think you’re human in the first place. So what else can a book do?”
So, what else can TV programmes do for BIPOC and QTIBIPOC+ audiences?
