‘I May Destroy You’ is vital viewing
Spoiler alert! Contains details about the first season of HBO’S “I May Destroy You.”
There are shows that take your breath away. And then there’s “I May Destroy You.”
In all of our quarantine viewing, there’s nothing that’s shaken us more than HBO’S exhilarating, emotional dark comedy, which has been praised by critics and celebrities, including Adele and Seth Rogen.
Created by Michaela Coel (Netflix’s “Chewing Gum”), the semiautobiograhical show follows free-spirited British writer Arabaella (Coel), who is drugged and raped in the first episode. She spends much of the season trying to piece together the assault and find her attacker, with the help of best friends Terry (Weruche Opia) and Kwame (Paapa Essiedu), who are both navigating their own issues and sexuality.
Kwame, a queer Black man, also is raped in an early episode, by a man he met on a hookup app. The assault occurs after they had consensual sex, which adds to his confusion.
Grappling with trauma, Kwame decides to meet and have sex with a white woman, Nilufer (Pearl Chanda), who fetishizes his Blackness.
When Nilufer makes flippant homophobic remarks afterward, Kwame reveals that he’s gay, and she resentfully throws him out.
Arabella struggles to sympathize with Kwame, and challenges him for having sex with someone under false pretenses.
At the same time, she’s forced to confront her own imperfect views of what constitutes consent. It’s a messy but vital conversation that no other project of the #Metoo era has so far tackled as comprehensively or unflinchingly as “I May Destroy You.”
USA TODAY talked to Essiedu about why this show is so necessary.
Question: It’s heartbreaking watching Kwame try to report his rape to police, only to have them cast doubt on his experience. What do you think that scene says about how male sexual assault victims can struggle to come forward?
Paapa Essiedu: I think it’s something particularly about Black queer men, and how their assault is statistically underreported and underacted on. But that scene is also looking at, what does it mean to be a Black man coming into a police station? Historically, we know that Black men are seen as perpetrators or aggressors ... . So as a Black man, when you come in as a victim looking for help, especially as a Black queer man, it seems like that’s something that doesn’t really compute in the eyes of these institutions, and therefore, you’re brushed aside.
If you compare Arabella’s experience reporting her assault with Kwame’s experience reporting his, there’s quite a big gap. It says something about those institutions at large and who they feel is worthy of attention.
Q: Especially now with dating apps, it can be so easy to get wrapped up in what you want out of a hookup, without really considering the other person’s emotions or experience. What resonated with you most about Kwame’s encounter with Nilufer?
Essiedu: Kwame’s in survival mode: There’s been so many instances of him being disregarded or invalidated, and he’s got a real urge to do whatever he can to take control. That’s what leads him into this situation with this woman who’s got a lot of (messed) up politics. She’s saying really problematic stuff to him that he’s trying to ignore just to get that monkey off his shoulder, in a way that people sometimes do in hookups.
There’s a lot of people doing regretful stuff in that episode, and he’s flawed . ... But that’s the great achievement of the show: It exists on a knife-edge where one thing he does is his fault and another thing she does is her fault, so who’s really at blame?
Q: How do you hope this show will help people better understand consent?
Essiedu: I feel like our education around consent and what it means is so far behind where we need to be. Those gray areas or that lack of definition in our ideas around consent is what allows predators to take advantage. That’s what allows people to use power to put people in positions of being oppressed or suppressed. It comes from that lack of clarity about what we mean when we talk about consent, and what we expect both to be done to you but also what we expect of our own behaviors towards other people. So I hope this show is a big indictator or directional pole to help us move into a more conscious place.