CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE ENDING OF I MAY DESTROY YOU
If you were left wondering if there was meaning, something you’d missed or an explanation that ties up the series at the end of I May Destroy You, then, I think, that’s probably yet another plaudit to add to the list ofhow well Michaela Coel’s drama deals with sexual assault.
I watched the end of I May Destroy You feeling that that the three imagined (were they all imagined?) scenarios in the bar showed (and there was a LOT to unpick within them beyond this) there was no neat finale to the ‘story of’ Arabella’s rape. Because how could there be? Is that something you think is or should be possible?
Yes, you could say, she completed the book, which was also, maybe, the show (wasn’t it?) and so maybe as a series there was an ending? Even though it took us back to the start. Didn’t it? There were also ‘endings’ for other characters’ stories. Arabella perhaps found comfort and order (not resolution) in writing? As Michaela has openly spoken about the fact that she was led to explore different aspects of consent and write I May Destroy You because of her own experience of being spiked and raped, there’s another layer to that.
But this all felt more stark in a month where the Victim’s Commissioner Vera Baird said rape in this country has effectively become decriminalised and it was announced convictions have fallen to a record low.
I know lots of people have talked about the way in which IMDY has sucker punched them, but reading that makes me feel physically sick. And it should do you. Think about what is being said there.
In her first annual report, Dame Vera Baird QC said: ‘In effect, what we are witnessing is the decriminalisation of rape. In doing so, we are failing to give justice to thousands of complainants.’ Thousands.
‘In some cases, we are enabling persistent predatory sex offenders to go on to reoffend in the knowledge that they are highly unlikely to be held to account. This is likely to mean we are creating more victims as a result of our failure to act.’
Not only are rape victims getting no ‘justice’ (in court), but more people are becoming rape victims unnecessarily because of those failings. There are people walking around, knowing that they can get away with raping. In the UK. In 2020.
Dame Baird is part of a review set up by the government to find out why there has been such a huge fall in prosecutions. She says the fall appears to coincide with a series of visits, as reported in The Guardian, where Crown Prosecution Services figures suggested not pursuing ‘weak’ cases, so the conviction rate would look stronger. The CPS have denied a change in policy. But Baird says they’ve not explained why, between March 2017 and March 2019, the number of cases they prosecuted, dropped by 52 per cent.
In its circular ending and wanderings into the darkest corners of Arabella’s mind... Coel reminded us that we were foolish to expect a neat ending.
And this is only a conversation about rape cases being brought to court, not to mention the rate of those found guilty. Or the years it might take for something to get to trial. Or the way in which defence lawyers have been allowed to interrogate victims.
In 2019, only 3% of rape complaints resulted in a charge. And it's now been revealed that in 2019-20, 1,439 suspects in cases where a rape had been alleged were convicted of rape or another crime - that's half the number three years ago.
So, why should I May Destroy You have ended in Arabella ‘catching’ her rapist and him being dragged away, as he was in one ‘imagining’? The drama has been praised, rightly, for its incredible depiction of sexual assault - why would it find some kind of narrative closure in the courts that 97% of people are denied? OR, I should say, 97% of people who REPORT their rapes are denied. As we saw with Kwame, not everyone who is sexually assaulted even gets that far.
And I’m not saying that jailing a rapist is a magic ‘closure pill’ – many women have articulated their experiences and how it isn’t. But it is the least someone who is raped can expect. That the criminal justice system can attempt to bring the person who has raped them, to justice. And, as Dame Baird expresses, it’s not just about 'closure' or 'justice' for rape victims – it’s about all our safety. Many rapists are serial rapists, and only escalate in their violence.
Coel, though has also proved herself nuanced in her consideration of the police. In an interview with The Guardian, she said of the officer in the scene where Kwame attempts to report his assault, ‘We should always remember that he’s trying to do his best. And then we should decide as an audience: is it really enough?’
For many reasons officers and prosecutors could better describe, it’s hard (in some cases) to find the perpetrators of rape. Especially if they’ve slipped through the net before. There might be no DNA to match, as with Arabella's case (even though in her ‘imaginings’ it's suggested he's a serial offender). Arabella goes to the same bar every weekend for almost a year to try and retrace her memories. Does she, after that effort, manage to recover them at all?
And so, there was one more clever ticking off from Coel to those looking for black and white. Previous to the final episode, internet speculation had built that Arabella's housemate Ben, was her rapist. But that’s not the ‘gotcha surprise’ that Coel had been building to at all. Ben was lonely. With that heartbreaking gut punch, Coel seemed to be laughing at us saying, ‘You really think it can be that easy?’
In a Vulture profile, Michaela Coel signalled another of the ‘imaginings’, where Arabella beats David and hides him under her bed – a literal monster there. She talks about reading a Margaret Atwood story, Stone Mattress, about a sexual assault victim meeting her attacker, which does end in murder. It was recommended to her on a retreat she’d gone on to try and end the series. ‘I’m kind of trying not to do that,’ she said at the time.
Instead, she says, after a terrible thunderstorm, she thought about how ‘she was trying to come back after almost losing herself’ and wanting to give both Arabella, and herself solace. In one iteration, she tries to find 'solace' in consensual sex, and even overpowering him sexually. She ‘tries out’ if saying, ‘Go’ works too. The monster under the bed walks away with other David. But is that any more realistic or helpful than the other 'endings'?
‘What does closure look like?’ she says in the interview. ‘It’s not that it ends. For me, I look at the last four years and I feel this overwhelming sense of euphoria and pain.’
In another interview, Coel said she wrote more than 200 drafts of the series. The post-it-noting and triple imagining we watched was letting the viewer off ‘lightly’ compared to what she worked through to complete the drafts in the years that followed her assault and trauma.
Instead, in its circular ending and wanderings into the darkest corners of Arabella’s mind, Coel gave us a tiny glimpse (35minutes, not four years) of the things that might have run through her mind. And in doing so, she reminded us that we were foolish to expect a neat ending. It showed us how little, even as we nodded our hands and Tweeted ‘clap hands’ emojis, we really understood about what is happening to people who are sexually assaulted - and the loops they’re left to play on when denied even the start of closure by our failing justice system.
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