*Spoilers for Normal People and I May Destroy You (up until episode 5) ahead
It is absolutely true to say that I May Destroy You is a ‘consent drama’, as it has been described in its promotional material and in the press. It is a 12-part series that has a disturbing sexual assault at its centre. It also seeks to interrogate other sexual encounters that Arabella (played by the show’s creator Michaela Coel) and her friends Terry (Weruche Opia) and Kwame (Paapa Essiedu) have, examining each one from various angles to determine whether they were consensual or not. Sometimes those encounters involve serious sexual assault and criminal duplicity and sometimes they are troubling but not illegal. So it is, yes, a ‘consent drama’ – but it’s weirder and funnier and more sophisticated and more tender than that term implies. It is harrowing but it is also hilarious.
Coel has brought the zaniness, the heart and the humour of her earlier hit Chewing Gum and applied that to often deeply disturbing subject matter. The result is a piece of TV that feels idiosyncratic and real. We are used to seeing assault on screen that is distastefully salacious (The Fall, for example, or any of the many shows that depict beautiful naked dead women). And we are used to discussions about consent that are sombre and didactic. But with I May Destroy You, Coel – who wrote the show after she was sexually assaulted – is offering up something new, something that allows us all to pick apart our sexual past, just as the characters are doing.
Everyone I know who is watching the show is sorting through their own memories. They are revisiting situations that were straightforwardly wrong, feeling understood and somehow protected by the generous, careful writing of Coel. And they are revisiting situations that are more confusing, looking at their own apparent complicity, or looking at times when their consent was more subtly undermined, when they were lied to or cheated on.
I May Destroy You isn’t the only BBC drama of 2020 to examine consent and how it’s given. Normal People, the record-breakingly popular adaptation of Sally Rooney’s novel, also explored the topic. Normal People had good-looking leads, lovely clothes, Italian backdrops and discussions of class, but most of all, it had sex. Good, passionate sex that actually looked like good, passionate sex. And before Connell and Marianne got down to it, they talked about it – haltingly and inarticulately and realistically. As they lay in Connell’s single bed, about to have sex with each other for the first time, Connell asked Marianne if this was her first-ever time.
‘Yeah. Is that OK?’ she says.
He answers: ‘Oh yeah, it’s fine, it’s just if you want to stop or anything, obviously stop.’
‘I doubt I’ll want that,’ she says.
‘I know but if it hurts, we can stop, it won’t be awkward, just say,’ he says.
Seeking and granting consent isn’t always straightforward, however. Asking is only the first step in establishing consent. Years later, when Marianne asks Connell to hit her, he says he doesn’t want to. Marianne sees that as a rejection, as confirmation that she is somehow defective, and she feels humiliated. She is devastated and neither of them is capable of having the discussion they need to.
Back on I May Destroy You, consent is undermined when it transpires that it was based on a lie. Terry seems to enthusiastically consent to a threesome – but when she finds out that the two men involved are actually not strangers, as they appeared to be, but friends, she feels differently. Can you ever give consent if you are also being lied to, the show wonders.
And just like in real life, onscreen characters can realise that something that seemed consensual wasn’t, many weeks or months or years afterwards. Arabella only fully realises that Zain removing his condom without telling her is abusive after she hears a podcast about the subject. She only realises it’s rape after she asks the ‘rapebusters’ at the police station about it. Discussing that episode with friends the other day, one said she hadn’t realised that the practice, often called ‘stealthing’, was a crime until she saw it on I May Destroy You.
As well as educating people, Katie Russell, national spokesperson forRape Crisis England & Wales, confirms that these kinds of stories can offer comfort, too. ‘Handled well, portrayals of sexual violence on TV can help to dispel damaging victim-blaming myths and ultimately help those who’ve been subjected to these crimes feel less alone,’ she tells me.
I hope the TV industry keeps making shows about consent, shows that are as vital, smart and considered as I May Destroy You and Normal People. They help us to keep talking, keep asking, keep learning, keep healing. They could even help to bring rapists to account.