Sitcoms in the 1980s frequently had “very special episodes” about sexual violence in which central characters escape assault. All in The Family’s “Edith’s Fiftieth Birthday” in 1977 was a groundbreaking episode in which Edith fights off an attacker. While it’s common enough for main female characters in TV dramas to experience rape that the trope has come under criticism as a lazy form of character development, rape in sitcoms is traditionally thwarted. Marital rape has also been treated humorous: it is jarring to look at the horrific 1978 Barney Miller episode “Rape,” in which the running gag is that a woman comes in to file charges against her husband for rape and is met with ridicule. There’s a long history of making attempted date rape a joke. If you think on it, you can probably recall a few scenes like the one in the 1959 film Pillow Talk, in which Doris Day fighting off a man in the car (“I’ve never seen a boy with so many arms before”) is crafted for laughs. Rape has often played a role in misogynist comedy routines, and there are many examples of sexual violence in film and television that have not aged well. That so many critics label it simply as a drama is illustrative of how situating the comedic in proximity to rape - and vice versa - has been seen as an ethical, representational failure. All of these shows often blend realism with quotidian absurdity, but, despite I May Destroy You’s stylistic similarity to the other series in that genre, its focus on sexual violence leads to its default categorization as a drama. The generic hybridity of these series contributes to the emotional ambivalence with which we’re meant to evaluate people and episodes in their lives, episodes shaped by their blended economic and emotional precarity. Julia Havas and Maria Sulimma would likely describe I May Destroy You as an example of recent women-led dramedies that blend cringe comedy and prestige drama - shows such as Girls, Insecure, and Fleabag. Arabella is a brilliant and charismatic figure intent on making sense of what happens to her, and in the end, processing the experience through her art. Arabella’s vacant stare in I May Destroy You is about her knowing too much. Tracey’s vacant stare in Chewing Gum was indicative of her sexual naiveté and frequent lack of comprehension. In I May Destroy You, close-ups of Coel’s face are essential both for humor and for communicating the devastating effects of rape trauma syndrome. At the center of the zany excesses of Chewing Gum was Coel’s exquisitely expressive face and embrace of cringe comedy as she told the story of a twenty-four-year-old woman, Tracey, seeking to lose her virginity in a diverse council estate community. But Coel is defiant in her refusal to let I May Destroy You be entirely about despair.Ĭoel’s comic sensibility - which many of us were introduced to in Chewing Gum (2015–2017) - remains present in her sophomore effort. Sexual violence is both commonplace and disruptive of the everyday. While much of I May Destroy You is emotionally shattering, one of the staggering accomplishments of Michaela Coel’s second television creation is that it manages to provoke real laughter, even as it focuses on various kinds of sexual assault. Such foreclosure has been most prominently displayed with the claim that “there is no such thing as a rape joke,” which has been used to combat the misogynistic routines of Daniel Tosh and other comedians. One way, or mode, that many people have understood as wrong, is the comedic. In navigating this spectrum of representation, many people work to find the “right” way to represent sexual violence onscreen. But I cannot imagine a circumstance in which I would feel compelled to watch something like Gasper Noé’s Irreversible (2002), for instance, a film that notoriously features an extended violent rape scene that has been described as gratuitous. More often than not I watch something about rape out of professional obligation - that was the case with both the controversial first season of 13 Reasons Why (2017) and Unbelievable (2019), the latter of which is a thoughtful challenge to rape scripts. Many of us choose to forego media that represents sexual violence. I SUSPECT THAT SOME PEOPLE decided to delay watching Michaela Coel’s HBO/BBC One series I May Destroy You for fear that it would, well, destroy them.
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