Brooke Obie Reviews ‘I May Destroy You’ for Esquire Magazine
Every Man Should Be Watching I May Destroy You
The groundbreaking HBO series is an excellent tool to help men understand what constitutes rape and the culture that perpetuates it.
Content warning: discussion of rape and sexual assault.
In the new HBO series, I May Destroy You, creator, writer, co-director, and star Michaela Coel illuminates a terrifying truth: rape is a common occurrence. Coel plays Arabella, a young writer in London who goes out to a bar with friends, then is drugged and raped by strangers. Arabella’s story is a fictionalized account of Coel’s own harrowing survivor story.
While the series shows explicit examples of rape, the power of the show is in Coel’s expert dissection of the more insidious areas of rape, the people who rape, and the long-term effects of rape on survivors.