Ep. 08 | I May Destroy You : Consent is Key

When you grow up, your parents, your school and society are teaching you a lot of different things. But for the sake of social etiquette, fear, or discomfort, some very important subjects have been overlooked. One of them being sexual consent…

Transcript

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Hi everyone. My name is Anna, and this is the miniseries road X. Hello? Hello. Hello. My beautiful people. Welcome to the miniseries road X. I hope that you had a good week. And once again, I hope that you are drinking a lot of water and minding your business. The miniseries road, X is your show where we talk about miniseries and only miniseries because ain't nobody got time for eight seasons. I'm working, you are working. Everybody got stuff to do. And on this episode, we are gonna be talking about, I may destroy you. So I really need to start this episode saying that it is a very heavy subject. I want slash need to put a trigger warning right here. And then, because we are going to talk about difficult stuff for some people that include sexual assault and rape culture. So anybody that doesn't feel like hearing me talking about those kind of stuff, I suggest you stop this episode and you listen to another one. There's a few pick one. They're all good as I am recording this. I still don't know how I'm gonna talk about it. I dunno how quote unquote graphic I'm gonna be, or if I'm gonna sugar, sugar coat it. I, I dunno, I haven't figured it out yet. So bear with me and let's talk about it once again. Trigger warning, sexual assault, rape culture. Don't listen. If you don't feel like it, I may show you is a British drama television series created written and co-directed and executive produced by Mike Kayla Cole for BBC one and HBO. The series premiered on seven, June, 2020 on HBO and 8th of June, 2020 on BBC one, according to meta critic, I made this radio was the most critically acclaimed television program of 2020. It was described by the New York times as the perfect show for an anxious world. Very much so. Well, it's weird because I remember what was that? June, 2020 was middle of the pandemic. It was very, very difficult for a lot of people. I was going through some stuff like everybody else. And I remember back in the day, I was like, I am not gonna watch that show right now because I don't feel like I can handle it. Not because I thought it was gonna trigger some trauma for me. It's just that I wanted to, I didn't want to watch a heavy show. I didn't want to watch something that serious. I needed to watch family guy and future drama, but not something that talks about those kind of stuff. So I didn't, and I watched it very, almost a year later. So yeah. Perfect show for an anxious world. I was just too anxious to watch that it won the Baptist for best mini series, best director drama, best writer, best actress to it, won everything. Okay. Well, not everything. I'm gonna go back to that. In second, the series received nine nomination at the 73rd primetime Emmy awards, including outstanding limited or anthology series. It won two awards, including outstanding writing for Cole. And it got no nomination for golden Globes, which is beyond me and beyond everybody literally. Okay. I don't wanna be too mean, but the fact that Emine in Paris was nominated for best comedy and best actress for Lil Collins. I think at the golden Globes, but nothing for the most critically acclaimed show of the year speaks volumes while we all know all those show, the, the Oscars, the, the Emmy, the golden Globes, the Grammys, whatever, all out of those shows, they are highly political. So it's not necessarily about talent, but it's about like everything. It's about money and politics. It's, it's just the same everywhere in it. But I feel like<laugh>, it's kind of like, if you wanna make a lie, you need to make a lie. That kind of sounds like the truth, you know, to just not nominate, I may destroy you is so blatant in terms of we are not here for talent. It's crazy. And I say that because you know what not to be mean once again, but if I may destroy, you was not nominated, but Emily and Paris wasn't as well, I would be like, Hmm, okay. They missed the ball. They dropped the ball on that one. But to nominate Emine Paris, best comedy, best actress. This is crazy. I'm sorry. I haven't seen the show. I haven't seen the show because I'm gonna be super annoying here, but because I'm French and I saw clips of the show and I'm like, yeah, that woman lives in Paris and never takes the Metro. Yeah. Okay. But every note that the only reason that show was nominated for golden globe and the Emmys as well is because it was made by Dar star. That is, was the creator of sex in the city. So once again, it's just politics. When you see that Lil Collins was not nominated for outstanding lead actress in the comedy, it doesn't make sense because when you have a drama, you can have a drama show that is nominated for best drama, because the plot is amazing. The writing is outstanding, but it doesn't work like that for a comedy. A comedy is solely based on its lead. The lead has to be funny. The lead has to be great. You cannot like if the lead is not that great. How was your show funny then? Who made that show? Funny? It doesn't make any sense. Anyway, that was my rent. And yeah. So no hate to little Collins. I'm sure she's nice. She did nothing to me, but that show is not it. And I haven't watched it back to, I made a show. So back to AMA destroyer. So AME destroyer was written, created, directed, and executive produced by Mikela Cole. Myla Cole is if you don't know, she is nothing less than a genius. A writing genius comedy wise, she is unmatched. She had a show on one of the BBC, a show that's called Trium. It is. So when I watched that show for the first time, I was like, this is genius. The level of creativity that she put in that show was just outstanding. She won everything that year as well. She is. She's just amazing. If you haven't seen Trium, you might have seen her in the USS catalyst, the black mirror episode, she is the only black character of that episode. Well, there's the guy and then there's her. So I'm sure you saw her face. She also has another limited series called black earth rising that I started watching and stopped for some reason, but I think I'm gonna give it a go again because it's won a limited series. And two, the topic of the show will be very interesting to talk about. I am definitely gonna do an episode about that later in the future. So in the show, she stars as Arabella, a young writer in the public eye who seeks to rebuild her life after being raped. Arabella is the kind of the archetype of the disturbed artist writer. Like you can tell she's going through something, but you don't really know what it is. So you just know that she's trying to figure out herself. She got viral on Twitter. She got offer for a book. The show starts with her trying to write that book. And what happened is that one night out, because it's Friday and it's London, we are going out, she gets raped at the beginning. She doesn't really think that because she has blackout. She doesn't remember the night before. She just feels weird. And she knows that something happened, but she can't really put her finger on it. And I think that she actually can, is just that she doesn't want to, but then she realizes that's what happened. So she goes on this whole journey to try to figure out what happened to her basically. So she has her best friend. She has her roommates. She has just a bunch of friends. So like I said, this show is about sexual assault and rape culture. And I think that what she did with this show, because of course, there' some shows that dealt with those kind of subject already. But what she did with this show that to me, was never done is that she talked about it and she tried as much as she could to show the complexity. If I can say that of rape culture. So in the show, she just highlights all those little subjects slash examples of she managed to speak about so many issues with all the complexity, without being of being cringy or preachy. She just highlighted different situation and also from different angles. And that's what was so smart about it. To example, that was like, it was very big in the show, but what happens when you are having intercourse with someone and that person decides to remove the condom, what do you do with that? Or there's another situation where there's another person that lied about being abused. What we would like to do in this world is trying to believe all the victims, but in that case, it was not true. She tried as much as she could to put all those different situation and show how much more complex than what we knew, because let's be honest until 10 years ago, mental health was not as big as it is today. And I say 10 years, I'm being very, very nice here. It is the same as consent. It was not a word that was so used as it is today. Not even five years ago, maybe. Okay. Maybe five years ago, but definitely not 10 years ago, consent was not so much talked about. She basically showed how little education we have and we get concerning those issues about consent about basically about consent, because that's the limit, right? The problem is, is always consent. You can do whatever you wanna do with a person that like, there are people, there are people that's out there. So like some people like to be, to be whipped. Some people like to be tied up and that's not sexual assault. It is sexual assault when consent is not there. And because we didn't get that education growing up, even being a grown up because sexist taboo, we don't talk to sex about their, their peers. So you are forced to look for the information yourself. If you feel like looking for the information yourself throughout the years, we accepted so many stuff that are unacceptable, just because we didn't know what was acceptable. There's this great, great scene where she talks about how the men that assaulted that woman just tiptoed on the line. And that's very true because people who unfortunately don't care about consent. They always tiptoe on that line. You know, it's always the, yeah, but she came in my room and she got naked. So it means that she was okay for it. But then she said, no tiptoeing on the line is saying that she came in my room and got naked. The rules are very well. The, the rules used to be very blurry. I don't think they are that blurry anymore, except for people who wish for them to still stay blurry, but the damage and the trauma is here. And I think I'm not gonna say it's worse, but I think it's even a special kind in the gay community. For example, I'm gonna tell a story about something that happened to me a few years ago. Now, maybe six years ago, I was at this party in France. It's called, I'm not gonna name it. It's a very, very big gay Parisian party. I was just with a friend. He went to the toilet. So I was waiting for him outside. We were all drunk as drunk at some point, there's this guy that just comes up to me and starts saying, oh, you cute and whatever. And I was like, oh yeah. I was like, I don't even, I think it was cute actually, but I was just not in that mood. And then he pushed me to the wall. It was not very violent. He just pushed me to the wall. I was like, oh, okay. And I kid you not in maybe a second. His hands were in my underwear. And he was touching me that happened in like, like that. So I removed his hands and I was like, what are you doing? Because like, I didn't, I didn't agree to that. Like, what's going on? And I don't know what he said. And then he left. And the thing is that after that I was annoyed. I was annoyed, but that's it. I was not shocked. I was not, I was just annoyed after that. When I thought about it, imagine a woman going to a club and a man does that to her. He will be in serious, serious trouble. That woman could go to the police and well could go to the police and, and what we know how hard the police works. I'm just saying that a lot of people will be outrage about the situation. But I don't think that me saying that as a gay man saying that I went to a gay club and some men touch me. I don't think a lot of people will take that seriously. And there's actually that situation in the show because she also put sexual assault from a perspective. What I thought was great and nobody cares. Nobody cares. So yeah, but the way she managed to just highlight all those situations. So, and it was so smoothly. So without never it feel like it's virtual signaling or like it's just too much, that's too much going on is just genius. The other thing that she managed to do is that she did what art is supposed to do. She just put a mirror back at the viewer and said, how do you participate in all that? Watching the show? I'm sure you'll be like, did I do that? Or did I act as a friend? When somebody told me something, did I believe her or him? Did I enable someone to do something that, that person was not supposed to do? All those question? You will just start asking yourself. Because once again, we didn't know. We didn't know what the rules were, especially, especially women. So we let so many things happen to us that are not okay. And there's also a high probability that we let something happen to other people around us. That's not cute. That is not cute at all. And like I say, education is key. Unfortunately in this society, we are born and we have a bunch of people telling us stuff. And unfortunately they are us the wrong stuff. So we just go through life with all this knowledge, quote, unquote knowledge. And I think that we need to unlearn everything so we can learn the real information that will be useful to be better human beings, I guess. And also what I really like about her is that she, she put those stories, but without being preachy, even if you're gonna ask yourself those question, uh it's you don't feel like it's done in the way of, are you guilty? Did you do that? It's more of, Hmm. Did you do that? Because if you did, it is not nice. So maybe think about it. Okay. I think it's done in a good, with good. I think it's done with good intentions because she understand that we all make mistakes. That's just human. So she doesn't guilt trip. You there's the perfect example of that in the last episode. That is absolutely. When I saw that scene, I was, I was not about to cry because I don't cry, but I was, so my heart was racing because I was like, because in that moment you're like, yeah. Okay. I, eh, and you can help yourself to think that, because I also believe that in life, people who do bad things are not necessarily just bad people or evil people. Like some good people do bad things. I know I did some bad things, but I'm still a good person. Okay. But people always do stuff. Even bad. People always do stuff for a reason. Now. It doesn't mean it's a good excuse. It just means it's a reason. It's just the why it doesn't mean it's okay. It just means that this is why it happened. And she managed to show that and to actually have some kind of empathy for this person that did that horrible thing. And you know what that is, that is being a genius. So is, so I encourage you to watch a show because it's also funny. It's not just deep and like sad and traumatizing. It's like, it's actually funny. It's my killer cold. So it's gonna be funny, but yeah, you should definitely watch it because it's really, really the perfect example of a good show and what a good choice is supposed to, to do to you the way it moves you and the way it makes you think real hard. That's everything. Everything I love about a show. Anyway, that is my 2 cents. On the matter, like I said before, Google is free. Have a little look on consent and just educate yourself because that's the only way we're gonna survive in this planet without being depressed all the time. I hope you have a great day evening, whatever time it is in your universe right now. And I will talk to you next week. Wow.