How I May Destroy You Reinvents Rape Television

Bibliographic Data

ID21320734
AuthorsCaetlin Benson-Allott (0009-0008-2486-1469, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume74
Issue2
Pages100-105
Publication date2020-12-08
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueFilm Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0015-1386 • E-ISSN: 1533-8630
PublisherUniversity of California Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1525/fq.2020.74.2.100
OpenAlexW3110962877
LanguageEN
Citations received9

British and American television shows frequently deploy rape and sexual assault to juice up characters’ backstories or titillate viewers, but they rarely focus on how one assault impacts multiple people’s lives or how intersectional oppression further traumatizes assault survivors. FQ columnist Caetlin Benson-Allott suggests that this may change in the wake of Michaela Coel’s incendiary series I May Destroy You (BBC One and HBO, 2020), which has answered a need for more artistically ambitious television about black life and for feminist-of-color critiques of rape culture on television. Hailing the series for its formal innovations as well as its generic and political interventions, Benson-Allott argues that I May Destroy You elevates its genre, and television more broadly, by contesting their prior shortcomings

Art · Media studies · Oppression · Poison control · Political science · Politics · Reality television · Reality tv · Sexual assault · Sociology · Suicide prevention · Television series · Gender Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Law · Media Studies and Communication · Media, Gender, and Advertising

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