There are TV series that run very agile, entertaining and for a few days are on everyone's lips and in the eyes of those who watched them, or rather swallowed, consumed.
And then there are other titles that take time to be metabolized.
Usually, if the fabric is that of a quality sartorial dress, the seconds are those destined to stay, not to last the space of a morning, or more than a week.
The paper houses of this world and the umbrella academies belong, with all the dignity and authority that distinguishes them, to the first case.
I May Destroy you, definitely to the second category.
I have written, and deleted, the title of this post at least 10 times, and I must admit I am not yet completely convinced.
Such is the complexity of the TV series written, directed and interpreted by Michaela Coel, that even the decision of the title of a banal, and forgettable, post on a blog like mine, ends up being difficult.
In 2018, the author revealed to the world that she had been abused on the set of her previous show.
Michaela Coel must have started from that specific and very personal trauma when she started working on the script for I May Destroy You.
Aired on HBO and BBC one, the TV series tells the story of the violence suffered by Arabella, a young author of a generation best seller, in contemporary London.
Unlike the classic, and now stereotyped, television and film products on the theme of sexual violence suffered by women, especially after the #metoo wave, I May Destroy You offers us a very varied and much broader perspective, both on the genesis of violence, both how it struggles to emerge in the subconscious and in the life of the protagonist, both on the general impacts that violence will produce in the psyche and in the life of Arabella.
But the touch of class, what makes I May Destroy You different, necessary, essential, is the breadth of her story, which does not stop at the main storyline but articulates, indeed branches out, in many other directions.
The violence suffered by Arabella seems almost to be a pretext to be able to tell something else, to be heard.
Coel's approach is a very "meta" one.
Her Arabella manages to get a lot of visibility when, in the series, she confesses, reveals, admits, shares the brutal aggression she suffered.
In the same way, Coel (interpreter of Arabella and author of the series, as already mentioned) "takes advantage" of her state of victimhood and of the attention that the public, now on her side and empathically close to Arabella/Coel, is giving her.
It is as if the author/protagonist felt the double weight, derived from the trauma itself and the responsibility that the revelation of the trauma inevitably brings with it.
I May Destroy You goes straight to the stomach and then takes the viewer's heart, brain and soul.
There are few TV series capable of doing this, and they usually take years.Michaela Coel takes a few episodes and in just 13 episodes she gives the impression of not wanting to, of not having the need to continue.
In about 7 hours of shooting (short episodes of about 30 minutes each) she said it all, she managed to condense many things, often rarefied, often indistinguishable, yet fundamental.
Think of Arabella's relationship with social networks.
Rarely have we experienced discomfort in witnessing, through the filter of the screen, the "disease" of the new millennium, a disease marked by a pathological compulsion to feel connected to the world through a smartphone, and because of this, and paradoxically, to end up moving away from planet earth, to isolate themselves from human relationships.
Arabella's trauma leads her, as mentioned above, to take on not only her personal drama, but also the Dramas of the world. This pushes her to share everything, aware of the media power that the revelation of the violence she has suffered has given her. Far from wanting to be an instrument in the hands of social networks themselves (something that will inevitably happen and will happen to anyone who manages to "break through" into and thanks to the world of social networks), Arabella obsessively shares her every moment, cloaking it in increasingly paranoid and detached meanings. In doing so, however, she opens her eyes to us, on the other side of the screen. She shows us, she tells us, the hypocrisy of information, the violence of war, the damnation of us powerless and apathetic toy soldiers of faceless corporations and multinationals, the promiscuity of increasingly impersonal relationships, the emptiness that surrounds our existences, just as we try to live and write them in our own way.
And it is that "our way", that "his way", that "his own way" that Arabella / Coel seeks, sometimes even unconsciously but always, inexorably.
A violent, traumatic path, full of obstacles inside and outside herself, that will bring her, must bring her to affirm herself.
And it will not matter the quantity of the things she succeeds in telling but the quality.
It is a very universal discourse, and yet it starts from an experience that more personal and intimate one could not imagine.
A man violates your body. You don't remember. Memories surface. Trauma emerges. Your life changes. Your faith in mankind collapses. Your landmarks are questioned. Society first absolves and pampers you, then harms and abandons you.
It is the crumbling of all certainty that allows the author to make the story as universal and detached as possible, but still densely personal.
There is also, and unexpectedly, a lot of Italy in this TV series, which confirms the growing trend for serial locations in our country.
In particular, at least 2 episodes, are entirely shot in Ostia, where Arabella goes to look for some serenity, before her aggression, and where she returns to confront and embrace Biagio, a boy from Ostia with whom Arabella lives a turbulent relationship but very close to being a real love bond.
This is not a secondary storyline or one of little impact.
On the contrary, it is an excellent moment to deepen the personality of Arabella, an eccentric, noisy, party girl but also, as often happens, fragile and insecure.
If Biagio plays a not secondary role for the development of the character and life of the protagonist, the characters linked to her 2 friends and roommates, historians: Kwame and Terry, are completely secondary.
The first, in addition to having a strong bond with the protagonist, is in itself a boy struggling with a very complex moment. It's in the phase in which his sexuality is indefinite and finally, before coming out first to himself, he decides to explore it in order to define it completely. It's a not irrelevant storyline and, like the rest of the series, far from the feeling of "already seen".
Terry is, instead, Arabella's eternal and ever-present friend. From parties to disappointments, from madness to depressive moments, she is the arm and shoulder that Arabella uses to pull herself up and regain control. There wouldn't be such a complete path for Arabella without Terry, a girl who represents an essential figure for the growth of the protagonist.
2020 is giving us a lot of products that are slowly permeating the public's fibres, from Devs to Tales from the loop, passing through High Fidelity and Normal People, products that are not very bombastic and slow carburation but that are paying very high dividends.
I May Destroy You is at the top of this ranking (by the way, find out its position here), offering a heterogeneous and original point of view to one of the most discussed themes since Harvey Weinstein was unmasked over 2 years ago.