HBO’s “Mare of Easttown” and Netflix’s “The Queen’s Gambit” may be the frontrunners for Best Limited Series but attention must be paid to HBO’s brilliantly and timely “I May Destroy You.” A BAFTA, Film Independent Spirit Award, Gotham and Peabody Award-winner, ‘’I May Destroy You” is nominated for eight Emmys including three for multi-hyphenate Michaela Cole (acting, writing and directing).
Just as the #MeToo movement has brought sexual assault into the forefront of our consciousness, “I May Destroy You” is a fearless dive into the aftermath of rape. The series follows Arabella, a young British writer, who instead of finishing her novel, goes out on London town with friends. She wakes up in the morning with a bloody gash on her head and a busted iPhone with flashes of memories of the night before. She soon realizes that her drink had been spiked and she was sexually assaulted. We follow and feel all of Arabella’s emotions over the 12-episode series, especially her anger, as she comes to terms with her assault.
Though the show is not entirely autobiographical, Coel admitted in a 2018 speech at an Edinburgh television festival that she met a friend for a drink one night and “I had a flashback. It turned out I’d been sexually assaulted by strangers. The first people I called after the police, before my own family, were the producers.” Coel examines both women and men’s experiences of being sexually assault. She told the Radio Times that “I realized that basically I was definitely not alone in wondering why these lines of consent were always blurred, and there were so many different experiences. So, I tried to take on the challenge of creating a show where I explore the different forms of where sexual consent can be stolen.”
Sexual assault has been explored on the small screen for nearly five decades. Let’s take a closer look at several of these and their place in Emmy history.
The first major TV films to explore assault was 1974’s “A Case of Rape.” Not only did it receive strong reviews, but it was NBC’s highest rated TV movie at the time. Elizabeth Montgomery, who had starred from 1964-72 as the charming witch Samantha on ABC’s beloved sitcom “Bewitched,” showed she had strong dramatic chops in this harrowing drama about Ellen, a married woman and mother, who is raped twice by the same man (Cliff Potts). Montgomery, director Boris Sagal (Katey’s father) and the editors all earned Emmy nominations.
After the first assault, Ellen tries to ignore what happened to her. And she can’t get the attention of her husband (Ronny Cox) who had been out of town when she was raped. Just four days, later the same man is waiting in her car in a parking garage and rapes her again. This time, Montgomery’s Ellen can’t wash the attack away in the shower. Though she goes to the cops, she doesn’t get a sympathetic ear from the police, detectives and even doctors. The trail is a complete sham with the rapist’s female attorney (Rosemary Murphy) viciously attack Ellen on the stand. The rapist gets off. Ellen’s attorney (William Daniels) tells her: “Never try a rape case unless your victim is a 90-year-old nun with at least four stab wounds.”
There are only clips of the film available on YouTube, but one short clip is extremely powerful with the camera set in her daughter’s bedroom. And as the young girl is sleeping you hear Ellen trying to fight off the rapist until there is just silence. The L.A. Times’ TV critic Howard Rosenberg considered it one of the best TV movies of the ‘70s and a “groundbreaking story that, although dramatically flawed, was far and away TV’s most sensitive and honest portrayal of rape and its impact to date.”
NBC initially didn’t want to show the second rape, but Montgomery put her foot down saying she would leave the production if it was cut. The actress won the argument. But the network did put a warning on the film: “A Case of Rape” treats a sensitive subject in a mature and forthright manner…that subject is one of growing public concern and importance.”
PREDICT the Emmy winners until September 19.
Seven years after “A Case of Rape,” some 30 million people turned into ABC’s long-running daytime drama “General Hospital” to see the wedding between the supercouple lovebirds Luke (Anthony Geary) and Laura (Genie Francis). But just two years before, 17-year-old Laura, who was then married to Scotty Baldwin (Kin Shriner), was raped by Luke on the floor of the Campus Disco to the pulsating strains of Herb Alpert’s “Rise.” Though their relationship turned into a story of love, forgiveness, and redemption, it’s doubtful the rape/marriage storyline would happen today. Critics back in the day complained the rape was a “forced seduction.”
The rape scene is powerful. Bad boy Luke, the brother of Bobbie Spenser, found work at the Campus Disco in Port Charles. Laura also worked at the disco to make money for her husband. The night of the rape, Luke is drunk and knows that the mobsters in town were going to kill him. Laura keeps telling him that she and Scotty wants to help him. Luke tells Laura he loves her and wants to hold her before he dies. He grabs her and begins to dance. Laura becomes frightened and wants to leave. They end up on the floor as Laura cries out “No.” When Scotty calls asking about Laura’s whereabout, the crying Laura escapes. Lying to Scotty, he walks over and see’s Laura’s sweater on the floor. He grabs it and calls out “What have I done.”
Some 20 years later, “GH” re-examined the rape when Luke and Laura’s son Lucky (Jonathan Jackson) helps Elizabeth Webber (Rebecca Herbst) dea with the trauma of sexual assault. In a startling nine-minute monologue, Luke recalls the evening her raped Laura. And then Luke and Laura have an emotional talk as Luke confesses the guilt he has felt over the years.
Arabella isn’t the only character in “I May Destroy You” who is sexually assaulted, so is her gay best friend Kwame (Emmy nominee Paapa Essiedu). He is date raped but when he goes to the police to report the incident, he is treated poorly by the police.
The same thing happens to Richard Beck (Richard Crenna) in the 1986 ABC movie, “The Rape of Richard Beck.” Ironically, Beck is a police detective. Crenna won the Emmy for his powerhouse of a performance as divorced Seattle detective. A swaggering macho veteran cop, he enjoys driving around the streets after hours with his partner to try to nab the bad guys. Beck is a chip off the old block; his retired policeman father (Pat Hingle) is equally aggressive. Little wonder, Beck believes that rape victims are “asking for it.”
One night after an angry confrontation with his wife and new boyfriend, he drive the mean streets of downtown Seattle. After seeing two thugs drug dealing, he follows them into a tunnel under the city where the criminals overpower him. One holds him down as the other rapes him. Even 35 years later, the aftermath of the rape depicted in the film directed by Karen Arthur is harrowing. Beck goes through the same emotions as Arabella. And the cops aren’t sympathetic: they have doubts about why he went alone in the tunnel. Perhaps he was dealing drugs too? His father disowns him because he gave up his gun.
Ultimately, Beck comes to terms with what happened. He identifies and puts one of the thugs who attacked him in jail. He saves a potential rape victim. And his relationship with his ex becomes more civilized and his relationship with his children becomes stronger. Perhaps one of the reasons, Crenna is so good in the film is because the story hit home for the actor: his eldest daughter had been attacked several years before.
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