On September 13th, Netflix premiered their newest drama miniseries: Unbelievable. The real drama lies in the fact that this series is based on a true story, the one of a series of rapes that occurred in Washington and Colorado, between 2008 and 2011. The case was initially revealed to the public in early 2009, in a ProPublica and The Marshall Project article (“An unbelievable story of rape”).
The miniseries is faithful to the real unfolding of events, and meticulously retraces the criminal investigation, and particularly Marie’s story.
Marie is eighteen years old, and she was raped. The viewer knows she was raped, and so does she, so she went to the police to file a complaint. Besides having to deal with the pain, the feeling of shame, the suffering and the trauma, Marie will also have to deal with the police’s suspicion and pressure, and two detectives that don’t believe her. Before you tell yourself that it can’t get worse, it does: the police’s disbelief in her story will be fuelled by Marie’s own family and loved ones, the people who should have been there to support her.
Unbelievable does what we, alone, are often incapable of doing: it puts us in the victim’s shoes; it transforms the pain and the memory of the rape into a tireless, ubiquitous presence, without ever glazing over nor sugar-coating the weariness and difficulties of the legal procedure.
We watch as Marie remembers the attack, as the police asks her to describe it, as the detective demands that she goes through the story again and again: one, two, three times, “and now put it down in writing”… as the nurse asks her to do the same thing when she is being examined at the hospital. We watch and witness the indifference with which the nurse mechanically recites the instructions she will have to follow, the same indifference with which she adds “If you experience any suicidal thoughts, there’s a number on there, I added it to the instructions.”
We, the viewers, also watch when Marie is held up in an interrogation room for hours on end, facing two cold detectives that tell her, over and over again, that there are inconsistencies in her story. When they then bluntly ask her if there was ever any rape to begin with, threatening her with the penalty for filing a false complaint. The unavoidable close-ups, Marie’s deafening silence, the tireless repetition of the same questions and threats, and the endless minutes spent in the interrogation room, make the viewer feel that same oppression and claustrophobia, and the scene becomes unbearable to them, too.
The first episode makes us want to scream injustice. It confronts us to the scary reality of many rape victims, that had the courage to speak up and that the world refused to listen to. Because there were inconsistencies. Because her behaviour and attitude were not victim-like”. It should us the difference a good support system makes, how important it is to have family and friends that are willing to listen and support us.
Unbelievable will scare any of us to death, filling us with distrust in the system and in humanity. It shows us that, still to this day, people will show their true colours when the truth is inconvenient. But Unbelievable teaches us an even more important lesson: that we must listen, support, and stop blaming the victim. Marie could be any of us. And if we can understand her injustice and her pain, let us be reminded we could never begin to imagine her trauma.
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