I’ve watched it, I thought the performances were excellent and I thought martha was played with a lot of sympathy. Not necessarily disagreeing with you, but how can we tell our own stories without involving other people?
Jessica Gunning was phenomenal, I agree. It's not a case at all of "good" or "bad". I just think the willingness to exploit someone's mental illness - something he claims to be compassionate about - is at odds with everything he is doing. She is being outed on social media because people on the internet easily tracked her down based on some verbatim quotes he used in the show. He hasn't done nearly enough to disguise her. These people found her in minutes. I think it is irresponsible and at odds with his declarations of empathy and compassion.
he WAS compassionate about her, until she traumatized him, I think that's one. secondly, there's a difference between being compassionate for someone in a bad mental state, and also wanting accountability. What do you think?
I was chatting to my husband about my concerns about this show. He asked whether I would feel the same if the genders were reversed. After a little thought I realised that, if the genders were reversed, the victim of the stalking (so a woman comic actress) would likely NEVER pitch such a programme because of the skewed power dynamic. In other words, she would be mortally terrified of her stalker and would do everything in her power to not provoke him to reoffend. The fact that Gadd doesn't appear to be worried about this says a lot, no?
I had exactly this conversation with my husband. The fear of reprisals would prevent most women. Maybe that fear is inbuilt into us in a way it is not with men?
I felt the same way. As a psychotherapist i was sitting there thinking, this doesn't add up! He's not telling us everything. And yes, how is making this programme ethical concerning this woman he claims he has so much empathy for? Or rather, he doesn't have empathy, he pities her. Jeez. I couldn't watch it all.
Really helpful to hear the thoughts of a professional. The more I think about it, the more I feel that the production company and Netflix bear the responsibility of this. Anyone should be able to tell their story, but it’s more complicated when someone still so apparently in the midst of their story is suddenly on a global stage.
Main reason I haven’t watched it is the (perhaps unconscious but present) inevitable fat shaming.
Being stalked by a delusional fan is bad enough, but being stalked by a FAT girl? NIGHTMARE!
Kind of had it with the whole fat=repulsive thing, to be honest.
But yeah, you make the BETTER point that since this is apparently closely based on a true story, that means somewhere out there is a genuinely emotionally fragile woman now watching herself being depicted as a pitiable grotesque. Does anyone know who she is and if she’s ok?
Unfortunately the internet reckons it knows who she is and she’s also getting a load of abuse to add to whatever else she might be going through. He used direct quotes from her real messages/posts to him so the armchair detectives didn’t have a hard job. And yes, didn’t know how to write about the physical embodiment of “scary stalker” without being misinterpreted. But it’s all so difficult to talk about when he stands behind his victim banner. Being a victim doesn’t automatically make you good and right and some people seem to think it’s awful to even criticise this piece of art because of that.
I wrote about similar misgivings in my last newsletter, but you have done a better job at nailing exactly what made me uncomfortable – including the coding of her as the archetypal unhinged older, less attractive woman. For me, the main red flag occurred after I discovered he’d used the exact wording of some of her tweets, so it took internet stalker-sleuths no time to identify her. To me, that seems totally counter to his requests that she be left alone and that she is a victim too etc etc. If he wanted to protect her, why make her so easy to discover? Also, if he didn’t want anything more to do with her, why poke her quite so openly by using her real words? In some ways, the TV show just feels like a continuation of a very unhealthy relationship.
OK, I think YOU have nailed this better than I ever could. The false equivalence many have used is, "Would you be criticising a woman who wrote about her stalker?" And my answer is, women have, in-built in our DNA, a fear of being murdered by men. I don't think a female victim of a male stalker would even slightly want to provoke that man into coming for her again. Stalking is a unique crime in that it's never really over. The fear stays with you. Gadd seems fearless, which on the surface could look admirable. But I think it's more that his complex relationship with being stalked is just ongoing. He's not "OK now". He's right in the middle of this story, being given millions to enact it by Netflix. I don't think anyone understands what they're doing here but it feels horribly irresponsible.
I heard Marina Hyde say that ITV or the BBC would never have let this happen because their compliance is so cast iron. Whoever was in charge of that at Netflix has a lot of questions to answer. It’s pretty basic stuff. I do think, too, that Gadd even tells us he’s still in the middle of the story - right at the end, when he steps into the pub (and into Martha’s shoes) and smiles at the bartender giving him a free drink. How no one at Netflix saw that and didn’t think “we need to be very careful about how we handle this story” I’ll never know.
Entirely agree, and now his stalker is being outed on Twitter, and allegations made about other real-life people who may (or may not) be the basis of other characters in the show, prompting police involvement. Can of worms isn't the half (hundredth) of it. Could I imagine a situation in which they end up one day pulling it? Maybe
Yes, there was no situation the release of this wasn't going to prompt internet detectives to find out who the characters are. I'm trying to understand why it's so much worse with this show than other "true stories" turned into entertainment. But I think quoting the stalker verbatim led a lot of people to work her out from old comments on his social media. How the production company and Netflix legally got this away baffles me.
Even though I thought it was brilliant in many ways, this was my concern - the bullying aspect of the pub lads, how they accessed his phone and sent that message. Even though it's made out to be a kind of accident, I can't help but wonder if she was the butt of many jokes. And the fact that she had ended up so poor that she hung around a pub for company and couldn't afford a cup of tea...
For someone to tell their own trauma story, they will have to involve the people who hurt them (or a version of them). There was no way around that. Personally, I think given the delicate situation, the topic of Martha’s character was handled thoughtfully; showing Martha as complicated and, in someways, helpless humanised her character and allowed the audience to understand why Gadd took sympathy upon her to begin with. However, she still caused immense problems in many of the characters lives. So although she was struggling and deeply troubled, it doesn’t take away from their traumatising encounters with her and how she affected their well-beings. People should be allowed to express their trauma and hardships in life through art. I think the show handled representing Martha’s character extremely well. Also, I thought it would make sense why Gadd would not reach out to her and ask how she was doing? She was his stalker. There’s probably some sort of agreement within the restraining order saying neither of them can contact the other. Finally, I thought it was clarified why his ex-girlfriends mum allowed him to stay at her house. Her son had passed away and she felt like Gadd filled his place. However I think the main point was exposing Gadd’s behavioural pattern of unintentionally putting himself in harms way, and his borderline self-destructive tendencies. The show massively depicts his flaws and his numerous missed attempts at shutting Martha down as well as how he kept returning to his assaulter’s apartment.
I also think it’s extremely unfair to indicate that Gadd’s character Donny was so fame-driven that Gadd himself has been “building up” to this big break his whole career. The awful events he went through were not something he most likely envisioned at the time becoming a Netflix series. It comes across very dismissive of his story, and implies he is manipulative and calculated
Have a look at his past Edinburgh shows on Chortle. Every single one is about a terrible thing that's happened to him, every year a new trauma to mine for comedy. His status as a victim is more complicated than it first appears when you look at the bigger picture. Your whole post is a description of the same show I saw, but I read it differently.
I also felt uncomfortable when watching but couldn’t articulate it as succinctly as you. Thanks for this- I need to reread and digest but lots to think about.
I saw Richard Gadd perform his Edinburgh show about the abuse and my overriding thought upon leaving was this: would this be a ‘show’ if the sexes were reversed? Would we be expected to feel empathy for a woman who repeatedly went back into a situation like this. We know the answer. My discomfort also came from the thought that his eye was *always* on the prize of fame… he craved it in his bones…and now he has it!
I agree. Whilst there is much in here that is important - police capacity, social structures; #mentoo, substance abuse and abuse of power in comedy and notwithstanding a good deal of life-like nuance and great narrative flow, there are a number of deeply problematic issues with this show, not least that the whole "bravery" thing feels like "oh, thankyou for monetising your trauma".
If a true story - and the James Frey type backlash is not evident at present -Richard Gadd appears to be quite sick/mentally ill/traumatised. This zeitgeisty fashion for stand up comedy as a psychological gladiatorial ring for those disinclined or unable to pay for much needed professional help is worrying and, well, self indulgent. Like the equivalent of all those boys at open mic singing their self penned woe-is-me ditties strumming along to their guitars, but with a much bigger audience and more dangerous subjective power - the accused can't step into the ring to offer their rebuttal and no-one is offering professional insight at the end of the session.
Also, I agree that all of these types of abuse happen to women so regularly as to be seen as pretty typical so it does stick a bit in the craw. Not least that it appears that this is a gay man who is so self hating he needs to fetishise trans women in order to be okay with his own sexuality and then glorify his own shame. That isn't brave. That is just sad.
Of course there are self truths to be found in introspection and creative expression but this story seems to scream "help me, help me, help me" with a large dose of "look at me"to boot, and there is so much here in that is *not* said. There is no real redemption ark and whilst I get that trauma is confusing and raw and we all go round in messy circles, it says it is a fictionalised account of the truth so why not have your character at least seek help rather than play passive?
The inter generational trauma of the father being a victim of child sexual abuse and apparent inability to show positive emotion/physical love is skipped over as if largely inconsequential when it is evidently a much larger part of the truth of the story.
As you imply, it feels as though this piece is just an extension of the ongoing cry for help at the centre of his self-set bin fire. As he says, if you can get everyone to look at the awfulness of it and admire it, it somehow makes the feelings better because it's got some kind of worth. But actually instead of dealing with what's happened he is rolling around in it and literally creating drama. Surely not a whole lot better than MD & GHB?
It feels fit for our fiddling-whilst-Rome-burns times that we are beard stroking and exclaming "how brave" whilst this mentally ill, vulnerable, needy, dramatist provides us with a bit of spice.
I feel Gadd makes himself look every bit the fool, the person who constantly makes the wrong choices, he hardly comes out glorified in the programme.
His off-set behaviour sounds bad, yes. It also sounds like exactly what you’d expect the character in the story to do. In fact he tells of indulging in ignorant and exploitative relationships in the story, (after the rape, ep 4) which will have resulted in a number of real life people having similarly bad tales to tell. I think we’ll be hearing a lot of them soon.
The alternative would be something like I May Destroy, where a writer explores the facts and emotional truth of her story but at no point tries to draw us towards the real perpetrator. It was a powerful and impactful discussion of her subject without any of the ethical problems presented here.
As I said in the article, Gadd is saying he feels compassion for her, that she’s suffering from a mental illness. Someone who felt those things could make this story and disguise her in the way that Coel did.
I don’t agree, sorry. I’ve known many real-life stories told through art, and of necessity they are told from a point of view. You can’t get around that. I thought that the script was interesting and bold by NOT presenting Donny as a hero. He’s an absolute mess, he makes mistakes, he does wrong things, and he’s definitely not presented as an innocent victim. It’s not a simple good vs bad tale which I think is it’s strength. Yes, the stalker should have had a mental health intervention and support rather than prison. And he shouldn’t have done many of the things he did. But the power of the show comes from that moral ambivalence where no one is truly right or truly wrong. And I certainly don’t think we “know nothing about the root of his compulsion” - it’s laid out in unflinching detail.
As I said in the article, he puts the ambiguity on screen. But the portrayal of someone with severe mental illness, without her consent, is likely to have a negative effect on that person he claims to have compassion for. She has been tracked down and outed on the internet already. He quotes some of her social media posts directly in the show which led the curious straight to her door.
I’ve watched it, I thought the performances were excellent and I thought martha was played with a lot of sympathy. Not necessarily disagreeing with you, but how can we tell our own stories without involving other people?
Jessica Gunning was phenomenal, I agree. It's not a case at all of "good" or "bad". I just think the willingness to exploit someone's mental illness - something he claims to be compassionate about - is at odds with everything he is doing. She is being outed on social media because people on the internet easily tracked her down based on some verbatim quotes he used in the show. He hasn't done nearly enough to disguise her. These people found her in minutes. I think it is irresponsible and at odds with his declarations of empathy and compassion.
he WAS compassionate about her, until she traumatized him, I think that's one. secondly, there's a difference between being compassionate for someone in a bad mental state, and also wanting accountability. What do you think?
I was chatting to my husband about my concerns about this show. He asked whether I would feel the same if the genders were reversed. After a little thought I realised that, if the genders were reversed, the victim of the stalking (so a woman comic actress) would likely NEVER pitch such a programme because of the skewed power dynamic. In other words, she would be mortally terrified of her stalker and would do everything in her power to not provoke him to reoffend. The fact that Gadd doesn't appear to be worried about this says a lot, no?
I had exactly this conversation with my husband. The fear of reprisals would prevent most women. Maybe that fear is inbuilt into us in a way it is not with men?
I felt the same way. As a psychotherapist i was sitting there thinking, this doesn't add up! He's not telling us everything. And yes, how is making this programme ethical concerning this woman he claims he has so much empathy for? Or rather, he doesn't have empathy, he pities her. Jeez. I couldn't watch it all.
Really helpful to hear the thoughts of a professional. The more I think about it, the more I feel that the production company and Netflix bear the responsibility of this. Anyone should be able to tell their story, but it’s more complicated when someone still so apparently in the midst of their story is suddenly on a global stage.
Main reason I haven’t watched it is the (perhaps unconscious but present) inevitable fat shaming.
Being stalked by a delusional fan is bad enough, but being stalked by a FAT girl? NIGHTMARE!
Kind of had it with the whole fat=repulsive thing, to be honest.
But yeah, you make the BETTER point that since this is apparently closely based on a true story, that means somewhere out there is a genuinely emotionally fragile woman now watching herself being depicted as a pitiable grotesque. Does anyone know who she is and if she’s ok?
Unfortunately the internet reckons it knows who she is and she’s also getting a load of abuse to add to whatever else she might be going through. He used direct quotes from her real messages/posts to him so the armchair detectives didn’t have a hard job. And yes, didn’t know how to write about the physical embodiment of “scary stalker” without being misinterpreted. But it’s all so difficult to talk about when he stands behind his victim banner. Being a victim doesn’t automatically make you good and right and some people seem to think it’s awful to even criticise this piece of art because of that.
I wrote about similar misgivings in my last newsletter, but you have done a better job at nailing exactly what made me uncomfortable – including the coding of her as the archetypal unhinged older, less attractive woman. For me, the main red flag occurred after I discovered he’d used the exact wording of some of her tweets, so it took internet stalker-sleuths no time to identify her. To me, that seems totally counter to his requests that she be left alone and that she is a victim too etc etc. If he wanted to protect her, why make her so easy to discover? Also, if he didn’t want anything more to do with her, why poke her quite so openly by using her real words? In some ways, the TV show just feels like a continuation of a very unhealthy relationship.
OK, I think YOU have nailed this better than I ever could. The false equivalence many have used is, "Would you be criticising a woman who wrote about her stalker?" And my answer is, women have, in-built in our DNA, a fear of being murdered by men. I don't think a female victim of a male stalker would even slightly want to provoke that man into coming for her again. Stalking is a unique crime in that it's never really over. The fear stays with you. Gadd seems fearless, which on the surface could look admirable. But I think it's more that his complex relationship with being stalked is just ongoing. He's not "OK now". He's right in the middle of this story, being given millions to enact it by Netflix. I don't think anyone understands what they're doing here but it feels horribly irresponsible.
I heard Marina Hyde say that ITV or the BBC would never have let this happen because their compliance is so cast iron. Whoever was in charge of that at Netflix has a lot of questions to answer. It’s pretty basic stuff. I do think, too, that Gadd even tells us he’s still in the middle of the story - right at the end, when he steps into the pub (and into Martha’s shoes) and smiles at the bartender giving him a free drink. How no one at Netflix saw that and didn’t think “we need to be very careful about how we handle this story” I’ll never know.
Entirely agree, and now his stalker is being outed on Twitter, and allegations made about other real-life people who may (or may not) be the basis of other characters in the show, prompting police involvement. Can of worms isn't the half (hundredth) of it. Could I imagine a situation in which they end up one day pulling it? Maybe
Yes, there was no situation the release of this wasn't going to prompt internet detectives to find out who the characters are. I'm trying to understand why it's so much worse with this show than other "true stories" turned into entertainment. But I think quoting the stalker verbatim led a lot of people to work her out from old comments on his social media. How the production company and Netflix legally got this away baffles me.
I haven't watched it and won't. I've had the ick from the outset because of this crucial question: what about her?
Even though I thought it was brilliant in many ways, this was my concern - the bullying aspect of the pub lads, how they accessed his phone and sent that message. Even though it's made out to be a kind of accident, I can't help but wonder if she was the butt of many jokes. And the fact that she had ended up so poor that she hung around a pub for company and couldn't afford a cup of tea...
For someone to tell their own trauma story, they will have to involve the people who hurt them (or a version of them). There was no way around that. Personally, I think given the delicate situation, the topic of Martha’s character was handled thoughtfully; showing Martha as complicated and, in someways, helpless humanised her character and allowed the audience to understand why Gadd took sympathy upon her to begin with. However, she still caused immense problems in many of the characters lives. So although she was struggling and deeply troubled, it doesn’t take away from their traumatising encounters with her and how she affected their well-beings. People should be allowed to express their trauma and hardships in life through art. I think the show handled representing Martha’s character extremely well. Also, I thought it would make sense why Gadd would not reach out to her and ask how she was doing? She was his stalker. There’s probably some sort of agreement within the restraining order saying neither of them can contact the other. Finally, I thought it was clarified why his ex-girlfriends mum allowed him to stay at her house. Her son had passed away and she felt like Gadd filled his place. However I think the main point was exposing Gadd’s behavioural pattern of unintentionally putting himself in harms way, and his borderline self-destructive tendencies. The show massively depicts his flaws and his numerous missed attempts at shutting Martha down as well as how he kept returning to his assaulter’s apartment.
I also think it’s extremely unfair to indicate that Gadd’s character Donny was so fame-driven that Gadd himself has been “building up” to this big break his whole career. The awful events he went through were not something he most likely envisioned at the time becoming a Netflix series. It comes across very dismissive of his story, and implies he is manipulative and calculated
Have a look at his past Edinburgh shows on Chortle. Every single one is about a terrible thing that's happened to him, every year a new trauma to mine for comedy. His status as a victim is more complicated than it first appears when you look at the bigger picture. Your whole post is a description of the same show I saw, but I read it differently.
Indeed. This week’s Osman and Hyde podcast gave me a lot of detail on Compliance and Netflix’s failure in that area that I hadn’t appreciated fully
Yes, they really helped to shine a light on that.
it is clear and your thoughts made me think more deeply about it… thank you 🙏🏼
I also felt uncomfortable when watching but couldn’t articulate it as succinctly as you. Thanks for this- I need to reread and digest but lots to think about.
I saw Richard Gadd perform his Edinburgh show about the abuse and my overriding thought upon leaving was this: would this be a ‘show’ if the sexes were reversed? Would we be expected to feel empathy for a woman who repeatedly went back into a situation like this. We know the answer. My discomfort also came from the thought that his eye was *always* on the prize of fame… he craved it in his bones…and now he has it!
I agree. Whilst there is much in here that is important - police capacity, social structures; #mentoo, substance abuse and abuse of power in comedy and notwithstanding a good deal of life-like nuance and great narrative flow, there are a number of deeply problematic issues with this show, not least that the whole "bravery" thing feels like "oh, thankyou for monetising your trauma".
If a true story - and the James Frey type backlash is not evident at present -Richard Gadd appears to be quite sick/mentally ill/traumatised. This zeitgeisty fashion for stand up comedy as a psychological gladiatorial ring for those disinclined or unable to pay for much needed professional help is worrying and, well, self indulgent. Like the equivalent of all those boys at open mic singing their self penned woe-is-me ditties strumming along to their guitars, but with a much bigger audience and more dangerous subjective power - the accused can't step into the ring to offer their rebuttal and no-one is offering professional insight at the end of the session.
Also, I agree that all of these types of abuse happen to women so regularly as to be seen as pretty typical so it does stick a bit in the craw. Not least that it appears that this is a gay man who is so self hating he needs to fetishise trans women in order to be okay with his own sexuality and then glorify his own shame. That isn't brave. That is just sad.
Of course there are self truths to be found in introspection and creative expression but this story seems to scream "help me, help me, help me" with a large dose of "look at me"to boot, and there is so much here in that is *not* said. There is no real redemption ark and whilst I get that trauma is confusing and raw and we all go round in messy circles, it says it is a fictionalised account of the truth so why not have your character at least seek help rather than play passive?
The inter generational trauma of the father being a victim of child sexual abuse and apparent inability to show positive emotion/physical love is skipped over as if largely inconsequential when it is evidently a much larger part of the truth of the story.
As you imply, it feels as though this piece is just an extension of the ongoing cry for help at the centre of his self-set bin fire. As he says, if you can get everyone to look at the awfulness of it and admire it, it somehow makes the feelings better because it's got some kind of worth. But actually instead of dealing with what's happened he is rolling around in it and literally creating drama. Surely not a whole lot better than MD & GHB?
It feels fit for our fiddling-whilst-Rome-burns times that we are beard stroking and exclaming "how brave" whilst this mentally ill, vulnerable, needy, dramatist provides us with a bit of spice.
Ambulance chasing anyone?
The alternative would be not telling the story.
I feel Gadd makes himself look every bit the fool, the person who constantly makes the wrong choices, he hardly comes out glorified in the programme.
His off-set behaviour sounds bad, yes. It also sounds like exactly what you’d expect the character in the story to do. In fact he tells of indulging in ignorant and exploitative relationships in the story, (after the rape, ep 4) which will have resulted in a number of real life people having similarly bad tales to tell. I think we’ll be hearing a lot of them soon.
The alternative would be something like I May Destroy, where a writer explores the facts and emotional truth of her story but at no point tries to draw us towards the real perpetrator. It was a powerful and impactful discussion of her subject without any of the ethical problems presented here.
why is pointing to the perpetrator such a taboo?
As I said in the article, Gadd is saying he feels compassion for her, that she’s suffering from a mental illness. Someone who felt those things could make this story and disguise her in the way that Coel did.
Why does he need to do what Coel did though? What is this expectation based on?
You can have total compassion for someone, and still have them be accountable for their behavior and actions.
Why does it seem hard to apply this logic to Gadd?
What is this expectation based on? Legal compliance. If you know about TV production, I don't think you'd ask the question.
I don’t agree, sorry. I’ve known many real-life stories told through art, and of necessity they are told from a point of view. You can’t get around that. I thought that the script was interesting and bold by NOT presenting Donny as a hero. He’s an absolute mess, he makes mistakes, he does wrong things, and he’s definitely not presented as an innocent victim. It’s not a simple good vs bad tale which I think is it’s strength. Yes, the stalker should have had a mental health intervention and support rather than prison. And he shouldn’t have done many of the things he did. But the power of the show comes from that moral ambivalence where no one is truly right or truly wrong. And I certainly don’t think we “know nothing about the root of his compulsion” - it’s laid out in unflinching detail.
As I said in the article, he puts the ambiguity on screen. But the portrayal of someone with severe mental illness, without her consent, is likely to have a negative effect on that person he claims to have compassion for. She has been tracked down and outed on the internet already. He quotes some of her social media posts directly in the show which led the curious straight to her door.