My little reindeer has slowly but surely risen to the top of the most watched series on the Netflix platform since it was put online on April 11. Hailed by critics, this autofiction quickly triggered an avalanche of reactions and controversies. So much so that she “could even revolutionize our perception of criminal fiction inspired by real events”, estimates journalist Vanessa Thorpe in The Observer.
My little reindeer is based on the true story of its creator, the Scotsman Richard Gadd. Playing on screen the comedian Donny, his fictional alter ego, he recounts the harassment and attacks of which he was the victim.
Critics are unanimous on the quality of this nuanced series, which encourages reflection on many social subjects: from the perception of male bisexuality to that of the intimate and lasting traumas triggered by sexual abuse.
Threats of complaints
But the enthusiasm generated by the series has also taken a turn that its creator did not seem to have foreseen. “For several days, the actors – and the real people from whom the plot of My little reindeer – find themselves at the heart of a violent controversy fueled by the research of apprentice detectives who resolutely scour social networks [à la recherche de l’identité réelle des agresseurs de Richard Gadd]. So much so that the police and several lawyers had to intervene,” reports the British newspaper Sunday.
The series opens with the meeting between Martha Scott, a visibly lonely forty-year-old, and Donny, a penniless comedian, in the bar where he works. Out of pity, he offers her some tea. But this will lead to a campaign of harassment lasting several years on the part of this woman, which will resonate with the rapes that the protagonist suffered in the past, perpetrated by a powerful television scriptwriter.
The online hunt targets both Martha and this screenwriter. And “a very prominent personality in the sector [de la télévision]wrongly identified as the author of the facts, threatens to file a complaint against Internet users who accused him of having committed the sexual assault described in the series. according to The Observer.
Faced with the whirlwind triggered by the series, a woman claiming to be the person who inspired Martha also told the tabloid Daily Mail, under cover of anonymity, that she was considering filing a complaint for defamation, relates The Hollywood Reporter.
A moral debate
Richard Gadd, for his part, asked spectators to stop trying to reveal the real identity of the rapist and the harasser he portrays. He explained that he changed many elements to protect their identity, particularly that of Martha, whom he portrayed with empathy as someone with psychological problems.
The actress who brilliantly plays the stalker, Jessica Gunning, also called on fans to stop this campaign. “It’s really, really a shame, she denounced in the columns of Forbes, because it proves that these people didn’t watch the series properly.”
The question of the dangers of fictionalizing real facts then arises, as does that of the need for Netflix to emphasize in its promotional campaign that the series was inspired by reality. “Beyond the possible legal repercussions, this approach continues to raise moral debates. Even among fans of the series, some today say that My little reindeer should never have seen the light of day”writing The Observer.
In The Independent, journalist Adam White believes that its creator was perhaps too naive not to have foreseen these repercussions, “but as spectators, we are also invested with a responsibility: that of understanding that My little reindeer cannot be placed in a simple box”, he continues.
“Richard Gadd did not conceive his series as a documentary or as a mystery for Sunday detectives.”
More severe as to the responsibility of the Scotsman, the columnist Stuart Heritage, in The Guardian, believes, for his part, that “if we were tempted, at first glance, to bow to the courage of Richard Gadd for having retraced with so much bravery a period that we imagine to be particularly trying, it is today difficult to exonerate him from the repercussions which he himself begat”. While emphasizing the quality of his work, the journalist judges that“we cannot just approach the series on a purely artistic level, when we know that the actor describes his own traumas”.
