One of my favorite things about Yellowjackets is the way it portrays female rage and violence as powerful and terrifying, but in a way that feels fundamentally distinct from male violence.
The show challenges the stereotype that women are inherently passive or gentle; the girls don't become violent and monstrous by shedding their femininity and becoming more masculine. Violence in our society is so often inextricably linked to men (for obvious reasons), but the violence in this show never feels like the girls "becoming men;" they are not adopting masculine control or structure. Male violence, especially in media, is direct, outward, and individualistic. It’s explosive and external, physically-driven and focused on proving strength.
The violence in Yellowjackets stems directly from womanhood. It’s relational, emotional, collective, and psychologically-driven. The rage, grief, and longing that drives their actions have been brewing under the surface, ruminated on and cradled internally for weeks, months, or years before they’re ever expressed externally. Their violence is centered on connection or disruption within relationships: betrayal, fear, grief, shame, jealousy, loyalty, or the need for safety. Womanhood is distinctly communal, and therefore violence and ferality in the wilderness manifests itself through shared rituals, shared belief and mythology, shared labor, and shared pain/grief/fear/rage/joy; the ways women have historically created meaning in oppressive environments.
It grows organically out of the social ecosystem of girlhood at its most heightened. As Tai so wisely says, "girl shit" becomes life-or-death out there. Jealousy, emotional and romantic rivalries, gossip, loyalty, and betrayal literally become deadly. The intense, all-consuming nature of female friendship becomes a force that can sustain life, dictate hierarchy, and, when fractured, destroy it. Peer pressure and the desire to belong escalate into collective psychosis and frenzy, social influence or status transforms into worship and spirituality, and exclusion or outcasting is a genuine threat to survival. The girls’ rituals and behaviors echo familiar aspects of adolescence, as the cabin séance is an eery version of a sleepover, Doomcoming mirrors the pageantry of a school dance, and the way they sleep huddled together on the floor evokes both a slumber party and a pack of wolves.
And amidst all of this rage and violence, we're surrounded by feminine imagery and symbolism: flowing white gowns, nature, synced menstruation, flower crowns, childbirth, the matriarchal Antler Queen, the Greek goddess imagery of the feast on Jackie. Even the team name Yellowjackets is distinctly feminine and symbolic of the duality of girlhood. In nature, yellowjackets are matriarchal as the workers, soldiers, and queens are all female, with males existing only to mate and die. Like a hive, the team is interdependent and nurturing, but also capable of intense aggression and danger.
The violence in Yellowjackets is all of the intensity of girlhood distilled into its rawest form, stripped of societal rules and oversight. It's female rage and catharsis in its most primal form.
