Why I love Yellowjackets: the unique intensity of female rage

What makes William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies” so terrifying is the idea that young boys could and would descend into barbarism after only a very short time with no supervision. Society has taught them to believe in strength above all else as men, which turns to cruelty and finally murderous rage in the high stakes survival situation. So, with the themes of toxic masculinity being a snake that eats itself in the forefront of our cultural conversation for years now, the question surrounding “Yellowjackets” was an unsurprising one—how does a female “Lord of the Flies” work?

In a world where media consumption is constant but the understanding and literacy of that media is more often than not flawed, I wondered the same thing. But now, as I wait for the second episode of what promises to be a psychotic, creative, and deeply twisted season two, I understand the most important distinction.

“Women are the bloodthirsty sex.”—Patricia Briggs

“Hell is a teenage girl.”—Jennifer’s Body

“Give me back my girlhood, it was mine first.”—Taylor Swift

They key to “Yellowjackets” is the context.

“Yellowjackets” is not an all-girls “Lord of the Flies” reboot. It’s a different beast entirely, draped in shadows and donning a crown of antlers.

Of course, there is no one gender or person who can lay claim to rage. But there are distinctions. Feminine rage is a quiet, desperate thing. It doesn’t posture or parade, it doesn’t go to war. Feminine rage scratches and claws. It’s been taught, and harshly trained, to stay beneath the surface.

So, what makes “Yellowjackets” so good? For one, it allows that rage to breach the surface.

We meet the Yellowjackets several days before they leave New Jersey for the high school nationals soccer championship. Even in their lives before the plane crash, the seeds of darkness are rooted in all the players, just as they are every person. Shauna Shipman, timid second fiddle to team captain Jackie Taylor, sleeps with Jackie’s boyfriend Jeff. Natalie Scatorccio, damaged from an abusive household and the death of her father, drinks and drugs on school grounds. Cutthroat Taissa Turner pushes a lesser player to the brink, breaking the girl’s leg in the process. Troubling behavior, but at its core? The behavior of normal, overdramatic teenagers: betrayal and infidelity, drug and alcohol abuse, jealousy and ambition.

In the real world, after nationals the team would have parted ways. There may have been some cold glances, some snippy remarks, but they would have left for their respective colleges with civility.

Now, put those same girls in the wilderness, slowly going mad from starvation and grief. There is no neat wrap up to the problem, no clean break. In an environment with no societal expectations that push women towards politeness and kind words, they’re free to settle their problems however they like. Which means Shauna can send Jackie to freeze to death with no adults ushering her into a corner, asking her to turn the other cheek.

There’s a certain rage a woman can only have for a friend she knows is bad for her, but that she’ll never leave. The deep, true, constantly verging on homoerotic relationship between Jackie and Shauna is a clear example. Shauna does everything she can to distance herself from Jackie—she refuses the clothes Jackie wants her to wear, she refuses the man Jackie tries to set her up with, and when Jackie sleeps with Travis, Shauna nearly kills him. Yet, when Jackie freezes to death, Shauna refuses to let her go. In fact, she reverses course. Shauna doesn’t eat Jackie’s ear for sustenance—she eats it because she desperately needs Jackie to still be a part of her. Even though Shauna hated every mark Jackie made on her life by the end, she couldn’t help but love her to the point of consuming her. Rage isn’t just anger—it’s feelings so huge and intense you can’t put them into words, and it drives you to the brink.

What “Yellowjackets” succeeds in so effortlessly is the odd sense of comfort that violence and anger and trauma can bring among people who experience it, even if they don’t understand it. When the current day Taissa starts sleepwalking again, Shauna doesn’t question or shame her, she offers to stay awake with her. Taissa pays for Natalie’s treatment no matter how much of a mess she is, out of a debt of gratitude to how she kept them alive. And when Misty asks them to come to the reunion, everyone shows up. It doesn’t matter what was said between them in the woods, and it doesn’t matter what they’ve done to each other. There is an unnerving comfort in violence—a tranquility in knowing that even though it’s horrid, you’re not the only one who knows you’re capable of it. You’re not strange.

Sometimes I think that instead of growing and changing, evolving from my girlhood, I instead murdered the trembling 17 year old with an axe, stepping fully formed into her place. Sometimes I wish a man on the street would sneer at me too loud, so I could see if my right hook could really break a jaw.

I go for a run after dropping 25 pounds on my shin. I pound my fists against my forehead when my hair turns out wrong. There is a complexity to feminine rage, to the hormonal violence of female adolescence, that I personally have never seen portrayed so accurately and personally as on “Yellowjackets”. It lays bare everything we as women are taught not to be—ugly, selfish, demanding, ambitious—and tells you that you’re not alone if you’ve felt it.

Throughout the first season, scenes of the girls walking through the white winter in cult-like robes, slitting people’s throats and draining them like deer, appear in disjointed ways across the timelines. And even though I knew what was coming from the third episode on, I still found myself preemptively forgiving them over and over again, remembering with twinges in my gut that they were girls, younger than I am right now.

“Yellowjackets” holds an uncomfortable mirror to the women who watch it, and asks if they know who they would be in those woods.