A vegan view of Yellowjackets – Meat, Power and Belief
A plane crash in the wilderness. A group of talented teenage girls trying to survive. Their trauma, catching up, twenty-five years later.
The Yellowjackets TV Series begins in full force with a gruesome, violent depiction of the hunt of a young girl in a snow-laden forest. From the very start, we know where the show is heading, and we are left to answer the question of “How”. Just like in other tales, fictional or real, about cannibalism, it is the most interesting question: how did they get there? Below, I’ll unfold some of my thoughts on the symbolism of “meat” in Yellowjackets – spoilers apply for season one and two.
Meat – a marker of violence
The first season follows three timelines: before the plane crash in 1996, right after in the Canadian wilderness, and 25 years later, where we meet adult versions of the main characters. There is Shauna, a housewife; Taissa, running for senator; Misty, a geriatric nurse and Natalie, getting out of rehab.
In very few of the first scenes, it gets established that adult Shauna can be ruthless: she almost threatens the journalist who tries to convince her to tell the tale, and later she kills the rabbit who has been eating from her garden. At her family table, meat is made central – it is what seems to gather them together, and the more “special” the meat, the more Shauna wishes it could bring closeness to their family gatherings. Her daughter, Callie, however, is constantly on the phone, and her husband, Jeff, seems emotionally absent as well. When Shauna tells them it is the neighborhood rabbit they are eating, they think it is a joke. The “meat” to be eaten, to them, seems to come by already-slaughtered. Liminal animals and nearby wildlife are not considered “edible” in the suburban American setting – they are scenery, or pests at worst.
Killing the rabbit marks Shauna as someone that doesn’t fit in – though she knows the rules, and she lies to her husband that indeed, she was joking. Later, we find out rabbits have been her best friend’s, Jackie, favorite animals. The double meaning of that act appears, as both a denial of her relationship to Jackie and of who she is supposed to be: a “normal” respectable housewife. Through preparing, serving, and killing animals, Shauna’s trauma shows through, and she is depicted as somewhat deviant, although in our reality, the killing and eating of non-human animals is considered completely commonplace. It is interesting, then, that the series shows us, step by step, the similarity in the preparation and consumption of animal bodies, be they non-human or human.
I am reminded of “Tender is the flesh” by Agustina Bazterrica where, in a dystopian future with no animals left, it is humans who are industrially bred to be eaten, with vocal cords cut so they cannot speak against it. The slaughterhouses are only partially adapted for human bodies, for they were already well-adept at curbing animal resistance, cutting, parceling and turning every inch of flesh into something consumable. Later in the series, when we see Shauna exercising her expertise in cutting up dead bodies, we already know where she got that knowledge and steady hand from: survival, as dependent on another’s death. It is only by practicing murder that one becomes so “good” at it, and, as certain philosophers would say, historically, violence towards non-human animals is a precursor to violence towards humans (some would say otherwise, but it is probably fair to consider it a cycle at this point).
Ancestral fears and holding power
The brutality of meat consumption is especially present in the wild: even when they consume a non-human animal, the show still presents it as somewhat disgusting. The knowledge of what meat implies makes it impossible to innocently enjoy. For Natalie, it meant dealing with her own traumatic past and the images of her abusive father: the first time to pull the trigger reminds her of that moment, a moment of courage, of self-defense, and ultimately, of unintended violence, acted upon for physical and psychological survival. She cries, and yet she manages to, because she needs to live. Later, when the deer needs to be bled, no one volunteers but Shauna. Previously presented as shy, a shadow of her popular best friend Jackie, in the wild Shauna grows into someone else, someone tenacious and self-assured. It is the terrible power granted to her that makes her so: the power to turn a cadaver into nourishment.
Yet learning to see animal bodies like that doesn’t come without consequences, and hunger brings forth the ways in which we, too, are animals. A primal fear begins to take shape within Shauna, as her belly rounds, full with life. She dreams of baby-cheeseburger, baby-chicken. Subconsciously, she understands the terribleness of the situation she is in. The precariousness, the ease with which bodies can turn into flesh to be eaten. But that knowledge keeps being pushed down, suppressed. Then, it comes out wildly on “Doomcoming” night, where, because of Misty, hallucinogenic mushrooms end up in everyone’s food. In the midst of their collective visions, the girls seem to wish to consume Travis entirely, sexually and in the flesh. Shauna sees him as a deer, projecting a specific form of animality into him: that of embodied prey. They chase him and tie him up, only to be stopped and shaken to reality by Natalie.
But the memory of this almost-real hunt remains, the presence of hunger remains, the boundary between human and animal is ever thinner. Remember, when Van is attacked by wolves, we learn once more that prey is a shifting category. In the wilderness, you can be prey, as well. Without human civilization to uphold its supremacy over nature and other animals, an animal body is an animal body: wanting, teeming with blood and muscle.
The famous essay by ecofeminist Val Plumwood beautifully explores the existential shattering that happens when a human realizes they, too, can be consumed. Drawing from her own experience of surviving a crocodile attack, Plumwood argues against the consumption of other living bodies not because we are human and they are not, but rather, because we are desiring beings, all of us alive. I’ve previously explored this line of thought on the relationship between food and nurturance in a just wondering animated essay. No matter how complex the issue seems, when we recognize other animals’ agency and wish for life, we are able to see these entanglements more deeply, and thus we are put in a position in which we can finally refuse the violences we do to each other.
As the first season of Yellowjackets ends and the second begins, a mysterious swoosh of wind makes snow fall over Jackie’s burning body. Her flesh is turned into a roast, waking the girls with the fragrant smell of “meat” – and here, the human/animal binary dissipates. In society, we do not eat humans because they are supposedly not to be eaten, they are de-animalized – the animal is relegated to be that thing to be consumed, irrational and instinctive, upon which violence is justified. In theory, the binary is supposed to protect humans from being preyed upon, but in practice, it works so as to always leave someone behind – the marginalized, those who do not fit, who become dehumanized, “treated like animals” in the worst ways by systems of oppression. The Yellowjackets wilderness made another run of this tale in which civilization isn’t there to uphold this supposedly beneficial binary. And because it is a desperate situation, we do not get life on “both sides”, but death. Consumption. Annihilation.
The consumption of Jackie is depicted as a feverish dream, a drunkenness of hunger. Yet it is just a step further into the terrible acts to come. Like a gambler putting in all, the more they do to survive, the more they seem to be willing to do. The “animality” they embody is not that of specific non-human animals, but rather the other face of imagined white, Western humanity.
The weave of belief onto violence
One of the most interesting aspects of Yellowjackets is its slight supernatural bend. It is so subtle that it leaves you wondering if it’s “real”, ontologically true within its crafted world. Does The Wilderness choose who lives and who dies? By the end of season two, when Lottie, their charming leader, goes deeper into her belief in “It”, we are shown a stronger bend: the need of this belief for survival. The need to construct a story to live with that violence. That one should survive, but not another. That The Wilderness chose. But did it? Or was it “us”? like Shauna said.
Humans are experts of story-telling, especially when the narrative is there to save their life: be it their collective, individual, or psychological life. Thanking the dead is one form. Thinking they were chosen is another. Saying it was meant to be makes space for relief. All of these make it possible to live with terrible things, onto which, if you weaved another belief – that there was another choice, for example – would bring great suffering and difficulty in continuing life. The lies we tell ourselves, personally and politically, and the lies we are told, all become wrapped up in bundles hard to un-knot. There are stories that protect us from thinking what we do and how we live is violence. There are stories that keep us believing some people are deserving, while others not. There are endless stories that justify the unfairness of this world. And I wonder, I wonder, does it shake anything up? Seeing some play out in fiction, acted in television, unfolding as entertainment in front of our very eyes.