Cannibalism by itself is boring (a Yellowjackets appreciation post)
Ok, this is going to have big, fat spoilers in it. Not the cannibalism, that’s literally the first scene of the show. I mean other things. If you haven’t watched Yellowjackets yet, or haven’t finished, or whatever, maybe don’t read this. Or do, whatever, I’m not your mother. I’m just saying. SPOILERS.
I’ve been thinking about cannibalism a lot lately. Not as a hobby, or anything, but about how it’s usually used incorrectly as a plot device, most especially in horror movies. There are so many (so many!) horror movies featuring cannibalism that have absolutely nothing interesting or, indeed, scary to say about it. Because where those filmmakers falter is thinking the eating is the scary part, but it isn’t. It’s the stuff that goes around it that matters.
Hannibal Lecter is the impeccably dressed poster child for what I mean. He’s not scary because he eats people. He’s scary because you know he eats people — he may be planning to eat you, in fact — and you still want to be around him. He’s brilliant and charming, a genteel lethality thrumming under the surface of his skin at all times. To be in his orbit is not just to court death, but to open yourself up to being a willing participant in your own demise. That is far, far more terrifying than “oh, these back country hicks wanna make you into stew, stranger.” Cannibalism, by itself, is boring.
Yellowjackets understands this. At least, I think it does.
Quick recap: You’ve got this high school girls’ soccer team (the titular Yellowjackets) whose plane crashes in the mountains. They’ve got no food and no way of communicating with the outside world. The one attempt they’ve made to hike out has led to a near-fatal wolf attack. Only one adult is still alive and he’s on his last leg (HAHAHAHAHAHHAHA I regret nothing). Though these are elite athletes and top-tier students, they’re still just a bunch of scared teenagers from New Jersey. They somehow manage to survive this situation for 18 months before making it back to the real world and going on to lead fairly normal lives. Except.
Except something so unthinkable happened out there the survivors make a vow to never speak of it. In fact, they go so far as to vow to keep low profiles as they grow up. Just go be an ordinary person, forget the fact that you’re brilliant or talented or ambitious or special. Go blend in, fade out, become a shadow of who you were and who you were meant to be. 25 years go by and still, the only people who know what actually happened to the Yellowjackets are the ones who were there. The secret is that big.
The show wants you to assume the girls resorted to cannibalism to survive, and they’re so deeply ashamed of their actions they won’t speak of it. I doubt that very much. While, yeah, the fact they were eating their friends adds a layer of ick that’s tough to get past, literally no-one would shun them for doing what they had to do to survive for more than a year on their own. But more crucially, Yellowjackets is just too damn smart to be that lazy when it comes to such an important detail. Like I said: Cannibalism by itself is boring.
So what was going on that’s so bad they’ll do just about anything to keep it quiet?
Possibility #1: They hunted each other.
This is, I think, exactly what the show wants you to believe, which is why I think it’s least likely to be true. The very first episode opens with the Yellowjackets hunting down what appears to be a teenage girl, forcing her into a spike pit, hauling her back to their camp, then stringing her up like a deer for butchering.
And because we don’t yet know what’s going on, when she’s eaten, we’re aghast, we’re horrified. Not because she’s being slaughtered per se, but because she’s being treated like just so much meat by people you think are her friends.
Cannibalism by itself is boring. Betrayal, on the other hand, is terrifying. But I don’t think it’s that simple. Shameful, no doubt. Having to come back to your community knowing that others would be with you if not for your actions…that’s a heavy burden. But if your only other option is starvation? I’m not sure you’d ever be normal, but I also don’t think you’d resolve to hide from the world, either.
Which brings me to what I really think is going on.
Possibility #2: They didn’t want to leave
Life in the wilderness is both hard and easy. Sure, you have to figure out how to not starve or freeze to death, and hoo boy does it suck when you get your period, and oh yeah, wolves and bears are still a thing. But you don’t have to worry about wearing the right clothes, or having enough money, or getting into the right school or, god, the neverending tapdance of not being a slut but also not being a prude while also not being a tease. It’s not hard to see how a life free of all that bullshit might be appealing.
Now, in and of itself, not wanting to leave isn’t all that big a deal. They were young and traumatized and it’s still a miracle they didn’t die. Yeah, there would be whispers and side eye, but still, not something you take a vow to keep secret.
But.
What if they were found? What if someone stumbled upon them and offered a way out and they decided…no. No, we’re not going to let you take our freedom away from us. We’re not going back to the insufferable weight of all that expectation. Expectation to succeed, to fail, to adhere ourselves to an image created for us by other people.
That is what I think is going on in that first episode. I don’t think the girl on the run is a member of the team, I think she’s a stranger, someone whose very existence threatened the Yellowjackets in their newfound home. So they hunted her and they butchered her and they feasted on her because she was no more to them than a bear or a wolf or any other mortal danger. It’s a choice that only someone who was there could ever understand.
Cannibalism by itself is boring. Cannibalism to prevent being forced back into your McMansion in the subdivision? That’s scary as hell.