Cannibalism and Queer Love in Showtime’s Yellowjackets
By Anne Gregg
Spoilers for Yellowjackets
Yellowjackets has been dubbed the lesbian cannibalism show by fans and anyone vaguely aware of the show’s plot and themes. In the horror genre, cannibalism may be used as a metaphor for desire — to love is to be consumed (literally). Through the act of cannibalism, a character is able to become the person they desire. You are what you eat. In media, queer desire is also framed through an obsessive question, “Am I in love with or do I want to be her?” Consuming is love and becoming. The lesbian cannibal is fused with her object of obsession. For example, in the finale of season 3 of Yellowjackets, Tai (Tawny Cypress/Jasmin Savoy Brown) eats her dead lover Van’s (Lauren Ambrose/Liv Hewson) heart before she buries her. A final act of love.
Yellowjackets follows the surviving members of the Yellowjackets, a high school varsity soccer team that has been stranded in the wilderness for a year and a half after their plane to Nationals crashed. The girls are forced to resort to cannibalism to survive the winter. To cope with all the horrible things they have had to do, they begin to worship the wilderness as a God. To survive, they must give the wilderness what it wants. The show cuts between the girls’ past into the wilderness to the present, 25 years later, where the survivors struggle to process their traumatic pasts and implode their lives because of it.
Yellowjackets Season 3 expands on its theme of love as consumption, especially through the character of Shauna (Melanie Lynskey/Sophie Nélisse). Shauna’s arc is the clear highlight of the season. She is also the character who most embodies the visceral desire and longing that defines stories of queer cannibalism. Shauna’s character is defined by longing and dissatisfaction. In the beginning of the show, Shauna envies her best friend Jackie (Ella Purnell). Jackie is the popular girl, the positive team captain who can put a smile on anyone’s face. She has her and Shauna’s life planned out. Shauna defines herself through Jackie. She blames Jackie for making her miserable, but she makes herself miserable. She resents the fact that she isn’t Jackie, that she makes herself smaller in Jackie’s presence even though Jackie never asked her to do that. She sleeps with Jackie’s boyfriend and becomes pregnant with his baby to feel power over her. When Jackie finds out, the two fight and Jackie leaves the cabin the girls have found in the wilderness and sleeps in the cold. She dies of hypothermia.
The girls keep her body preserved in a shed until they can bury her. However, they begin to starve and eventually eat her. After Jackie’s death, Shauna is haunted by Jackie. Jackie is the voice in Shauna’s head that belittles her. Ghost Jackie is condescending and cold. She torments Shauna and blames her for her death.
In Season 3, Shauna begins a relationship with Melissa (Hilary Swank/Jenna Burgess). Shauna sees Melissa as beneath her, as someone who will worship her and love her flaws without question. The first time they kiss Shauna is wearing Jackie’s shirt. Shauna wants to emulate her relationship with Jackie, but she wants to be Jackie. Her relationship with Melissa fails because Shauna wants Melissa to feel how she felt about Jackie. If Melissa is miserable, then Shauna can be the Jackie that lives in her head. Melissa recognizes this, and leaves Shauna.
Shauna becomes the leader of the Yellowjackets because she is ruthless and the girls know she will enact violence if she does not get her way. As the leader, Shauna forces Nat to carve up their assistant coach — and later Mari (Alexa Barajas) — for their feast. She orders the girls to stay in the wilderness when they have a chance at rescue. Shauna does not back down from violent confrontation when most of the other girls will. She has nothing left to lose. Shauna’s life post-crash is unremarkable. She becomes a stay at home mom with an adoring husband. Except, she hates her daughter and her husband is Jeff (Warren Kole), Jackie’s ex-boyfriend. And she doesn’t love him. She becomes the archetypal woman, she keeps her head down and does not let herself be ambitious or fulfilled. Jackie’s ghost makes her feel unremarkable. She blames everyone else for her unhappiness. She lives in the shadow of Jackie’s death. Tied to her ex, haunted by her ghost, longing to be that perfect, dead girl.
Shauna’s character is fascinating, because she is mean, she is despicable and not in a way where you want to forgive her — wearing Mari’s hair is truly disgusting. Shauna consumes people to have power over them. She needs everyone to feel like she does, and the easiest way to do that is to take them into herself. Shauna consumes people but never becomes them, even if she wants to. Shauna longs to be someone she is not, but instead of changing herself, she wants everyone else to change.
About the Author
Anne Gregg is a poet and writer from Northwest Indiana. She is an English Writing major at DePauw University and is the editor-in-chief of her campus’s literary magazine, A Midwestern Review. She is a Media Fellow at her university and loves dissecting how LGBTQ+ people are portrayed in film and tv.