Upon Figuring Out That ‘The Yellowjackets’ and ‘Yellowstone’ Are Different Shows
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Just a missive on savage feminism.
So for the longest time I had confused ‘Yellowjackets’ with ‘Yellowstone’: both critically acclaimed, I just couldn’t get my mind around what a bunch of teenage soccer players flirting with cannibalism had to do with Kevin Costner’s conservative rancher thing. Clearly, I wasn’t paying much attention to either one of them as the ‘yellow’ is the only thing they have in common.
But a few weeks ago I was drawn to an article about Melanie Lynskey — an actress I have long admired having seen her first as a pretty odd teen in ‘Heavenly Creatures’, co-starring Kate Winslet — and the heat she was now taking online when cast as a soft spoken psycho in ‘The Last of Us’, in tandem with creeps trolling her weight in ‘Yellowjackets’. Well, nothing triggers my zealous support of a beautiful middle-aged woman who’s owning it more than criticism of said woman by a bunch of shit stains who can’t pay a woman enough to blow them. Or the same vein of self-loathing, hyperbolic shots taken by other women who just can bear the thought that that creamy skinned chubby girl has something they don’t have and can’t envision. Melanie Lynskey is, for better or worse, infinitely relatable.
And, of course, I realized that ‘Yellowjackets’ had nothing to do with Kevin Costner.
So I binge watched the first season last week and, honestly, it’s like a car crash: horrifying in so many ways but you just can’t turn away. Lynskey, Juliette Lewis (who’s always appeared a bit rough, like she might get tre’ pissy over a bad breakup) and Christina Ricci (possibly the scariest of all the girls, but she is, after all, Christina Ricci) — and Tawny Cypress but I am unfamiliar with her work so there’s less to compare this role with— are freaking crazed. So are the young gals who play them as teens, but like fine wine, the younger actresses are just not as inherently mesmerizing — or as menacing in their own agency — not owning every frame the way these women do.
I’ve watched the first episode of Season Two and mostly, I am addicted. I have to know where this goes, even as I’m struggling some with the part of me who’s cheering for this posse of rabid, discretely murderous, sociopathic females raging to…
