From Yellowjackets to The Power, TV Is Embracing Matriarchy at a Dark Moment for Feminism
As a woman who has navigated through various phases of my life, I find these television series that portray matriarchal societies particularly intriguing. They offer a glimpse into the resilience and solidarity that women have displayed throughout history, especially during trying times.
Originally, this article appeared in 2023. Now, we’re re-sharing it because Yellowjackets Season 1 is currently available for streaming on Netflix.
The ordeal for the mystic of the Yellowjackets starts when her former high school soccer team manages to make their way out of the wilderness. In the opening scene of Season 2 of Showtime’s popular thriller, we find Lottie Matthews, portrayed as a teenager by Courtney Eaton, stepping onto a bustling tarmac filled with cameras, microphones, and flashbulbs, indicating a media frenzy. Her face contorts in pain. We witness her parents explaining that she hasn’t spoken since returning home and requesting a psychiatrist to “help her.” A distressing sequence follows where Lottie is restrained, given sedatives, and undergoes electroconvulsive therapy. As Sharon Van Etten sings on the soundtrack, “I used to feel free,” Lottie struggles, questioning, “Was it just a dream?
In my eyes, it’s not what one would expect from a survival story. After surviving a horrific plane crash that claimed the lives of many of my teammates, followed by 19 long months of dirt, hunger, strife, and unforgiving cold, these girls should be embracing the pavement that symbolizes their return to civilization. However, Lottie is not the only Yellowjacket who seems more alive in the wilderness than she does at home. The high-achieving Shauna (portrayed by Melanie Lynskey as an adult and Sophie Nélisse as a teenager) sinks into domesticity, but the suppression eats away at her marriage and relationship with her daughter. Taissa (Tawny Cypress and Jasmin Savoy Brown) manages to keep her life together enough to embark on a political career and start a family, all while her subconscious performs astonishing acts of violence. Misty (Christina Ricci and Samantha Hanratty), who intentionally damaged the plane’s black box to keep us stranded, clings to the women who once made her feel like she belonged to something greater. “Since they rescued us,” says Natalie (Juliette Lewis and Sophie Thatcher), “I’ve lost my purpose.” Her season 1 journey takes her from rehab to the edge of suicide.
The creators of the series, Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson, recognize that trauma can linger even after its cause has vanished. However, Yellowjackets raises questions about whether the girls might have thrived in the self-made society they established, considering its themes of young women, matriarchy, and the dual nature of personal strength. As a character from Amazon’s drama The Wilds, a series that explores a teenage girl plane crash, remarks in the first episode: “What was so terrible about the lives we abandoned?… Being a teenage girl in ordinary America was the real living hell.
The fundamental theme shared by ‘The Power’, releasing on Amazon March 31, and ‘Class of ‘07’, both debuting this month on Amazon, is that they both explore what might transpire if young women worldwide were to acquire eel-like electrical abilities in the former, and if alumnae of an all-girls boarding school found themselves stranded due to a flood during their 10-year reunion in the latter. This concept has gained a growing sense of resonance since the late 2010s, as the era of Lean In feminism evolved into the reactive misogyny associated with Donald Trump and the Supreme Court he influenced. It seems these series imply that male dominance cannot be removed through elections or reformed away, but rather, young women may need to dismantle it by force, or even abandon it entirely – perhaps even starting a new civilization from scratch.
Yellowjackets and similar series are not portrayed as utopian alternatives to the patriarchal dystopia depicted in The Handmaid’s Tale. They do not romanticize all women as inherently peaceful or kind or flawless. Instead, these stories, filled with darkness, violence, and distress, strike a balance between psychological authenticity and visceral excitement.
Even though it relies on a massive flood reminiscent of biblical tales, the latest installment in the matriarchy series titled Class of ’07 is surprisingly light-hearted compared to its counterparts. A group of women who once tormented each other in high school find themselves stranded at their mountainous alma mater due to heavy rainfall that turns the area into an island surrounded by water. In the morning, they realize that the school is now isolated in a vast sea of water. Unlike the girls from The Wilds, who must search for shelter on their deserted island, these women don’t have to worry about that. However, they need food, medicine, a social contract, and improved relationships to survive long-term. While cannibalism is hinted at in the flashbacks of Yellowjackets (until Shauna eventually eats her dead friend Jackie’s ear during the second season premiere), Class of ’07 uses survival themes such as food poisoning, broken toilets, and even murder to create dark humor.
The characters of this series embody typical archetypes often found at high school reunions. We have Genevieve (Claire Lovering), the overachiever; Megan and Tegan (Chi Nguyen and Bernie Van Tiel), the pot-smoking duo; Rose Flanagan’s “Forgettable Laura”; Zoe (Emily Browning) and Amelia (Megan Smart), who were once inseparable but drifted apart due to adolescent conflicts. However, Kacie Anning, the creator, adds an intriguing twist with Saskia (Caitlin Stasey). Initially a mean girl, she transformed into “Saskia 2.0”, a feminist philanthropist, who donates menstrual products to underprivileged women worldwide. Tasked by her peers to lead them, despite her claims of leaving her bullying days behind, Saskia eventually reverts back to the same oppressive figure they’ve spent years discussing during therapy sessions.
Peel back the layers of a self-proclaimed girlboss like Gretchen Klein from “The Wilds”, and you might uncover a beast lurking beneath. As the puppet master orchestrating events on this deserted island, her actions are aimed at establishing a matriarchal society, disguised as a female empowerment retreat.
In the television series titled “The Power,” based on Naomi Alderman’s 2016 novel, we find an ambitious yet somewhat confused portrayal. This show stands out among other matriarchy-themed productions for its overt political stance and its ambiguous view towards powerful individuals. Instead of depicting a closed, single-gender society, the story unfolds across various continents where adolescent girls mysteriously acquire an organ that enables them to discharge electrical charges from their hands. This sudden change transforms the world, bringing both positive and negative outcomes. “I now run with both my earbuds in,” Jos (Auli’i Cravalho) remarks, “I hadn’t realized I was living under a constant state of fear.” However, patriarchal governments, which essentially refers to most governments regardless of their leadership, perceive this development as a threat. In the United States, schools become sites for rounding up girls and subjecting them to intrusive testing. In Saudi Arabia, they are prohibited from using their newfound ability, and the death of a girl who unintentionally breaks the law sparks widespread protests.>
As a devoted cinephile, I’m drawn to the character of Jos’ mom, Margot (played brilliantly by Toni Collette), who boldly stands as an essential political ally for the group known as “electric girls.” Much like many progressive female politicians since the overturning of Roe, she passionately advocates for women’s right to “bodily autonomy.” Her belief is that either we, as a society, have inflicted this upon these girls, or they’ve developed it out of necessity. However, her unwavering voice doesn’t just put Margot in the crossfire, but also her family. The questions linger: Is her cause noble enough to risk endangering her husband (John Leguizamo) and kids, without their approval? Is she a selfless heroine, as society expects from good women, or is she prioritizing her career over her loved ones?
In the story, Margot’s morally intricate journey mirrors that of several other characters within the large, international cast. In a fictional Eastern European nation called Carpathia, victims of human trafficking break free from their oppressors and retaliate brutally. A survivor of abuse (Halle Bush), having lost her family, takes revenge on her abusive foster father and embarks on a spiritual journey guided by a voice she believes to be divine. The novel The Power poses the question, albeit without endorsing patriarchy, as to whether placing women in positions of power traditionally held by men—be they figures like Obama, Che Guevara, or Jesus—will bring about the change humanity requires.
Yet for all the problems that persist in gynotopia, TV’s matriarchies tend to function more smoothly than male counterparts both fictional (see: Lord of the Flies) and, like the Stanford Prison Experiment, real. The second season of The Wilds finds Gretchen sending a control group of boys to a desert island of their own, and the results are not encouraging for Team Testosterone. Yet this gender discrepancy doesn’t originate with individuals; in Yellowjackets, Misty flirts with psychopathy, while the sole teen boy, Travis (Kevin Alves), is among the gentlest, most sympathetic characters. It’s about group dynamics. Egomaniacs can be female as well as male, yet where a dozen boys might fight for dominance or over resources, a dozen girls have been taught to cooperate and prioritize the collective. They also benefit from the exhilaration, in all-female environments, of suddenly shedding a shared vector of oppression.
Thus far, these productions have been quite compelling and refreshingly different. It’s intriguing to note that much of the feminist-themed entertainment often relies on stereotypical female strength and gender roles (essentialism). Characters like Ms. Marvel and Rhaenyra Targaryen from House of the Dragon, once considered powerful, now seem like relics of a past era. However, what these matriarchal stories seem to grasp is that women endure hardships, regardless of whether they’re battling cold weather to find food or dealing with an unwanted pregnancy in a region where abortion is illegal. They survive because of unity. These series vary in quality, from the fragmented and discordant The Power, to the deeply layered Yellowjackets. But as examinations of a society at war against women, their insights are equally profound.
It’s important to note that not all women-centric TV shows offer a comprehensive perspective on the world. For instance, they often shy away from contentious topics for modern feminism. Although their casts may appear diverse at first glance and queer relationships are prominently featured, sensitive issues such as race, class, and religion are frequently overlooked.
Nothing makes the shows’ matriarchal visions feel as incomplete as the fact that they all remain, through no fault of their creative teams, literally unfinished. Female-dominated societies are apparently as tough to sustain on TV as they are to establish in real life. The Wilds and Y, which both predated the phenomenon that is Yellowjackets, were both canceled before they could wrap up planned multi-season arcs. The first season of Class of ’07 ends on a cliffhanger, and the eight out of nine episodes of The Power’s debut season that I was able to screen in advance introduced multiple stories that seemed to just be getting started. Which makes it hard to gauge the confidence of any show’s creator in a positive outcome for their respective matriarchy.
It appears that only “Yellowjackets,” a series whose second season premiere shattered viewership records on Showtime and has already been renewed for a third, seems destined to conclude its story on its own terms. So far, the show carries a rather bleak tone. The underlying sadness and horror seem deeply connected to the ground that feminism has lost since the ’90s, a time when the series’ unconventional teen cast and music selection heavy on PJ Harvey and Tori Amos suggest, pop culture made an unprecedented space for young women’s anger. It seems unlikely that the show’s characters will successfully incorporate the most liberating aspects of their twisted matriarchy into their lives as middle-aged women in the regressive 2020s.
When we encounter grown-up Lottie, portrayed by Simone Kessell, who heads a group that appears to be a cult but she calls an “intentional community,” it’s evident she has spent her adult life attempting to reconnect with the person she became in the wilderness. She tells her followers, “There exists within you a self that fully comprehends who you are and what you truly desire – a raw, natural essence.” She continues, “And nothing is more agonizing than concealing that self.” As young Lottie, played by an actor from 1998, finally heads towards civilization, she turns to the camera, unleashing a scream that reverberates through time and reaches the present.
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2024-10-02 19:10