Praise for Complicated, Multi-faceted Female Characters
An all-girl soccer team boards an airplane to the state championships but never arrives at their destination. In a sudden plane crash somewhere in the rugged mountains, the teenage girls are stranded with no resources or medical attention. Considered dead to their loved ones who searched for them for months, the team is left to their own devices to survive the approaching winter.
For those who haven’t seen Showtime’s Yellowjackets, the series hits the ground running with a shocking opener that would make any viewer’s blood run cold. Cold, of course, because the scene features a young girl running through a snow-covered forest, being chased by mysterious, woodsy creatures in masks and fur capes.
It takes viewers a while to catch on to Yellowjackets’ jolty rhythm between flashback and present. In fact, it seems to mimic the way visceral memories haunt the surviving characters, who struggle to be normal people after the accident. What seemingly devolves into something similar to Lord of the Flies turns out to be much more sinister and haunting as the plot unfolds.
Yellowjackets was a big win for women everywhere, demonstrating female characters who were complicated, sympathetic, and above all dynamic. Critics and viewers both raved for the series, claiming that they needed more than the ten episodes that had aired. Their prayers have been answered. Showtime announced that filming will begin this summer, promising a chilling focus on the girls’ time surviving in the dead of winter.
An (Almost) All-Female Writers Room
Where survival shows were reserved for Bear Grylls and psychological dramas left to men spiraling into madness to the likes of Dexter, Hannibal, and a long list of titles, representations of women in dire straits have been few and far between.
The few roles where viewers saw women in survival were typically flat, unrealistic, and dependent on sexist stereotypes. Women gathered food or cooked, rather than going out to hunt or fight like their male counterparts. While there have been shows like The Walking Dead that have displayed autonomous, interesting female characters, the fact still remained that the film and television industry was a male-dominated world.
It wasn’t until recently, with the rise of #metoo and gender equality coming front and center, that women began to receive complicated, dynamic roles. That’s not simply because male writers listened to what women had to say about the media. It’s because more women have been able to enter the field and make great work.
Such is the case with Yellowjackets. Showcasing a team of interesting female writers, who have worked on successful titles such as Euphoria, Riverdale, and Jane the Virgin, the team created a chemistry of characters that resulted to be the right amount of explosive, tense, confusing, and tender moments on screen.
The Future is Female
#Metoo set the bar for Hollywood’s climate regarding gender equality, however the ladies of said movement are not the only ones who paved the way for women in the industry. Throughout film and television history, female actresses, hosts, and writers were the often the first in their field. Whether it was Ellen DeGeneres coming out as a lesbian in the early 2000’s or Hattie McDaniel becoming the first Black actress to star in her own comedy show in the 1950’s, these women crawled so their successors could run.
While many women have paved the way for their successors in the film and television industry, that’s not the only industry that’s seeing big changes. Believe it or not, the male-dominated world of poker has taken a turn for the better as women take the lead. One of the many female trailblazers in poker is Jennifer Shahade, who has made it her mission to “play like a girl” and win. This year, she published Chess Queens: The True Story of a Chess Champion and the Greatest Female Players of All Time, where she elaborates on her experiences as a female professional chess player and the genealogy of women chess players who made ripples in the male-dominated pool of chess and poker.
Speaking of ladies with brains, the computer scientist Joy Buolamwini recently made waves in the world of AI and facial recognition. While conducting an experiment on surveillance cameras, she realized that the facial recognition software had inaccurately identified Black people almost every time and women about half the time. Knowing this technology would be dangerous and result in wrongful convictions, Buolamwini founded the Algorithmic Justice League and made a testimony to the House of Representatives to demonstrate the gravity biased facial recognition technology could have on people’s lives. She also writes poetry with code and performs them, including her famous piece, AI, Ain’t I a Woman?
While Buolamwini performs her poetry other artists like Shirin Neshat doesn’t heed others’ definitions of her. A multi-discplinary artist who refuses to call herself a photographer, a filmmaker, or any title that will freeze her to a specific medium, Neshat boldly speaks about women’s rights, her Iranian heritage, and the beauty of process and experimentation. She is best known for her black and white photos of women with textual intervention superimposed over them.
