That F@%*ing Scene : Shauna Beats the Breaks Off Lottie
* This scene analysis contains major spoilers for season two of Yellowjackets. Duh. *
I have a love/hate relationship with fight scenes. They are, in general, predictable, derivative and perverse in their own way, like an absurd choreography executed by people who are way too sexy for the circumstances they're in. But when a fight scene is good, it's fucking awesome. It's memorable. It changes the dynamics between two characters and reframes the entire story within new parameters. Although I'm keeping a lean diet of television nowadays, we had a good example in Yellowjackets recently.
Yellowjackets is a really complicated story to break down in a few sentences, but here’s what you need to know about this scenes : a group of girl is trying to survive winter in the forest after a plane crash, they’re all having visions, Shauna was pregnant since season one an she just lost her baby in a cruel and grueling scene. Oh, she also had a vision of the girls in the cabin eating the baby. So yeah, people are tired, tempers are flaring and shit’s about to go down. Here’s the fight for you to watch.
Why is it so heartbreaking to watch a young girl beat the everloving shit out of her friend?
I’ve identified four reasons:
They’re friends. Duh. This beating is not supposed to happen. Shauna and Lottie aren't enemies who need to assert social dominance over one another. They love each other, but dire circumstances, immaturity and regrettable choices have created a rift between the two young girls. You can see it earlier in the season where Shauna, who has to cut herself from her feelings a lot to help others survive, turns into protection mode around her baby and doesn't let Lottie do her esoteric crap around her anymore.
A memorable fight is a symptom of something that went wrong between two people. It is never an end in itself. It need to express an emotion a character has been repressing. Usually anger, but in this case heartbreak and pain. Shauna doesn't REALLY want to beat the shit out of Lottie. She wants to punish a culprit for the loss of her child. If Shauna and Lottie hadn't been in such extreme circumstances, this beating would've never happened. It's not the anger that hurts. It's the love.
Lottie offers herself. Another important element that makes this scene powerful is that Lottie doesn't fight back. She sacrifices herself to be the receptacle to Shauna's anger. It's as much of an exorcism than it is a confrontation. There’s a lot of Christian symbolism surrounding Lottie throughout the show: she's wearing white, she has visions, the girls flock around her like a messianic figure, etc. But this scene was the most evident example: Jesus allowing his own crucifixion in the garden of Gethsemane.
The way actress Courtney Eaton puts her hands behind her back and delivers her line : "Let it out. We need you Shauna" also contributes to making that scene so painful and heartbreaking. It's like she could feel Shauna's pain and consciously decided that making her feel better was a more sensible decision than preserving her physical health. Shauna was a ticking time bomb after her child died. The self-sacrifice of Lottie for the greater good, but also for Shauna gave the scene emotional complexity.
The girls are just watching in horror. When I saw the scene for the first time, I was so overwhelmed that I immediately started watching it again and again. One element that doesn't strike right away as important is that no one does anything to separate Shauna and Lottie. Most of them don’t even look away. It's like they understood it had to happen. They watch in polite reverence until Shauna flops at Lottie's side, exhausted from all the violence she just exorcised from her body. But it never feels cowardly.
I think this inaction underlines how important Shauna is to the group. No one ever brings it up. The show doesn't even put it forward, but their reliance on Shauna to arrange to meat (which will be crucial an episode later) explains why she feels so isolated and alienated from the others while she’s the most important member of their little community. That overpowering sense of alienation follows Shauna all her life and contextualizes her older self played by Melanie Lynskey. You finally witness her rage.
Fucking Lightning Crashes. Not every element of a memorable scene has to be intellectually honest. Creators of Yellowjackets Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson are super duper good at using their nineties soundtrack to tug at your heartstrings (remember, the girls are lost in the woods in 1996) and what better song to illustrate a mother's grief than THE song of the nineties about motherly grief, Lightning Crashes by Live. This idea was SUCH a low-hanging fruit, but it works so disgustingly well.
On top of being insanely on topic, Lightning Crashes is a counterintuitive choice for a fight scene. It's a downtempo power ballad. But what it does is highlight the emotions going through Shauna as she attempts to punch poor Lottie through the floorboards. She's not angry or righteous. She's in pain. Total, overwhelming, all consuming pain… and Lightning Crashes is a song about total, overwhelming, all consuming pain. This stylistic choice is both exploitative of nostalgia and ridiculously on point.
