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Yellowstone is back with its fifth season, and over 15 million viewers have been waiting for it. It’s as big as House of the Dragon with its 20 million viewers but barely gets as much attention in the media as the Game of Thrones prequel. In a feature in The Atlantic, series creator Taylor Sheridan bristled at the show being dismissed as “anti-woke.”
“They refer to it as ‘the conservative show’ or ‘the Republican show’ or ‘the red-state Game of Thrones, and I just sit back laughing,” Sheridan said. “I’m like, ‘Really?’ The show’s talking about the displacement of Native Americans and the way Native American women were treated and about corporate greed and the gentrification of the West, and land-grabbing. That’s a red-state show?”
Yellowstone is a multigenerational saga about the Dutton family, led by John Dutton (Kevin Costner), who controls the largest cattle ranch in the country. Amid shifting alliances, unsolved murders, open wounds, and hard-earned respect – the ranch is in constant conflict with those it borders – an expanding town, an Indian reservation, and America’s first national park, as well as coastal corporations out to seize the land to build hotels, casinos, and condominiums for rich coastal elites looking to buy secondary luxury homes. For John Dutton, life is a constant war against invaders out to seize his family’s land, and he and his children are soldiers fighting it. The fight is often literal, with Dutton’s adopted surrogate son Rip (Wings Hauser) and his youngest son Kace (Luke Grimes) often acting as enforcers and assassins, fending off interlopers and hitmen sent after the family. His daughter Beth (Kelly Reilly) is the most feral and ruthless of them all, eager to help her father out of loyalty even as she knows their ranch and his way of life is doomed.
Calling Yellowstone ‘Anti-Woke’ is a Lazy Elitist Liberal Stance
East and West Coast liberal writers in the major media outlets see cowboy hats and horses and turn their noses so high in the air they might fly off their faces. This is typical liberal laziness and lack of imagination. They’ve written millions of words dissecting The Sopranos and talk about the social issues, and urban blight in The Wire; they swoon unironically about incest and misogyny in House of the Dragons, swooning unironically about how sexy they think murderous incest f***boi Prince Daemon (Matt Smith) is as he seduces and marries his niece while ignoring how Yellowstone is about fighting misogyny, racism, gentrification and class war as a ruthless, fanatical crime family uses its political influence to hold onto its land.
Anyone who calls Yellowstone ‘anti-woke’ hasn’t been watching it. It’s strongly anti-racist, has feminism all over it in its autonomous and independent female characters who are smarter than the men and more ruthless, and has featured at least one gay couple (granted, one-half of them is murdered, not for being gay but being a reporter threatening to expose the Duttons’ activities) on top of ongoing sympathy for the legacy of the near genocide of indigenous people. It’s a lot more anarchic and woke than CBS’ Blue Bloods, which is the epitome of a Conservative show on American television right now.
Yellowstone is Not Totally on The Duttons’ Side
John Dutton runs his ranch with an iron hand. The ranch comes first for him, which makes his ideology conservative and could be read as an “America First” analogy. This does not mean he and his family are the heroes of the story. They’re antiheroes. The Duttons are a dysfunctional family full of betrayal and vicious fights. John has raised his children under the dictum that the ranch and the family come first, and they are all damaged by it.
The Politics of Yellowstone are Complicated
John Dutton’s politics may be conservative, but he is an antihero. There’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it line in the last season where John Duttons is asked to run for governor against the Republicans. Tribal leader Thomas Rainwater (Gil Birmingham) plots a long-game strategy to get the land back from Dutton for his people by first planning a casino but has to ally himself with the corporate powers seeking to gentrify the land, then finds himself having to side with Dutton when a worse party moves against them both.
The worst villains in Yellowstone are corporate capitalists and the Far-Right militias and white supremacists they ally with. That’s far from anti-Woke. There’s ongoing anger in Sheridan’s scripts against class injustice, racism, and racial injustice, particularly at the near genocide of the Native American population and the abuse and murder of Native American women. In this series and Mayor of Kingstown, Sheridan makes no bones about portraying white supremacists and Neo-Nazis as the absolute worst of humanity that deserve to be put down like mad dogs in shootouts rousingly directed with the same visceral intensity of a Michael Mann movie.
Yellowstone is Deeply Ambivalent about the Myth of America
In Yellowstone, Sheridan is tackling the Grand Theme that other Western shows don’t: the corrupted legacy of the American Frontier. Yellowstone ranch is an allegory for America, not the America of the coastal elite cities, but the America of the frontier. It’s not seen through rose-tinted glasses. It’s a land that was seized by white men from the Native population and fought over greedily and jealously with a large trail of bodies of both enemies and loyalists. It’s tainted by bloodshed and murder, still fought over by the ones holding it. Sheridan’s writing frequently questions whether the Duttons or the corporations truly have any right to claim the land. A Chinese tourist in season one states outright that no man should have the right to own this much land and keep it for himself.
The Duttons are Not “The Good Guys”
The Duttons are America: ruthless, fanatic, and violently protective, yet with their own moral and ethical code. Their actions are frequently extreme, shocking, and sometimes insane. Any admiration for them might end up grudging. The show might celebrate the traditions of the cowboy life through Jimmy Hurdstrom (Jefferson White) finding his purpose in life in a career at the rodeo, and the nostalgia for the West might be a Trojan Horse for exploring the show’s themes of ruthless class and land warfare as well as the historical and ongoing injustice suffered by Native Americans. The series is a crime melodrama, the Duttons are practically a crime family, Corleones in cowboy hats. Sheridan knew what he was doing in casting Kevin Costner and subverting his heroic cowboy image for the stoic family patriarch John Dutton, who rules over his ranch and his family with an iron hand, demanding absolute loyalty, going as far as having the most loyal ranch hands branded to prove their loyalty. Yellowstone ranch is more than a cattle and horse business, more than a crime family. John Dutton is the head of a cult, and that cult is an allegory for America. We’re not meant to admire or respect that Rip has the cowboys branded. That part of the show is written and shot to be shocking. The supporting characters like Monica, Kace’s wife, who is often the audience stand-n, are horrified when they discover this is done at the ranch. Why would an anti-woke show make a Native American female character the one audience identifies with most for entering the story?
The whole “Yellowstone Saga,” including its prequels and spinoffs, is attempting The Great American Novel for Television. Sheridan loves America, but he’s exploring how broken and flawed it is, and the tragedy of the ruthlessness that created the country has evolved into an even worst ruthless capitalism is going to destroy it in the end.
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