'Yellowstone' Speaks the Language of Culture War

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https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/10/a...-sheridan.html

It’s simplistic to label “Yellowstone” a “red-state drama.” But the cowboy soap speaks the language of culture war with a perfect accent.

By James Poniewozik
Nov. 10, 2022

After every national election these days, someone circulates a map that divvies up the country by color, vast swaths of Republican red speckled with accents of Democratic blue. And after every election, someone responds to that image, “Land doesn’t vote.”

This is true, in the literal sense and in the spirit of majority rule. It is not, however, the point of view of last TV season’s highest-rated drama.

On Paramount Network’s “Yellowstone,” which returns for its fifth season on Sunday, land damn sure does vote. It confers political power and wealth and a sense of identity. It is a source of legitimacy and an object of lust.

The more land you have, on “Yellowstone,” the more you matter, no matter what anyone on Twitter complains. And John Dutton (Kevin Costner), the embattled patriarch of a Montana ranch big enough to eat a small northeastern state for breakfast, matters more than anyone.

On one level, the appeal of “Yellowstone” is apolitical and as old as TV. It’s a big, trashy, addictive soap about a family business, like “Dallas” or “House of the Dragon.”

Sibling rivalries are fought, deals plotted, secret paternities revealed. There are wolves and sex and a wolf watching characters have sex. There are gunfights and fisticuffs and bombings. So many people die over the first four seasons, you wonder how Montana’s population grew enough to get a second congressional seat. The plotting is melodramatic, the dialogue unsubtle, the action sublimely over the top. In one episode a character is murdered by having a rattlesnake thrown at his face.

But the show is also a hybrid of something old and new. The creators, Taylor Sheridan and John Linson, have crossbred a throwback Western with a modern antihero drama, let it graze on the myth of the West and hormone-injected it with a rural-vs.-urban culture war.

John Dutton, a Marlboro Man Tony Soprano, runs the Yellowstone Ranch like a quasi-mob. His wranglers, many of them ex-cons, are branded with a “Y” to mark them as his. When they’re not breaking horses, they’re breaking his enemies’ faces (and often one another’s).

He’s as ruthless a father as he is a rancher. He honed each of his children like weapons to defend his interests. He pushed Jamie (Wes Bentley) to become a lawyer and now despises him for it. Beth (Kelly Reilly) is the relentless, cruel corporate killer. (She’s also haunted by guilt over the accidental death of her mother when she was a child; “Yellowstone” has a theme of mothers dying and taking the good in their families with them.) Kayce (Luke Grimes), an ex–Navy SEAL, has become his father’s bloody right hand despite his moral qualms.

As on any good soap, you don’t need to admire any of the Duttons to enjoy “Yellowstone.” But like “Breaking Bad” (or “Sons of Anarchy,” in which Sheridan acted), “Yellowstone” keeps the viewer invested in them by giving them enemies who are worse.

Who is that? Specifically, it’s a string of greedy tycoons who want to buy or steal Dutton’s property and build casinos, condos and ski chalets — to pave paradise and put up a Park City.

But in general, in this saga of land, the enemy is the sea. Or rather, it’s a certain, specific caricature of people who live near the coasts: Surf vs. turf.

It’s white-collar city folk who have degrees and suits. Who drink pour-over coffee. Who don’t know how to wear a bolo tie properly or know that it’s bad luck to put a cowboy hat on a bed. Who fly in from California and raise llamas at their second homes for the tax break. It’s bankers. Lawyers. Vegans.

All these themes have earned “Yellowstone” the label of TV’s “red-state hit,” which is both accurate and oversimplified. Demographically, according to Paramount, the show is most popular across the country’s south and middle. But its conservative tilt is not absolute.

The show rarely ventures into national politics, red, blue or otherwise. Elected state officials figure into the story, but mainly as tools to aid or thwart the Duttons’ schemes. (This may change in Season 5, after a recent twist in which John Dutton, almost on a whim, runs for Montana governor.)

And “Yellowstone” is hardly blind to the reasons white men like John are in charge of all that mountain majesty. Kayce’s Native American wife, Monica (Kelsey Asbille), an American history professor, reads her class a Christopher Columbus journal entry in which he says he could subjugate the Indigenous people of the Bahamas with 50 men. Characters from the nearby reservation are portrayed as complex individuals who are sometimes rivals for the Duttons’ land, sometimes uneasy allies against outsiders. “Yellowstone” might be the one show on TV that can tell your right-wing uncle that white people stole America and not make him change the channel to “Hannity.”

But the series speaks the language of today’s conservative cultural politics with an impeccable accent, dramatizing a last stand to save traditions under siege.