Interesting take. I saw a few episodes of the show on a plane and found it unappealing for basically the same reasons Rob describes, but I’ve heard the show described as ‘peak tv for red states’- so I’m surprised to see it described as progressive or hear that conservative activists are dragging it. My impression was that it’s meant to present people who do things like cattle ranching as heroic figures preserving a virtuous way of life in the face of less virtuous modern ways of living like actually making money.
The show’s apparent popularity among right wing boomers is rather revealing about some of the pathologies of this demographic in my view. The very fact that John Dutton is regarded as some kind of protagonist is amusing in its own right as he’s basically launching an actual war that results in several deaths just to prevent anyone from disrupting his antiquated hobbies; the way that outsiders and ‘transplants’ (basically people who have real jobs and want to conduct regular business in Montana) are depicted as cartoon villains is eye-rolling. I was genuinely unclear if the audience is meant to sympathize with the Duttons at all but I think they are considered the protagonists, even when engaging in unsavory behavior.
I often hear from right wing media that liberal elites look down at rural conservatives and think they are better. In my view, this has it backwards: urban liberals don’t think about rural America much at all- the idea that some hipsters in Brooklyn are wasting any brain space on the goings on in rural Montana reflects a weird kind of delusional narcissism. By contrast, as reflected in this show, rural conservatives create whole tv series devoted to depicting themselves as superior to everyone else, featuring lurid fantasies of physical violence carried out against outsiders and long diatribes against ‘transplants.’ I can’t think of a counter example of a liberal tv show where some hipster gives an extended soliloquy about how much better he is than cattle ranchers and then arranges to have them murdered purely out of spite. But maybe I’ve been misreading the show altogether and everyone else agrees that the Duttons are losers.
The entire plot of the Daily Show/Jon Oliver/etc is that liberal coastal elites are better human beings than poor uneducated fly over state trash. Do you not have a TV? This message is EVERYWHERE in the popular culture.
Yellowstone is Trojan Horse Wokism. It’s made to distract the deplorables with something shiny they think is sympathetic to them and then slam them with over the top wokism when they aren’t looking.
Traditional cattle ranching is only unprofitable because of factory farming methods that (a) systematically torture animals and (b) employ cheap immigrant labour that is only cheap because the government is footing the bill.
True, traditional cattle ranching could be greatly improved by adopting regenerative methods thus representing a positive externality (for which, ideally, the ranchers would be compensated). But even without that they are justly incensed that they cannot compete with farming practices that, quite simply, should be illegal.
Have you ever eavesdropped on conversations in Park Slope coffee shops? I find the stereotypes of Brooklyn hipsters aren’t far off, though their idea of rural America is more upstate NY and interior NJ. Montana may as well be Afghanistan.
I have no doubt that if you dropped the patrons of a park slope coffee shop off at the Dutton ranch you’d get some negative reactions. I think you’d get some positive reactions too, at least superficially, because part of the experience of hipsters is an underlying self loathing that manifests in a constant search for something more authentic; the real hipsters might find the ranch experience ironic and get a kick out of wearing a cowboy hat. But I take your point that they would consider the Duttons pathetically primitive yokels, especially if they got to talking about politics, religion, art, etc.
But of course, that would only happen if you forcibly relocated these people to rural Montana. My point was that it would be unlikely to even come up since they wouldn’t devote much brain space to rural America in the first place. I haven’t spent too much time eavesdropping in park slope, but the reason they call it flyover country is because you don’t think about it at all, positive or negative- I would guess they’d be more likely to talk about where in Brooklyn to get the best banh mi sandwiches or something. They certainly don’t make tv shows about some heroic liberal bravely fighting off some culturally inferior rural conservatives, at least not that I’m aware of.
Cattle ranching is not a very profitable enterprise; it was once more profitable but a lot of ranches have gone out of business as they can’t compete with modern industry, and a lot of small family ranches continue the practice basically as a hobby. As they take up a lot of land, their property tax bills are quite high, and a lot of ranchers want some kind of tax relief to protect their particular antiquated and unprofitable business model. This was basically the story of the Bundy ranch showdown from a few years ago: the Bundys had their cows grazing on federal land but didn’t want to pay grazing fees to the bureau of land management, because apparently the federal government has an obligation to give them things for free owing to the supposed importance of their way of life. The Duttons depicted on the show are engaged in a comparable struggle.
I should have suspected something like that. The market moveth this way and the market moveth that way. When watching Western movies on TV or YouTube and the interior of a ranch house is shown, I find myself looking for the electronics and marveling that they were not there then. Robert Redford has, I believe, a hobby (or political virtue signal) ranch in Montana. If so, hes a Leftist symbolizing Rightism. Importance of their way of life to whom and for what?
Yeah that is odd that even Hollywood liberals find the rural lifestyle somehow romantic. I think there are a few other celebrities who’ve acquired ranches as a kind of luxury asset, and there’s a flourishing tourist industry of city people or Californians who go to Wyoming and Montana to ride horses and have a kind of cowboy fantasy camp. It sort of speaks to the point I made above, that this impression among rural conservatives that elites are looking down on them is mostly a figment of their imagination, part of the wider ecosystem of right wing grievance politics.
Interestingly, the basic scenario I described is alluded to at one point in the show but without acknowledging the underlying implications. In one early episode, Chief Rainwater gloats to John that when he dies, his children will never be able to pay the inheritance tax on all that land, and the tribe will buy it and tear down the Dutton ranch, a scenario unthinkable to John. The thing is, if the ranch were a real business, his children could just pay the tax with a loan secured against future profits, at least if they think that’s a good investment. But John knows as well as you and I do that that would never happen because the ranch is not a profitable enterprise. It’s just an antiquated hobby that they’ve imagined has some historic importance and need to preserve in the face of market realities and common sense.
This is actually even more silly if you know a bit about western history. Most of these family ranches were acquired not through any particularly noble means but through the homestead act, a welfare program that granted free large plots of land to otherwise landless families (accomplished through other initiatives that waged genocide on the natives, but that’s another story). So these ranches aren’t really sustainable now, but arguably they never were when you factor in this massive federal government investment and all the infrastructure that went along with it. To me this is a real foundational irony of American politics, that rural people think of themselves as somehow self reliant, even though the entirety of American history has involved massive wealth transfers from urban areas to keep rural communities afloat. The lifestyle depicted has never been sustainable, and yet we’re supposed to find it somehow romantic or heroic.
Excellent post and the last paragraph is spot on. My only objection is that I think deep down it bothers rural conservatives more that liberal elites do not think about them at all where as rural conservatives think about liberal elites ALL THE TIME. Being looked down on or hated would allow some semblance of a playing field with the people that they dislike.
I'd disagree that Yellowstone is woke - it quite deliberately lets characters have different points of view and doesn't try at all to cram an ideology down its viewers' throats. It's no accident that Beth, who is profoundly unwoke, has become a wildly popular character among women viewers, for example. And Thomas Rainwater isn't very woke as the ex-Wall Street tribal chief committed to using the market to recover tribal lands.
You might take a look at the special issue of PERC Reports from the Property and Environment Research Center, where a number of PERC-affiliated folks (including me) wrote about free market environmental themes we found in particular scenes in the show. Taylor Sheridan joined us via Zoom for part of the conference where we discussed our pieces and in his remarks he stressed his view that entertainment shows shouldn't be pushing ideologies on viewers but let them make up their own minds. https://www.perc.org/2021/12/06/the-yellowstone-we-know/
Great episode, but can Rob please not spoil TV shows other than the one that's being discussed? He gave what sounds like a major spoiler for Succession, which I was planning to watch.
This show just seems like very typical Taylor Sheridan. If you’ve seen the movies he’s written, the common themes are: they’re neo-westerns that lionize the downtrodden in a populist fashion, like poor uneducated types or native Americans on reservations, who are being victimized by a big bank or oil company; also, narratively pretty straightforward. Wind River and Hell or High Water were both good but very conventional movies.
If I had to impute an ideology to SherIdan’s work it’d probably be class-first leftish with some primitivism mixed in. Sheridan is at his best when he’s making movies with straightforward plots, well done action scenes and reasonably engaging if mildly cliche characters. He can make a good 2 hours worth of entertainment out of that, but running a TV show just doesn’t seem like it would be his forte. It requires a lot more enduring creativity than making a decent film.
Your really off beam on this one. I subscribed to your Stack to see how far you’ve gone. You say you’re not truly right wing just someone whose a Contrarian. I consider myself a Contrarian in that I like to challenge mainstream thinking. But from what I’ve seen of your latest Stacks they’re just outright right wing attack. I’m still struggling to see how Yellowstone even figures in the woke debate to be honest. If any show challenges wokeness it’s Yellowstone.
I've watched it a little, there are some interesting themes from living close to the range. The thing that bothers me the most is that it's never snowing and freezing cold in Montana in this show!! Anyone who's lived there knows this is the biggest falsehood of all
Interesting take. I saw a few episodes of the show on a plane and found it unappealing for basically the same reasons Rob describes, but I’ve heard the show described as ‘peak tv for red states’- so I’m surprised to see it described as progressive or hear that conservative activists are dragging it. My impression was that it’s meant to present people who do things like cattle ranching as heroic figures preserving a virtuous way of life in the face of less virtuous modern ways of living like actually making money.
The show’s apparent popularity among right wing boomers is rather revealing about some of the pathologies of this demographic in my view. The very fact that John Dutton is regarded as some kind of protagonist is amusing in its own right as he’s basically launching an actual war that results in several deaths just to prevent anyone from disrupting his antiquated hobbies; the way that outsiders and ‘transplants’ (basically people who have real jobs and want to conduct regular business in Montana) are depicted as cartoon villains is eye-rolling. I was genuinely unclear if the audience is meant to sympathize with the Duttons at all but I think they are considered the protagonists, even when engaging in unsavory behavior.
I often hear from right wing media that liberal elites look down at rural conservatives and think they are better. In my view, this has it backwards: urban liberals don’t think about rural America much at all- the idea that some hipsters in Brooklyn are wasting any brain space on the goings on in rural Montana reflects a weird kind of delusional narcissism. By contrast, as reflected in this show, rural conservatives create whole tv series devoted to depicting themselves as superior to everyone else, featuring lurid fantasies of physical violence carried out against outsiders and long diatribes against ‘transplants.’ I can’t think of a counter example of a liberal tv show where some hipster gives an extended soliloquy about how much better he is than cattle ranchers and then arranges to have them murdered purely out of spite. But maybe I’ve been misreading the show altogether and everyone else agrees that the Duttons are losers.
The entire plot of the Daily Show/Jon Oliver/etc is that liberal coastal elites are better human beings than poor uneducated fly over state trash. Do you not have a TV? This message is EVERYWHERE in the popular culture.
Yellowstone is Trojan Horse Wokism. It’s made to distract the deplorables with something shiny they think is sympathetic to them and then slam them with over the top wokism when they aren’t looking.
Watch this scene for example:
https://youtu.be/YscqvroL7vg
Traditional cattle ranching is only unprofitable because of factory farming methods that (a) systematically torture animals and (b) employ cheap immigrant labour that is only cheap because the government is footing the bill.
True, traditional cattle ranching could be greatly improved by adopting regenerative methods thus representing a positive externality (for which, ideally, the ranchers would be compensated). But even without that they are justly incensed that they cannot compete with farming practices that, quite simply, should be illegal.
Have you ever eavesdropped on conversations in Park Slope coffee shops? I find the stereotypes of Brooklyn hipsters aren’t far off, though their idea of rural America is more upstate NY and interior NJ. Montana may as well be Afghanistan.
I have no doubt that if you dropped the patrons of a park slope coffee shop off at the Dutton ranch you’d get some negative reactions. I think you’d get some positive reactions too, at least superficially, because part of the experience of hipsters is an underlying self loathing that manifests in a constant search for something more authentic; the real hipsters might find the ranch experience ironic and get a kick out of wearing a cowboy hat. But I take your point that they would consider the Duttons pathetically primitive yokels, especially if they got to talking about politics, religion, art, etc.
But of course, that would only happen if you forcibly relocated these people to rural Montana. My point was that it would be unlikely to even come up since they wouldn’t devote much brain space to rural America in the first place. I haven’t spent too much time eavesdropping in park slope, but the reason they call it flyover country is because you don’t think about it at all, positive or negative- I would guess they’d be more likely to talk about where in Brooklyn to get the best banh mi sandwiches or something. They certainly don’t make tv shows about some heroic liberal bravely fighting off some culturally inferior rural conservatives, at least not that I’m aware of.
> cattle ranching as heroic figures preserving a virtuous way of life in the face of less virtuous modern ways of living like actually making money.
So cattle ranchers dont make money?
Cattle ranching is not a very profitable enterprise; it was once more profitable but a lot of ranches have gone out of business as they can’t compete with modern industry, and a lot of small family ranches continue the practice basically as a hobby. As they take up a lot of land, their property tax bills are quite high, and a lot of ranchers want some kind of tax relief to protect their particular antiquated and unprofitable business model. This was basically the story of the Bundy ranch showdown from a few years ago: the Bundys had their cows grazing on federal land but didn’t want to pay grazing fees to the bureau of land management, because apparently the federal government has an obligation to give them things for free owing to the supposed importance of their way of life. The Duttons depicted on the show are engaged in a comparable struggle.
I should have suspected something like that. The market moveth this way and the market moveth that way. When watching Western movies on TV or YouTube and the interior of a ranch house is shown, I find myself looking for the electronics and marveling that they were not there then. Robert Redford has, I believe, a hobby (or political virtue signal) ranch in Montana. If so, hes a Leftist symbolizing Rightism. Importance of their way of life to whom and for what?
Yeah that is odd that even Hollywood liberals find the rural lifestyle somehow romantic. I think there are a few other celebrities who’ve acquired ranches as a kind of luxury asset, and there’s a flourishing tourist industry of city people or Californians who go to Wyoming and Montana to ride horses and have a kind of cowboy fantasy camp. It sort of speaks to the point I made above, that this impression among rural conservatives that elites are looking down on them is mostly a figment of their imagination, part of the wider ecosystem of right wing grievance politics.
Interestingly, the basic scenario I described is alluded to at one point in the show but without acknowledging the underlying implications. In one early episode, Chief Rainwater gloats to John that when he dies, his children will never be able to pay the inheritance tax on all that land, and the tribe will buy it and tear down the Dutton ranch, a scenario unthinkable to John. The thing is, if the ranch were a real business, his children could just pay the tax with a loan secured against future profits, at least if they think that’s a good investment. But John knows as well as you and I do that that would never happen because the ranch is not a profitable enterprise. It’s just an antiquated hobby that they’ve imagined has some historic importance and need to preserve in the face of market realities and common sense.
This is actually even more silly if you know a bit about western history. Most of these family ranches were acquired not through any particularly noble means but through the homestead act, a welfare program that granted free large plots of land to otherwise landless families (accomplished through other initiatives that waged genocide on the natives, but that’s another story). So these ranches aren’t really sustainable now, but arguably they never were when you factor in this massive federal government investment and all the infrastructure that went along with it. To me this is a real foundational irony of American politics, that rural people think of themselves as somehow self reliant, even though the entirety of American history has involved massive wealth transfers from urban areas to keep rural communities afloat. The lifestyle depicted has never been sustainable, and yet we’re supposed to find it somehow romantic or heroic.
The market moveth this way and the market moveth that way. Ignore it and you end in the dustbin of history w/Marx and your Leftism.
Excellent post and the last paragraph is spot on. My only objection is that I think deep down it bothers rural conservatives more that liberal elites do not think about them at all where as rural conservatives think about liberal elites ALL THE TIME. Being looked down on or hated would allow some semblance of a playing field with the people that they dislike.
Interesting interview with Taylor Sheridan about the show that fits with a lot of what Rob's views here: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-features/taylor-sheridan-yellowstone-interview-1235519261/
I'd disagree that Yellowstone is woke - it quite deliberately lets characters have different points of view and doesn't try at all to cram an ideology down its viewers' throats. It's no accident that Beth, who is profoundly unwoke, has become a wildly popular character among women viewers, for example. And Thomas Rainwater isn't very woke as the ex-Wall Street tribal chief committed to using the market to recover tribal lands.
You might take a look at the special issue of PERC Reports from the Property and Environment Research Center, where a number of PERC-affiliated folks (including me) wrote about free market environmental themes we found in particular scenes in the show. Taylor Sheridan joined us via Zoom for part of the conference where we discussed our pieces and in his remarks he stressed his view that entertainment shows shouldn't be pushing ideologies on viewers but let them make up their own minds. https://www.perc.org/2021/12/06/the-yellowstone-we-know/
> Thomas Rainwater
Rainmaker?
It’s Trojan Horse Wokism just like Peaky Blinders.
> but it can also be fun to turn your brain off for an hour and enjoy...
...cable TV news and politicians. Its even more fun if youre stoned.
Great episode, but can Rob please not spoil TV shows other than the one that's being discussed? He gave what sounds like a major spoiler for Succession, which I was planning to watch.
As a tail-end boomer, I will attest that Yellowstone is not woke. The characters are repellent, and the overt ideology predates Ayn Rand.
Plus everything gets solved by killing someone, for which no one gies to prison. (How does law enforcement know nothing of the gigantic open grave?)
Token sprinkles of contemporary matters are still solved using the Rand hymn book.
The rest is ridiculous soap opera. It's entertainment, not woke.
This show just seems like very typical Taylor Sheridan. If you’ve seen the movies he’s written, the common themes are: they’re neo-westerns that lionize the downtrodden in a populist fashion, like poor uneducated types or native Americans on reservations, who are being victimized by a big bank or oil company; also, narratively pretty straightforward. Wind River and Hell or High Water were both good but very conventional movies.
If I had to impute an ideology to SherIdan’s work it’d probably be class-first leftish with some primitivism mixed in. Sheridan is at his best when he’s making movies with straightforward plots, well done action scenes and reasonably engaging if mildly cliche characters. He can make a good 2 hours worth of entertainment out of that, but running a TV show just doesn’t seem like it would be his forte. It requires a lot more enduring creativity than making a decent film.
Your really off beam on this one. I subscribed to your Stack to see how far you’ve gone. You say you’re not truly right wing just someone whose a Contrarian. I consider myself a Contrarian in that I like to challenge mainstream thinking. But from what I’ve seen of your latest Stacks they’re just outright right wing attack. I’m still struggling to see how Yellowstone even figures in the woke debate to be honest. If any show challenges wokeness it’s Yellowstone.
https://youtu.be/YscqvroL7vg
I've watched it a little, there are some interesting themes from living close to the range. The thing that bothers me the most is that it's never snowing and freezing cold in Montana in this show!! Anyone who's lived there knows this is the biggest falsehood of all