I have to admit that. I avoided Yellowstone like the plague for the first five seasons. I saw a trailer full of Kevin Costner’s Cowboy dad drag and a fanbase that seemed like mostly white republicans from Midwestern. It seemed that it had to be a MAGA propaganda tool, or at least a rather mushy Americana dreck. But it is, by far, the most popular program in the United States (and is being based on the cheapest to find the most popular Paramount Network in the world). In particular, the program has already spawned two star-studded prequel series, (81 stars Sam Elliott and 1923 star Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren, and is unlikely to succeed) or be forced to change their mind. And many smart and insightful critics, like Mark Harris, love the program – and so I thought what I lost?
I decided to concentrate on it.
And boy was glad I did it! I only have one season in a half, but this isn’t the case now. The first season starts with John Dutton having to shoot his horse after both were badly injured when a semi hit his trailer. It’s not Hallmark. He’s the father. But in cowboys. We watch the Dutton family extort, kill and bully their way through Montana to keep their vast ranching empire intact. I’m the first to say that someone who could hurt the Duttons is murdered in almost every episode of the first season. My youngest son, Kayce, knows how many of these are! Dutton frequently assigns the dirtiest and most violent work to his senior ranch hand Rip, who is actually more like an active Mafia enforcer in a Stetson. The family hates each other like an ordinary thing. The siblings Beth and Jamie are constantly kissing each other, and even grabbing their hand, and Kayce refuses to live on the ranch (at first) after his father brands him. And remember that that dad is Kevin Costner. It’s a bad year. What was your best success?
That is not the most disturbing part. The most disturbing part is the show politics. It is not propaganda conservative like MAGA despite the sexy cowboys and beautiful rural landscapes. Like in Succession or the Billions or the Corleones, this family is all rich, miserable and evil monsters. If the show doesn’t give us a lift when we like them and watch them, it lets us forget they are very evil. And while the Duttons is one of the main antagonists in the Los Angeles real estate market, the one which he says bended the stealing of the Dutton ranch and turning it into a new luxury playground for the rich, the other part is Chief Thomas Rainwater (the fabulous Gil Birmingham), who has the newly elected leader of the Broken Rock Reservation. His goal is to return the Duttons Land, and he isn’t afraid to play a dirty white mans game to do that.
But the show does go out of its way when it’s possible to show that rainwater is usually right, despite his methods. I heard from the show that Duttons took land from the tribes using a forceful, genocidal tactic (as many colonizers were so busy) to give that land an overdose. The show spends half of its time with the native characters, giving them rich materials and space in which they have been transformed into completely fleshed-out characters. Actually, the only one truly good, and decent person who appeared on the show, Monica Dutton (Kayces wife), is a professor at the local school, just so she can teach the science of Columbus and American History in her way. As in speaking to students what the horrible, unvarnished truth is, the teachers tell me.
That’s boy. She was given a lecture, starting with the dressing down a racist and sexist male student, when she was in the middle school. She was once once again a woker to the very day I saw on a television program with me. Here is his whole speech:
After Christopher Columbus arrived to contact Native Americans, the American population was in the Bahamas. I’ll read from Columbus’ journal to you:
They willingly traded everything they owned; they don’t bear arms and don’t know them, I showed them a sword, they wiped it apart and cut themselves out of ignorance. They’ll make nice slaves A fifty-two men would be able to subjugate their all and force them to do the right thing.
Did you feel like this, Trent? Do you really want to make somebody do what you desire? It is a very European mindset, backed by the oppressive political and religious structures of the Renaissance.
That was the mentality of the people who discovered America. Because that is our society’s mentality with whom we face now. Who understands history as the norm of life? I’m not learning that. I’ll teach you what happened. I want to speak with my friends. And to you, I’m on your own. We are all descendants of subjugated people. We’re all the same.
It’s unlikely that she’s an antagonist or bully to the students. She spoke on her behalf (at least now). What is not the right way to start? That brings forth the possibility of sinking into our conservative parents and their families, too.
This is the show that isn’t quite light. It is explicitly depicting those rich Duttons as murder plotters, as they have in fact said, Mark Harris. It’s saying these people, wealthy capitalists, are murderous and evil. Even though we get ready for them, the show does not stop us. They’re the original legacy of the colonization and genocide perpetrated in the country. And they will continue murdering and extorting to hold this territory that didn’t belong to them.
And while yes, most conservative fans still watch the Duttons and think fuck yeah! Similarly, even though they are clicking on short yellowstone lines, they are absorbing the messages of Monica Dutton and Thomas Rainwater. They’re slowly, but surely, getting consumed with the actual progressive text of the show.
(Image: Paramount Network).