Yellowstone has always been political
At its most basic, thematic level, Yellowstone is about land.
Who owns the land, who uses the land, and for what purpose. Land as identity, land as a vehicle for profit, land as a sacred trust.
This is as political as it gets. Native Americans, settlers, the environment, capitalism. Differing views of humankind's relationship to nature, of land stewardship, of purpose. These are often the most political issues of our world. In The Yellowstone -- not the show, the place -- Native reservation and casino, National Park, cattle ranch, vacation boomtown -- this is inherently and profoundly political.
In case you missed it, they threw up some billboards
In Season 5, the political messaging becomes heavy-handed. Perhaps, with the show's end in sight, Taylor Sheridan wanted to make sure we all "got it". Perhaps the earlier seasons were crafted by better writers, who had less at stake than Sheridan. And perhaps viewers who found Yellowstone suddenly political were reacting to some of the awkward and more obvious billboards.
In the first episode of S5, there's a particularly clunky scene at the Montana-Canada border. Some RCMP officers on horseback (their jackets say POLICE, I suppose to not confuse an American audience?) confront a group of American ranchers in a skirmish about stolen horses.
The Canadian police declare: "It might be the Wild West on that side, but on this side rules are the foundation of order, and order holds the flanks of a civilized society." Kayce Dutton, both rancher and Wildlife officer, dismisses the Canadians as "sheep", and asserts his property rights, daring the order-keepers to challenge him.
Some progressive commentators were horrified, because don't all right-thinking Americans see the rule of law as sacrosanct? Well, do they? Do progressive people agree that the rule of law supersedes all? I don't think so. If we did, how would Harriet Tubman and Rosa Parks be heroes? Ranching and chattel slavery: the laws defied in these examples are very different. But both situations assert that there are values more important than what a government declares to be the law.
Yet even with these awkward, heavy-handed moments, I can't see the politics being telegraphed here as Trumpism.
The Duttons and their culture are staunch libertarians. The show conveniently omits some of the gross contradictions of the libertarian right. We don't see health care, or schools, or even how electricity is produced and delivered -- any of the shared resources that even libertarians might use. We only see the "freedoms" that Taylor Sheridan wants us to see. But there's nothing sinister about that. A grand, stirring series about, say, organizing factory workers probably won't show you the dark side of labour unions, either.
But here's the thing. If Yellowstone's politics were Trumpism, would the show consistently acknowledge that the land was stolen, taken by force, from the original inhabitants? If it were MAGA, would the show be chock-full of incredibly fierce, smart women -- women who are the unquestioned head of their families -- and strong men who consistently and honourably defer to them?
If the show followed Trump values, would it be anti-fracking? Would it portray environmental vandalism as heroic civil disobedience? And would it emphatically insist that the best use of land is no use at all -- that the highest purpose land can have is wilderness? This is a far cry from Drill Baby Drill.
An elegy for a way of life
In addition to the family drama, romance, murder, intrigue, and tragedy, Season 5 is an elegy.
Yellowstone S5 lifts up the cowboys' and ranchers' cultures, bathed in a warm glow of love and deep respect, and asks us to admire and mourn it. It shows us a way of life that is flawed, dangerous, often cruel and ugly, and at the same time, profoundly beautiful. A philosophy that worships individual freedom, yet is consciously steeped in community. A culture that is dying, but remains alive, because people are choosing to create it and live it.
As with other worlds we have seen onscreen, such as the "Godfather" saga, the cowboy and ranching culture is rife with contradictions: violence, cruelty, love, honour; respect for nature and dominance over it; machismo and equality; the bonds of chosen family above all. As a cultural ethnography, it compares to books of previous eras such as A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Call It Sleep that elegized the urban immigrant experience: something both ugly and beautiful. Something to be endured and celebrated.
The billboarding can get tiresome. One character -- a vegan environmentalist whose presence is sometimes used as a foil -- actually says, "People think you're all a bunch of misogynist bigots who ruin the environment, but that's not what I found here." Right. We got it. Yellowstone asks us to see cattle ranchers as environmental stewards. That may be a tough sell, but compared to the multinational corporations that want to build condos, malls, and luxury resorts on the same land, they are.
I wonder if those who see right-wing politics in Yellowstone are reacting to a work that humanizes a culture that they reflexively oppose.
I also cross-reference some books I recently read -- or tried to, but couldn't, because they were too heartbreaking: Vanishing New York: How a Great City Lost Its Soul and How to Kill a City. The same forces that are destroying New York, San Francsico, and other great cities around the globe are the same forces ruining Montana: unchecked greed, arrogant entitlement, the blind quest for profit, and total disregard for the environment -- whether that environment is natural or human-created.
In Yellowstone, references to New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco are often used as a shorthand for these forces, not unlike the way progressives use "Texas" as a stand-in for many things we despise. When you're tempted to yell at the screen that New York is more than entitled elites looking for unspoiled wilderness to use as vacation playgrounds, you might remember that Texas is more than xenophobic, homophobic book-banners, and fetus-fetishers.
I suppose you could watch Yellowstone yelling at your screen about the virtues of veganism and the joys of urban life. Or you could maybe learn something about how some other people live.
* I watched S1-4 on Prime, then S5 got paywalled behind Paramount Plus. But only the first half of Season 5 was available. I don't read entertainment news, so I didn't know why the second half of the show was delayed. (I do now.) I waited -- and waited and waited -- for the remaining episodes of S5 to drop before ponying up for Paramount. My plan is to complete Yellowstone, watch both prequels -- "1883" and "1923" -- and possibly "Landman," then cancel Paramount. There's nothing on it that I care about that I don't have access to elsewhere. I'm particularly curious how the prequels approach Indigenous/settler issues.
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