My latest streaming binge has been “Yellowstone” on Amazon Prime, the massive, sprawling Dutton family saga written by Taylor Sheridan, executive produced by and starring Kevin Costner.
“Yellowstone” is hard to get a grip on, but it’s gripping. What exactly it says about America I’m not sure; but it’s not all that kind to cowboys, and it’s pretty nice to Indians (to use the term Native Americans use themselves). Which is good as far as it goes, because we stole their land, their livelihoods, their cultures, and their dignity and left them to fit into white Christian America. And what’s a liberal arts blog without a little cultural criticism?
I need to say first off that I tried watching “Yellowstone” (the six-season contemporary series, which is part of the mega-series on the Dutton clan in Montana that includes “1883” and “1923,” all produced by Costner) several years ago. It didn’t take. The show concept intrigued me at the time, but most of the main characters were so repulsive that I had to stop watching; I just couldn’t stomach most them.
A year or two ago, I began the earlier series – “1883” and “1923” – and found them very watchable. “1923” is the best of the lot, mostly because it stars Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren as the patriarchal couple of that era’s Dutton family, but also because it teeters between the old and the new West, and because it’s deeply revealing about the corrupt relation of Americans to the West and its native people. Not counting the first few episodes, which take place largely in Africa and are extravagantly irrelevant to the main story lines, “1923” is a masterpiece of visual storytelling. So, to a lesser extent, are the prequel “1883,” and “Yellowstone” itself.
And so I returned to “Yellowstone,” the up-to-date story of the Duttons, a few months ago. Most of the characters remained horrible. Beth Dutton (played by the British actress Kelly Reilly), the daughter of John Dutton (Costner), is cartoonishly nasty and obscene. Costner himself fine-tunes his patriarchal role to depict a cowboy who loves the land, respects the natives, and fights developers – albeit ruthlessly and often violently.
I don’t know if he’s a great actor, but the tell that he’s at least a very good one is this: you want him onscreen. He has great lines, which he delivers with authenticity and command; but he also has an eloquent face. (And I suppose a beautiful one, but I’m not a woman.) He’s fundamentally a moralist, although that doesn’t mean he’s always right or well-behaved. In fact, if there’s anything wrong with “Yellowstone,” it’s that it portrays 21st century cowboys behaving exactly like 19th century cowboys. Think Clint Eastwood (or John Wayne) with a cell phone.
Cars and trucks and helicopters abound, but the cowboys mainly remain in their saddles you rarely see any farm machinery, or an actual cop. If “Yellowstone” is to be believed, livestock agents in Montana are the law – period. Guns are fired frequently and with lethal effect.
For all that, “Yellowstone” is extremely watchable. The music is outstanding, including a slew of country-western tunes, and so is the scenery. The villains are villainous and so, often, are the supposed heroes. The horsemanship, in many scenes, is spectacular. Only toward the end of the final season did I again weary of the violence and depravity.
At a recent appearance at the Oscars, Costner cited the film “How the West Was Won” as a turning point in his youth. It is in fact a fine and interesting film (I have written about it in an essay titled “The Kennedy Western.”) Costner neglected to mention one of its glaring flaws, the atrocious title. But I’m guessing that, like the film itself, Costner hovers ambivalently between a romantic view of the West and a revisionist one. “Yellowstone” is a study in such ambivalence. And there’s no getting beyond it: the land and its human history will always be at odds. The people won’t go away, and neither will the ghosts.
Hollywood, to its belated credit, has moved on from romanticizing cowboys and demonizing Indians. The demythologizing began, slowly, more than sixty years ago with films like “How the West Was Won,” “Cheyenne Autumn,” and a few others. And there have been great neo-Westerns set in modern times, including “The Misfits” (my personal favorite and one of Hollywood’s most underrated movies), and the Kirk Douglas film “Lonely Are the Brave”. More recent standout Westerns include “Hostiles” and “Wind River” (both from 2017) and “The Power of the Dog” (2021), directed by Jane Campion and starring Benedict Cumberbatch. Another recent sleeper – among many – is “Broke.”
I remain infatuated with the genre, perhaps as only an Easterner who loves the West and would hope to redeem it can. The locals, I suspect, know it too well – but love it even more. Blame Hollywood for mythologizing the white conquest of the West, and whitewashing its violence and moral atrocity. Credit Hollywood for finally moving forward over the past half-century.
I’m not sure I entirely share Costner’s and Sheridan’s vision of the American West, but there’s certainly some overlap. In “Yellowstone” Costner plays a complex hero: a wise and idealistic quasi-warlord of contemporary Montana who throws his weight around to save his ranch from an assortment of diabolical predators. Some of them, even in the “1923” series, come across as caricatures. But then, maybe the West was settled by caricatures.
My best excuse for watching Yellowstone, if one is needed, is Jimmy: the one important character (other than certain family members) whom one can root for unequivocally. Jimmy (brilliantly played by Jefferson White) is an innocent young hand in the raucous bunkhouse at the Yellowstone Ranch who pays several fearful prices in order to fit in and measure up. He’s treated as the village idiot by the other hands but proves himself up to one challenge after another. I root for Jimmy, and for Montana – the place, that is. I’m guessing Kevin Costner does too.