Nobody Told Me YELLOWSTONE Was Woke

Isn't this supposed to be a Red State show?

Yellowstone is the number one non-sports show on television. It’s on the very unhip Paramount Network and it never seems to crack into the mainstream pop culture world - you rarely see people talking about it, it doesn’t make magazine covers the way HBO shows do, and it’s largely ignored by the tastemakers in the entertainment world. For a long time there has been a huge divide between what TV shows get attention versus what TV shows get eyeballs - 12 million people watched the fifth season Yellowstone premiere this season, while 4.1 million watched the hyped finale of White Lotus, and I don’t have to tell you which of these shows got more coverage, discussion and memeing - and Yellowstone is just the latest show to be very popular but not very cool.

I ignored Yellowstone for most of its existence; like many of you I bought into the larger narrative that this was a corny, Red State oriented show whose politics would make me uncomfortable or be anodyne at best. I didn’t even know anything about the show - I kind of assumed it was a Seventh Heaven-like show filled with sweet family messaging and stand-up guys with a heart of gold. I knew it was a show that appealed to everybody’s grandmother, so my guess was that Yellowstone was a largely safe, middle of the road bore.

Jesus Christ was I wrong. First of all, Yellowstone is not a family-friendly story of frontier bravery, it’s a TV show about, as Mark Harris put it on Twitter, a family of murder lunatics. It’s nowhere near Seventh Heaven and is in fact much more like a cowboy The Godfather - this is a crime family, and a lethal one at that. There’s a stretch in the first season where murders happen every single episode; some of them are righteous (a man who is slowly dying after his meth lab exploded gets put out of his misery) some of them are for sure not (a ranch hand who knows too much wants to quit, so they drive him to the middle of nowhere and put a bullet in his head). Kevin Costner is the paterfamilias of the Dutton clan, owner of the Yellowstone Ranch, and he is first introduced shooting a horse in the face. Graphically, mind you. In season two a veterinarian performs stomach surgery on him while he is awake. Again, very graphic stomach surgery. Your grandma is tuning in every week to watch a show gorier than half the horror movies you were not allowed to watch as a kid.

Every member of the Dutton family is a piece of shit. John Dutton is a monstrously cold-blooded man who mentally and physically abused his children, who demands unthinking loyalty, and who doesn’t hesitate to have his enemies lynched cowboy style. His son Jamie (played by Ghost Rider’s Wes Bentley) is a weaseley lawyer with political aspirations; neither Republican or Democrat he is dedicated only to the Duttons and the Yellowstone - he sees politics as a way to solidify his family’s power. Black sheep son Casey (Luke Grimes) is trying to live a non-criminal life, but he keeps on killing people, and his dad keeps on having to cover it up. Hell, he kills his brother-in-law after his brother-in-law kills his brother. This family is single-handedly depopulating the state of Montana.

Then there’s the daughter Beth (Kelly Reilly). In a world where we are constantly yaas kweening the various badass women on our TV shows it is crazy that Beth Dutton has gone under the cool kid radar. Beth is, without a doubt, the nastiest, most fun and most vicious character I’ve seen in years. She is bitingly funny, terribly behaved, consistently cruel… and under it all a wounded woman who is protecting herself by being the meanest, most dangerous person in the state. She simply rules; every episode she says something so wild and awful that I’m hooting and hollering. While the other characters on the show default to violence, Beth’s methods are way, way crueler - in one storyline she is trying to ruin the life of her father’s rival and makes him think she’s seducing him. But she’s not, and she tells him: “I”m not fucking you. I’m fucking [your wife]. And if you have a brother I’m fucking him too. I’m chopping your family tree down.”

The show is way more hardcore than I ever expected; it’s a big soap but it’s got a lot in common with the kinds of anti-hero shows that have been so popular on cable, like The Sopranos or Breaking Bad. There’s no question that this ranching family who wants to have complete control over the world is anything but evil, but we absolutely love watching them be evil. My favorite character so far is Rip, the head ranch hand (Dazed and Confused’s Cole Hauser) and John Dutton’s personal enforcer. He’s just an incredible badass, a cold-blooded killer and a deeply fucked up tough guy. A great character! And a standard mob story archetype - the loyal lieutenant who perhaps doesn’t get the appreciation he deserves and maybe is starting to resent it.

But more surprising than the foul language and intense violence and entertainingly loathsome characters is the fact that Yellowstone - what I thought was simply a Red State fantasy show about rural white excellence - is perhaps the wokest thing I have seen on TV in years. Episode after episode I find myself wondering what the show’s ostensibly MAGA-esque fanbase is making of the larger political leanings of the program, which are far less black and white than I might have ever expected.

One quick thing: I am still catching up on Yellowstone, and as it is a soapy show it is very possible that any character ends up being bad, getting killed, etc. That’s part of the joy of a program like this, and the show is very much in the vein of classic prime time soaps like Dallas in that way, mixed with the adult-oriented aspects of modern antihero storytelling with a mafia filter thrown over a cowboy story. At any rate, the reason I bring this up is a) don’t spoil shit for me in the comments and b) if a character is later bad, or killed off, I don’t think it really reflects a repudiation of their larger political position. People exist to go bad and get killed off on shows like this.

We are in the middle of a little-remarked upon renaissance of Native American representation on TV. Reservation Dogs, Dark Winds, and the just-canceled Rutherford Falls feature heavily or predominantly Native casts, and while that’s not a lot of shows, the year 2022 had more Native Americans on TV than I have ever seen in my entire life. Then there’s Yellowstone, which also features many prominent Native characters.

In the show John Dutton has one goal: protect his ranch and his family. This brings him into conflict with developers and real estate tycoons, but most of all it brings him into conflict with the local Native American reservation. This conflict is steeped in questions of who exactly should be on this land, how the Duttons ended up where they are and how the Natives ended up where they are and, most excitingly, whether the Natives should learn a thing or two from colonizers about stealing land.

Gil Birmingham (who was in Under the Banner of Heaven this year - more Native representation) plays Chief Thomas Rainwater, the head of the Broken Rock reservation. Rainwater went to an Ivy League school, is a business whiz and, at the end of the day, exactly as ruthless as John Dutton. He’s an antagonist, but I hesitate to call him a villain. For one thing, most of the characters on this show qualify as villains, but for another Rainwater’s motives and perspective are clearly delineated and fully understandable. He’s not wrong. But what I think is especially great is that Rainwater isn’t the only Native character; the show has a bunch of them, and they are as diverse in personality and character type as real people are. There’s no one kind of Native on this show, and the show doesn’t reduce them to standard mystical stereotypes.

In fact the idea that Rainwater can be an antagonist and that his antagonist status is based on the idea that he acts like white people is pretty great, and kind of very progressive. One of the stumbling blocks to representation is the idea that a representative character must be a paragon, must be strong and good and not suffer. None of these things are dramatically interesting. Real representation is when a character can be good or bad, weak or strong, and not have to stand in for all people like them. When you have just one Native character and that character is evil, you’re in a bad place. But you can have an evil Native character when you have other Natives who are different kinds of people.

But again, Rainwater has a point. Yellowstone begins from the idea that not only were Natives the victims of genocide and centuries of oppression, they are currently living in a country that is systemically biased against them. This is exactly the sort of stuff that Ron DeSantis is trying to censor with his Stop WOKE Act; his lawyers have defined being woke as “the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them.” Yellowstone is, by this definition, very woke.

What made me want to write this, though, was a speech given in season two, episode two. It’s given by Monica (Kelsey Asbille*), Casey’s wife and possibly the only fully good character on the show (again, I’m catching up and I would not be surprised to find out Monica goes bad as this is a staple of soaps, but also don’t ruin it for me!). She is Native, and she is a smart, capable and driven woman who is dedicated to being a teacher on the reservation. When she is offered a cushy university gig (orchestrated by John Dutton, who wants black sheep Casey back with the family) she turns it down because she knows if she leaves the rez school they will just be down a teacher - she will not be replaced. The system is stacked against them.

(*in the interests of full disclosure: while there are many Native actors on Yellowstone, in both major and bit parts, it’s possible that Asbille is not one of them. There is some controversy about her heritage; while she has claimed Cherokee heritage the tribe itself has said they could not find evidence that this was true)

As the result of a terrible accident - she tries to get between two students fighting and gets knocked out and slams her head on the concrete (something awful happens to characters every episode in this show. The misery never stops) - Monica gets some brain damage. She has to go through a lengthy rehabilitation and walks with a cane, but she never loses her sharpness. As a result of this she ends up taking the university offer, and the dean gives her a class to teach: American history starting with Columbus.

She asks him if he wants her to teach the myth or the truth, and he assures her that he wants her to teach her truth. And so on the first day of class she gives a speech that I think is more progressive than anything I’ve heard on other ostensibly progressive shows.

But first she takes down an unruly white student. When she comes into class he makes sexist and racist remarks about her, and Monica shuts him down right away:

“Can you tell me the definition of power, Trent? Hmm? It's the ability to direct or influence another's behavior or a course of events. That's what I have... I can remove you from this class and fail you. Or I can send you before the dean for violating the student code of conduct. These are all things that can alter the course of your life. That's power. And you don't have any.”

That’s a really important preamble to the speech she’s about to give, which is all about power and how it has been wielded in America.

"When Christopher Columbus first came in contact with Native Americans, it was the Arawak people in the Bahamas. I'll read to you from Columbus's journal:

“‘They willingly traded us everything they owned... They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They will make fine slaves... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.’

“You ever feel like that, Trent? Ever feel like making someone do what you want, whether they want to or not? It's a very European mentality, stemming from the oppressive political and religious structures of the Renaissance.

“That was the mentality of the men who discovered America. And it is the mentality our society struggles with today... What you know of history is a dominant culture's justification for its actions. And I don't teach that. I'll teach you what happened. To my people. And to yours. Because we are all the descendants of the subjugated. Every one of us.”

To say I was stunned by this speech would be putting it lightly. Even though I had already watched a bunch of episodes of Yellowstone and had begun to realize this show was not Cro-Mag oriented (at the end of season one they had a female ranch hand move into the bunkhouse and it was not a negative plot point - she integrated much better than some of the other new guys) but this speech to me was as clear and concise a statement as could be hoped for.

First, Monica defines power. This is always a problem with our modern social justice conversations, as power can be an amorphous concept. But her definition is simple and understandable and applicable across scenarios. Next, she gives us Columbus’ own words about what a piece of shit he was; there’s not much room to argue against the man himself when he says he’s there to subjugate and enslave people.

Then the speech does what I thought was the most brilliant thing: it acknowledges the role of whiteness and European peoples in global colonization and subjugation while also acknowledging that this is not a function of race or heritage but rather cultural and political systems that sprung up at a certain time and place. Then Monica pulls it back and says that even if your white ancestors colonized and subjugated her people, they were doing it at the behest of people who subjugated them.

This is so vital: Monica’s speech acknowledges the role of whiteness and racism not only in our history but our present, but she also acknowledges that in many ways these issues serve as smoke screens for even more fundamental disparities in class. Lyndon Johnson put it well (with some 1960s appropriate language, mind you):

"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

Monica’s speech covers all of this in a few paragraphs, and it makes it all very digestible. One of the biggest problems, I believe, with crossing ideological divides about identity stuff is that white people can too easily feel attacked when these conversations come up. I’m not saying they’re right or wrong to feel that way, simply that they do. In this sequence Monica does attack a white guy, but she does so in immediate retaliation for his explicitly racist and sexist remarks, and she wraps it up by telling him that he’s the descendent of the subjugated as well. I think this is often the missing piece - many “anti-woke” or “anti-identity politics” white people can’t understand what the idea of privilege means when they look at their own lives and see themselves struggling. Too often the argument that we are all being oppressed by capitalists (aka John Dutton) is trotted out in service of denying or ignoring race-based oppression. Monica does not do that, but rather shows that oppression and subjugation exist on a continuum, with some oppressed people oppressing other people.

Lest you think this show is making Monica bad - after all, she’s teaching on a liberal university campus (in Bozeman Montana - how liberal could it really be?) - after the class we see Trent come up to Monica and apologize. That’s the key final bit of the sequence, which reiterates that Monica is right. Nobody undercuts her perspective. And there’s no conservative pushback - nothing about bootstrapping or judging a man by the content of his character and not his skin and nothing about “my family wasn’t here when this happened.” It’s a purely left wing speech that connects identity politics with class politics very clearly.

Look, the word woke is stupid, but I used it in the title here because I think it’s appropriate when contrasting the level of progressiveness I see on this show with the image of its target audience. People don’t give speeches like this on White Lotus, that’s for sure, or if they did they would be kind of comedically clueless white people doing it. Yellowstone does this incredibly earnestly, and the show takes a moment to let this whole thing play out. This episode, by the way, was written by Taylor Sheridan, the creator of the show and the runner of the larger Yellowstone empire. This speech is coming from the showrunner, and while I usually hesitate to assume a character’s views are the same as the writer’s, it seems likely to me that Monica is saying what Sheridan thinks. (It's important to note, by the way, that other characters on this show are not very progressive in their thoughts, and it's said at one point that John Dutton would disown his son if he were gay. You have to separate character from creator in these scenarios)

I would love Yellowstone if it were just a murder cowboy show - I don’t require much - but there’s a subversion to this that really appeals to me. I think about Trump-voting parents I know (not mine!) who are big fans of this show. I wonder how they metabolize scenes like this. I wonder how they internalize the way the show represents the Natives as truly and systemically oppressed. I wonder if they quite get that John Dutton is in many ways the face of the man who is making all of our lives miserable. I mean, a lot of people watched Breaking Bad and thought Skylar was awful, so never underestimate people’s ability to miss the point… but at the same time I think it’s amazing that a show with this audience is willing to be so vocally progressive, and to put such progressive words in the mouth of arguably the only decent main character on the series.

By the way, I’m not a fool - I know that Yellowstone isn’t radical politics. There’s plenty of stuff on this program that’s problematic, and some of its inclusiveness feels for show, but getting this kind of messaging to middle America feels like a real feat these days. That the show is entertaining and wild and crazy is a bonus, but this aspect of it makes Yellowstone something more than a guilty pleasure for me.