Paramount Network’s television series Yellowstone is a huge hit, and I’ve been pondering why. After all, raising cattle is not something that one would guess most contemporary Americans would likely find particularly riveting.
It strikes me that there are two very different ways to view Yellowstone. To many like me, it’s consumed as a mafia story. Mafia families use extortion, violence, and other criminal methods to make money and preserve power and privilege, and that is precisely what Yellowstone’s Dutton family is all about, episode after episode.
There’s a lot to like about Yellowstone. It is entertaining, beautifully shot, and well-acted. As with many a mafia story, the story about what will become of the family members pulling out all the stops to maintain their power and privilege has been worth watching. Before watching it, I might not have believed that a Montana-based Sopranos yarn would work, but it does for me.
It’s far from perfect. The story line gets preposterous at times, the trash-talk scripting often feels particularly contrived, the level of violence displayed is gratuitous, and the simplistic characters seem mostly unwilling or unable to see gray areas in the situations they encounter. Talented actresses like Kelly Reilly could have been even more interesting to watch with scripts that weren’t so simplistic and over-the-top.
But beyond the familiar mafia formula, there is another very different way to view Yellowstone. Many viewers see mega-rancher John Dutton and his loyal family as superheroes, not criminals. They see an ultra-honorable family fighting for what they believe was once great about America – more hard work, more family loyalty, more agrarian lifestyles, less “politically correct” nonsense, and a might-is-right approach to ensure you always get your way.
In this case, the superheroes’ superpowers involve guns-a-plenty, humiliating trash-talking, bullying of dissenters, corruption of state and local government, and an unflagging certainty that it’s their God-given right to control anything they damn well want, despite what “the others” – urbanites, environmentalists, the insufficiently macho, and Native Americans – do or say.
A lot of people seem to see Yellowstone this way. Go to any rural or small town area, and you’re going to see folks wearing Yellowstone gear, just the way people wear Captain America, Superman, and Wonder Woman gear. These folks not only want to watch the Duttons, they want to be them.
Indeed, the Wall Street Journal reported that Yellowstone first became a hit in smaller, more rural markets, not on the coasts.
The show wrapped its fourth season Sunday night with an average 10.4 million total viewers on the Paramount Network, up from 4.5 million in season 1. The unconventional path “Yellowstone” took to ratings dominance shows how audiences can accrue and change over a series’ lifespan and how regional differences still matter…
Lafayette, Ind., is a “Yellowstone” stronghold. The area around Purdue University had the highest proportion of viewers during season 1 of any small market outside Montana and Wyoming, the region where “Yellowstone” is set, according to Nielsen data on viewers ages 25 to 54.
Loyalists there include Jim Hedrick, 62, whose company Horizon Ag Consulting works with farmers across the Midwest. He says “Yellowstone” mines issues that matter in his circles, such as family cohesion and the development of rural areas.
When “Yellowstone” premiered in 2018, the show ranked fourth in the 25-to-54 age group in the least-populated TV markets, categorized by Nielsen as D markets. In the country’s most populous areas—dubbed A markets, which include New York and Los Angeles—“Yellowstone” didn’t crack the top 50.
Like other superhero tales, Yellowstone sometimes gets pretty unrealistic. In the real world, no business, including ranching, is immune from criminal law enforcement, environmental protections, eminent domain rules, and political realities. Deep red rural states trend in those directions, but they’re not nearly as extreme as the Dutton-dominated Montana.
As such, the Yellowstone fantasy offers an escape for viewers who dream of a world where people who look and act like them find ways to control everything. That seems like the “secret sauce” that makes Yellowstone so delicious for so many.
Why are the Duttons viewed by so many as heroes rather than criminals? For many viewers, the Dutton’s brutal crimes are forgiven – lustily cheered on, even – because of the enemies involved. The Duttons hate the same people that Trumpists hate — fakey latte-sipping urban dwellers, clueless environmentalist brats, rule-bound government dweebs, hopelessly soft beta male, snowflake cucks, and coddled minorities.
And who doesn’t want to see someone stick it to those guys?
Yellowstone is a kind of Rorschach test that is being seen different ways depending on the individual viewer’s biases and values. How you interpret it reveals personality characteristics, such as an authoritarian instinct and willingness to rationalize violence and other crimes.
I have no proof of this, but it seems a safe bet that there is a strong correlation between Trump fans and people who view the corrupt, murderous Duttons as righteous superheros rather than a privileged, power-obsessed crime family.
(By the way, the other way that Yellowstone is fantasy is that the actors like Kevin Costner and Kelly Reilly who are playing right wingers’ heroes are not conservative in their real lives. After campaigning for Reagan earlier in his life, Costner has campaigned for Barack Obama and the Biden Administration’s Pete Buttigieg. And the English actress Reilly is reportedly a Democrat.)
Because Yellowstone has proven so overwhelmingly popular, we surely will see more programming like it. We can expect more “us against them” narratives giving comfort and encouragement to viewers whose fondest wish is to own the libs without pesky laws in the way.
If I were a right-wing billionaire intent on fanning the culture war flames as a means to maintain and grow my financial power and privilege, I’d bankroll more Yellowstone-like shows to provide entertaining propaganda tools to compliment the news-like propaganda tools that those billionaires already control to great effect.
Everyone likes to fantasize about being a superhero, and shows like Yellowstone offers heroic role models and road maps for white people bending and breaking laws to maintain their privilege in a rapidly changing world.
And you know what? If the acting, story, scenery, and production levels are as good as they are in Yellowstone, the chances are that plenty of liberals like me will probably watch the coming Yellowstone clones, though through a very different lens.