The Controlling, Conservative Cruelty in the TV Show Yellowstone
Is both fascinating and frightening
Note: There are a few minor spoilers in this piece, but nothing that should take away from watching the show.
Yellowstone is a hugely popular television show with all of the grit, drama, dynasty and violence of Game of Thrones, except it takes place in the modern American West. It also garners as big an audience as Game of Thrones, but if you haven’t heard of it, that’s because most of Yellowstone’s fans live in small towns in flyover country, and the show is particularly popular among American conservatives.
The show centers around rancher John Dutton, played by Kevin Costner, whose only mission in life is to defend his sprawling ranch in Montana from hostile corporate takeovers, as well as the local Native Americans who’d like their land back. Dutton’s ranch is named Yellowstone and is located right next to the iconic national park.
My husband and I love this show. Once we discovered it, we watched all four seasons in just a few weeks. Like Game of Thrones, sometimes the show is hard to stomach, but for me, it’s not because of the violence, which is plentiful. Rather, it’s because of the physical, mental and emotional abuse the patriarch of the family imposes on everyone around him.
John Dutton runs his ranch as if he’s a king and everyone around him, including his children, are his subjects. He and his wife — who died before the show began — trained their kids from birth to do one thing, and one thing only: Defend the ranch. Dutton sent his son Jaime off to become a lawyer in order to defend the ranch legally. His other son, Kaycee, is a skilled cowboy who Dutton later manages to seat in a locally advantageous political position. His daughter, Beth, is a beautiful, heartless shark who knows how to mingle with rich people and the corporate elite, and she employs any trick necessary — be it via the stock market, or the media, or sleeping with influential men — to protect her father’s ranch. (Beth doesn’t even like the ranch — she’s simply dedicated to her daddy.) John Dutton himself holds a huge amount of influence in the state of Montana, with friends in high places.
