The co-creator of the hit Paramount Network series “Yellowstone” is adamant that the show isn’t meant to be right-wing, despite its guns, masculinity, and traditional values.
“They refer to it as ‘the conservative show’ or ‘the Republican show’ or ‘the red-state Game of Thrones.’ And I just sit back laughing. I’m like, ‘Really?'” filmmaker Taylor Sheridan said in an interview this week with The Atlantic.
“The show’s talking about the displacement of Native Americans and the way Native American women were treated and about corporate greed and the gentrification of the West, and land-grabbing. That’s a red-state show?” he added.
From the initial sounds of it, he doesn’t like the show being linked to the right. If anything, he believes the show is best described as “progressive.”
“People perceive all my stuff as red state, and it’s the most ridiculous thing. If you truly look at this show or ‘Wind River’ or ‘Sicario,’ these are pretty wildly progressive notions. The people who are calling it a red-state show have probably never watched it,” he said in a separate interview three years ago with The New York Times.
These remarks come amid longtime complaints from both the left-wing media and left-wing Hollywood about the show’s purported right-wing makings.
“The New York Times referred to the show as ‘a conservative fantasy liberals should watch’ and a negative review from The Guardian called it ‘Game of Thrones set on a ranch,'” according to the Daily Mail.
Meanwhile, “Yellowstone” has continually been snubbed by the Emmys, despite its popularity.
“Despite the fact Yellowstone has been an instant hit with viewers since it first premiered in 2018, the Paramount+ series has failed to find the same success within the Hollywood industry after being mostly ignored at awards shows,” the Daily Mail notes.
All this said, politically speaking Sheridan himself seems like a Trump-hating liberal, but not necessarily an insane leftist.
On one hand, he doesn’t seem to care for former President Donald Trump.
“Can we just impeach that motherf–ker right now? Like what are we—I don’t understand … It’s just, it’s so embarrassing,” he said in a 2017 interview.
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But on the other hand, Sheridan doesn’t necessarily care for “woke” concepts such as so-called “white privilege.”
“Here’s the worst two words put together in the past ten years: white privilege,” he said in a 2018 interview with Esquire magazine.
“Oh, really? Help me, Mr. Harvard-f–king-Ph.D., convince the man who’s losing his ranch, who can’t afford his kid’s college — he has no health care, he has no f–king clue what Obamacare is, he’s never seen a social-security-f–king-office, his only concept of federal government is taxes. How do I convince that guy he’s privileged? You won’t do it,” he added.
Asked by The Atlantic about this stunning remark, he said, “You should be mindful of not berating the subject you are trying to educate, and find a way for them to digest your point of view without turning them off to it.”
So what exactly is “Yellowstone?” It’s a neo-Western that tells the story “of a family of ranchers, led by Kevin Costner, who seek to protect their land at all costs against encroaching forces like land developers and neighboring Indigenous people who want to build a casino,” according to Variety magazine.
What makes it “conservative,” critics have said, is its anti-“woke” stance. But it’s not purposefully “anti-woke.” It’s just honest, in that Sheridan hasn’t manipulated the story to appeal to modern political correctness.
“Sheridan told me he aims to do ‘responsible storytelling,’ to depict the moral consequences of certain behaviors and decisions. He says he was strongly influenced by Clint Eastwood’s 1992 film, Unforgiven, which ‘upended’ the black-hat/white-hat conventions of the traditional Western,” The Atlantic notes.
“[Eastwood] let the sheriff be a bully and the hero be this drunken, vicious killer. [He] shattered the myth of the American Western. So when I stepped into that world, I wanted there to be real consequences. I wanted to never, ever shy away from, This was the price,” he said in his own words.
That said, his “responsible storytelling” appears to involve a mix of “progressive” ideas such as anti-capitalism and conservative ideas such as “honor, bravery, physical labor, respect for tradition,” etc.
“The biggest price—and this theme runs through much of Sheridan’s work—is the one exacted by capitalism and the gentrifiers and financiers who snooker the good people who still work with their hands,” The Atlantic’s reporting continues.
“Despite his professed admiration for Eastwood’s revisionist Western, Sheridan subscribes artistically to something that looks like the old cowboy way. If his work has a higher moral plane, it’s one governed by cowboy virtues: honor, bravery, physical labor, respect for tradition, and a willingness to die—and kill—in defense of your family and your land,” according to The Atlantic.
Writers and editors can be contacted at [email protected] with feedback, tips, or corrections.
V. Saxena is a staff writer with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University. Saxena also contributes to BizPac Review.
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