Blessed Are the Rich: The Taylor Sheridan Universe and the Last American Myth -
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This article is dedicated to all the millenials that watched Yellowstone with their Dad.  A young man sits across from me and tells me he has watched all of Yellowstone four times. He is not a rancher. He has never owned an animal larger than a dog. He works a job that exists mostly inside […]
  • came_apart_at_Kmart [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    4·
    4 months ago

    good article and deep insight. the author touches on aspects of Sheridan’s earlier writing that resonate. Sicario, Hell or High Water & Wind River are still some of my favorite flicks. early Yellowstone did setup some potential plot lines that were quietly, lazily abandoned. The first seasons of Mayor of Kingstown, especially the very first, germinated from an idea that is serious, real, and not generally part of the cultural buffet in the imperial core: the economy of the carceral state.

    it’s so easy to say Sheridan is a reactionary dumbass, because he absolutely is. but uncritically dismissing the early work is a missed opportunity. personally, i think Sheridan kept his stupid mouth shut earlier in his career, before Paramount basically anointed him a creator of worlds with massive budgets. in those early days he probably tempered his writing to the demands of other creatives in the room. he integrated notes into his writing, etc.

    the author fleshes this out further, pointing out the distinction between having good instincts (being able to feel the systems of oppression and institutional forces pushing people around) and being smart (enough to investigate and articulate how they work). that’s where Sheridan falls back entirely on digestible melodrama and reactionary tropes. and once Sheridan grew into his own machine above the influence of others, it exposed his short comings. all of his works have degraded rapidly, and his newer properties are fucking ludicrous across the board. Landman is fucking Joe Rogan level stupid and Lioness might be one of the stupidest shows I have ever watched in its entirety. all of his protagonists grow into “the devil you know” assholes, representing a lesser version of whatever the worst villain he imagines, and this is presented as OK/good.

    full disclosure, i quit watching Yellowstone somewhere around Season 4? i can’t recall exactly, but somewhere in the execution i realized it wasn’t going where i hoped it would and had instead chosen to focus on shit i didn’t care about at all. i totally watched 1883 and 1923. helen mirren is a national treasure and it really should stop surprising me that tim mcgraw is a tremendously talented actor, but otherwise… what-the-fuck-ever.

    the BIGGEST disappointment i’ve had in a movie in the last decade was Sicario 2. the first one benefited heavily from Denis Villaneuve’s direction and Emily Blunt as an audience stand-in, which seemed to hem in Sheridan’s apparently ludicrous takeaway that Josh Brolin’s character was the good guy and doing cool stuff. the first movie subtly portrayed all the SF guys as basically dangerous cowboys and unscrupulous attack dogs, while the second movie was basically giving them handjobs.

    anyway, i’m curious to see how bananatown his next offering is now that paramount cut him loose.

    don’t forget to buy your OFFICIAL Yellowstone Baked Beans with Bacon

    https://www.eatyellowstone.com/products/baked-beans/baked-beans-with-bacon/