I am not a movie or TV critic but I can’t resist throwing my hat in the ring of commentaries about these two series. Much of what has been written has been from the perspective of the personalities of the protagonists and their human flaws. But more than that can be glimpsed from the two series.
Despite some commonalities, I found both series to project some salient reflections of the ways of the old and modern worlds, which surprisingly still coexist even in advanced societies and seem to appeal in varying degrees to different segments of people. I have looked, though not thoroughly, for this kind of analysis, and the closest I came was an essay in the December 2022 issue of The Atlantic which I found to be an interesting point of departure.
So, before I go into my own takeaway points, let me give some highlights of that Atlantic essay. First, a glaring discrepancy. Although “Yellowstone” has been more popular than “Succession,” it has received no formal artistic recognition. “Succession” on the other hand, as of its third season, had garnered 48 Emmy nominations and 13 awards. “The elites won.” That’s how the author put it. To buttress this claim, the author wrote that “Yellowstone” appealed to audiences in the American heartland whereas “Succession” appealed to the coastal elites. “Yellowstone” was all about masculinity, honest toil of the land, and resistance to change. “Succession” was about corporate power and control, and about super-wealthy people served by swarms of domestic servants, lawyers and assistants, fleets of SUVs, and private jets.
“Succession,” for sure, is firmly grounded into the world of modern capitalism and life, though the better part of this life is for the privileged few. The plot in “Yellowstone” is about a struggle to keep it in its pre-modern state-dominated world. In each of these series we see the reflections of raw versus sophisticated living.
What is striking in “Yellowstone” is how justice is meted out and order is kept. Whether we have altercations in the cowboy compound or disputes with outside interests, justice and order are dealt with little resort to authorities. The ethos of the residents of the ranch is based on personal loyalty and trust and immediate retribution. When thuggish types threaten the Dutton’s interests the family prefers to settle scores outside the purview of the law in their own swift ways. That’s what we would see in clans and tribal societies. Dispensing with formalities and authorities is not because the state is weak but because the direct application of justice (and for that matter revenge) entails greater and more immediate satisfaction. The Dutton family runs the ranch under its own set of rules and discharges justice accordingly. We have the distinct feeling that the state apparatus, from the governor’s office to the police, enter the Dutton’s affairs only as an imposition or as a last resort. Authorities are trusted as long as they are under the control of the Dutton patriarch.
If these are valid observations, it is not difficult to see why the Dutton’s world can be appealing primarily to those who are distrustful of state authorities and prefer a personal or communal law and order. In today’s America this yearning for direct justice finds its political expression in the “Stand your ground” laws. Let’s face it. Humanity has lived a lot longer under law and order systems that precede the founding of the state as the only authority to mete out justice.
Next, family assets have different meanings to the Dutton and Roy families. John Dutton does not see his ranch just as a type of capital that can be transformed into cold cash. He resists all takeover attempts because to him the ranch is family tradition and pride, hence, it has no transactional price. “Succession,” standing on the other side of economic paradigms, is the embodiment of modern cut throat capitalism. Everything can be sold and bought for the right price. Royco run by the Roys or by the Swedish tech mogul Lukas Matsson makes no difference to the Roy siblings as long as it has the same value to them. The sudden change of hearts toward keeping the company in the family has little to do with the desire to preserve a beloved family asset and a lot more to treating it as an object of power play and a trophy for whoever secures its leadership. Capital in capitalism, as a factor of production, is devoid of any sentimental attachment and value. After all, an asset can not be called capital unless it is available for trade and utilization for maximum monetary benefit.
The two series also tell us something about the complexity and contingency of our modern world. Life and doing business in “Yellowstone” exude a much stronger flavor of a pre-industrialized world. They are much more grounded and closer to the land. Running the ranch has few of the trappings and layers upon layers of intermediaries that intervene to turn decisions into outcomes. Both, “Yellowstone” and Royco are family businesses, but with distinctly different organizational forms. John Dutton runs Yellowstone as he pleases, with only minimal input from his children. Logan Roy has, in theory, the same power, but he needs to follow corporate bureaucracy and procedures that engage board directors, lawyers, PR executives, finance guys, securities authorities and on and on. This is not just a difference in business organization; it is also a difference in complexity and division of labor.
But there is more to increased complexity and division of labor. The wider the gap becomes between wanting something and getting something because we need to rely on “experts” or technology, the less capable we become in basic survival skills. Think of the decline in numeracy because of the reliance on calculators. The Roy family members look like they have a privileged life served by servants and assistants catering to their every need. The price of that life is dependency on others that can disappear once the privileges are gone. For the Roys and their peers, and less so for the rest of us in the periphery of the elite world, each level of service depends on the function of a service under it, and so on. This is what I like to call contingent living. Greater complexity brings more contingency. But the higher the degree of contingency the higher the risk a little disturbance in the system will bring a devastating end. No wonder our modern lives, the result of advances, progress, and system complexity, are also lives full of anxiety.
We can draw all these differences between these series and then again come to the same enduring conclusion that has govern human life. No matter under what system we live, human love, compassion, jealousy, ambition, greed, vengeance, are all there. The only thing that varies is the social context within which our human nature finds its expression.
Let's Reason 