Frontier Politics
Every nation develops and maintains some sort of national identity. This loose grab bag of ideas, wishes, history, semi truths and bullshit grows as the nation grows. In some countries it is very strong, in others not so much. National identity is important, it is part of the glue that keeps the construct which is a country together but it can also be a dangerous thing. With its virtues come dangers. Dangers we are seeing more and more in the modern world. National Identity can be twisted and used by anyone with a grievance, real or imagined. Hitler was driven by national Identity, so is Putin and Xi Jinping. The Far Right continually leverages identity as a tool for support. And because national identity is as much bullshit or opinion or interpretation as it is truth it can be very difficult to update as the nation itself changes.
I say this in a time where the dangers of national identity are writ large [always wanted to use that phrase]. The actions of Boris Johnson, Trump amongst others are at least partly driven by their view on their countries national identity and attached values. How often in Australia do we congratulate ourselves over our value of mateship and equality forgetting that other people in the world seem to be just as willing and capable in cultivating and maintaining friendship and our egalitarianism is rapidly diminishing.
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has everything to do with a poisoned take on national identity values and some historical apparently unforgivable slights.
Times are not good and I have been watching a TV series that explores these themes in a minor way. The bad aspects of national identity which I must admit I have highlighted above are there but the positive aspects are also dealt with in a surprising way. I am sure that was not the main idea of the show but when you watch a TV show set in on the American frontier with cowboys and Indians and all the trimmings you can’t get away from the nation building both in the physical and myth sense.
Yellowstone showing on Stan is heading into its fifth season. I see it as cross a between a modern western and a family domestic drama not unlike the shows from the 70s and 80s like Dallas and Dynasty or more recently Succession. To quote the Paramount website, “Oscar and Emmy winner Kevin Costner leads the cast in this drama series, starring as the patriarch of the powerful, complicated Dutton family of ranchers. He operates in a corrupt world where politicians are compromised by influential oil and lumber corporations and land grabs make developers billions. Amid shifting alliances, unsolved murders, open wounds, and hard-earned respect, Dutton's property is in constant conflict with those it borders. “
Yellowstone has been very popular but I can take or leave it.
What has really worked for me is the prequel named 1883 on Paramount +which tells the story of how the Dutton family settled their land. This is much more the traditional western in many ways. There are wagon trains, gunfights, outlaws, Indians and cattle drives etc. Where 1883 is different is that is told through the eyes of a teenage girl.
Taylor Sheridan creator of 1883, Yellowstone and Mayor of Kingstown is the hot content creator in Hollywood at the moment. He specialises in taking the traditional Hollywood output like the western or gangster genre and mixing in family drama so you get a meaty high production soap opera wrapped in a genre that really reflects aspects of the American national identity and its values. It is powerful stuff when done well and 1883 nails it because of the point of view. Elsa Dutton and her family’s adventures on the Oregon Trail and her experiences of violent and tragic death, love and lust and the stunning but unforgiving environment bring the full range of emotional storytelling to the series. Sure there are plenty of the standard Western tropes but we are also presented with some decidedly non-traditional western takes on the role of women and the native Americans, so often trivialised, victimised or demonised in the the old fashioned John Wayne and Clint Eastwood examples of the genre. The script gets everything just right for the majority of the time, the cast and the acting is fantastic and everything looks authentic with big production values and if every now and then the soapy element gets too much a harsh lesson from nature is just over the hill.
1883 is beautiful and compelling to watch, honest and brutal in its content and an emotional rollercoaster throughout. This is a slightly different take on one of the great wellsprings of the American identity. The concepts now central to US values of the importance of the individual and power projection like frontier trailblazing, manifest destiny, pioneering independent men and might[ especially from the barrel of a gun] is right are all presented with more nuance than usual .
Nation founding is not easy, only the tough and/or ruthless survived and it is right for the USA to celebrate these people and their achievements. But as 1883 shows is that these stories have their dark side too. Massacre, rape, theft and murder were all central to the USA’s and for that matter Australia’s expansion. To pretend otherwise is foolish but achieving that balance between blind worship and manipulation of a glorified past and an endless criticism bordering on self-loathing is the difficult bit and where we run into trouble.
I’m not saying that 1883 will provide us the answer or give us some clues as to what to do about Putin or any tyrant. But it provides some mighty entertainment and made me at least think more about how stories and values like these come to be and how the individuals involved in the actual events were in the end the usual grab-bag of humans just doing what could be done within their skills and values. The rest of it, everything that hangs off it always comes later from others.
Photo by Taylor Brandon on Unsplash
Five songs on the topic.
The Cowboy Song – Thin Lizzy
Geronimo’s Cadillac – Michael Murphy
Streets of Laredo – Marty Robbins
Circle Back – John Hiatt
Rawhide – Frankie Laine
