Abstract:
This article explores the idea and articulation of place in Taylor Sheridan’s
western series 1883 and Yellowstone. Through narrative and genre analysis, we
critically compare these two series to demonstrate that genre semantics combine
in a particular series-specific syntax to articulate place differently. Our thinking
on place and adjacent concepts of trails and knots, inhabiting and occupation,
as well as the differentiation between place as object and place as event, is
primarily informed by the scholarship of Tim Ingold. We argue that these series’
specific and gendered articulations of place are meaningfully linked to each
series’ protagonist, Elsa Dutton and John Dutton respectively. Finally, we
suggest that the two series generate an additional western-genre binary that we
base on Ingold’s work: occupation (particular to Yellowstone) vs. inhabiting
(specifically in 1883). The Yellowstone character Beth Dutton notably reifies
this binary. Yellowstone, here framed as post-heydey western, postwestern and
post-Western, articulates place as nostalgic and static compared to 1883’s more
expansionist and dynamic iteration of place.
