There Is no heaven to go to, because we’re in it already. We’re in hell, too. They coexist : place-making and the television western series 1883 and Yellowstone

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.