This is what I get when I look up ‘quotes from Yellowstone’ –

Why?? What’s the point? “Ooooh look at how evil I am, I am so amoral, I don’t care about anything except money and power.”

It doesn’t even advance the plot, they’re just doing it to be weird.

I made it about two minutes into that new British show about gladiators for the same reason: every single line of dialogue is like this.

    • MoonMelon@lemmy.mlEnglish
      0·
      23 days ago

      I really hate shit like the first quote because willows are incredible trees. They’ve also been super useful to humanity for tens of thousands of years, from everything from baskets to aspirin. You can chop off a willow branch and stick it in the ground and it grows a new tree. Try that with oak (although oaks are also cool).

      Whoever wrote that knows nothing about trees. They just thought, “bendy weak not-bendy stronk.” Oh not a modern, commercial timber species, must suck. Drives me nuts they pretend to be “men of the land” then say some stupid bullshit like that. It doesn’t make them sound hard. A stone age man could make a fishing net out of that willow that would feed his family for a year. Fuck outta here.

      • Alice@beehaw.org
        0·
        23 days ago

        I also hate that quote, but mainly because the idea that your character is determined at birth is so, so stupid.

        Why would you judge a willow person if that’s just what they were? Hell, why would you be proud to be an oak person if you had no say in the matter? It’s basically saying, “my few admirable traits come from genetics. I never actually bothered to hone any skills”.

        Unfortunately this type of argument falls on deaf ears because people look down on others for simply being what they are all the time. But it’s fucking stupid.

  • Jo Miran@lemmy.ml
    0·
    23 days ago

    It’s the tone of that show who’s basic premise is “stubborn man tries to hold on to the past”. Another show from the same writer (prequel to Yellowstone) has a very different narrative tone. Instead of lashing out against the passage of time, it has a hopeful wonder about the future and its possibilities.

    Like God Decided To Light This Day With Candles, I Could See All Of Texas. It Was The Most Beautiful Thing I Had Ever Seen.

    Freedom. To Most, It Is An Idea, An Abstract Thought That Pertains To Control. That’s Not Freedom. That’s Independence. Freedom Is Riding Wild Over Untamed Land With No Notion Any Moment Exists Beyond The One You’re Living.

    It can also have dark narration but, at least to me, it wasn’t overtly “macho” most of the time.

    I Knew Nothing Of The Horror That Hides In Freedom’s Shadow.

    EDIT: I watched “1886” and loved it. That led me to “Yellowstone”, which I was not a fan of.

  • LarkinDePark@lemmygrad.ml
    0·
    23 days ago

    I’ve been thinking a bit about the similarities in settler based cultures lately. The commonalities with Israelis, Northern Irish “loyalists/unionists” and Americans is amazing. They all have the same extreme paranoia and racist supremacy. Absolutely assured of their righteous place as being better and above others. Machismo and a rugged individualism. Triumphalism, ultraviolence, callous inhumanity, over the top flag waving right-nationalism.

    I’d love to be a fly on the wall for some of the conversations they have with their kids to teach them their culture of hate. How they pass the message of hate and bigotry down about their superiority.