Conservationist Cowboys in the Climate Age

This article argues that the hit Western television series, Yellowstone (2018–), offers an instructive case study as to how storied media can effectively use culturally resonant, religiously inflected idiom to cross the membrane of the digital filter bubble, morally engaging polarized publics. The series’ popular appeal bridges regional, political, and religious divides in ways that cultural creations explicitly labeled and presented as ‘environmental media’ fall short. Taking up thorny environmental and agricultural land-management issues, Yellowstone effectively presents more liberal-leaning viewers with the complexities, pressures, and ethical challenges faced by multigenerational ranchers in the American West, while making rural communities feel more ‘seen’ and appreciated. In a deeply divided country, Yellowstone, as a cultural work—and now as a broader popular cultural phenomenon worldwide—demonstrates the powerful potential of storied media to cultivate common ground in the climate age.