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Hello friends, I hope you are all doing very well. I guess many of you like series and movies, and I also guess many of you are aware of the cultural debates within the entertainment world. So today I want to talk to you about a series that had all the potential to do badly from the point of view of all sides in the cultural debate, and yet it did relatively well.

The Cultural Debate.

Today the entertainment world is immersed in a social justice debate, where there are constantly accusations and counter-accusations revolving around issues such as racism, which was for a long time a reality within the entertainment industry, women's rights, the rights of people with different sexual preferences etc....

This has led many audiovisual productions today to fall into the margin of one of the two spectrums, often with negative consequences for the productions, on the one hand we have the productions that still insist that white men are the center of the universe, are always the heroes, those who are right, and those who are worth idealizing, an archaic worldview that is not adapted to the modern world, and that only looks at the side of the history of these archetypes. These productions sin for being monotonous and retrograde...

In the other corner we have what some call the Woke Culture, which insists on giving more space to people of color, women, and transgender people, here sometimes sin by the historical impression that denies the reality of life in the heavy, inserting characters of a race, ethnicity or sexuality into a role in which, in the real world they could never have been, and yes, I know that movies and series are works of fiction that are not meant to educate, but to entertain, but for something to be fun it has to have a minimum of immersion, if you can't make sense of what you see, you can't feel it.

And on both sides of the debate the extremism to push a worldview makes productions make narrative mistakes, like the Mary Sue characters, so competent and morally perfect that it's hard to connect with them, and the historical impressions that make something that is supposed to put us into an era end up dissociating us.

1883 had everything to fail, and it did well.

Now, let's think of a Western, the quintessential movie genre a representation of the Anglo-Saxon culture of the United States, where very very macho white men fight Mexicans and Indians and always triumph, in scenarios of endless prairies where freedom and expeditious justice reigns [usually by white men]. If you get right down to it, a worldview that fits poorly with today's audience, and is also historically incorrect. For many legends of the old west were actually vile men, such as Wyatt Earp, while some famous outlaws had clearer facets, such as Billy the Kid.

In the wild west there were also very notable and powerful women, as well as colored cowboys [these especially after the civil war] and Mexicans with strong moral values, who called that land home long before the arrival of the Americans.

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It is this side of the story, the side with real human beings that 1883 focuses on. With imperfect protagonists, with strong women who also make mistakes, with men who made wrong decisions in life and recognize it, with emigrants who are attracted by the American dream but suffer a lot to try to achieve it, with people of other ethnicities or color who can teach us a lot about the reality of their lives without having to center the whole story around that... I particularly like a scene where Thomas explains to Captain Shea [Sam elliot] why Europeans prefer to face the terror of the unknown than to stay in their land.

Shea: The most terrifying thing on this planet is the unknown.

Thomas: That's cause you ain't never been whipped, Cap'n. Let someone put a whip to your back. Then tell me the unknown is what scares you. These folks ain't never goin' home.

In the 1883 series the west is brutal, dangerous, ethically gray, and no matter who you are or where you come from, death can happen in an instant and without warning. It also shows the futility and yet inevitability of war and its consequences.

The story centers on the Dutton family [the same as the Yellowstone series] but it doesn't need that connection to be a good series in its own right and is highly recommended. It shows us that it is still possible to tell a good story, without falling into the extremism of either side of the cultural debate, and to represent more or less reliably a very interesting time and historical moment. I recommend that you see it. Thanks for reading. Have a nice evening.