Bite the Power: The Gentle Satire of Rutherford Falls

In an otherwise entertaining and insightful essay in The Atlantic about Sterlin Harjo and Reservation Dogs, David Treuer briefly compares the show with Rutherford Falls. He describes the latter as "toothless."

I think he is wrong.

Without getting into the topic of which show is better, I should acknowledge that the shows are very different -- despite sharing so many actors and writers. Reservation Dogs is more like an indie film, whereas Rutherford Falls is more like a mainstream comedy. (Treuer calls it a "feel-good sitcom," which is true.)

This makes sense when you consider the previous projects of their creators and the environments that produce them.

Harjo made several independent films (Barking Water, This May Be the Last Time), and he co-created the series with Taika Waititi, who has been launched from independent films (What We Do in the Shadows) to big studio movies (Thor: Ragnorak).  Rutherford Falls was created by TV comedy veterans: Ed Helms (The Daily Show, The Office), Michael Shur (The Office, Parks and Recreation, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Good Place), and Sierra Teller Ornelas (Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Happy Endings, Superstore).

Reservation Dogs emanates from FX Productions, which also produces It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Archer. Like those shows, it features irreverent topics and a great deal of cursing. The second season of Reservation Dogs seems to have the ambition of unseating The Sopranos for the most F-bombs per screen minute.

Rutherford Falls airs on Peacock (NBC's streaming service) alongside... surprise!... The Office, Parks and Recreation, and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. And also Modern Family and Psych. Combined F-bomb score: 0.

I believe Treuer sees "teeth" in Reservation Dogs' realism. It focuses on tough issues, such as the grief the band of young protagonists feel about the suicide of their friend, which fuels their desire to escape their reservation community. The show takes place in a poor neighborhood in the Muskogee Creek Nation in Oklahoma. People hustle, whether selling their own CDs or meat pies outside the IHS clinic.The gang steals what they can to raise money for their escape. Etc. The show alternates between pathos and comedy.

Meanwhile, in Rutherford Falls, set on the land of the fictional Minishonka Nation, we see no poverty. I believe that is part of the show's message and one of its contributions to the popular awareness of Native people: Poverty does not define all of Indian Country. There is little pathos in the show. It concentrates on humor and satire. 

Coincidentally, both shows are in their second season, and both shows this season feature episodes about the death a protagonist's female relative.

In Rutherford Falls, "Aunt Sue" is about the aftermath of the passing of a beloved family member. How to honor Aunt Sue in a memorial service at the tribal casino? (It will require "an insane amount of Buffalo Wild Wings" and "Bonny Rait at full volume.") Who inherits Aunt Sue's land -- the niece who works in the tribal cultural center or the nephew who is like a prodigal son? (The niece does not get the land, but she does get Aunt Sue's motorcycle.)

In Reservation Dogs, "Mabel" is about how the community comes together to help with the passing of a grandmother -- she is on her death bed, and her house is filled with friends, family, and food -- and how her granddaughter deals with the difficult emotion of saying goodbye to the woman who raised her after her mother's death. There is humor, but what I heard about most from the viewers I know were the tears. Good tears, but tears nonetheless. I do not think viewers were intended to cry about "Aunt Sue."

Reservation Dogs does not shy away from representing hardships in its Muskogee Creek community, but it does not devote much energy to the causes of those hardships. There are #LandBack signs and t-shirts sprinkled through episodes, but no one talks about how American Indian reservations are structured to keep Native populations in poverty. (You can read about some of those structures in "5 Ways the Government Keeps Native Americans in Poverty.")

Harjo's show has an indie film feel, whereas Rutherford Falls is more mainstream -- and, perhaps because of that or despite that, it engages with the dominant culture more explicitly, critiquing it (however gently). 

Despite what Treuer writes, we could say Rutherford Falls shows some teeth when it engages with  how museums represent Native people, how Native communities can use some tools of capitalism to fight the system that makes their lives difficult, or how Hollywood misrepresents Native culture and ritual. 

From the first season, one of the Rutherford Falls moments that circulated on social media was a speech from Terry Thomas (Michael Greyeyes), who is the CEO of the tribe's casino. He tells NPR reporter Josh Carter (Dustin Milligan) that the tribe has always adapted to survive the challenges it has faced, and corporate capitalism is just the latest challenge. He says corporate capitalism is just one model, and tribal capitalism can operate to benefit the whole community rather than just a few shareholders. He concludes the speech by saying, "I won't rest until my nation gets every single thing that was taken from them."  

You can watch the scene here.

Debbie Reese studies Native representations in children's literature and other media; she advises librarians and educators on how to select appropriate and accurate representations, and she recently tweeted to recommend content creators pay attention to Rutherford Falls.

She is referring to an episode about Rutherford Falls characters who become cultural advisors to Adirondack, a fictional drama that seems to spoof Yellowstone and Hollywood representations in general. The episode, "Adirondack S3," opens with a scene from that show, which, ironically, is popular in the Minishonka community of Rutherford Falls. In it, the white protagonist is helping defend the Native community from losing its land to a greedy corporation. As he speaks the line -- "Can't you see, after all we have done to erase these people, they are noble keepers of the land?" -- he steps in front of Chief Night Pipe, making him disappear.

Even those who think they are helping can be part of the problem.

The cultural advisors to Adirondack discover that the show's creators want Native imagery, but not true representation. Behind the scenes of the show within the show, the advisors discover the producers are making up "Indian culture" as they wish. In this, they echo a concept from Anishinaabe scholar Gerald Vizenor. In his book Fugitive Poses: Native American Scenes of Absence and Presence, he writes that representations of Native people from the dominant culture (museums, popular fiction, movies, advertising) are a "cultural concoction of bourgeois nostalgia." For Vizenor, these representations may look like Natives, but, in an irony lost on their creators, they signal the absence of any real Native rather than their  presence. 

The cultural advisors from the Minishonka Nation learn that the show's producers do not want accurate Native representation in their show, so they give the producers every cliche, exaggeration, and invention they can. Their goal is to make fools of the producers, who do not realize they are being tricked. 

Rutherford Falls may not bear fangs -- it is too gentle for that -- but it does have some bite.