"Oil and masculinity: both are oftentimes crude, both are considered toxic in the twenty-first century. So it only makes sense that the two are as tightly bound as a bolt on a rig in "Landman," the latest hit series from the neo-Western television auteur Taylor Sheridan, on Paramount+. At the center of the show is Tommy Norris (Billy Bob Thornton), a grizzled and cynical but ultimately good-hearted consigliere to a reckless oil-field billionaire, Monty Miller (Jon Hamm)."
"Where Sheridan's expansive " Yellowstone " franchise focusses on the landowning class, "Landman" depicts the considerably less glamorous world of a middleman toiling for the rich. Tommy drives his dun-colored Ford F-350 pickup truck, emblazoned with Monty's M-Tex company logo, across the dusty, flat expanse of the West Texas Permian Basin, nicknamed the Patch. His job as the titular landman is to secure leases for oil extraction, to manage crews of roughnecks, and to deal with local government and police."
Landman links oil extraction and masculine posturing, portraying oil as both an environmental toxicant and a source of wealth that enables escape. Tommy Norris functions as a grizzled landman who secures leases, manages roughneck crews, and negotiates with local government and police while serving a reckless oil billionaire. The series situates action in the West Texas Permian Basin and emphasizes symbols of working-class oil culture, from pickup trucks to company logos. The narrative presents machismo as a force that pollutes relationships even as it yields power, money, and grudging respect.
Read at The New Yorker
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