The White Lotus, HBO’s delicious new skewering of the rich, white and privileged, is like an Onion article come to life. The intro sequence assumes the typical headline’s purpose, establishing a statement of the satirist’s intent. The mood of the story is set. So are the expectations. The first episode is the opening para, introducing the players and the premise. Then, the irony or the hypocrisy of it all is pushed to its absurd limits before that final zinger arrives.
Our reality grows more absurd than the satire mocking it. Which is why some people have trouble recognising which is which. The White Lotus is the latest satire targeting the ill-behaved rich, following in the footsteps of Succession. But the show's creator Mike White pointed out the difference between the two lies in the nature of its subjects. “[Succession’s] a great show, but it's very king's court. You can kind of otherise them. They're billionaires,” he told The New Yorker.“With White Lotus, I wanted it to be more, like, this is your next-door-neighbour rich person who is part of the system.”It’s true. There’s a familiarity to the one-percenters on The White Lotus. No matter which part of the world you live in, you would have met their ilk. You may have been witness to their tantrums of entitlement, deceptions of niceness, and danglings of carrots — or even on the receiving end of them.
Though not quite as sulphurous a satire as Succession, The White Lotus will sure have you at “Aloha.” A group of wealthy vacationers arrive at the titular resort hoping for good times and tan lines. Their arrival almost feels like a colonial invasion. Here is this postcard-perfect idyll soon to become a scene of tragedy. The guests check in with plenty of baggage, literal and figurative. They check out a week later, one of them permanently. But none are too keen to check their privilege.
Scrolling through this gallery of the obnoxious upper crust, you might not care who checks out in a casket. There’s the honeymooners: frat brat Shane (Jake Lacy) and trophy-wife-who-doesn’t-know-she-is-a-trophy-wife Rachel (Alexandra Daddario). All Shane wants is to be treated with respect he doesn’t deserve, and get lei-ed. Rachel hopes she can still retain some agency after having married a douchebag. There’s the emotionally needy Tanya McQuoid (Jennifer Coolidge), who’s come all the way to Hawaii to scatter the ashes of her mother whom she’s always despised. Then, there’s the Mossbachers: matriarch Nicole (Connie Britton), a regular Karen whose Search Engine CFO job emasculates her husband Mark (Steve Zahn), who’s battling health and masculinity crises. Their daughter is liberal arts sophomore Olivia (Sydney Sweeney), who’s brought along her college friend Paula (Brittany O’Grady) so they can read Nietzsche by the pool, and judge anyone who enters their eyeline and doesn’t meet their Übermensch standards. This includes her younger brother whom she bullies: the socially inept Quinn (Fred Hechinger) who spends his vacation playing mobile games and jerking off.
Pampering the guests and catering to their every need are staffers who smile through gritted teeth. The manager Armond (Murray Bartlett) tells his team to fade into the background and treat the guests like they’re sensitive children. Behind the cheerful, can’t-complain front is a man who will slowly unravel as he tries to appease them all.
Between “Arrivals” and “Departures”, the week will be marked by hostilities and epiphanies. Like an Agatha Christie story, The White Lotus confines these wealthy guests to a luxury locale and lets a comedy of manners play out before the murder mystery. As they drink champagne and learn to scuba dive, secrets and lies bubble up to the surface. It’s the kind of story that lends itself well to a poolside read, if it were a novel. The Hawaiian setting and score are intrinsic to the show’s ominous atmosphere. The waves ebb and flow to the rhythms of the tribal drums. The damp shadow on the shoreline hints at tragedy closing in on the guests. The hooting flute and animal noises give a jungle-like feeling to the resort, the animals here being the wrangling guests.
Class warfare has yielded rich pickings for cinema and TV’s satirists in recent years. Knives Out, Parasite, Succession and now The White Lotus continue the traditions of William Makepeace Thackeray, whose Vanity Fair took aim at the “humbugs and pretenses” of the rich.
Common to all these stories is an underclass simply trying to survive: be it by grinning and bearing with whatever morsels the capital class was generous enough to throw, or scheming around them. When the rich became aware of these schemes, they would ensure the social hierarchy and its timeworn traditions were upheld through whatever means necessary. Vices pushed to their odious extremes revealed the corrosion behind these vanity fairs’ glistening varnish. The tropical wallpapers in the opening titles of The White Lotus too hint at the rot seething under the surface. The flowers, the fruits and the fish decay over time, just as the plastered smiles on the staffers crack.
While sipping on maitais and dining on lobsters, the guests debate the sins of imperialism and the sad plight of being a straight white young man today. These conversations are hollow and dishonest — but perhaps that’s the point. Privilege reeks like Kramer’s beach cologne. Shane is mani(a)cally outraged he wasn’t given the best room in the resort, but the second-best. Brooding over this supposed injustice, he engages in a passive-aggressive ego-clash with Armond, who won’t admit he’s double-booked the room by mistake.
Pointing out white privilege provokes all sorts of defensive reactions. Taking an accusatory tone especially hits a raw nerve with Nicole, who feels it is incredibly tough for people like her son. She refuses to believe his privilege gives him any sort of headstart. Her husband, Mark, acknowledges his privilege, but thinks it’s absurd to cede it — for “We’re all just trying to win the game of life.” Paula’s wordless reaction says it all. Thackeray put it best: “The moral world has no particular objection to vice, but an insuperable repugnance to hearing vice called by its proper name.”
There is a strong sense of irony to the Mossbachers’ delusion. What the white people spout here is the opposite of the message White himself wants to convey. One might wonder why then is the point-of-view of the staff rendered secondary to that of the guests? Perhaps, White is exploring his own blindspots as a rich, white and privileged man, rather than assuming the working class and minority’s perspectives to which he cannot possibly do justice.
At one point, Paula’s vacation-long lover Kai (Kekoa Scott Kekumano) talks about how his family was evicted from the land on which the hotel was built. While his brothers are contesting their eviction, Kai is forced to work for the hotel to make a living. It’s the same reason the trainee Lani (Jolene Purdy) hides her pregnancy. Power differentials mark not just class relations, but also gender, sexuality and race. In each relationship, a character holds power over the other. This applies to Paula and Kai’s relationship too. For Paula, Kai is nothing more than a distraction, a way to break free from Olivia’s controlling nature. In Rachel’s case, she starts to lose her ambition and her identity with Shane’s repeated dismissal of her career as a freelance journalist. When Shane’s snotty mother (Molly Shannon) crashes their honeymoon and joins in the clarion call, Rachel realises she holds little value than army candy to them.
In the same way Shane feels he is entitled to Rachel’s uninterrupted attention because his family has paid for their honeymoon, Olivia too is possessive of Paula for bringing her along on the trip. For Olivia, Paula plays the role of the one black friend who allows her to feel better about herself that she isn’t as prejudiced as her parents. But she requires Paula to play the sidekick and provide emotional support when necessary. When Paula goes on her own journey i.e. begin a relationship with Kai, it upsets the power dynamic Olivia expects. Whatever honourable intentions Olivia does have are warped by her own selfishness and privilege.
For the rich, the lower classes exist to be exploited. Tanya lures the underpaid spa manager Belinda (Natasha Rothwell) into being her personal support system with the promise of funding her own wellness centre. The staffers too exploit whoever is lower than them on the food chain. Armond uses one of his subordinates for drugs and sex. As he puts it, “They exploit me. I exploit you.”
Money renders the symbolic chasm between the haves and have-nots concrete. But learning its corrupting influence on the rich tempers our resentments. It makes watching the rich behave to their detriment somewhat satisfying as we sit at home in judgement. And it clearly seems we can’t have enough it. While the whole of India suffered through two devastating waves of a pandemic utterly mismanaged by the government, Bollywood and its nepotist assembly line spent ritzy vacations in Maldives. India needs a “check-your-privilege”+ ”eat-the-rich” satire of its own, and soon. “The Orange Lotus,” anyone?
The White Lotus is streaming on Disney+ Hotstar Premium.
Watch the trailer here
source https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/the-white-lotus-review-hbos-new-vanity-fair-streaming-on-disneyhotstar-is-a-class-satire-without-a-hero-9891361.html
