The White Lotus

I’m currently obsessed with season 2 of The White Lotus. Binging it. I held off jumping on this new season because I loved the first season so much and didn’t want this new chapter to be disappointing. If that resonates trust me when I tell you that it’s just as juicy and excellent the second time around. The show is obviously visually delicious. Stunning scenarios and beautiful cast members in exotic locations. The casting is fantastic, as is the acting. This show is so much more than meets the satiated eye and I have been pondering why, which led me to want to write about it. 
When I watch each episode I’m fraught with tension and discomfort. There is contraction and unease in my belly, like I’m bracing myself for some kind of impact. Good television is so engrossing and entertaining because it makes us react, even if we can’t name, describe, or explain our reactions. I have always gravitated towards the underbelly of things, particularly beautiful, perfect looking things. It’s so fascinating that underneath the gorgeous facades and fronts of the characters here, lies this deeply uncomfortable, sinister, dark, super fucked up, highly nuanced reality. This formula isn’t new but it always works because audiences love schadenfreude. Humans often get off on watching other humans struggle, especially the ones that seem picture perfect. In today’s culture of  effortlessly beautiful and easeful, filtered social media, it’s extra juicy to see the ugliness and failures of the folks who seem to have it all. This is an unfortunate part of humanity but so it is; we are animals who, despite sophisticated evolution, are designed for survival of the fittest. We are elementally built to compete and win so that we get the food, the mate, the kingdom, and the position in the pack. We eat and have sex to stay alive and procreate just like all animal species. Our survival in the wild is just as much in the lobby of a five star hotel as it is in the jungle, because we are human beings existing in actual jungles of extreme emotions. We are computers taking in unmanageable amounts of psychological and emotional information, and trading it all with others around us at breakneck speed. Human life is hard and complicated, and watching this play out on screen works because it resonates. It’s familiar to us to identify with marital and sexual tension, emotional dysfunction, greed, hedonism and it’s impact, wanting more and more money, disconnection, power struggles, deceit, confusion, grief, anguish, despair, being used, using others, craving, fear, loneliness, and the oft emotional paralysis that results from constant changing human causes and conditions. The list goes on to what we experience and identify with. Pay close attention as a viewer to what you are averse to and then ask yourself what’s striking such a nerve here. It gets interesting when entertainment is more than just entertaining. When I get curious about my personal reactivity in an honest way, I can then go into my body and explore my various tensions and discomfort and why I’m responding so viscerally. Of course I also get grossed out and scared of things I can’t relate to at all, but a show like this that is all about excruciating human nuance. This I relate to. Hard. 
While last season explored themes of socioeconomic divide, this season focuses on sexual and gender power. I so appreciate how each vignette and storyline, while different, are intertwined and interconnected. I’m often on the edge of my seat and am actually reminded of really shitty vacations in beautiful places I’ve taken myself. It’s a miserable experience being so disconnected, restless, tense, and lonely in a beautiful, picturesque setting. It’s clearly supposed to feel different. No one plans a vacation to be miserable and yet it’s such a common outcome. We can take ourselves away but our shit follows us everywhere we go. To watch this play out on screen is actually validating for me, which is why it resonates. Like, wait, I’m not the only one who has struggled in this type of context. I mean I knew that but it scratches an itch watching it unfold at The White Lotus hotel. There us also a deep sadness and alienating quality to the show that makes me panicky. Again, resonance.  It’s really terrible, all the ways in which people hurt each other and try to whitewash it with aesthetics. 
This show is a social experiment to me: throw a bunch of people in this gilded fishbowl and let’s see how they begin to systematically injure and destroy each other in all sorts of ways. I really recommend this show and I also recommend paying close attention to how you respond to it. There’s valuable information there on both the macro and micro levels. A human life is a deeply complicated one, and I find comfort in this discomfort because it bonds us all.