Are All Vacations Just Colonial Excursions???
The new HBO show, The White Lotus, from show-runner Mike White, has been the talk of the internet. Is it a drama? A comedy? Both? Neither? Do we like anyone in it???
The premise of the show is simple and elegant on its face, but the deeper you dig into it, the darker it becomes and the more questions it asks.
The White Lotus is a swanky and upscale resort and spa on a remote island in the Hawaiian islands. In the series’ first episode we see Shane (Jack Lacy, who plays the arrogant, rich, asshole, 30-something frat-boy expertly, perfectly opposed to his typical “nice-guy” roles in The Office, Girls, or Obvious Child) in the airport ready to leave the island. We learn that someone at The White Lotus has died and watch as their remains are loaded into the plane.
What we have to spend the next six episodes discovering is which of the central characters will be coming home in the cardboard box, and who might not leave with the person they came with.
SPOILER ALERTS…
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The show’s central characters exist as either guests or staff. Of the guests there are three groups of people who have come to the island for a holiday:
Shane (Lacy) and Rachel (Alexandra Daddario), newlyweds on the their honeymoon,
the Mossbacher family: Nicole (Connie Britton (what can’t she do?!)), Mark (Steve Zahn), Quinn (Fred Hechinger), and Olivia (Sydney Sweeny) who has brought her best friend(?), Paula (Brittany O’Grady) on the trip,
and last, but certainly not least, Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge in all her “onion” glory), coming to the island to scatter her mother’s ashes.
As the boat delivering the very upscale guests approaches the resort we see the resort staff, smiling broadly and insincerely(?) on the shore. They are Resort Manager, Armond (Murray Bartlett), Trainee (who is secretly in labor) Lani (Jolene Purdy), Spa Manager, Belinda (Natasha Rothwell), and Server, Dillon (Lukas Gage).
Over the next few episodes we learn more and more about the characters. Shane (Lacy) is even more awful than we thought, Rachel (Daddario) is miserable and (in my opinion) should definitely leave this misogynistic-asshole ASAP.
The Mossbachers don’t seem to like one another much at all—college students Olivia (Sweeny) and Paula (O’Grady) make the 16-year-old Quinn (Hechinger) sleep in their galley kitchen and then on the beach, and Nicole (Britton) and Mark’s (Zahn) entire relationship is passive aggressively ignoring one another.
Tanya (Coolidge) wanders somewhat drunkenly around the resort in loud printed dresses carrying a large silver box containing her mother’s ashes and crying.
Through all of it, Armond (Bartlett) is trying to hold together his high-maintenance guests, his staff, and his sobriety.
Everything begins to unravel when Shane (Lacy) and Rachel (Daddario) learn that the Pineapple Suite which they thought they had booked was double-booked. Instead of accepting a less-than-earnest apology and taking The Palm Suite (which has a better view to begin with), Shane (Lacy) commences a week-long, toddler-level temper-tantrum culminating in calling his mother, played spectacularly by Molly Shannon, who had originally booked the room.
The rivalry between Shane (Lacy) and Armond (Bartlett) more or less grounds much of the “comedy” of the show, until the final moments where there is nothing funny about it. And while I, personally, hated Shane (Lacy) I wasn’t particularly rooting for Armond (Bartlett) either as he blatantly harasses his staff and trades drugs and sex for better shifts.
While the animosity between the two was arguably the most humorous part of the show, the Mossbacher’s offered the best bit of social commentary, and it all starts with the books.
While sunning themselves at the pool, Shane (Lacy) is always reading “Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell, though it doesn’t appear that he ever makes progress in the book. Rachel (Daddario) is fittingly reading the Elena Ferrante tome, “My Brilliant Friend,” signaling that she isn’t stupid, but is maybe a bit behind the times and isn’t looking for too much of a challenge in her “beach reads.” She too seems to never make it far into the book.
However, in almost every shot Olivia (Sweeny) and Paula (O’Grady) are reading a different high-minded and deeply theortical texts—from Judith Butler’s “Gender Trouble,” to Franz Fannon’s “Wretched of the Earth.” We see them read Nietzsche, Freud, Lacan, Camille Paglia, and Aimé Césaire. For those of you who’ve survived undergraduate (and maybe even graduate) studies you will likely do as I did, get excited, laugh, and then aggressively roll your eyes.
These girls want to look and sound smart and intimidating, and while Olivia (Sweeny) is awful to her family (and somewhat terrifying to watch), she sounds like your average smart 20-something who is certain that she’s smarter than everyone around her. She is woke and can speak fluently about oppression, colonialism, structural racism, and systemic inequality… but will she walk the walk?
Paula (O’Grady) is quieter and while this could be that she is an outsider and guest of the family, the real reason is more likely that she is an outsider more broadly, as the only “guest” of color in the cast. All the other guests who arrive on that first boat are white, and she is not. All of the other cast members who are BIPOC are the staff.
And therein lies the rub.
Olivia (Sweeny) spends much of the series castigating her family—her mother for being a “lean-in” corporatist capitalist, her dad for being another clueless cis- white man, and her brother for… well… masturbating… a lot.
She knows the lingo quite well, but when the shit hits the fan and her family has to come together after a robbery and assault it is very clear whose tribe she’s in, and it isn’t team downtrodden and oppressed.
All the while Paula (O’Grady) watches. She has a fling with a local, Kai (Kekoa Kekumano), who works at the hotel and who tells her his story of being disconnected from his family after accepting his job as the hotel sits on land that once belonged to his tribe.
Paula (O’Grady) is horrified and masterminds the robbery in which Kai (Kekumano) will break into the Mossbacher’s room while the family is on a scuba excursion, steal hundreds of thousands of dollars in jewelry, and use it to hire a decent attorney who can represent his family. Kai (Kekumano) needs some convincing to commit the crime, but our Lady Macbeth convinces him that it’s the only way to get back what is his and earn the respect of his family. But first she coldly breaks up with him when he asks her stay, telling him that she’s got school, and friends, and life back home.
When the Mossbachers come back early and Nicole (Britton) finds a strange man in her safe, Kai (Kekumano) pushes her to the ground and tries to leave, but is met with “Superman in a Wet-Suit” when Mark (Zahn) tackles him to the ground. Kai (Kekumano) gets a few punches in—just enough to be able to get away and the Mossbachers deal with the aftermath of the burglary.
Meanwhile, Tanya (Coolidge) appears to be constantly on the verge of a nervous breakdown and goes to the spa to unwind. She meets Belinda (Rothwell) who can’t get her in for a massage, but instead offers a treatment in Reiki, a form of energy healing. Tanya (Coolidge) seems reborn after her time with Belinda (Rothwell) and showers her with tips and even invites her to dinner where she pitches funding a holistic spa and retreat for Belinda (Rothwell) to run.
Belina (Rothwell) is skeptical, but Tanya’s (Coolidge) commitment to the project over several days gets her so excited that she puts together a professionally bound business plan complete with logo. But Tanya (Coolidge) meets a man, Greg (John Gries) and becomes so enamored that she never actually reads it, and instead just hands Belinda (Rothwell) an envelope full of money, turns her back, and leaves… and realizes she forgot her sunglasses, retrieves them as Belinda (Rothwell) weeps, and leaves once more.
Similarly, when Rachel, (Daddario) has a crisis about whether or not to leave her marriage, it is Belinda (Rothwell) to whom she reaches out. Thankfully, this time, Belinda (Rothwell) looks at the rich and beautiful white lady, crying her beautiful white lady tears and says, “You want my advice?.... I’m outta it,” and walks away.
In the end, it is the BIPIOC characters who are always there to serve the needs, desires, and whims of the white characters. And this is very much the point of the series. The show is about how white people, and in particular wealthy white people use folx of color and then dispose of them, often while touting their own “woke” bonafides.
It is Paula (O’Grady) who puts it best one night at dinner when she leaves the table because she can’t stand to watch Kai (Kekumano) and his colleagues perform a “ceremonial dance” when she says (and I’m paraphrasing here) that it’s too sad to watch native Hawaiiians perform for the white people who stole their land.
And while this is undoubtedly true, it is Paula (O’Grady), whose borrowed privilege (arguably) does the most damage to the most people.
When she realizes that Kai (Kekumano) is going to get caught she sits and waits on the dive boat. She doesn’t try to cut the Mossbacher’s off before they reach the hotel, she doesn’t send a text, or make a call… and then when she knows he’s caught she just quietly absorbs the reality and walks away, tossing the beautiful necklace he had made for her into the ocean.
Even Quinn (Hechinger) only finds some kind of solace (after losing his phone) when a group of Hawaiian men offer to teach him how to canoe and invite him on a journey around the South Pacific. It seems that Quinn (Hechinger) is actually the only character in the show who actually learns anything. And it’s only because BIPOC characters offer to teach him.
By the end of the series he doesn’t care about his phone—he wants adventure, and he wants to connect with other people and with the earth— not his superficial family, or even his beloved pornography. Ultimately, we are led to believe by the final shots of the island that he will stay and make a home there.
While the series hits the nose right on the head about how rich white people can behave, it even more so gets what our/their conversations can sound like, when Nicole (Britton) goes on a rant about how hard it is to be a straight white man nowadays and how “she just isn’t allowed to hire them anymore,” or when Mark (Zane) talks about how he isn’t responsible for the crimes of the past, or how Tanya (Coolidge) mistakes BLM (Bureau of Land Management) for BLM (Black Lives Matter) but doesn’t seem to care at all when the man giving her attention laughs off the cause. It reminds us that while we might have learned a lot of new buzz words and phrases and how to avoid blatant racism and sexism in favor of more banal microaggressions, we are still on team “us,” even if we read Judith Butler and Franz Fannon on the beach. Even if we have a Black friend. Even if we are “nice.” In essence the show absolutely skewers “well-meaning white people.”
In one of the final episodes Paula (O’Grady) asks Mark (Zahn) and the whole family, “What do you stand for?” and that is really the central question we white people need to ask ourselves. What do we stand for? And if we can’t answer that, as the Mossbachers clearly cannot (not even Olivia (Sweeny)), then we still have a lot of work to do.
Embedded in the show is also the question of how can we, as white people, not be colonizers all the time and everywhere? Is that even possible?
We travel around the world and want to “take in” and “experience” “authentic” and “local” “traditions,” but what do those words even mean?
What is it to travel from stolen land, onto other stolen land, and then ask the people there to be grateful that we are “supporting the local economy.”
How much is our money really worth?
Kai (Kekumano) talked frankly about being ashamed of working at the hotel, while simultaneously telling Paula (O’Grady) that he really needed the job, and it’s a bind. Without that job he has nothing, but only because the hotel has already taken everything he already had.
If “Columbus-ing” is walking onto someone else land and saying “Now this is mine.” What is it to decimate a people and then “save” them by allowing them to work for you?
Ultimately the show is a study of privilege and while I certainly saw parts of myself (and in-particular my 20-something self) in the characters, I also want to be better than them. The show was uncomfortable to watch because… what if I’m not???
In the end, it almost doesn’t matter who comes home in the cardboard box… and I won’t spoil that twist here, what matters is the choices we make and how those choices affect others from this moment in our lives until we all end up in the ground. For as long as we are still standing, what do we stand for?
In the final moments at the airport we watch Shane (Lacy), alone, looking out the window, presumably wondering if Rachel (Daddario) will join him. She appears to have broken things off, telling him that she “made a huge mistake” and getting her own room.
And she did. She wanted to be a journalist, and while she might not be all that great at it, she has a dream and should go for it. At every possible moment Shane (Lacy) tells her that she’s “wasting her time” writing “click-bait” and that she should just enjoy being his “hot wife.” As a feminist (and killjoy) I wanted to wring his neck… and for most of the show it looked like Rachel (Daddario) did too.
But then she shows up to the airport, smiles at him, embraces him, and tells him, “I’m going to try to be happy.”
And I nearly vomited.
What. The. Actual. Fuck. Rachel?????
Rather than struggle, rather than be her own person, she will choose what is easy—money, comfort, luxury. She will choose to be a trophy because… principles are hard. And maybe because Belinda (Rothwell), a Black woman, wasn’t willing to do the work for her.
Whatever the reason Rachel (Daddario) makes this decision, it solidifies that fact that there is not a SINGLE character in this show that gets out of the week unscathed. Mike White delightfully skewers the people most likely to watch The White Lotus (smart white folx who like to travel and who pay for premium cable) and I can only hope that most of us are self-aware and, dare I say it, “woke” enough to realize it.
