The rich, Fitzgerald famously observed, are not like you
and me. In the roughly 100 years since that line appeared in The Great
Gatsby, movies, books, and television shows have reinforced the point. This
summer’s buzziest addition to this milieu was HBO’s The White Lotus,
a six-episode limited series that takes place over a week’s time at a luxury
Hawaiian resort.
The upstairs/downstairs class struggle is established
quickly. The “haves” include Nicole and Mark Mossbacher, their two teenagers,
Olivia and Quinn, and Olivia’s college bestie Paula. In addition, we have
newlyweds Shane and Rachel Patton; he comes from money, she does not. Lastly,
there is Tanya McQuoid, a flightly middle aged singleton who is here to
dispense with her mother’s ashes (and hopefully the mental damage inflicted on
her when her mom was alive). The “have nots” are Armond, the resort manager,
Belinda, who manages the resort’s spa, and Kai, a native Hawaiian working at
the resort as a fire dancer while bemoaning the theft of his family’s property
by unseen forces.
In lesser hands, this would be standard, pay cable summer
escapism, but Mike White filmed a horror story that is easy to miss because the
eye is constantly drawn to the lush cinematography, gospel-like Hawaiian
soundtrack, and internet catnip (social media lost its mind over the syllabus
of anti-capitalism and anti-colonialism books Olivia and Paula devoured,
Jennifer Coolidge’s hot mess performance as Tanya launched a million memes,
etc.)
But below the surface, White’s story telling simmers
until boiling over in the show’s bleak conclusion. When the guests arrive,
Armond naturally counsels his staff to be invisible, anodyne, and essentially
treat the guests as overgrown children whose every whim should be catered to.
It is surely the same lecture he gives them at the start of each resort week,
but because he and his staff are human beings and not mindless robots, that
edict is thrown out the window as the ever-present demands from the entitled
guests start wearing on the staff.
And that’s the thing. Kids can be negotiated with or
disciplined but adults with privilege cannot.
Shane is a male Karen, refusing to accept that the
honeymoon suite his mother (because of course) reserved was double booked even
though the alternate room he and Rachel are given is also very nice. Instead of
simply leaving well enough alone, he keeps after Armond about the screw up,
inflicting unnecessary humiliation on the resort manager, whose pride gets the
better of him and he refuses to simply admit his mistake, which just escalates
the problem.
Tanya pleads for a massage as soon as she arrives,
quickly adopting Belinda as an on-demand combination masseuse, therapist, and
dinner companion as she vomits out all of her messy baggage without a second
thought at the demands (emotional and time-related) she places on someone who
has to service all the other guests at the spa. Belinda feels obligated to
attend to Tanya both because of her status and Tanya’s dangling the possibility
of funding Belinda’s proposal to open a wellness clinic.
The Mossbachers are caught up in their own drama swirl.
Nicole is a LEAN IN executive who feels undervalued while her daughter is both
repelled and ensconced by the wealth her parents provide. Mark is neutered by
his strong willed wife who has not forgiven him for having an affair while
simultaneously dealing with a cancer scare (in the balls, METAPHOR ALERT) that
may kill him and deprive him of a stronger bond with his son (whose face is
buried in an iPad 24/7).
Rachel and Paula have a foot in each world. Neither comes
from money, but they now reap the benefits of being in proximity to it – they
are, what you might call, privileged-adjacent, but that puts them in a
precarious position. For Rachel, the stakes are outlined neatly – Shane (and
ultimately, his mother, who randomly barges in on their honeymoon after
one-too-many calls from him complaining of the treatment he is receiving) will
literally pay his own wife money to not accept a freelance
assignment she receives while they are at the resort. Her mother-in-law poo
poos her idealism, explaining the impact Rachel can have by hosting fundraisers
and getting involved in philanthropic efforts not in pursuing the career in
journalism she hoped to have. In other words, a future as a trophy wife who is
expected to look pretty (and not much else) is on offer if she is willing to
accept her place at the side of a just-keeping-it-together rage monster who
will LOUDLY demand to see the manager if he is unsatisfied with the
service.
Paula, on the other hand, is smitten by Kai, who puts a human
face on the punishment that has been inflicted on native Hawaiians who must
serve rich (mostly) white people in order to survive because America annexed
the island 100 plus years ago. While Paula is clear-eyed enough to see Olivia’s
limitations (vague allusions are made to her hooking up with one of Paula’s
former boyfriends) and her parents’ blasé attitude toward their own fortune,
she is also self-aware enough to pass on Kai’s offer to stay with him in his
humble abode and turn her back on the college education she no doubt sees as
her ticket out of whatever modest background she comes from.
The story lines slowly start bending toward one another
as the week unfolds. Paula hatches a hair brained scheme where Kai can sneak
into the Mossbachers’ suite while they are gone, pilfer a few expensive
bracelets, and sell them to get the money he says he needs to hire a lawyer to
recover his family’s land. The plan flops when Nicole shows up unexpectedly
with Mark trailing behind her, forcing Kai to rough them up, but being caught
approximately two seconds after he flees. Olivia quickly figures out that Paula
gave Kai the code to the safe and freezes her out. The crime gives Shane the
hook he needs to go over Armond’s head and get him fired, but his obsessive
need to humiliate the resort manager is the last straw for Rachel, who decides
to leave him. As a parting “gift” to Shane, Armond sneaks into his room, drops
trou and leaves a deuce in Shane’s luggage but before he can leave, Shane
returns to the room. Shane, sensing the presence of a burglar, grabs a knife to
protect himself. In a moment of really bad timing, the two
collide, with the business end of the knife penetrating Armond’s chest, killing
him. Meanwhile, the Mossbacher parents, estranged and distant when the trip
started, are brought together by Mark’s fit of heroism in protecting his wife.
Shane, who literally killed a man, is dapped up by the cops, leaves the resort
with essentially no questions asked, and with Rachel, who had toyed with
leaving him, back in the fold. Finally, Tanya predictably cuts Belinda loose when
a male guest starts showing Tanya attention (not to mention affection).
In the end, the Lotus acts as a bizarro Fantasy
Island reinforcing the sense of entitlement and privilege its wealthy
visitors possess. Mark, who arrived emasculated by his successful wife and
fearing he had cancer at the physical center of his manhood, departs a hero in
the eyes of his wife and children, a badass black eye from saving the day, and
a clean bill of health. Shane now has a compliant Stepford Wife at his side,
and Tanya absorbed all of Belinda’s kindness and desire to help and walks away
with a guy who has seen the layers of her onion and not run away screaming.
Both Paula and Rachel, given the opportunity to escape
their toxic, albeit privileged surroundings, balk. Rachel, given the
alternative between scrounging out a living as a clickbait news aggregator at
the bottom of the journalistic ladder and having all her money problems
disappear, chooses the latter. Perhaps she was simply honest enough to see her
own limitations, lacked the self-confidence to do things on her own, or just decided
that being poor sucked. For Paula, she benefits from her proximity to privilege
and moves on at the cost of knowing she has left behind a life ruined.
The outcomes for the have nots are the exact opposite. If
you try to literally (or metaphorically) take a dump on a person of privilege,
your best case scenario is termination, your worst, death. If you try to ingratiate
yourself in order to get the money you need to fulfill your dream of striking
out on your own, it will be cruelly snuffed out by the whims of a flighty rich
white woman who will assuage her guilt by shoving some money in your face, but
will not afford you the chance to mourn your lost hope because the phone keeps
ringing with new demands from new people. And if a girl you’re having a fling
with tells you to commit what she believes is a victimless crime, you will
undoubtedly pay the price for her miscalculation, be made an example of and punished
to the full extent of the law, lest the same wealthy people whose money keeps
resorts like the Lotus in business fear vacationing there. The message could
not be clearer: resistance is futile. The house always wins.
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