Right, where I disagree is that this constitutes a moral of the story. I’m not sure there are any morals of the story in the traditional sense. Like S1 was about the ways in which wealth disparities create power disparities and how this inevitably perverts human relationships, and as a lefty my reaction to this is “wealth disparities are bad, let’s reduce them”. But this season is all about sexual desire and the various power disparities that creates and how that messes with relationships. But it’s not like the conclusion can be “let’s do away with sexual desire”. It seems to me that the message is more like “sex, what a thorny issue, huh?”.
I think if the show is pointing at anything as being a problem, it’s naivety about sex and romance and the danger of enslaving yourself to those things. Like Daphne and Cameron are not supposed to be role models, but it’s Daphne’s lack of naivety in dealing with her husband that enables her to survive and prosper. In fact just now, in the middle of writing this post, I looked up an interview with Mike White and he says some interesting things about this:
I wanted to ask you about this idea of transactional sex that’s not just in the Mia and Lucia story line, but in Cameron and Daphne’s relationship and all over the place. Is there a way in which those transactional relationships are more honest than the sex that we see as “romantic”? Does romantic love even exist in theWhite Lotusuniverse?
I grew up, not to get too personal, witnessing women having their hearts broken a lot over and over—and in the case of someone very close to me, it was debilitating. Well, I’ll just tell you: My dad was gay, he was married to my mom, and then they divorced. My mom was so distraught and devastated, and then she realized that her whole relationship wasn’t what she thought it was. I’m kind of an anti-romantic. It’s good to love someone and attachment is inevitable, but there’s a lot of mythologizing around romance that can really work against you. The White Lotus gets into self-created problems.
These people are creating problems for themselves. They don’t really have problems. To me, romance is the definition of a self-created problem. You’ve decided to give up the power of your self-narrative to this idea. Maybe that’s cynical, but then it does make you go, like, “Well, there’s other ways to engage sexually and with other people.” This isn’t a pro-transactional-sex show, but what I like about Mia and Lucia is that they know what they want. They go and they get it. Compare that to Tanya where she’s so obsessive about Greg. I know women like this where they like to finger the wound. They like to live in the pain of it. They’re tragic people and that’s why, in this case, she has a tragic ending.
[Let’s talk about] Daphne, who has staunchly decided that she’s not the victim in this story. Cameron can get up to whatever he gets up to, but she’s taking control of what she can. She has that great line in the finale about not needing to know everything to love someone. I love that this season ends with Ethan and Harper being much more Cameron and Daphne than they were when they started. Is this about contentment and dishonesty? Is it about keeping those walls up a little bit and so finding some safety inside of a relationship?
I do kind of agree with Daphne. It’s colored by the fact that her husband is such a cad. He’s pretty extreme. But obviously, she’s made some kind of internal bargain that she is OK with. In general, we create the narratives of our relationships. We decide what importance to put on fidelity. If we’ve been betrayed, we tell the story of our relationships. Daphne just has a very strong sense of how she’s going to tell the narrative of her relationship. It’s not a relationship I would want, but if you’re gonna be in the relationship, figure out how to feel good about it. He can go and be the biggest sleaze, but she’s going to figure out a way to make that not feel painful.
As far as Ethan and Harper, I also think that’s true. When I was younger, there was this obsessive desire to feel like I’m totally in lockstep with my partner. There’s no gray area. It’s just this feeling of possession of the truth of what they do and their desire. I feel like that is a futile endeavor because you don’t even know yourself, let alone fully know somebody else. I’m not a relationship expert, for sure, so I’m not saying open relationships are healthier. But I do think maybe certain things you can let go. Maybe you could live in the mystery of something.
So the sin here is naivety about sex and that includes the naivety of thinking that you can have 100% honesty in a relationship, because people are not even 100% honest with themselves, let alone with other people.
I guess to put it a slightly different way the moral is about maintaining control of your own self-narrative and not subsuming that in an idealized version of another person. Tanya has this idealized version of Greg. Alby idealizes Lucia with this damsel in distress story. Ethan and Harper have this idea that they can be 100% honest with each other. Portia allows herself to be taken in by this sort of idealized version of masculinity that Jack offers to her. The story ends up being critical of all those things. The characters who prosper - Daphne, Mia, Lucia - do so because they maintain control of their own stories. So the message isn’t “sex work is good” or “Daphne and Cameron are role models”, it’s that romance and sex shouldn’t mean becoming reliant on someone else to live up to some ideal.
I’ll take the heat. I’m glad a lot of people liked the new Dune. I hope I like Part 2 more, if not, I hope it’s at least as good for people who liked Part 1. I’d love to see this IP continue on streaming services. I really enjoyed Children of Dune, and there is a lot of original Frank Herbert material to cover that could stretch out for many seasons of tv.
But Part 1 was still pretty bad, my initial thoughts here,
But it’s not just that Part 1 was disappointing, Lynch’s Dune is underrated. It’s bizarre, creepy, operatic, absurd, and I kind of like it.
I think it’s difficult to do that because people can choose what they do in sex and romance and how they frame relationships to themselves, but wealth disparities are real things which can’t just be handwaved away.
Like, one way or another Belinda is inherently subject to the whims of rich people at the White Lotus, either working as a wage slave or subordinating herself to Tanya in an attempt to get capital to do something else. No amount of narrative reframing will change this.
So it’s different in that it’s about how people cope with these real constraints, but I think what it has in common with S2 is a suspicion of dogmatic idealism. Like from Mike White interviews about Rachel and Shane:
I was so conflicted about the fact that Rachel decides to go back to Shane in the end.
I always knew she’d go back to him. There was something about her, even in the way she’s approaching him; it’s like someone who wants to get a response. Honestly, it feels true to life for me. I’ve seen peers who may not have been in this exact situation. She’s started to feel the limits of what she thinks she’s capable of, and it’s the reality of the seduction of a lifestyle. Some people read it as cynical; to me, the thing that I feel about Shane is that even though he is a privileged asshole, he does really love her. Even if it’s just an idea of her.
What I was trying to do with Jake [Lacy] was like, [Shane] may say obnoxious things to [Rachel], but he really is into her. And he’s the kind of guy where as long as he’s waiting, it’s okay. It’s only when he doesn’t get what he wants that he shows his douchebaggery. Maybe it’s a little bit of a portrait of mediocrity or someone who’s weak. I don’t know, I feel like when I see her go back to him, the way I talked about it with Jake was that, in that moment, he’s like a little boy lost. There’s a little bit of pathos there for me.
Maybe I’m being condescending to them, but I’ve seen it in my life. There is a powerful pull of money and lifestyle. In L.A., you see it all the time. In a way, she’s naïve; she wants to be independent and have power in the relationship, but she doesn’t have the money, she doesn’t have the power. I do see women making that choice sometimes.
And from another interview:
Switching gears, did Shane and Rachel’s reunion at the end make you happy or sad?
I felt sort of happy that they [ended up] together. The emotion of the music and [the look on] their faces, I was like, “ Awww , that’s nice.” As far as what it means in terms of her idealism and what she’s choosing, it’s bittersweet. I don’t judge her for it. It was always about her choosing that lifestyle and whatever compromises she was going to have to make in connection with that. And so it made sense for the character.
Like the idealistic answer for Rachel is like “she should Follow Her Dreams into journalism and also find a more equitable relationship” but what White Lotus is saying is, if you don’t have money you will inevitably be subjugated in some way to people who do. For people like Armond and Belinda that means being subservient to the hotel guests to earn a wage. That’s the point of Rachel’s conversation with Belinda towards the end, that Rachel sees this. She has started to bump up against the reality of a life in journalism, which is that she has to write inane fluff pieces to earn a living. Her choice is to give up her independence in exchange for wealth and security. The idea that everyone can live lives of total freedom and independence in a capitalist world is a fantasy.
Most rich guys are assholes. Part of the reason the show is so good is bc the characters like shane are very accurate to what they are really like in the real world
One the the things I found funniest is how the college girls couldn’t tell that Rachel was ridiculously hot and were treating her like she was ugly (or at best average) and then they have this massive realization when she walks into the pool in her swimsuit. We’re supposed to believe they’re blind?
I just felt so bad for her because I relate so much to how hard it is for a woman in her position to walk away from a man (and future partners) like that.
Ramani: I have to say I applauded them for not taking the easy way out in their story…because this is far more often how the story goes. The producers and writers of this show really did a great job of laying out how people get pulled into these narcissistic relationships.
Here is what I wrote way back when season one finished.
Rachel asserts her identity, needs, and limits with increasing confidence. But everyone she turns to shits on her.
First the kids. Then Nicole. On and on.
And when she leaves Shane, Belinda confirms her worst fear. Being free may mean finding her way alone.
So she relents. She returns to Shane. At least he’ll have her.
Shane has the standard fear of abusive narcissists. He fears anyone and anything that is not an extension of him, his feelings, his limits. He fears that his “love” will not be enough for his wife, because that possessive illusion is the most he has to offer.
Hell of a lot packed into one episode. Not prestige TV but well executed. As far as writing and acting, it pales compared to the Jack Reacher series. Still a fine way to spend some time before sleeping.
Finally started Ted Lasso. Four or five episodes in. It’s quite enjoyable. Don’t see the hype yet and why it won every Emmy, but I certainly like it enough to want to keep watching.
I read the 1st book last year after watching the movie and enjoyed it. Started book 2 and stopped halfway through or so, never picked it back up and that’s something I rarely do.
I wouldn’t call myself a hater, but I did love Dark and was fairly disappointed in 1899, maybe because the high expectations. My gf and I were really excited to watch it after being big fans of Dark, but we both felt 1899 was too slow and just… not that interesting. Dark s1 on the other hand, I was engrossed basically from episode 1, and it kept delivering a steady stream of answers and new questions all the way through the season finale. With 1899, by the end of the season it felt like the mysteries that had been set up were made kinda irrelevant by the final reveal.
Would they have made it work with another two seasons, making s1 feel more relevant and interesting in retrospect? Maybe, but Dark was firing on all cylinders from the first few episodes, and didn’t need s2/s3 to help me appreciate season 1 at all.
We’d have been happy to keep watching, and it’s a shame we don’t get to see how it would have turned out, but ultimately we weren’t even that disappointed when I read it was cancelled. Looking forward to the creators’ next project in any case.
