What White Lotus says about men

Hi, welcome to A Manly Podcast. I’m your host Matthew. On A Manly Podcast, I talk about issues related to men and masculinity in American culture and society. And on this episode, I’m talking about White Lotus season 3 and what it says about men.

Now White Lotus is more like a long 19th or late 18th century novel, like Middlemarch by George Eliot or Vanity Fair by William Thackeray. Maybe a Charles Dickens novel about social class and social issues.

Despite being a show with hardly any action. There’s no fantasy, sci-fi, or horror element to it. I guess you could say it’s a crime drama. And there’s no flashy effects or cliffhangers hanging from episode to episode. It really goes at its own pace. It still draws a massive audience. There are 16 million viewers across the whole season.

In today’s cable and streaming landscape, that’s a huge audience. And it means that people all across the country, all across the US are watching this show and globally, and they’re loving it. Now this is a no-brainer for HBO, because White Lotus cost about 6-7 million to make per episode, and the season 3 finale got 6.2 million viewers.

House of Dragons, the first season cost 200 million, I believe, to make. It cost about 20 million an episode, and the season 2 finale got 8.2 million viewers. Now that’s definitely more than White Lotus, but not that much more for the price difference.

Let’s compare that to the Lord of the Rings series. I don’t know the rating or viewing numbers on Lord of the Rings, but that, the first season cost $465 million to make. Whoa!

Mike White has found a way to dig inside the deepest, darkest, most taboo parts of American life, while making it enjoyable for us to watch the neurotic demise of rich people, and making it easy on the eyes with the vicarious vacation we get when we enter a White Lotus episode. The music in season 3 does a really great job of putting us in the mood and atmosphere of the resort.

White in every season has made staff members at the hotel characters. And I feel like I’m getting a VIP, behind the scenes exclusive look at what it’s like to cater to these guests. We also sense that they live a luxury lifestyle that they would rather, no, it’s that they cannot live without, I think.

And that’s one of the major themes across all seasons of White Lotus. That rich people would rather be unhappy or depressed, rather than give up their material possessions, money, any sense of power or privilege towards others.

Featured in all the seasons are a number of unhappy characters who are apathetic, angry, depressed, or harboring secrets that they’re very uneasy about.

The other theme of the show seems to be a belief that people are much more nature than nurture. And the guests in the show really gravitate towards their instincts and urges, much more than taking the moral or ethical high road.

Many guests at the White Lotus lack the capacity to really think or care about others, even though they’re staying at a resort where that’s all the staff does for them. White really puts a stamp on this throughout season 3 with all the shots of the tropical jungle surrounding the hotel. We see baboons and monkeys climbing through the trees, swinging on the vines, sometimes they’re yawning, sometimes they’re chewing on a piece of fruit, and there’s also the lizard in Belinda’s room that Pornchai has to escort out before they sleep together.

In this season, it’s very much as if these tourists have been transported into an alternate world, one that pretends ill omens for them. Most of the characters do not understand this world, and with rare exceptions, they never really end up meshing with it. I mean, most of them can’t even give up their phones. These themes are dark mirrors about wealth and privilege in American society and Western culture at large.

It suggests people are okay with a greed is good, dog eat dog capitalist society, as long as they’re the ones who can afford the $7 latte, can get the luxury home and creature comforts and go on that extravagant getaway to Thailand, etc.

But at the same time, it also holds up another mirror to wealthy people in America and says that even though the culture may perceive them as ungrateful, vapid, or possibly unhappy, they also have the capacity to be kind and generous to one another too, which is always what happens at the end of the White Lotus season. There are specific characters that become more kind and more generous, evolve through the show. In this season, it’s specifically the trio of women who were there on their girls’ trip, who become conflicted and have catty, bitter fights between each other in the middle, but then come together at the end and really make amends.

But the genius of all this is taking a camera like a fly on the wall so we can watch and observe all of it. Now the characters of course on White Lotus have to be conflicted, depraved, a bit corrupt. That’s what makes the show interesting. If there were a bunch of people at this hotel who got along and did everything that the hotel had to offer, renewed their spirits, took a really relaxing refreshing vacation, it wouldn’t make for an intriguing drama.

The camera both brings us into the hotel, brings us into its vibe, but at the same time gives us a little bit of comfortable distance from the characters’ complicated lives. We’re able to see themes around issues of wealth, privilege, and unhappiness. It allows us to say “We’re not like that,” while at the same time still being conscious and aware of wealth and privilege driven by power and unhappiness.

Now there are a lot of strange men on this show, each in their own sort of crisis. The funniest men I thought were Timothy Ratliff played by Jason Isaacs, and his son Saxon Ratliff played by Patrick Schwarzenegger. Timothy is in high finance and the patriarch of the Ratliff family, an old southern family from North Carolina. Timothy says at one point that his grandfather or great grandfather was the governor of North Carolina.

Tim, as his wife Victoria adoringly calls him played by Parker Posey, is a bit of a workaholic and self-entitled jerk. When they arrive, the Ratliffs seem to be unaware that The White Lotus in Thailand is a spiritual retreat.

They have zero desire or respect to understand, except for their daughter Piper played by Sarah Catherine Hook, the culture and rituals around them.

Tim walks around strutting his white privilege like no one else can, and then his world kind of cracks apart when he learns over the phone that there’s a financial crimes FBI investigation into him and his financial business partner Kenny.

That’s when he has the brilliant idea for his family to unplug like the hotel wanted from their phones and gives them to the front desk and communication is cut off for the trip. He is on his spiritual retreat.

But then at one point he asks for the phone back and that’s when he gets on with his lawyer and finds out that they’re going to freeze his assets. He’s probably going to get jail time and also his financial partner Kenny has flipped on him as well.

Then he gives his phone back doesn’t return to it till he’s back on the boat on the way to the airport. And this is when he really checks out goes catatonic by stealing his wife’s Lorazepam and drinking any whiskey he can find.

And at different points he has to feign performances of normalcy when his wife is talking about her scents and creature comforts or asking him how he’s doing, he seems off. His son Saxon comes up to him and confronts him saying, 

“I built my entire career around you. You would tell me if there’s something wrong dad because without this job, I’m nothing. I’m nothing without you.”

Victoria and Saxon feel like without their father’s wealth and power without their family’s wealth and power they are nothing.

And after Piper spends a night at the Buddhist monastery, she realizes that she doesn’t want to spend a whole year without her material comforts and possessions. And so the only person in the Ratliff family that feels like they can live without any Lochlan

Timothy I think, however cowardly, comes to a humbling spiritual reorientation of hisself. His image as leader, provider, patriarch of his family is literally crushed by the news of the federal investigation with frozen assets and jail time.

He thinks about killing himself, he almost follows through with a plan but doesn’t. Then he thinks about killing his entire family by using the Ping Pong seeds from the poisonous fruit and putting them in piña colada. But every time he visualizes it, visualizes all of them dying or himself dying, he can’t follow through with the plan.

He literally watches Saxon start to drink his piña colada and then throws the drink out of his hand, saying the coconut milk is spoiled.

Instead he has to try and embrace this horrific, terrifying feeling that his life is crumbling and he’s not in control anymore.

This is what happens when he goes to the Buddhist monk and he, the Buddhist monk talks about being the drop of water in the chaos and then he will be consumed back into the larger consciousness of the ocean. He comes to be at peace with his self at this moment where he realizes that he just has to almost roll with it, go with the flow or something.

He seems to get there on the boat back to the airport, but this is after they already have their phones back and it looks like Saxon has already found out, looking at his father strangely. And we know when they get back, Victoria will for sure divorce him.

Saxon, along with Victoria, are definitely the best characters from this season. And there’s a lot to unpack here, but I think first to note is that Saxon is like an avatar for the target market for bro-casters.

He’s not hypermasculine, but he wishes he was in some senses. I think his main persona, what he wants to be, is successful, ambitious, business bro. And he also sees a performative sense of self as wanting a lot of sexual experiences with women. He wants these sexual conquests. And he also wants to beef up. That’s what he’s always trying to do with the protein shakes.

What we learn, though, is his desire to be more masculine isn’t who he really is. They get to the Full Moon party, he’s really the one that pushes his brother, Lochlan, to come to the Full Moon party.

His brother’s the one who wants to take the drugs, not him. And it leads to this shocking moment of trauma for Saxon later in the evening when his brother, Lochlan, is having sex with Chloe (played by Charlotte Le Bon) and his brother ends up pleasing him till he orgasms.

This is after the other woman, Chelsea (played by Aimee Lou Wood), ends up turning him down and says she won’t have sex with him because she’s staying faithful to her boyfriend.

And it’s also revealed later that Saxon, while under the influence of this designer drug, kissed Lachlan earlier in the evening and seemed to enjoy it.

Lochlan tries to talk to him about it later, the next day or the following day, saying he’s a pleaser to his brother. He also doesn’t seem fazed by talking about it while it terrifies Saxon.

Turns out he’s more conservative than his younger brother, and he’s really not good at picking up women by the pool, even though he tries to. And it seems like a fool’s move because who wants to get picked up at a spiritual retreat?

The most enjoyable thing he does the entire trip seems to be reading a meditation book that Chelsea gives him, which he actually really enjoys. But when his younger sister asks what book he’s reading and sees it in his hand, he says, “I’m not reading anything,” because I think he thinks as a bro it’s uncool to read.

And even though he has, there’s this running gag about him drinking these protein shakes and pure pressuring his brother into drinking them, I don’t think he actually likes drinking them either because he doesn’t like the taste. He frowns every time he drinks them and he’s like, “Ugh.”

Saxon, whose name associates nicely with the word Anglo-Saxon, is trying to pretend to be something he’s not, I think.

He wants to fit the mold of the ambitious, successful business bro, and maybe he can be a successful businessman, but I don’t think that fits in the mold of traditional masculinity. The truth is that being a bro for him is more of a performance. He wants to be his own person, but he’s so wrapped up in fitting this stereotype and denying his true self that I don’t think he’ll ever get there.

And one of the main ways Saxon affirms his performative sense of self is obviously in his relationship with his brother.

Lochlan played by Sam Nivola, is a shy high school senior who is bossed around by his brother. He can’t stand up to his brother, he can’t say no to him, for fear his brother will make fun of him or shame him. But Saxon’s push to get Lochlan to the Full Moon party leads Saxon to realize that Lochlan’s actually not as shy as he lets on. He becomes the side piece while his brother has sex with Chloe, and this completely upends his relationship with him. One of the reasons he probably obviously doesn’t want to talk about it again is because he was emasculated by his brother. And showing off his masculine image in behavior, appearance, actions is pretty central to his identity. And if we add the layered context that we know that his job at his father’s company is history when he gets home, his whole life may be upended. And if he’s not the persona of successful business bro, then who is he really?

There’s definitely a lot more hope for Lochlan to find a more secure, personal idea of what masculinity is to him than there is for Saxon or his father.

I think episode 6, Denials, was the best of the season because we really learn so much depth about the characters. Not only about Saxon and Lochlan’s relationship and the revelations after the Full Moon party, but also more about Rick, played by Walter Goggins and his friendship with Frank, played by Sam Rockwell. And we learn more about Belinda’s relationship with Greg and how that will evolve later in the show.

Now Rick is a depressed individual who fails to see how much his girlfriend Chelsea loves him.

Instead of enjoying a romantic getaway in paradise as tourists, Rick is fixated on killing the man he believes killed his mother and avenging her death. This man supposedly is Jim, played by Scott Glenn, who is the owner of the White Lotus Hotel in Thailand.

It actually ends up being his father, and he only finds this out after killing him. He ends up getting shot by his bodyguards and dying too, as well as his girlfriend Chelsea. This is probably the most tragic storyline of the season. There’s a mystery surrounding Rick. You don’t know where he’s from or how he’s made his money. He is a much more traditional man though than his friend Frank. When they meet, Rick is disappointed Frank won’t drink whiskey with him. Instead he orders tea and tells him why he got sober. Frank had an identity crisis.

Through his sexual experiences in Thailand, he learned that he enjoyed pretending to be an Asian woman, sometimes dressed in lingerie, while men had sex with him. And he would sometimes pay Asian women to watch him.

This led to an identity crisis, where he really didn’t know if he was a middle-aged white guy or actually wanted to become an Asian woman.

So instead he stopped partying, having sex, drinking, doing drugs, and took up Buddhism.

Now, Rick definitely identifies as a depressed middle-aged white guy, but he doesn’t have much of a reaction to what Frank tells him.

He just acknowledges it, and as long as Frank helps him with his plan to kill Jim, he doesn’t care much either way what Frank does.

A man like Timothy or Saxon would be horrified by Frank. Now, it’s important to note that Saxon may have even felt taken advantage of by his brother. But at the same time, I can’t imagine that Saxon or his father would understand Frank’s identity crisis or his sexual desires. They’ve constructed their masculinities in a more traditional framework, and they like that world.

Now Gary, or rather Greg [played by Jon Gries], is a mysterious figure who people don’t know much about, and he wants to keep it that way after the mysterious death of Tanya in season two, his late wife.

He inherited $500 million from Tanya, and seems to be hiding out in Thailand. He’s connected to the government as some official in the Interior Department. He’s in all three seasons. He seems to be this stand-in for an extremely wealthy white man that almost exists autonomously outside the bounds of government or economic power.

These people can be literal free agents. They are either ghosts, or they can wield enormous influence through their money.

There are different layers, levels of white patriarchal power in White Lotus, but most of them fall to misfortune or are killed off in the show.

Jim, the owner of the White Lotus hotel, is shot by his son Rick, who ends up being shot by his bodyguards.

Timothy is heading to federal prison, and Frank reneges on being sober in his spirituality, returning to his wild ways.

Going back to season two, the trio of white men Greg hired to kill Tanya are all killed by her, and she accidentally dies while trying to get away. Greg is the only one who gets off scot-free,

He’ll continue to live the good life, even though karma has come back to haunt the other rich white men of White Lotus.

The masculine hero of the season is Zion, played by Nicolas DuVernay. Zion is the son of Belinda [played by Natasha Rothwell], and he helps his mother get $5 million dollars from Greg.

Now, they really get the last laugh, because Belinda throughout the season is terrified of Greg, and she believes that Greg is going to kill her. But instead, Greg offers her $100,000, and Belinda says she’ll think about it, mostly for moral reasons. But Zion, who’s really high on his business skills, asks to negotiate with Greg, and he dishes out in their second meeting this high-roller number, and believes his mother can get this much money, because it’s only 1% of Tanya’s wealth, and he says to Greg, “This will buy you the peace of mind you need.”

His mother is way too scared to ask for this much money, but kind of with this young ambition, Zion really goes for it, and in the end, they get their fairytale ending.

So what does White Lotus say about men in the end? It says that most men are too caught up in their sense of self, their image, and how they’re seen by other people. They’re too caught up in their own egos, their pride, how much power they have.

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