Reply to White Lotus

Forum Index » Entertainment and Pop Culture

Reply to "White Lotus"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I just finished last night and have enjoyed reading the last few pages but wanted to get my thoughts out.

First, I feel like what this show does incredibly well is critique the casual cruelty of being UMC and being white. The casual conversation, its effortless and inadvertent cruelty and cringiness, I found that to be so...illuminating? I'm not sure the right word. I grew up in a family like the Mossbachers, not THAT rich but definitely wealthy enough to relate to them. And while I found Olivia to be just awful I also was like, wow that is me in my family! Making conversations uncomfortable by calling out their casual microaggressions while almost certainly doing it myself in smaller ways. And they are my tribe, that comment by Paula struck me. It was just so accurate.

But the show also portrays them all as sympathetic. They are all complex people with motivations that are equally complex.

Even Shane, horrible, he loves Rachel, you can see that. He isn't really even abusive. Other than a couple moments when he got mad he was overall not bad to her. And honestly I'd be angry if I just got married and my spouse said they made a huge mistake too.

I think it is weird how everyone thinks that all the staff were portrayed as miserable. I thought they did an interesting job at even describing the differences THERE. Armond seems pretty well off, although someone for whom it matters that he keeps his job. So not WEALTHY but also doing just fine. I would bet that is a 100k+ a year job. The white guys he parties with seem totally fine, but it is clear that the stakes are lower for them. Lani is struggling, but she is also not treated badly. Armond feels terrible about her situation, she got medical treatment. Belinda has a very good job that I bet pays 50-80k a year. Not enough to save up to do her own business but also not in a terrible situation. They seem like people who have good jobs in nice environments that they are relatively happy with but who roll their eyes at the privilege of their guests and sometimes, like anyone who has ever worked retail, having an outsized reaction to a particularly annoying person.

I agree Kai was not that pressed about his job.

So the staff aren't miserable, but the show DOES illustrate very clearly how they are treated as less than human. We, the viewers, particularly the DCUM viewers, see with shame how they are treated. Because we all participate in that tourism industry and we all know these people are treated badly and so we feel bad participating in the industry. I think this is similar to how people feel shame in having a cleaning lady. The cleaning lady has a good job, works hard and hopefully has dignity in their work. But the person who hires her would feel shame if THEY were a cleaning lady and so treats her WORSE for their own biases towards service work. If I would never be a cleaning lady, then I feel bad for cleaning ladies, even if they are happy and fulfilled. I impose my own class judgements on them while simultaneously expecting them to fulfil their role.

And then you have Tanya, who doesn't do this, who respects Belinda for who she is. But who, despite understanding the power imbalance in their relationship, shows no care for Belinda. She uses up all of her giving nature while leading her along (and not maliciously!) and then at the end shakes it all off like it didn't matter. Because it doesn't matter to her.

So many thoughts! I agree with other posters that Paula is certainly not poor. She is effortlessly comfortable in the environment and comes with a bag packed with pills. If she isn't wealthy herself, then she is firmly enmeshed in wealthy circles to the point where she spends most of her time in them. I think it is interesting they had her perform the most clear act of meaningless woke-ness. She tries to help him in a way that inevitably deeply hurts him. Probably ruins his whole life. And then she throws the necklace overboard, accepts no responsibility and leaves with her relationship with her friend intact.

Such interesting and IMO a very real portrayal of people and how they think/interact/deal.[/quote]

Kewl story [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics