Mike White's Pessimistic Humanism

Wherever you go, there you are.

It’s a cliché but I like it. Alcoholics call the idea that relocating will change an addict’s life “doing a geographic”. But it can apply to anyone with trauma, temptations or even plain old traits.

In The White Lotus, various troubled souls are holidaying or hiding out in Hawaii (Series 1), Sicily (Series 2) and Thailand (Series 3). In the opulent surroundings of the White Lotus hotel chain, rich Americans torture and are tortured by each other and themselves.

You might well have seen the show. (If you haven’t, be warned that there are spoilers ahead.) I am usually late to hit series and this was no exception. Still, my girlfriend and I blitzed through its 21 episodes and are disappointed to have finished them. The White Lotus is ingeniously written and beautifully produced.

It is also thoroughly miserable. It is populated by all kinds of dreadful human beings: lecherous husbands, manipulative wives, arrogant jocks, murderers, thieves et cetera. People who seem more good-hearted tend to be undone by their own weakness — like Rachel in Season 1, returning to her insufferable husband, or Piper in Series 3, who accepts that she is too dependent on her creature comforts to realise her ambition of joining a Buddhist commune. Others are simply obliterated by misfortunate. Chelsea in Series 3, for example, might be the most likable character in the show — doggedly loving and optimistic. She gets pointlessly killed.

There is no clear ethical or hopeful alternative to the squalor of the world of The White Lotus. Mike White, who wrote and directed the show, is cleverly sensitive to the pretensions of virtue. In Series 1, Olivia and Paula are scornfully judgemental of the “problematic” speech of their hapless relatives while being mean-spirited, drug-addled leeches. Ultimately, Paula gets tired of her wealthier and white-privileged friend — but then she gets a poorer acquaintance jailed and saunters off without obvious interest in his fate. In Series 2, meanwhile, Albie is a kind young man who rejects the cock-brained masculinity of his dad and grandpa. White knighting for a lover he just met, though, he ends up being complicit in the grotesque deception of his own mother. Being a good person, it turns out, is a lot easier in theory than practice.

White has a lot of fun with the potential hideousness of the nuclear family. The Mossbachers, in Series 1, communicate more tensely than North and South Korea. The suffocatingly insular Ratliffs in Series 3 become, well, far too insular for comfort. But White also seems cynical about individual aspiration. In Series 1, Rachel embodies the sort of person who wants to be an individual without displaying unusual perspectives or abilities. (She wants to be a journalist but does not mention anything article-worthy.) In Series 3, Piper disdains the shallowness of her family. But she seems to have constructed her identity around being the odd one out. She wants to judge her loved ones but doesn’t want to actually leave them.

The writing has got worse by Series 3. White is a bit too obvious in leading his puppets towards an abyss. There is something faintly sadistic about it. (“We don’t know if there’s some kind of lifeline we’re going to throw to these characters,” smiles White in a behind-the-scenes clip. Mike, you’re drowning them.) Some of the characters, too, are not flawed as much as they are walking flaws. Rick Hatchett, who might get the most screentime, would be a limp character without an astonishing performance from Walter Goggins — a man whose good looks and charisma give hope to balding men everywhere.

Series 3, though, pays the most attention to the essential theme of The White Lotus: the ego. Characters are slaves to their desires — the realisation of which is never satisfying. Greg goes from being a chirpy — if somewhat annoying — middle manager to a brooding and paranoid multi-millionaire. In turn, though, desire can be a front for the ego. Saxon, in Series 3, is sex-mad but only inasmuch as his sense of self depends on his being sexually successful.

A gentle alternative to the mad Americans in Series 3 are the Buddhist monks who live near the hotel — cultivating their sense of non-attachment. Yet seeing the bizarre and colourful specimens on The White Lotus — who so reflect people we have known in real life — I suspect that to transcend desire and the ego could be as unrealistic an ambition as transcending the use of one’s arms and legs. This is not to say, of course, that they cannot be channelled.

Are we left with any kind of positive vision? At the end of Series 3, Laurie, who has been holidaying with her more successful friends Jaclyn and Kate, gives a little speech — well, a little outburst — about friendship:

I don’t need religion or God to give my life meaning because time gives it meaning.

We… we started this life together. I mean, we’re going through it apart, but we’re still together, and I… I look at you guys, and it feels meaningful. And I can’t explain it, but even when we’re just sitting around the pool talking about whatever inane shit, it still feels very fucking deep.

On one level, this could be transparent cope. The women are not good friends — they are gossipy, and jealous, and spiteful. On another level, though, that could be the point. The White Lotus is hardly full of people, or relationships, who aren’t miserable in one way or another. Perhaps an interpretation could be that attachments can transcend their flaws. Perhaps instead of Laurie betraying her honesty — which, as the least rich, most single member of the trio, she has been priding herself on — she is saying that people can be loved despite an honest appreciation of their failings. A lot of The White Lotus, after all, is made up of hideous or miserable people flaunting their supposed perfection (Cam and Daphne with their perverse marriage in Series 2, for example, or Victoria Ratliff with her terrifying family in Series 3). Perhaps happiness lies in being brutally honest yet fiercely loyal.

Or perhaps not. Poor Chelsea has that combination and gets suddenly and needlessly killed. But there is no perfect formula for life. You can’t begin to be honest without accepting that.