White Lotus is a slow-paced but well-written comedy-drama TV show about rich people on vacation at resort hotels, the first season in Hawaii, the second in Sicily. It’s created by a rich guy named Mike White who presumably takes a lot of vacations and takes insightful notes on the people he meets.
White is adept at giving his clashing characters good arguments for their contrasting sides and coming up with interesting plot twists. But you aren’t supposed to do that anymore. Instead, the point of fiction is to have the characters with the good identities win and the characters with the bad identities lose, at least according to New York Times opinion columnist Michelle Goldberg:
‘White Lotus’ Didn’t Care About Toxic Masculinity After All
Dec. 12, 2022By Michelle Goldberg
Opinion ColumnistThroughout the second season of “The White Lotus,” this time set in an opulent Sicilian hotel, the creator Mike White hinted that there would once again be an ideological arc to the show. …
There was every reason to think that a reckoning was coming for some of these men, one that would put their power struggles and the privileges that have protected them into a new light. …
But now season 2 is over and the good identities didn’t always win and the bad identities didn’t always lose!
No moral framework determined who won and who lost. …
If “The White Lotus” is again a cultural harbinger, then in 2023 we’ll see a rash of movies that try to transcend politics rather than comment on them.
God forbid.
