The White Lotus
HBO’s, created by Mike White, is a satirical anthology series that peels back the veneer of luxury tourism to expose the moral rot festering beneath.
The show’s first season (2021), set in a Hawaiian resort, dissected racial and class tensions, while the second (2022), in Sicily, delved into sexuality, infidelity, and colonialism.
Both seasons interrogate the hypocrisy of the elite, but beneath its razor-sharp wit lies a more damning critique: the series itself risks becoming the very spectacle of performative wokeness it claims to satirize.
While brilliantly critiques systemic inequality, its reliance on shock value, superficial characterizations, and voyeuristic indulgence in the suffering of marginalized characters raises ethical questions about whether it truly challenges power structures or merely commodifies them for elite entertainment.
At first glance, appears radical in its indictment of privilege.
The first season’s Armond (Murray Bartlett), a queer, drug-addled hotel manager, embodies the exploited service worker pushed to self-destruction by wealthy guests.
Yet, as scholar Sarah Banet-Weiser argues in (2018), media often co-opts progressive narratives while reinforcing the status quo.
Armond’s tragic arc, though compelling, ultimately serves as a plot device rather than a meaningful critique of labor exploitation.
His death is sensationalized, reducing systemic injustice to a macabre punchline.
Similarly, the second season’s exploration of sex tourism epitomized by Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) and the predatory gays exposes the commodification of desire but does so through a lens that fetishizes the very exploitation it condemns.
As film critic Richard Dyer notes in (1997), representations of privilege must be scrutinized for whether they challenge or replicate oppressive dynamics.
often does both, leaving its politics frustratingly ambiguous.
Satire thrives on exaggeration, but when the targets are already grotesque billionaires like Shane (Jake Lacy) or narcissists like Olivia (Sydney Sweeney) does the critique lose its bite? Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of (, 1984) suggests that elite audiences may consume such satire not as a call to action but as a form of self-congratulatory detachment.
The show’s wealthy viewers can laugh at Shane’s entitlement while remaining blind to their own complicity.
Moreover, the treatment of non-white characters raises concerns.
Belinda (Natasha Rothwell), the Black spa manager in Season 1, is promised empowerment by Tanya, only to be discarded a metaphor for hollow corporate diversity initiatives.
Yet, as scholar bell hooks warns in (1996), when marginalized characters exist solely to highlight white guilt, their narratives become tools of the oppressor.
Belinda’s arc, while poignant, risks reducing her suffering to a teachable moment for white audiences.
The show’s gender politics are equally fraught.
Season 2’s Daphne (Meghann Fahy) weaponizes her victimhood, manipulating her husband while perpetuating cycles of abuse.
Feminist media scholar Angela McRobbie (, 2009) warns that postfeminist media often celebrates female agency while ignoring structural inequities.
walks this tightrope Daphne’s cunning is framed as empowerment, but the systemic forces enabling her behavior go unchallenged.
is undeniably incisive, holding a mirror to the grotesqueries of the elite.
Yet, its ambivalence between critique and complicity reflects a broader cultural dilemma.
As journalist Anand Giridharadas argues in (2018), the modern elite excel at diagnosing inequality while evading accountability.
Does the series provoke change, or merely let audiences revel in guilt-free schadenfreude? Ultimately, is a masterclass in exposing privilege but until it moves beyond voyeurism and toward substantive critique, it remains part of the problem it so brilliantly skewers.
- Banet-Weiser, S.
(2018).
- Bourdieu, P.
(1984).
- Dyer, R.
(1997).
- Giridharadas, A.
(2018).
- hooks, b.
(1996).
- McRobbie, A.
(2009).