Rich People Problems | An Analysis of The White Lotus

it's hard being rich the white lotus follows the trials and tribulations of three rich families vacationing in hawaii interpersonal dynamics get more and more chaotic and dysfunctional as the vacation continues relationships start to crumble as class racial and gender divisions become more defined there are three main story lines and families that we follow the first group is the mossbacher family nicole who is the chief financial officer of a big company mark who is married to nicole olivia is their college student daughter paula is olivia's friend from college and quinn is nicole and mark's son the second group of vacationers is a newlywed couple rachel and shane rachel's a journalist and shane is a real estate agent who comes from a wealthy family the third group is tanya a wealthy woman who is in hawaii to spread her mother's ashes the hotel workers also play a big role in the story the biggest players are armand the manager of the white lotus belinda the spa manager and kai a busboy the story line of the first group the mossbacher family revolves around the parents patching up their relationship and paula's relationship with kai a hotel staffer olivia is jealous of paula's relationship and quinn is usually off on his own or having to listen to his dad's tangents that always seem to go a bit too far for shane and rachel shane spends the majority of the trip fighting with armand about various things that go wrong during their honeymoon trip most notably he's upset about being put in the wrong room rachel struggles with her identity as a newly married woman what she should do with her career and whether she and shane are a good pairing shane's mom kitty also crashes the honeymoon at one point tanya spends a lot of time at the spa where she befriends belinda the characters in each group are carefully crafted to highlight the differences between them especially due to their economic status the mossbacher family is this privileged white rich family paula is the outsider here she's not a part of the family so isn't indoctrinated in the same philosophies and experiences as the rest of them i assume her family isn't as well off as the mossbachers and she has her own views due to her experience as a mixed woman shane one half of the newlywed couple comes from a rich family as well while rachel his new wife does not rachel has had to hustle her whole life and questions what to do with herself now that she doesn't have to work anymore tanya is an aries type a rich white woman who has probably never had to work a day in her life she befriends belinda a black woman who supports her family by working at the white lotus as a spa manager paula and olivia are typical gen z women they are more politically correct they're college educated but still slightly ignorant about the world paula's biggest obstacles come from her best friend olivia they both are gen z politically correct but olivia is more of a performative activist both of the girls call out behavior that is problematic but olivia uses problematic language when she feels justified to do so when she's annoyed at her brother she uses homophobic slurs and attacks his autism which it's unclear if he does actually have autism or if she's just using that as an insult when paula gets upset about the performance by the hula dancers olivia understands it she doesn't walk out like paula does but she does try to explain paula's reaction to her family while her parents go on a tirade about how younger generations these days are too sensitive my feeling is most of these activists they don't really want to dismantle the systems of economic exploitation not the ones that benefit them which are all global by the way they just want a better seat at the table of tyranny no that's just you mom to the mossbachers paula appears to be an overly sensitive woke social justice warrior gen z crusader olivia does defend paula's views but at the end of the day she doesn't quite agree with them at least not as far as to actually do anything to enact change not only is olivia a performative activist she's also just a bad friend to paula olivia has a history of stealing paula's boyfriends for no reason other than to see if she could i'm olivia guang hi that's such a cool name then there's shane and rachel rachel is the underdog in comparison to shane shane comes from money rachel has had to work hard her whole life by marrying shane she has the opportunity to never work again in fact shane and kitty his mother encourage her to do so not only do they encourage it but they almost expect it they treat her working as an impossibility i i really want to get a job no why would you do that honey no why would you want to do that that doesn't make any sense rachel struggles with her identity now that she's expected not to work she's focused on her career for so long who is she if she doesn't even have that she also struggles with seeing the way shane treats the hotel workers especially armand and how shane refuses to move on from a simple mistake throughout the series shane is upset that they paid for the pineapple room the honeymoon suite while they were actually placed in another room the room they have is beautiful rachel loves it she entertains shane's insistence on switching rooms at the beginning but after a few days when the mistake still hasn't been reversed she encourages shane to let it go she loves the room they have and she doesn't want them to spend their honeymoon complaining and sulking but shane never lets it go which is especially childish when the room they have is perfect when the mistake doesn't really affect him very much since he isn't even paying for the room his parents are and when they wouldn't miss the money anyway from the minute tanya arrives at the white lotus she is desperate for a spa treatment belinda tells her that everything is booked tanya keeps asking if belinda can possibly move anything around and belinda eventually offers to guide tanya through a ceremonial chant which tanya accepts tanya loves the experience and clings on to belinda and keeps requesting her companionship when belinda is supposed to be working or when she's on her time off and belinda obliges because she feels bad for tonya since she seems lonely and depressed and is struggling to process the death of her mother tanya also dangles this proposition of a business opportunity over belinda's head she says belinda has a gift and would love to help her out and start a business with her so belinda feels pressured and obligated to spend personal time and emotional labor on tanya around the middle of the series tanya meets greg they have a romantic connection and they spend more and more time together by the end tanya has clung onto him and has no time for belinda and her false promise of starting a business together then you can take it a step further where there are multiple layers on the class totem pole there's the rich then there's the rich by association and at the bottom is the working class it's not the oppressor versus the oppressed the privileged versus the unprivileged it's more nuanced than that paula is the outsider in the mossbacher storyline but paula also spends a lot of time with kai a native hawaiian who works at the hotel they have a romantic connection and kai tells her about his life story how the government stole his family's land to build this hotel how he needs to work at the hotel to survive to make money and how his family has no money to pay a lawyer to go after the people who stole their land and how conflicted he feels having to work for the company and industry that robbed his people paula sympathizes with him and becomes more and more enlightened about the faults of the mossbachers and tourism to hawaii in general she's upset when there's a dinner show with hula and fire dancers she's caught in the middle between the mossbackers who are ignorant to how this could be exploitative of hawaiian culture and resources and kai who is the one being exploited and robbed over time paula fully flips to kai's side she becomes annoyed with the mossbacher's ignorance and targets them as if they were the literal people that stole kai's land she encourages kai to steal from the mossbachers while they're out of the hotel room because she equates them to being the people who stole directly from kai paula may be an outsider to the mossbachers she may be underprivileged in comparison to them but she is privileged in comparison to kai kai whose land was stolen kai who was forced to work for his oppressors who didn't have the opportunity to go to college like paula did and is probably stuck there in a low-paying job for the rest of his life rachel is the disadvantaged one in her story her storyline revolves around resolving differences between her and her new husband's economic backgrounds in the last episode rachel admits to shane that she thinks she made a mistake marrying him she visits the spa and is very upset belinda feels bad for rachel and encourages her to call her if she ever wants to talk rachel takes her up on that and we later see belinda visit rachel in her room acting as her pseudo-therapist belinda can't take it anymore and leaves mid-conversation you want my advice i'm all out after all belinda has gone through with tanya which by the way is probably what she has gone through over and over again with different guests belinda is done done being used as a rag to wipe white women's tears her empathetic nature seems to have put her in this position where rich white women use her as a tool for their own self-betterment without giving her anything in return she already works a job that probably doesn't pay well doesn't fulfill her dreams where she has to put up with these snobby entitled guests and then she spends the few bits of free time she has acting as a friend therapist companion for these white women on a vacation that she will never herself be able to take rachel is the victim in her story with shane belinda is the victim in her story with tonya but it's not as black and white as rachel always being the victim or belinda always being the victim victims can also be perpetrators here rachel is just another white woman using belinda in belinda's eyes rachel could be just as bad as tanya in rachel's eyes she is the victim she doesn't see herself as being the villain in belinda's story these characters are multifaceted there's multiple layers to each person's identity and place in society these intersecting identities come into play to create a nuanced dynamic and hierarchy of privilege and power i will and have been referring to each character as a victim or villain of course this is a very simplified view of things calling the mossbacher's villains may be harsh referring to belinda as a victim may sound demeaning of course she is much more than a victim and as i just explained it is a lot more nuanced than victim versus villain someone can be both a victim and a villain but for the purpose of this discussion and my analysis of class relationships i will be using these labels to refer to each character each of the main victims revolt against their oppressors but they eventually revert back to their normal life as if nothing has changed as paula gets closer to kai she aligns herself more with him than with the mossbachers paula encourages kai to steal from the mossbackers kai steals from them and gets caught when nicole and mark come back to the room early olivia eventually finds out that paula was working with kai that paula gave him the code to their room safe and told him when the room would be vacant the next day olivia and paula are friends again we didn't see any conversations that explained how they resolved their friendship everything just returned to normal as if the previous day's events were just a dream over the entirety of her stay rachel is contemplating her relationship with shane it all predictably leads up to the realization that it was a mistake to marry him when talking to shane her mind sounds made up she's confident that she made a mistake they stay in separate rooms rachel cries at the spa into belinda she's distraught but then the next day she reunites with shane at the airport it's unclear why she goes back to him again no apologies were ever exchanged tanya repeatedly requests belinda to join her for lunches and dinners and even her mom's memorial service which belinda does do belinda continually caters to tanya's eccentric requests she moves things around in her schedule and spends her personal off time with belinda this whole time tanya has been saying that she will help her start a business that belinda has a gift that should be shared with the world belinda even makes a business proposal for tanya she repeatedly asks tanya to take a look to start discussions about the business but tanya changes the subject every time and in the end tanya says she can't help her because she doesn't want to have another relationship that has this financial element to it belinda throws away her business proposal disappointed later she tries to comfort rachel as she usually does with these rich clients but can't take it anymore and eventually gives up trying to cater to their needs but at the end of the series we see belinda back to normal welcoming guests to the white lotus likely the cycle will repeat itself as if belinda is living in a perpetual groundhog stay each character's status in the hierarchy dictates how much they're able to develop or revolt the mossbacher parents and shane and tanya don't change they don't think they need to change anyway they're delightfully ignorant to their privilege and their negative impact on others they never see themselves as a problem they even see themselves as victims but he is a straight white young man and nobody has any sympathy for them right now and i just feel like we should the oppressed characters paula rachel and belinda all try to revolt but in the end comply with the norm they call out their oppressor's behavior but in the end go back to them without even an apology they can't really afford to revolt anyway what is belinda supposed to do quit her job and paula and rachel are almost gaslit into thinking that they're overreacting their anger is misplaced that they're being hysterical women the next day they probably force themselves into the mindset of their oppressors tell themselves that they did overreact because of the gaslighting but also because it's easier to stay in that position than it is to enact radical change rachel for example would need to leave shane she would be on her own again starting over and would be forced to hustle for every dollar she ever makes there's also a power imbalance at play here paula is on a trip paid for by the mossbachers what is she supposed to do go off on them and be stranded in hawaii with no way to pay for a plane ticket home rachel is the traditional housewife to shane's breadwinner she doesn't have a say in anything shane and his mother kitty practically force her to enter career once she's broken down that much it's difficult to regain control belinda works at the white lotus she is in service to tanya even when in her free time if a rich high profile customer asks you begs you to move things around to squeeze her in for a spa treatment you probably would eventually give in if they ask you to dinner you would probably feel pressured to do that as well and this the customer is always right mentality thank you so much for the invitation i really appreciate it it's absurd we can have dinner who do i talk to you know what um i'll talk to armand and i'm sure it'll be fine yeah i will be fine yeah then tanya dangles this idea of a business relationship over belinda's head so belinda feels motivated to partake in these outings with tanya only to have that dream stripped away as kitty mentions at one point every relationship has some kind of imbalance whether it's money fame power these power imbalances create an uneven playing field where the weak characters feel obligated to comply to the will of the person in power regardless of whether the dominant party is intentionally trying to force anything onto them calling them out is biting the hands that feeds you it's difficult to put that at risk for something as intangible as morals or respect which is unfortunately a gift that unprivileged people can't afford to have sometimes a lot of times these people would rather take the abuse because they need the job they can't afford to call out customers call out an abusive boss this example is most applicable to belinda as a worker who is constantly working with powerful entitled rich tourists paula and rachel have the option of biting the hands that feed them but why would they they have a good life building these connections having these benefits of being friends with people in high places all they have to do is subject themselves to a little bit of casual misogyny and racism at times which could be manageable in return for reaping the benefits of being attached to these powerful people there are three workers that we follow there's armand the hotel manager belinda the spa manager and kai a hotel bus boy all of these characters have tragic endings which juxtapose the rich family's endings the rich families all leave the white lotus unharmed some of the vacationers like paula and rachel had a temporary metamorphosis where they realized the sins of the mossbachers and shane respectively but in the end they revert back to their original form everything just goes back to normal for them all the hotel workers however are left in the wake of the rich tourist's devastating impact belinda's fate is the least dramatic but is also a very common and realistic outcome after her run-in with tonya and then rachel she stands up for herself and decides to start putting herself first maybe she does set a boundary with future clients maybe in the future she won't spend her personal time with guests in the hopes of making them feel better but it feels hopeless it feels like a cycle that repeats itself a way of life that it's inevitable she'll return to and in the end we see her back the way the series started her standing on the beach of the white lotus welcoming families ashore so even if she does put this boundary between herself and future customers she still is at this job that doesn't fulfill her dreams where she has to deal with entitled privileged customers tanya does seem to care about belinda but she is ignorant to the power imbalance in their relationship from the moment she asks her to spend personal time with her a guest of the hotel even during free time there's always going to be this power dynamic that exists between a hotel worker and a guest the hotel worker is in servitude to make the guests stay as perfect as possible even in their free time tanya brings up the idea of funding belinda's business multiple times but once belinda takes it seriously and prepares a proposal tanya ignores her and changes the subject eventually she rejects it outright with some nonsense about how it's not good for her mental health to go into business with a friend even though she's probably never going to see belinda again after this trip she does give belinda money as compensation so she is well-meaning but she is still ignorant to how she used and manipulated belinda to benefit herself and her own self-healing and how she simultaneously killed belinda's hopes and dreams of getting to run her own business tanya will probably go on with her life will probably never think of belinda again and belinda will probably continue to be taken advantage of and mistreated by future hotel guests kai and paula's relationship also exhibits a power imbalance simply due to their existence as hotel worker and guest similar to belinda and tonya's situation the power and balance from being hotel worker and guest probably comes less into play here though because kai and paula's relationship is mostly about these young people having a bit of fun together but these two characters still have differences and privilege and status that lead them to having different outlooks on life paula being a college student rich by association by traveling with the mossbachers and kai a native hawaiian who is working a minimum wage job paula tries to help kai but she ends up making things worse in fact she ends up ruining his life paula plants the idea in kai's head to steal from the mossbachers she has the purest intentions she feels bad for him and his family that their lands were stolen that their culture is exploited that kai is forced to work for his oppressors that kai doesn't have the money to pay for a lawyer to fight back against any of this she wants to help him but doesn't consider the possibility that he could get caught when she finds out that nicole and mark are heading back to the room early she doesn't warn kai she doesn't try to stall nicole and mark and after kai gets caught she doesn't admit to her involvement or try to explain his actions at all she of course feels bad for him but never does anything to help him that would jeopardize her own standing with the mossbachers or with the police paula and the rest of the mossbackers will continue to live their lives this won't even be a blip on their radar while for kai the mossbacher's stay has permanently impacted and decimated his future armand has perhaps the most tragic ending of all the workers from the beginning he is already fed up with how the guests treat him he is a recovering addict and relapses once the guest satisfaction particularly shane's rapidly starts to decline shane and armand's rivalry blossoms from a relatively innocent mistake armand double booked the honeymoon suite and shane insists that armand admit his mistake and move them into the honeymoon suite armand refuses to admit his mistake is unable to move them into the honeymoon suite since it's occupied the mishap with the room shouldn't matter to shane very much the room he has is still beautiful and his parents are paying for the room anyway but it's all about the principle to shane it's all about winning and being right shane is uncompromising he complains to armand every chance he gets he tattles to his mom and his travel agent to try and get armand in trouble armand escalates by sabotaging shane's trip shane complains to arman's manager and eventually the owners of the hotel and in the finale the rivalry escalates to a fatality when armond intrudes into shane's room to mess with his things shane thinks armand is an intruder and stabs and kills him armand is driven to this breaking point having to deal with these entitled guests continually it affects his mental health and sobriety he begins self-sabotaging by purposely trying to ruin shane's trip and by drinking doing drugs and having relations while on the job until it all ends in his death after shane's final run-in with armand shane is released the next day no fuss seems to be made about him killing armand we see him talk briefly to police the next day but they seem to have let him off the hook pretty quickly armad's life story comes to a tragic close while shane will probably rarely think of this moment ever again he'll probably just think back on this vacation with slight annoyance and we'll move on with his thoughts all of the workers crash and burn in the end while the rich families are completely unaffected for most of them this trip will have little to no effect on their lives some of the characters may have had a temporary awakening but their lives don't ultimately change much but the workers are devastated arrested or dead or stuck in the eternal thankless circle of serving these ignorant destructive tourists the hotel workers are also relegated to being side characters in the main character's narrative they're side characters that just exist on the margins of the main character's memories existing only to fulfill the needs of the guests the hotel workers live their own lives are fully realized people but the narrative of the story doesn't focus on them the story is about the mossbachers shane and rachel and tanya armand belinda and kai are just the nameless people who helped their vacations be perfect or the annoying deaths and arrests that caused them some inconvenience during their stays the nameless staffers who will continue on this path for multitudes and multitudes of other guests that will come stay at the white lotus after kai robs the mossbackers we don't ever see him again we hear about him briefly we see paula try to text him we hear the police say they caught the robber we hear armand say that the robber was kai a hotel staff member and that he was arrested we don't ever get to see him as a real person again paula and the rest of the mossbackers don't think of him as a real person with a ruined future he's forever the faceless villain in the mossbacher story after the robbery kai is reduced to nicole's memory of him as this masked assailant we get no closure no resolution no reunion between him and paula we don't ever get to see kai's perspective on this event how he will be affected nicole and mark will continue to bring this up as a light topic of conversation at dinner parties as a form of entertainment remember that one time in hawaii where we almost got robbed from the perspective of the rich hotel guests kai was arrested and that's all we should care about the bad man is locked up and good has triumphed over evil for armand there is little to no fanfare over his death the police let shane go pretty immediately and hotel operations seem to continue on as usual the next day we see another person in armand's uniform they're ready to replace him as hotel manager another nameless person for the hotel guests to manipulate and disparage the white lotus has a way of portraying these rich people problems as if they are the end of the world conversations bubble into utter awkwardness these conversations are completely mundane but feel like they have devastating consequences as tension continues to build like quinn getting the birds and the bees talked from mark mark talking about sex with armand until armand thinks he's propositioning him rachel talking with these sniggering college girls in a way that feels so relatable and real shane flirting with these college girls right in front of rachel shane who's flirting while on his honeymoon and with these girls that basically bullied rachel rachel talking to nicole for career advice and coming to the realization that nicole didn't like the article rachel wrote about her tanya acting oddly in almost any conversation she has the situation where shane requests a nice romantic getaway for him and rachel to have dinner together but armand puts them on the same boat where tanya is spreading her mother's ashes where tanya thinks that shane and rachel have come along for emotional support while shane and rachel are awkwardly there had intended to have this romantic meal but now feel obligated to participate in tonya's memorial for her mom awkward social interaction is piled on awkward social interaction which in addition to the escalating music discordant chance creates this anxiety and watching everything unfold i mean everyone takes vacations okay so 60 pages based on how fast you read that'll be like two minutes and then you can jump in do you want to know me there are moments in the show where each of these characters are having these dysfunctional chaotic moments all at the same time we dart between one situation and the next and the tension is palpable the music rises the awkwardness is inescapable there's no relief these stories converge and intertwine where it creates such a mess but only in regard to relatively surface level social interactions in a conversation with belinda armand refers to the guests as lotus eaters google defines this as coming from greek mythology a member of a people represented by homer as living in a state of dreaming forgetfulness and idleness as a result of eating the fruit of the lotus plant to me this comparison is made to point out the hotel guests general ignorance to life they're detached from the real world not just during their stay at the white lotus but also during their lives in the outside world their privilege makes them ignorant to how most of the world lives and interacts with each other they're so detached they live in this dreamlike state where every dream is catered to they experience minor struggles or hardship another definition of lotus eaters is a person who spends their time indulging in pleasure and luxury rather than dealing with practical concerns the rich guests that come to stay at the white lotus are on vacation so are of course there for a good time but even in their real lives they don't experience much hardship they work in posh respectable jobs where they get paid more than what their labor's worth they could never understand the struggle of a blue-collar worker or even someone in the hotel service industry which is why they treat them as these nameless servants that must cater to their every need or be punished but most notably i think the most interesting thing about this comparison is that the rich hotel guests like to pretend that they're not lotus eaters they like to play the role of the oppressed victim again the second definition of lotus eaters is someone who indulges in pleasure not practical concerns the guests are the ones that indulge in pleasure the hotel workers are the ones that deal with practical concerns for the mossbachers mark worries himself over the smallest things for a while he worries about a pending cancer diagnosis which he ends up not being diagnosed with he obsesses over this to a point that it's all-consuming later on he finds out that his father was secretly gay and again this piece of information becomes all-consuming why is he so obsessed with these points that aren't really a big deal i think it's so he has something to worry about something that makes him look like an oppressed victim someone who has these hardships to deal with even if they are self-constructed these problems are the utter definition of first world problems shane does the same he spends the entirety of his vacation complaining and fighting with armand about the room he makes it his mission to fix the room situation even when rachel begs him not to make a fuss and he goes out of his way to make armand's job a living nightmare again he creates these imaginary practical concerns to cause play as a working-class person that experiences hardship while it takes a backseat in comparison to how the show treats class issues gender roles also come into play in character relationships and story lines the women in the story are the only characters excluding the hotel workers that are shown to have struggles relating to their career path nicole struggles as a workaholic high executive of a massive company she seems to struggle with work-life balance as well as the rejection she gets from outsiders or her own family as a successful woman who is the main breadwinner for the family rachel of course struggles with deciding whether she will become a housewife like shane and his mother want or whether she will continue being a journalist she carefully considers what it means for her self-identity if she no longer has to work and she considers her prenuptial agreement and how that would affect future job opportunities if they got divorced and she had to start working again with a long gap between jobs and a lack of experience mark and nicole diminished paula's experience as a mixed race woman when paula is upset about hawaiian tourism about how kai and the other hawaiians are treated she is treated as an over-emotional teenager acting out of line they even go so far as to claim reverse sexism that actually white boys are the oppressed ones nowadays because no one can hire them and because they're automatically assumed to be villains rachel patiently observes shane's escalating childish behavior surrounding the room mishap in combination with other factors and ultimately comes to the conclusion that she made a mistake in marrying him when she musters up the courage to bring this to shane's attention he treats her so cruelly he treats her like a hysterical delusional woman irrational and dumb like a surficial gold digger he reduces her to the most stereotypical and harmful tropes dismissing even the possibility that he could be in the wrong even a little bit shane in armand's rivalry escalates into a childish display of toxic masculinity neither party will admit any fault or just surrender for the greater good it becomes about who will be the winner for bragging rights of who is the most dominant one it also becomes more and more animalistic until it ends with armand literally marking his territory on shane's luggage and shane killing armand nicole and mark and rachel and shane both reunite after heroic shows of masculinity nicole and mark's gender roles are swapped nicole is the breadwinner which makes mark feel a bit submissive maybe if i'm just honest about my failures maybe he'll respect me for better he is vulnerable in sharing private information with quinn but nicole gets mad at mark for sharing these intimate pieces of their relationship their relationship isn't repaired until mark tackles kai who is robbing their hotel room and threatening nicole once mark establishes this dominance she takes them back and their relationship is repaired nicole likes the brutal dominance and protectiveness mark exhibits over the raw vulnerability that mark had previously offered similarly for shane and rachel they're in the midst of a fight and separation and then shane kills armond next thing we know rachel is back at shane's side it's unclear why she goes back to shane but it's just an odd coincidence that both of these relationships are repaired once the man exhibits this physical dominance the white lotus highlights character relationships and dynamics established by each of their intersecting identities how class race gender creates different mindsets and experiences how it can create power imbalances that affect how people move around in their lives how people are taken advantage of how people are ignorant to their part in exploitation and manipulation that's it for my analysis of the white lotus i really liked the show i thought it was really entertaining really funny as well as a very thoughtful look at these dynamics between relationships and just making fun of rich people it also has an outstanding cast too so i would just really encourage people to check it out if you haven't already but if you made it this far you probably have but that's it for this one i'll see you in the next video bye

Channel: Lifeisbella

Views: 260,459

Keywords: The White Lotus, HBO Max, TV, review, analysis, discussion, Murray Bartlett, Connie Britton, Jennifer Coolidge, Alexandra Daddario, Jake Lacy, Natasha Rothwell, Steve Zahn, Sydney Sweeney, Brittany O'Grady, Molly Shannon, Hawaii, Mike White, Mossbacher, Tanya McQuiod

Id: yOkZE3CVkKU

Length: 38min 43sec (2323 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 29 2021