The third season of HBO’s hit show The White Lotus is barreling towards its season finale on April 6. The satirical comedy, which airs on HBO on Sunday nights, inspires internet theories and discussions around the proverbial water cooler on Monday mornings. 
 
Since each season begins with a crime and reveals who the victim and perpetrator are at the end, most discourse centers around the identity of not only the perpetrator but the victim. But The White Lotus also spurs important conversations about sustainable tourism, class consciousness and the human search for meaning. 
 
For more clarity about why The White Lotus is an important contemporary touchstone, Temple Now spoke with Yang Yang, professor of tourism and hospitality at the School of Sport, Tourism and Hospitality Management, and Kartik Nair, assistant professor of film and media arts at the School of Theater, Film and Media Arts. 


 

Temple Now: The term "the White Lotus effect" has been used to describe the increase in tourism in the locations each season is set, and “set-jetting” is the term used more broadly to describe the phenomenon of traveling to film locations. Can you explain more about how seeing locations depicted on TV and film can influence tourism demand?  

Yang Yang: When a person is trying to make travel decisions, the process is like a funnel. At the very top of the funnel is awareness—to choose the resort or destination, you have to first be aware of it. After that, you have to make lots of other decisions based on various criteria. So TV shows and movies and even YouTube content make people become aware of the possibilities of their choices and that impacts every stage of the funnel. The media shows what the local infrastructure looks like and makes them feel more prepared to visit the location. Local stakeholders definitely embrace the opportunities to use media as marketing campaigns.  
 

TN: “The White Lotus effect” and set-jetting create a risk of overtourism. What are the negative consequences of overtourism? 

YY: When there’s increased tourism to a location, the benefits can trickle down to the individuals of a place, but there can also be negative effects such as destruction of the local ecosystem and infrastructure overload. Anti-tourism, or retaliation against tourists, is also an issue in a lot of places. And seasonal tourism is an issue, too, in that there are influxes of people at certain times of year, which can create seasonal unemployment in that area.  

Different places have different vulnerabilities to overtourism. However, I am a strong advocate of sustainable tourism. I believe we should definitely think about the strategy behind drawing tourism while working with local stakeholders on figuring out how to leverage the positive effects of tourism while mitigating the potential negative effects.  

TN: The White Lotus is based on the Four Seasons hotel chain and is mostly filmed there. HBO has partnered with the Four Seasons to do screenings of the show as well as wellness cabanas and bar popups inspired by the show.  How does this partnership benefit both parties?

YY: They’re leveraging a trend in marketing that is experience-based and offline. Lots of brands are holding in-person events that foster connection with the brand. So in this case, there’s demand to have experiences in the actual version of the fictional resort depicted on The White Lotus, especially since there’s a widespread interest in entertainment opportunities that focus on mental health, physical health and social well-being. As we look ahead to the future, we can predict that these experience-driven events will play an ever bigger role in the marketing industry. Brand experiences can connect so many different things. 



 

Temple Now: Every season of The White Lotus starts with a crime but reveals neither the victim nor the perpetrator, and then the remainder of the show reveals everything that happened in the week leading up to it. In what ways is it a classic crime narrative? 

Kartik Nair: The detective story with the scrambled timeline is not new. It certainly has existed in literary fiction and paperback fiction, in television shows and film noir. These stories often begin with the appearance of a dead body, and then you go back in time to understand how and why this happened. It is a way to maintain or generate narrative interest or suspense and casts a pall over the preceding proceedings, because you expect minor interactions or happy situations to lead to murder. 
 
At the same time, I think there is something distinctive and new about the miniseries or multi-episode TV show format. Wealthy lifestyles, combined with sordid crime, are something that I noticed becoming popular on American television in the last 10 years or so. For example, in Big Little Lies (2017) there’s been a murder in this enclosed wealthy community. There’s some combination here of the excitement and envy of seeing how the rich live but also this kind of comforting fiction about how they’re unhappy and driven to murder. I think the crime allows for a kind of moral cover to be very interested in the lifestyles of the rich and famous.   
 
I think what’s special about The White Lotus specifically is its thematization of high-end tourism, the aspect of service labor in this racialized and hierarchical space. So I think on the one hand it is part of a very old genre with roots in film noir and detective fiction, but also something very new that I think may have something to do with COVID and a desire for travel while also being a contemporary thematic exploration of race, class,  gender and sexuality. 
 

TN: What are the qualities of The White Lotus that make it a social satire?  

KN: It is pretty good at showing us that these uber wealthy men and women work very hard but are pretty anxious about holding on to their capital. They don’t lead stress-free lives. I think the show captures the contemporary popular ambivalence around wealth: It is both a critique of the 1% and a voyeuristic look at how they live.   

TN: What are some of the main thematic elements of The White Lotus?  

 KN: I think The White Lotus explores a universal drive to create meaning, but also that death and decay are inevitable. In Season 1, there’s a scene in which the character Olivia is reading Nietzsche by the pool. The fact that Olivia is reading existential philosophy poolside may indicate something both superficial and yet deep. The theme of the search for meaning is made more explicit in the character of Piper in Season 3. She’s interested in Buddhist philosophy, but her mother hates it because she experiences it as a rejection and betrayal of her values. Piper’s character is a continuation of the Olivia character from the first season. It’s interesting how the show places some faith in young people. Young people can be perceived as dangerous, unpredictable and driven by desires that can cause pain for other people. And I think the show is interested in youth as the potentially uncorrupted next generation of the super wealthy.  
 
The show is also very interested in taboo desire, ‘wrong’ desire. Creator Mike White is a committed explorer of images of non-normative sexuality that go against a kind of respectability politics. Almost every season hinges on shocking moments of homosexual sex discovered or witnessed by somebody who’s not gay. I think there’s some exploration of bringing to light what’s been repressed and counterposing this very straight world of capitalist machismo, accumulation of wealth, good wives, good children and pedigree.