Kai (Kekoa Kekumano) has a series of really touching scenes with Paula (Brittany O’Grady) where he talks about how much he struggles with being an employee of the resort whose owners had stolen his family’s land. Lani’s (Jolene Purdy) character arc serves almost entirely to jumpstart Armond’s (Murray Bartlett) character arc, where he realizes that he’s treating his employees the same way the hotel’s guests treat him. For starters, there are only two explicitly Native Hawaiian characters on the show and they both exist more to further the plot lines of other characters than to have a foundational narrative presence of their own. For it to be so, it would have to prioritize its Native Hawaiian characters as much as everyone else and it just doesn’t do that. To say that The White Lotus is about the colonial relationship non-Hawaiians have with the island archipelago would be duly incorrect. This is not to knock the now-anthology series but rather to temper expectations, be realistic about its storytelling prowess and flaws, and push back against the idea that mere engagement with the toxicity of whiteness is enough for a story to be about that toxicity and the pollution it leaves behind for others to inhale. The fetishization differs from context to context but ingrained within it is an undeniable continuation of the social paradigm that equates whiteness with humanity and therefore, respect.
When white people across the gender and sexual spectrum fetishize Black, Brown, and Indigenous peoples, it is an active display of the colonizing mindset. The argument of the essay is, in essence, that “civilized” white people needed to save Black, Brown, and Indigenous peoples from “our” barbarism, stupidity, and eternal damnation. Rudyard Kipling, author of the stunningly lazy, infantile, and racist The Jungle Book (the name “Baloo” literally means “bear” in multiple South Asian languages, for example) wrote a small essay called “The White Man’s Burden”.
Infantilizing and fetishization are two sides of the same coin, expressed by colonizers, both conscious and hidden, to defend their relationships, actions, and identities.
This is fine, drama, whatever, but for the actors to turn around and present it as a glorious and important representation of rimming is a little dumb, no? Add to this that the only other gay character (so far) is a closet case who died of AIDS, the discovery of which is so disturbing to his adult son that the man launches himself on a days-long existential crises/bender, and you kind of get a sense that on White Lotus, gay sex is treacherous, abnormal, and ultimately self-destructive.The relationship of whiteness to colonialism rests in part upon a duality of expectations about the people and land being colonized. It may have been one thing if Dillon (the employee) had wanted to pnp, but it was strangely connected to a possible job promotion, and read like a predatory boss manipulating his straight employee, and getting him so high on Ketamine (of all things) that the young man didn’t know any better. I actually found the scene, and the show itself, a little bit self-hating and homophobic? Anyone else? The scene in question is best described as satanic leering, drug-fueled, red-lit, drum circled, and treacherous.