On White Lotus II

This blog post is dedicated to some of the "White Lotus II" characters

Spoiler alert: watch the series first.

Tanya

Tanya's storyline immediately caught my attention, and Jennifer Coolidge perfectly played the role of a scared child hidden behind the disguise of a rich and insensitive woman. The film's script skillfully unwinds this contradiction, starting with an image of a fretful aging hag constantly demanding attention from others. Yet, that graceless woman is strangely appealing to the others in a rare moment of sincerity. Like any other person, she's reminding me of a "mobile" - a kinetic art sculpture consisting of levers and objects hung on them to form a balanced yet bizarre structure. Only her structure is grotesquely unstable and could fall apart in a quiet state, so she moves, constantly irritating people around, pushing them aside, or leaning on them to find that unlikely stability. Soon enough, we discover Tanya's childhood trauma and her ridiculous personality starts to make sense. It is difficult to forgive anyone who committed such an atrocious crime as child harassment. Mental recovery after rape is hard to live through, but when the parents, who must protect their children at any cost are involved, it hurts to think what that girl experienced. I could only imagine what thoughts were occupying her mind while she was alone in her bed, crying herself to sleep. Why me? What did I do wrong? Maybe I'm bad, and that's a punishment? Am I bad, and this should have happened? Why did nobody protect me? The pit of despair Tanya lived in was bottomless, along with her insecurity, never-ending fear, and the wound that never heals. It's a bad wound, a poisoned one because it makes weaker people hurt others to gain an illusion of power and security. During all those years nobody tried to heal her, and she was too weak and frightened to reach out for help. Instead, she succeeded in building a wall of wealth separating her from the others. She's got good at hiding her true feelings and numbing the pain within. Constantly afraid of being hurt, she's been controlling people around her to get an illusion of authority. That's why Tanya was so obsessed with money, it was a single thing that was keeping her safe. But deep inside, she's been that small girl being exploited, the girl who wanted someone to look after her while she sleeps. The girl who surrounded herself with assistants that were really babysitters, because she trusted babysitters more than her own mother. A wretched child possessing an enormous wealth, that's who she was. She's an opera heroine, tragic and beautiful, even in numbness. It's not a coincidence that her assassins called her Puccini's heroine, she truly was. Frankly speaking, I never expected that kind of performance from Jennifer Coolidge, an actress notorious for comic low-life characters and bathroom humor. I think she's been able to reveal the perception of the world of that unhappy little girl to the full extent.

Eaton and Harper

The story of those two couples should remind us of how socially centric beings we all are. Оn the outer layer, it's a story of rise and fall and how partners deal with it. Eaton recently became very wealthy, but he could not comprehend that completely. There is a social inertia that sits deep in our brains, supposedly acting as a safety mechanism preventing us from dangerously abrupt changes. Eaton looks like a man who striving to achieve his life goals with hard work. The script doesn't uncover the sources of his inner motivation, but it's clearly visible that Eaton seeks social approval. It's important for him to be acknowledged. That's why he studied frantically while most of the other university students were having fun. For him, it's not just a nice feeling, but a gravely important factor related to survival. He might be from a poor family, studying on scholarship, or the best grades were the only way of bonding with distant parents, who knows... Eaton's social inertia dictated him to be a part of the group, much like a young animal. When I was around eleven, I impulsively bought a book called "About rat and mice" by Kotenkova. Among other topics, this book has an interesting overview of mice sociology which was surprisingly similar to the unwritten rules the middle school crowd was following. Most of the mice populations got very hierarchical ranks of male dominance. Alpha-dominants are at the top of the social pyramid and assert their dominance by taking food from the less powerful mice and copulating with females. Omega-dominants are at the bottom of the chain, they are the most repressed species in group, and they are not allowed to have a mate. What is interesting, is that omega-dominants are directly and most ferociously oppressed directly by alphas. But when the alpha dies or gets lost, often one of the omega-dominants becomes a new leader. Funny, ha? That book told me much more about human sociology than all the school courses put together. Eaton is a typic omega-dominant oppressed by his college roommate Cameron. Cameron is a typical alpha who humiliates Eaton instinctively, knowing his great potential, but preferring to have him obedient and selfless. Cameron had sex with each girl Eaton liked and belittled him until Eaton took it as a normal way of life. Cameron's dominance was powerful enough to imprint a vague sexual attraction to him in his oppressed roommate (remember the scene with Cameron having sex with a girl, and Eaton looking?). Eaton lived a very weird co-dependent relationship, he was unable to leave, out of fear of becoming an outsider and loosing Cameron's approval, although he hated Cameron even more than loved him. All of these opposite feelings were only making Eaton study harder to dull the feeling of being oppressed, and jealous unhealthy attachment to the leader. Eaton was working hard to improve himself by learning, creating a gigantic torque if we could compare physics to psychology, and that momentum in turn was a source of his social inertia that kept him unaware of his new status. Gaining a big wealth didn't alter Eaton's life perspective instantly, he could have lived that inertial moment even longer, but suddenly, he's been confronted with Cameron anew. Now the even weirder part :) A story tells that Eaton lost a sexual appetite for his young and beautiful wife, and the reason behind that was Eaton's new social status that he could not associate with himself, but his body already did. Previously, Harper was a family head, she's been making strategic decisions, and caring after her delicate husband. She's been looking ahead, nurturing Eaton, protecting him from harm outside of their relationship (the moment when she warned Eaton about Cameron's pitch). She'd been bossing her husband around for a long time, but unexpectedly their roles swapped when Eaton became a VIP. I bet I knew what their sex life had been before. Eaton was looking for support and consolation from his wife. I could easily imagine him standing on his knees before her, looking at her face, awaiting that tender and a bit condescending smile in the corners of her lips before she allowed him to immerse himself into the warm void of oblivion, disassociating from his present stressful life and letting the primal sucking reflex to bring him back into a babies state of mind. Women sometimes ask, why men like it so much, I can tell very definitively, that we do it to bring back the early state of mind of the happy baby. What women feel at this time is a mystery to me. Perhaps, they observe that men with their strength and muscle really belong to women, who carried them under their hearts, gave them birth, and could easily destroy them, because let's face it, women can do that too. Then, they have been making out, with him on top. Harper is a clever woman, and she's been giving him that, knowing what he will ask from her next. Shortly after the first time, he's been inviting her to be on top of him, and that was his sweetest moment. Because, for Eaton, being controlled so close, so tight, and seeking even more conformance in her glance, was the highest form of acknowledgment. He's been a central focus of her attention knowing that he's a good boy, she's accepting it, and he's protected by her, and everything's gonna be all right. But suddenly, he became powerful and influential, however his social inertia can't change his viewpoint momentarily. An abrupt change for the better can be difficult to handle too. For Eaton, becoming rich and important all of a sudden was a shocking condition. His hormonal system reacted immediately forcing the poor consciousness to watch porn of the men dominating moaning women. He wasn't able to understand why he lost a sexual interest in his wife so abruptly, not knowing it was not the interest in his wife he lost, but the way they had been intimate. His hormonal state changed enforcing a new alpha behavior on him that he was not ready to accept. In a desperate attempt to alleviate that state of mind, Eaton was torturing himself with speed runs, but that helped very little. For Harper that change was full of shock as well because she's been the head of the family too long, and now her soft husband evolved into a different man who grew cold and aloof. Harper, already tired of being a man, mother, buddy, and lover tried to play it cool but wasn't able to find a solution until Daphne showed her the power of being feminine. This is one of the key points. We are social beings, and no matter how hard we are trying to resolve the situation, most of the time, communication with the right people, and an experience exchange works much better and efficiently. With this new knowledge, she finally kicks off a change in her husband's self-awareness, and we observe how he gains his masculinity. Eaton suddenly realizes that there is no point in being jealous, he's the new alpha, and Cameron is just an image of the past, a bleak facade with no strength. A fight on the beach is a culmination of Eaton's change. Again, I'm seeking a zoologic analogy here. Like a young chimp coming of age, he's been fighting for leadership, and to be completely honest, this fight doesn't look like Eaton was going to strangle Cameron, but rather force him into submission like young chimps do (here I allow myself to spare the details because the level of weirdness is already high), and Cameron submits quietly. Finally, Eaton and Harper accept their new roles and start a new passionate relationship. With Daphne and Cameron, it is the opposite. Daphne is disturbed by her husband's financial instability, he's not an alpha anymore, and despite all his bravery, and inertial behavior they are both scared. They are also living a change full of shock, but Cameron isn't prepared to work hard. For that couple, what they going to get through wouldn't be easy as well.

Jack and Portia

Have you noticed an episode of true love in a very Shakespearian sense? "White Lotus" is reacher than it appears at first glance. I'm talking about Jack, who fell in love with Portia and willingly sacrificed his life for hers by bringing her to the airport instead of vanishing her. Jack did that knowingly, fully understanding the consequences, and that she wouldn't remember anything of him, but fear and disgust. For Jack, she's a nice girl who liked him unconditionally, and he can't betray this anymore. For her, he's a filthy monster she happily escaped, and a life lesson to keep close to her own kind. A man who loves her, is somebody she will try forgetting as a nightmare.

I am not a native English speaker, feel free to correct me.