The Art of Lust and Betrayal on ‘The White Lotus’

First came my surprise at recognizing Taormina’s San Domenico Palace, a hotel I have visited a few times. Then came my cringe upon realizing that some of the outfits worn by Cameron (Theo James) also hang in my closet. And then, finally, came my discomfort at being called out in the show: As a professor of art history at Stanford University, I am the real-life equivalent of Albie’s (Adam DiMarco) teacher, the one who brainwashes students by exposing the emptiness of “the solid days of the patriarchy.” (Albie’s words, not mine. I give him an A+, even if he must have slept through my class about courtesans.)

By episode four of this season, like everyone else, I was hooked on The White Lotus, with its cliff-hangers, sexual tensions, and secrets spilling from the lives of people spoiled for choice who think they cannot fail. Somehow the stakes felt existentially higher for me. Not only do I research the ways desire and fantasies of love have shaped art and history, but I am also an Italian living and working among Americans, whose behaviors remind me of my different culture and morals, a tension made obvious in the show.

This clash was evident in the maddening search for clues during the week leading to the finale. I turned to Twitter and TikTok, on fire with interpretations as users speculated about the meanings of a signet ring; the books each character reads; the recurrence of birds; or Jack (Leo Woodall) singing the anthem of a UK soccer team that gives away his proletarian origins.

Some of these mysteries were easier to decipher: Jack’s accent, Boohoo clothes, and overall attitude made it abundantly clear that he was hardly the member of the British billionaire family he claimed to be. Plus, we all saw him coupling his so-called “uncle” Quentin (Tom Hollander). What mattered to me was what made the characters so tragic: their acting on the tales they imagined and were fed rather than on evidence.

The White Lotus, as many have noted, dramatizes privileged people’s premade fantasies of love and success, which they often transfer to one another in a furious battle for control. In the finale, Harper (Aubrey Plaza) calls Cameron “an idiot” to his face, echoing Cameron’s definition of Ethan (Will Sharpe) as “the original incel” in the first episode. As the search for power often relies on a fake-it-until-you-make-it-attitude, the pleasure of watching this show largely came from figuring out who these people truly are, something that the characters themselves often do not know. Hence, the audience’s obsession with details was not just the consequence of engaging with a well-built crime story or a farce about the self-delusions of the rich. It was also an expression of wishing to have the upper hand: the desire to label the characters, restricting their possibilities, and, in a way, owning them.

The show put us all under its spell. It was sobering, in the end, to see Valentina (Sabrina Impacciatore) accepting a relationship she was originally trying to thwart between her employees and to hear Daphne’s (Meghann Fahy) poignant reflection on the disconnection of love from knowledge.

The first season of The White Lotus was gripping as well, but this one was amplified by the characters being plunged into Italy, a country that, while ravaged by power struggles (the show acknowledges its paralyzing unemployment rate, homosexual anxieties, sexism, and the Mafia), has done a tremendous job at marketing itself as the stage for a saturated life. In Italy, flavors are thought to be sharper, love waits around the corner, and people live for theatrical emotions confident, as they are, of standing on venerable grounds.

This fantasy and the role Italians play in buttressing it took center stage in the first episode. We were introduced to it via a pot known as Testa di Moro. Upon the guests’ requests, hotel concierge Rocco (Federico Ferrante) explains that the head-shaped vase memorializes the tale of a foreign knight decapitated by a Sicilian girl he seduced after she found out that he had a wife and children back home. The gruesome details of the racist murder are ignored. Instead, the guests wonder what the message of the cautionary tale may be. “Don’t fuck my wife,” says Cameron. “It’s a warning to husbands, babe,” quips Daphne. There is no immediate resolution—Rocco is already showing the guests a private passageway—but the exchange initiated the guessing game, with everyone excited to have entered a place of greater signification, where even pottery concealed spirited tales. As it turns out, both Cameron’s and Daphne’s interpretations proved prescient.