White lotus is a Houellebecq horror

When the cocvid lock started five years ago, many in the portable computers have looked into the glorious social dislocation. They kissed Zoom. They took deliveries at home and forgot to worry about the carbon footprint. And they pretended to stay connected to other people by watching all the same television programs. As Boris Johnsons Freedom Day arrived, many have not noticed it. They were still stuck inside, laughing at a new HBO comedy in a Hawaii hotel.

In this regard, at least, I was a class traitor: I didn't really like The white lotus. Despite some skillful observations, she wore her moralization too strongly and seemed a little hackney: rich whites behaving like monsters, blind to the ways they instructed underpaid ethnic servants. Or maybe it was too close to the bone, what else was the locking for the best of us, but a kind of real life vacation, expected by harassed immigrants? Anyway, in my professional life, there were already a lot of whites who were telling me about the problematic toxicity of other whites, and I did not feel in mood to be was during my nights.

Five years later, these days are well behind us. The wave of white on white verbal knife crimes also seems to be pending, although the delivery drivers are still there. White lotus 2A sexual farce in a Sicilian hotel has been and disappeared, and the third series is on the screen. Today, five episodes, the creator Mike White dropped both the wacky elements of Cruder and the easy dishes, and gave us something more subtle and intriguing. And his vacation reading between the shows seems to have included a lot of Michel Houellebecq.

The most obvious link between White lotus 3 and the famous post-liberal figurine of Cassandra is PlatformIts satirical point of view of Western tourism of various toxic types. Like the novel, the series focuses on the holiday industry in Thailand, and the two stories contain a gun attack against customers covered in a luxury complex. There are many other suggestive references: bald and stomach men in pot predicting with precaution on young joyful Thai women; Parodically docile, smiling with a hotel, with a miserable moral dissolution of tourists visiting in an even raw relief; The tourist world merging with a criminal on the edges; And even a lubricating qubco prostitute which is most likely a tribute to PlatformS The most memorable positive character, Valerie, masters by Islamic terrorists at the end of the book.

As in the world of Houellebecqs, having destroyed almost all forms of association not sought after with other people, rich visitors nominally in search of well-being at the white lotus paying for simulacra: massages paid instead of loving magnetic caresses; False religion through reiki, yoga and tampons in Buddhism; A veneer managed by drinking constantly and swallowing pills. But also, there is little manifest judgment, and the consumer in search of entertainment can take advantage of the fruits of hyperliberalism as well as his poisons. In PlatformReaders can obtain cheap thrills of prolonged descriptions of transactional sex. In White lotus 3Endorphins are also stimulated by all persistent plans of luxurious interiors and sparkling beaches. When the action moves to locations more struck by poverty, the pain of the transition is visceral.

And of course, as on vacation, the greatest pleasure is to listen to the dysfunctional relationships of other peoples. A particularly delicious dramatic group implies three close friends during a trip of a lifetime, models of exchange of allegiance and attack on a hectic life depending on the one who has just left the room. But the most convincing parallel scenarios involve a rich southern family called The Ratliffs, and a very Houllebecqian couple: Rick, an aging and aging and Chelsea drifter, the optimistic and hippie girlfriend whose Rick is constantly trying to escape.

Until now, in the series, each of these sub -intrigues has produced a dramatic moment a lot discussed on social networks (I therefore decline any responsibility for spoilers). In the first, there is an incestuous kiss between two male members of the Ratliff family. In the second, we are witnessing a monologue of a friend of Ricks on Autogynephilia. In their own way, these scenes suggest that once social dislocation has obtained a grip for good, the basic human impulses for love and connection, are required to run anarchically.

The immediate cause of the incestuous kiss between the Ratliff Boys adolescents is the drug and the excitement of a Thai festival, during which they become high with Chelsea and the sexpot. The distal cause, however, is that the family's patriarch has decided that they should all store their phones and connect properly with each other on vacation. (Even more hilarious, it is just an excuse that he really tries to prevent his family from having seen news ashamed on the Internet.) Susulating usual crutches of the Internet porn and scrolling, the annoyed older brother is his mission so that his younger brother was more attractive for women. All unexpected mental attention turns against the fires, and the younger brother begins to covet his new mentor instead, overall, a terrifying warning for any parent who plans to reduce his offspring.

THE Conversation on autogynephiliaIn the meantime, occurs in a bangkok bar. Rick met an old friend from his home, who explains that he is now out of alcohol after a quarantine crisis. In Thailand with money, no attachments and nothing to do, he claims to have become insatiable for Asian girls. After about a thousand nights like that, I started wondering, where are I going with that? Why do I need to kiss all these women? What is desire? … Maybe what I really want is to be one of those Asian girls you know? Rick does not do. The friend specifies: I told myself that what I really wanted to be one of these Asian girls, to be fucked by me and to feel it. The adventures bearing lingerie and perfume followed, as well as being embarrassed by guys who looked like him a little. Then, I became addicted to this and at the same time, I praise an Asian girl to sit there and look at everything, and I look in her eyes while a guy fucks me, and I think I am her, and I fuck myself.

In recent years, some of us have become familiar with the narcissistic spiral who is a man who is excited by the idea of ​​himself as a woman, and all the more so that she often requires the neighboring presence of real women as accessories to maintain fantasy. But we have rarely seen the libidinal room of mirrors described so boldly and precisely on the camera; And neither perhaps the desire for spiritual transformation around which he turns, so to speak. Sex is a poetic act, is it a metaphor am I also a white guy of average age inside? Or inside, could I be an Asian girl? asks the friend. Finally, he said, he abandoned such deep metaphysical questions and rather launched in Buddhism.

We have rarely seen the libidinal room of mirrors described with if audacity and precisely on the camera.

Writing Platform In 2001, and describing Islamic terrorism scenes in tourist sites known for hedonism, Houellebecq provided a hyperliberal future and yet little believed. Bali's bombings did not take place until year later. Looking White lotus 3You sometimes also get a disturbing premonition of imminent and barely suspect social dangers that are hidden under current habits and especially those supercharged during locking: teenagers without attachments and nothing to do, left to their own devices, literally; An increasingly distorted cultural sensitivity which reduces whole people to collections of breasts, genitals and large biceps to proteins; And the dilution of intra-family ties, until people live in the same house barely know what love is supposed to look.

Traditionally, on vacation, you have the chance to get out of everyday life and see things more clearly or the most flatness. The characters of White lotus 3 tend to suggest the opposite. However, we, viewers in the real world, can keep their eyes open to the current effects of hyperliberalism, although it is not clear if we can do something other than to look helpless.