In this section of our Colossus Season 2 Guide for The White Lotus, we will discuss the meaning behind the show’s title.
Why is the show called The White Lotus?
The title, The White Lotus, refers to the fictional Hawaiian resort introduced in Season 1. But White Lotus is a brand rather than a single location. Meaning the show can choose a new location for every season. Hawaii for season 1. Taormina, Sicily for season 2. This means the show can keep a similar concept—wealthy people at a resort—but not be locked into a single setting. Season 1 leaned into Hawaiian culture. Season 2 leaned into Italian culture.
Beyond the literal in-world explanation, there’s more. In 2021, in an interview, Vulture asked White, “How early did you have the show’s title in place?”
White said: The title was there before I started writing. The idea of—and again, this is something I experience, ugh. But as someone who’s made money in my 20-plus years in the business, you look at yourself and you think—I feel like this is why I don’t judge Rachel [season 1 character]. I came out, so I felt like I was going to always swim upstream. I came out with so much idealism about the purpose of art, the purpose of what I was going to do. I have tried to stay that person, and I feel like, Have I fallen asleep in the poppy fields? Am I a lotos-eater? Yeah, I took The Emoji Movie. I tried to get the money for that house in Hawaii. I’ve tried to justify some of it by being like, Oh, I didn’t come from money. I’ll get my mom out of debt. At some point, it’s hard to justify continuing to chase the dragon. I wanted to explore that in a way that I felt like—at least for me, and it may not feel that way for the audience—but at least for me, it felt like I was exposing something of my own lotos-eating. …It’s both my name and the racial oppressor and all of that! I have been Shane [season 1 character] recently, where they wouldn’t let me into my room at two, they said, “Your room won’t be ready for two hours,” that kind of thing.
The lotos White mentions is in reference to Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem “The Lotos-eaters”. Which was inspired by the lotus-eaters from Homer’s Odyssey.
Odyssey:
I was driven thence by foul winds for a space of 9 days upon the sea, but on the tenth day we reached the land of the Lotus-eaters, who live on a food that comes from a kind of flower. Here we landed to take in fresh water, and our crews got their mid-day meal on the shore near the ships. When they had eaten and drunk I sent two of my company to see what manner of men the people of the palace might be, and they had a third man under them. They started at once, and went about among the Lotus-eaters, who did them no hurt, but gave them to eat of the lotus, which was so delicious that those who ate of it left off caring about home, and did not even want to go back and say what had happened to them, but were for staying and munching lotus with the Lotus-eaters without thinking further of their return; nevertheless, though they wept bitterly, I forced them back to the ships and made them fast under the benches. Then I told the rest to go on board at once, lest any of them should taste of the lotus and leave off wanting to get home, so they took their places and smote the grey sea with their oars.
Tennyson’s poem is too long to quote in full but it’s essentially the Odyssey scene with more detail and lyricism that dramatizes the experience of being a Lotus-eater. But these lines embody the poem’s ethos: Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore/Than labour in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar;/O, rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.
The basic idea is a giving-in to ease. Why do the hard thing when the easy option is available? Which is what Mike White means when he talks about The Emoji Movie. He knew it was a low effort, low quality gig, but the money was good. So he took it. That initial artistic idealism he had gave way to simply making money. Easy money that leads to wealthy, easy living is the lotus eating.
That’s why The White Lotus is so focused on the wealthy and these issues that come up due to their wealth. But also the tension they have with those who don’t have money. So you can look at the title as referring to not just wealth but specifically the way wealth has turned people from who they initially were, the same way the lotus in The Odyssey stripped people of whatever identity they had and turned them solely into a consumer of lotus.
There are other implications there, of course. The word “Lotus” has become associated with yoga and meditation due to the popularity of the seated cross-legged lotus position. Britannica.com adds: Representing spiritual enlightenment, the flower is sacred in both Hinduism and Buddhism and was used in ancient Egypt to represent rebirth….In addition to artistic uses, the lotus has, since ancient times, symbolized fertility and related ideas, including birth, purity, sexuality, rebirth of the dead, and, in astrology, the rising sun.
That creates a tension. You have the positive energy of spiritual and symbolic force as well as the negative energy of apathy and indulgence. Which is kind of what we see play out in the show. The resort is full of beauty and promise. The people who go there want relaxation and peace. But their demons are still present. The show explores what happens when this negative energy becomes dominant. For some, it leads to transcendence. For others, tragedy.
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