{"id":1777959,"date":"2022-12-16T14:47:43","date_gmt":"2022-12-16T19:47:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1777959"},"modified":"2022-12-16T14:47:49","modified_gmt":"2022-12-16T19:47:49","slug":"is-hbos-white-lotus-a-reactionary-masterpiece","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/is-hbos-white-lotus-a-reactionary-masterpiece\/","title":{"rendered":"Is HBO\u2019s \u2018White Lotus\u2019 A Reactionary Masterpiece?"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">14<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fis-hbos-white-lotus-a-reactionary-masterpiece%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1777959&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>HBO\u2019s \u201cWhite Lotus\u201d is the sharpest commentary on western decay in popular culture, a subtle and subversive invasion of America\u2019s favorite medium. As the second season proved again on Sunday, Mike White challenges limp modern assumptions about sex, honoring the real \u201cfeminine mystique\u201d as exactly that\u2014an eternal mystery capable of bringing powerful men to their knees.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s an irony in this visual feast, constructed to the tune of some $3 million a episode, training its arrow straight at the heart of American decadence. But writer and creator White deploys his ample resources for good, using all that sweet, sweet Warner Bros. cash to do something very simple: tell a great story that honors beauty and nature.<\/p>\n<p>In \u201cWhite Lotus,\u201d we have an aesthetically stunning show that manages to captivate and castigate, to fill out stereotypes with nuance and honesty, to find where everyone is going wrong while doing so much right. It\u2019s a rebuke of the self-serious \u201cHandmaid\u2019s Tale\u201d era that dominated Me Too, as society\u2019s wealthiest women stripped themselves of agency and saw only victimhood in their arcs. <\/p>\n<p>Importantly, White\u2019s human subjects are as complicated as the natural world he casts as their master, breaking in and out of the action with powerful shots of mountains and waves. He understands what Camille Paglia once wrote, that \u201ceverything great in western culture has come from the quarrel with nature.\u201d Despite our best efforts, \u201cWhite Lotus\u201d reminds viewers, nature has yet to lose.<\/p>\n<p>Where the show\u2019s first season felt like more of a class commentary\u2014albeit an excellent one\u2014the second season, haunted visually by the ruins of Roman greatness, was more comprehensive. Indeed, in many ways, White seemed to be drawing from the same well as Paglia\u2019s most important piece of writing, \u201cSex and Violence, or Nature and Art,\u201d the first chapter of \u201cSexual Personae.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe primary image is the femme fatale, the woman fatal to man,\u201d wrote Paglia some 30 years ago. \u201cThe more nature is beaten back in the west, the more the femme fatale reappears, as a return of the repressed. She is the spectre of the west\u2019s bad conscience about nature. She is the moral ambiguity of nature, a malevolent moon that keeps breaking through our fog of hopeful sentiment.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>If you\u2019ve seen the final moments of season two, that sentiment blares from the screen. Paglia\u2019s vivid rendering of physical intercourse illustrates the emotional dynamics that drive \u201cWhite Lotus\u201d from beginning to end. \u201cThe basic mechanics of conception require action in the male but nothing more than passive receptivity in the female,\u201d she wrote. \u201cSex as a natural rather than social transaction, therefore, really is a kind of drain of male energy by female fullness.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Tempted and manipulated, the show\u2019s men leave Sicily drained, above all else. (Financially, emotionally, physically.) The women? Sated. In White\u2019s telling, it\u2019s they who get the best of their men, wealthy or not. They\u2019re intentional, they have agency, and they get what they want by wielding sexual power over men of all<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Writer and creator Mike White deploys his ample resources to do something very simple: tell a great story that honors beauty and nature.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":554,"featured_media":1777962,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[6919,9723,9722,9725,9724,3765],"class_list":["post-1777959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist","tag-federalist","tag-hbos","tag-lotus","tag-masterpiece","tag-reactionary","tag-white"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1777959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/554"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1777959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1777959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1777962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1777959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1777959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1777959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}