Meditating on The White Lotus!

My theory about the overdone fivestar hotels in the Third World at least is that they are temporary palaces designed for the rich to feel like theyrsquore kings Capitalism being the new royalty Technically this momentary fleeting monarchy is democratically open to all so long as you can pay for itmdashunlike palaces from the past so itrsquos not all so unfairThe White Lotus resort on which the stupendous conversation piece for an HBO show is named is of course in Hawaiimdashand therefore not in the Third World And yet one of the opening sequences of the sixpart series that recently dropped on HotstarDisney tells you all that you wanna know about a world within a worldmdashbuilt for those blessed with privilege to escape from the latterThis is when the propertyrsquos GM general manager the brilliant Murray Bartlett instructs his serverswaiters that their goal is to disappear behind masks as purely interchangeable entities Hersquos essentially asking the resort staff to invisibilise themselves because thatrsquos how the rich would like itldquoThey need to be seenmdashtreat them like sensitive childrenrdquo he tells his staff Just as he treats himself as a parentmdashdenying the thumbsucking brats what they instantly desire by convincing them that what they already possess is wonderfulMakes sense when you generally consider that the world isnrsquot as much divided between the haves and havenots as it is between the seen and the unseen And yes you can go back to being a pesky child if you can afford it Irsquom sure yoursquove been on business meetings where serious men negotiate minutiae over money and one of them to seal the deal actually suggests ldquoOkay wersquoll add some sweetenersrdquo Same guys another contextNow I havenrsquot been to Hawaii But I have lived in the Third Worldmdashchiefly defined by how the poor get treated in comparison to the wealthymdashall my life to know that The White Lotus might even ring truer in India rather than where it is actually set Which of course also confirms that the uber rich are a nationagnostic class of their ownEven as Indiarsquos own mainstream popculture for instance Bollywood is full of stories about the well offmdasha charge the late filmmaker Yash Chopra defended as ldquoglamorous realismrdquo about polite societies Or Karan Johar calls ldquoemotionally as against socially relevant filmsrdquo Which arenrsquot too different from say Crazy Rich Asians either A lot of people will deride it as not ldquorealrdquo Because real poor Like lsquoreal Indiarsquo you knowWhat do these stories mainly deal with First World problems like crises in relationships sexldquochemistryrdquo esteem loneliness selfactualisation etc Since violence and oppression safetysecurity have been taken care of As have all other lower needs on Maslowrsquos pyramid food water warmth rest The gaze on this lockdown series is obviously the creatorrsquos the excellent Mike White But the best way to access this world for a viewer is obviously through the eyes of the proverbial outsiderrsquosThe new migrant to this lot is a young wife Alexandra Daddario a commoner if you may newly married to a filthy rich realestate dude A trip together is fairest test for mutual compatibilitycharacter That first trip in her case happens to be the damned honeymoon She simply looks appalled rolling her eyes all throughHow do the teenaged young GenZ if you may represented here by actor Sydney Sweeney react to the world they didnrsquot quite create Theirs is probably the generation most conscious of power play and class privilegemdash totally leading the drive to call out the tonedeaf among usmdashcancel culture as it were Exposure through quality education privileges them that worldviewAs on The White Lotus as with life theyrsquore subtly mocked on occasion The same way anybody who constantly questions or proposes the rich and poor as the only binary is put down as ldquoleftyrdquo or ldquochampagne socialistrdquo in their thinking The flip side to this is blindly accusing the elite of elitism As if the two are one and the same thing Obviously theyrsquore notldquoNobody cedes privilege thatrsquos human naturerdquo the father Steve Zahn tells his young girl on the show Simple but satya vachan The fact is for all the rolling of eyes the newly wedded wife obviously attracted to the dude for several reasons is still with him And itrsquos not even a richpoor thingmdashwhether a cop on the street or the guard in your building we use privilege when we get the chanceAs does the resort GM in The White Lotusmdashforgetting briefly that privilege effectively is what you can get away with He canrsquot with a lot beyond a point But thatrsquos the way the cookie crumbles Why does a show thatrsquos entirely about obvious class divides not get you angry I guess because the world is what it isMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper