Review
America
Culture
Feminism
Film & TV
6 min read

White Lotus understands a lot - but not Christianity

Here’s what the girl squad storyline gets right and wrong.
Three woman dining in a luxury hotel in Thailand, turn and look to the camera.
Kate, Jacylin, Laurie.
HBO.

I really rate The White Lotus.  

This multi-award-winning show is one of the smartest around. It’s almost like a modern myth. The specificity of the premise alone is incredibly satisfying: White Lotus is the name of an international chain of high-end resorts, a luxurious touchstone for the rich, the famous, and the dodgy. Season one took viewers to Hawaii, season two jetted us off to Italy, and this year we find ourselves welcomed to Thailand. 

Each new series has a new location, a new cast and a new set of intelligent storylines. the only thing that ties the three series together is the omnipresence of the White Lotus hotel. Oh, and the presence of murder. Each series opens by telling its viewers that one person that we’re about to meet will die – it just takes us eight episodes to find out who.  

I’m convinced that Mike White, the writer and director, must be one of the most perceptive people on the planet. I wouldn’t be surprised if, before he entails on writing another series, he just sits and watches the world. He endeavours to notice, endeavours to understand. I say this because he seems to discern the way people work: the way they love, the way they hate, the way they rest, the way they hide. And then he turns it up to eleven when crafting his characters.  

Honestly, if Mike White hadn’t mastered the art of noticing, White Lotus wouldn’t work. But he pays attention to people; deep, intense and curious attention. That’s the magic sauce, I’m sure of it.  

In the latest episode (episode three of season three, as it stands), there’s a scene that caught me by surprise. Its perceptiveness stopped me in my tracks.  

Is Mike White over simplifying this, or is he saying what he’s seeing? That people have reduced the greatest, deepest, largest and truest story ever told to an association with red or blue?

We’ve been introduced to three friends: we have Kate (Leslie Bibb), Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan) and Laurie (Carrie Coon). They’ve been friends since school, but now in their forties, life has taken them in different directions. Kate lives in Texas with her picture-perfect family. Jaclyn is a newly married and semi-famous TV star, living and working in LA.  And Laurie is a divorcee, working hard and raising her daughter in New York City. They’ve come to Thailand (at the invitation and expense of Jaclyn) to re-connect and make some new memories.  

But it’s not that easy.  

Each woman is caught in a tussle of loving and loathing who the other two have become, they celebrate each other’s ‘successes’ and instinctively compete with them in equal measure. It’s masterfully done. As deeply as they want to be good friends to each other, perhaps for old time’s sake, this trio is not a safe one to be in.  

One evening, after Laurie has had an ‘energy healing’ session, Jaclyn mentions that she can get on board with spiritual practices a whole lot easier than she can get on board with ‘religion’ – Christianity, she states, is made for men. She can’t seem to find herself, or any other empowered women, within the biblical story. And so, she finds herself gravitating to ‘witchy’ alternatives.  

I’m a woman, a pretty ‘feminist’ one at that. I’m also, first and foremost, a Christian. And so, I think I have the right to say that this is incredibly perceptive of Mike White. I have this conversation time and time again: people wondering why a woman, one who believes in the social, economic, political and spiritual equality of the sexes, would ever hitch their wagon to the Christian tradition. Honestly, sometimes I feel like a unicorn.  

Yet, when the ‘Christian’ church was first bubbling up (we’re talking first century) it had the reputation of being a religion for women and slaves. Everywhere it travelled - city by city, village by village - women (of every socio-economic background) flocked to the Christian community in dramatic numbers. It changed the cultural landscape. Jesus, the Galilean saviour that these communities couldn’t stop talking about, kept company with women in a history-making way and they were determined to do likewise. Now, what I can’t deny is all of the patriarchy that has been thrown into the mix since. To pretend it’s not there would be silly of me.  

So, I hear you, Jaclyn. But I’ve gone straight to the source (Jesus) and I’ve hit upon a disconnect between the story I believe/the saviour I believe in, and the way it/he has been used against my gender – so I’ve stubbornly chosen to ignore the latter. I’ve never let it drive me away. I find my whole self (my gender included) forcefully loved by the God I know, endlessly drawn into his company, convinced by his assertion that he made me – fearfully and wonderfully. 

Oh Jaclyn, they can try to tell me that Christianity isn’t for me, but I ain’t budging.   

The dinner conversation moves on, Kate hits back – she tells her buddies that she, in fact, goes to her Texan church every Sunday and finds it ‘very moving’. Jaclyn and Laurie, both wide-eyed, sympathetically state that it must be hard to be around people who voted for Trump. And then it becomes obvious, to those in the scene and those of us watching it, that Kate herself voted for Trump.  

It’s an emotionally intelligent watch: two women feeling viscerally betrayed by their friend for voting in such a ‘self-defeating’ way. And the friend on the other side, betrayed that they would think of her so differently as a result of her well-intentioned political leaning.  

I live in the UK, and so I was taken aback that these women were able to draw such a confident line between A and B – between Christianity and one particular political party. Because of the perceptive nature of Mike White (as evidenced by the lines that came before these ones), I trust that this is somewhat accurate. It may not be the truth (I’m sure not every Texan Christian voted one way), but it’s certainly a perceived truth.   

It intrigued but mostly troubled me. It made me wonder what the meaning of ‘Christian’ is becoming, or perhaps has already become – people holding the cross in one hand and a political party in another, claiming that to love one is to love the other. Are we really known as people who are wanting a messiah in the White House, a Saviour in the Senate? Is Mike White over simplifying this, or is he saying what he’s seeing? That people have reduced the greatest, deepest, largest and truest story ever told to an association with red or blue?  

To Jaclyn, Laurie, Kate, and all those you represent – I’m sorry if we haven’t done the best job at representing ourselves, or Jesus, to you.  

To Mike White – watch us a little longer, watch a little deeper. We Christians are neither a patriarchal nor political tribe; don’t squeeze us into the boxes that we’re pretending we fit in. That’s our bad. There’s more to us than that. You have my word. 

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Review
Culture
Film & TV
Monsters
1 min read

How to do the Devil’s work in modern America

The Bondsman ‘literal evil’ fits so easily into the capitalist model.

Giles Gough is a writer and creative who host's the 'God in Film’ podcast.

A bondsman looks to a colleague.
Kevin Bacon and Jolene Purdy star.
Amazon Studios.

The Bondsman looks like the kind of story we’ve seen many times before, but look closer and you’ll see some fascinating insights.  

The show dropped on Amazon Prime last Thursday, starring Kevin Bacon as murdered bounty hunter Hub Halloran, who is resurrected by the Devil to hunt demons that have escaped from the prison of Hell. Hub learns how his own sins got his soul condemned, which pushes him to seek a second chance at life, love, and bizarrely enough, country music. 

After being murdered in an all-too visual pre-credits sequence, Hub is resurrected, and after seeing some supernatural horrors he can’t explain, Hub is quickly sent chasing down those demons with the help (and often hinderance) of his mother played by Beth Grant. They receive instructions on which demons to capture via fax. The demons are suitably unsettling, with their red pinprick-of-light eyes and gravity defying leaps. As scary as they are, they are also helpful enough to get themselves killed with conventional weapons and burst into flames as soon as they die, saving Hub the inconvenience of having to dispose of the bodies.  

In the first few episodes, it would be easy to dismiss The Bondsman as schlocky genre fiction. Kevin Bacon easily leans into the laconic, foul-mouthed cynic, more comfortable with ultra-violence than discussing his emotions. The Southern Gothic is an aesthetic we’ve seen in more Amazon Prime shows than we care to remember at this point, and the gore is at the level you would expect from horror experts; Blumhouse, and the setting of rural Georgia, is reminiscent of The Walking Dead. You could be forgiven for leaving this show at the pilot and not returning to it. But if you can make it through the formulaic first few episodes (which are mercifully short, 35 minutes at the longest) your patience is likely to be rewarded.  

For any viewers familiar with Angel or Constantine, the idea of a hero who fights evil but is still damned to hell for their past actions, is well worn territory. But if we look at Hub’s ‘co-ordinator’ Midge (Jolene Purdy) we get a small insight into the banality of evil. Midge is coerced into selling her soul to the devil in order to save her dying infant son. This highlights how often people are drawn into corruption because they were forced to pick the lesser of two impossible evils. As Midge’s own ‘co-ordinator’ tells her: “The fastest path to hell: selling your soul to help someone you love”. Midge’s son is ‘miraculously’ healed, so long as she continues to meet her quota of convincing people to sell their souls. It seems the devil has a better health plan than corporate America. 

Those subtle jabs at corporate America make the show quietly subversive. The devil’s minions here appear as the ‘Pot O’ Gold’ company, a slimy operation that preys on the weak and perpetuates misery in order to benefit a faceless boss. What’s interesting is how ‘literal evil’ fits so easily into the model of a capitalist corporation. Whilst many US politicians may decry the evils of socialism, it seems that as far as evil in America in The Bondsman is concerned, the call is coming from inside the house.  

It's true that God is largely absent from this story. In the same way that competent, protective parents are absent from children’s novels. If he was present, that would undercut a lot of the narrative tension. Despite this, it’s interesting how even in a world where characters reference and believe in the existence of God, virtually none of the characters think to pray or ask for his help. It brings to mind the C.S. Lewis quote about how “the doors of hell are locked on the inside". 

This might possibly be the show’s greatest contribution. What we can see from The Bondsman is God in the inverse, a negative image. Instead of the hope of an eternal life, they’re faced with the numbing despair of lasting torment. Hub and Midge are sent out on missions by a faceless, uncaring ‘boss’ rather than a loving intimate father, forced into being corporate co-workers rather than found family. Once it moves past the adolescent gore-for-gore’s sake of the first few episodes, it seems The Bondsman might have a fantasy world worth exploring. 

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