Few recent TV shows have been more hotly anticipated than season three of HBO’s “The White Lotus,” written and directed by Mike White and set this time in Thailand’s Koh Samui.
Season three of the smash hit premiered on February 16 but, so far, the beloved show has already garnered criticism for its take on Thailand, including its sepia color correction, underuse of Thai characters, and stereotypes about Thailand.
For those who have not yet watched seasons one and two of the show, the premise always unfolds thus: a group of out-of-touch wealthy Western tourists stay at fictional White Lotus resorts across the globe where an unidentified dead body has been discovered.
Over the course of the ensuing episodes, the tourists are lampooned for their tone deaf approach to their local surroundings, as viewers try to solve a traditional whodunit from the cast of mostly white and upper class characters.
Seasons one and two were shot in Hawaii and Sicily, respectively, but the series’ jump to Thailand has now provided the opportunity for a stark examination of how Western audiences view Southeast Asia.
Orientalism is ever-present from the opening credits and monkeys, actually macaques, feature prominently in both animal and statue form.
Everyone is obsessed with the monkeys, which they mostly think are cute and exotic, although one character has the foresight to mention that they can be aggressive, foreshadowing that Southeast Asia is a continent of smiles but one where danger lurks beneath the surface.
In another scene in the opening episode, one of the characters is terrified to discover a monitor lizard slithering about the high end resort. Later, she hears something rustling in the trees at nighttime, causing her to flee to the safety of her room.
Dangerous and brooding animals lurk everywhere in Southeast Asia, it seems, and they upset foreigners.
The way Thailand is depicted in “The White Lotus” was criticized as far back as last year when the trailer was released, and caused controversy for seemingly using what has been described as a “third world country yellow filter.”
“This is not the first time Hollywood has used warm yellow color grading to depict foreign locales such as India, Mexico and Iran. Color grading is a post-production technique used to alter the color tones of a work,” Singapore’s The Straits Times wrote at the time.
“This longstanding trope was evident in crime drama series Breaking Bad (2008 to 2013), in which scenes set in Mexico or New Mexico had a yellow and orange tint.”
It added, “The Netflix action film Extraction (2020), set in Bangladesh and starring Australian actor Chris Hemsworth, faced similar backlash for its heavy use of yellow tones. Even the first season of The White Lotus depicted Hawaii with a noticeably yellow tint.”
In cinematic terms, the West is clean, bright, and white, while the “third world” is dirty, yellow, and backward.
At around the same time that the “The White Lotus” trailer aired, Apple was similarly panned for releasing a sepia-colored advertisement for its phones that suggested that Thailand was dirty, unsafe and underdeveloped – and filled with people who don’t speak English.
It is not just cinema, or Thailand, that suffers from Orientalism, a concept satirically tackled by British travel writer Tim Hannigan in a 2012 article in New Matilda entitled “How to write about Indonesia.”
“Indonesians do not have Facebook accounts. They enjoy cockfights and have an intimate connection to the world of spirits,” he wrote.
“There must be a volcano. This is a good way to create a title for your book about Indonesia. Between the Volcanoes, Beneath the Volcano, Inside the Volcano – these all work. The volcano is a symbol of how Indonesia is exotic, mysterious, and threatening. Putting it in the title of your book will convey this very clearly.”
Back at “The White Lotus,” Thailand is similarly mysterious and threatening, and also sexually deviant.
In addition to creepy animals, there are ladyboys and massages with “happy endings” and everyone adheres to an unknowable religion called “Boodhism,” which one character remarks is for Chinese people.
In the opening scene of episode one, another character refers to a statue of the Buddha as “mother******.”
One of the main reasons why “The White Lotus” was so hotly anticipated in Southeast Asia was due to the casting of Lalisa Manoban from the k-pop group Blackpink, in her first acting role as resort employee Mook.
Mercifully, Mook speaks to her coworkers in Thai, which should feel like common sense, were it not for the hundreds of TV shows and films where local characters have been forced to speak English to one another lest anyone watching have to read subtitles.
Yet despite the casting of Thai actors, there have already been criticisms that their Thai characters are mere sub-plot devices, with the BBC’s Caryn James describing season three as “flabby and elongated,” where Manoban’s character has “little to do except smile and flirt with the security guard at the resort’s entrance.”
Similar commentary has been made by others, including a piece in The Conversation entitled “HBO’s White Lotus Does Thailand Dirty.”
“There is a clear cultural, economic, and racial split presented, one that fails to allow any Thai character the ability to air their criticisms of the guests or to be developed in a meaningful way. In the main, the focus is on whiteness – a criticism previous series have also garnered,” lecturer Andrew Russell wrote.
But perhaps this is the point?
The entire thrust of “The White Lotus” to date has been to laugh at rich people who are unable to laugh at themselves, and who are out of their depth anywhere other than their immediate environments.
As we watch the characters flounder around on Koh Samui – marveling at monkeys and mangling the Thai language while trying to order room service, perhaps we are only meant to see Thailand through their eyes rather than expect a serious and nuanced depiction of the country.
With that in mind, is the criticism of Thailand’s “The White Lotus” and its overt Orientalism justified, or are we just failing to see the obvious joke?