The Streaming Souls of White Folk

Abstract

In the second July of the ongoing pandemic, with his cinephilia fading, Film Quarterly columnist Bilal Qureshi was jolted awake by the biting excellence of HBO’s six-part series The White Lotus, the undeniable water-cooler show of the summer. A classis whodunnit set among a collective of entitled, smug, and vindictive wealthy tourists at a Hawaiian luxury resort, The White Lotus proved a provocative meditation on class, privilege, and the frayed national mood. To have a work of mainstream “prestige” TV—with is lavish production values and characteristic wealthy white angst—inspire confusion and disagreement over issues of whiteness and privilege strikes Qureshi as a welcome shift from streaming’s usual habit of lulling audiences into one-dimensional distraction and cements The White Lotus’s status as a definitive pandemic-era piece of filmmaking.