Whats queer with Mike White?
a limited series
Producer of Magic Mike, White Lotus Writer/Director/Exec Producer is this moments favorite California guy. He has the back story to die for - a lovingly strict conservative upbringing, posh liberal arts college, minister father coming out as a gay activist after he had paid for his kids’ college education by ghost writing for famous tel-evangelists. But my stan dive sheds light on some uncomfortable niggles around the edges of my brain as the very sumptuous, meticulously shot feast of Season 3 speeds towards its finale in 2 weeks.
White is well fleshed-out for someone usually behind the scenes. A vegan dog lover, who does downward dogs, Mike has cut his chops as an actor, with an almost twink incel vibe, playing lonely, anxious, awkward but ultimately likeable characters in shows he also wrote like Chuck & Buck, School of Rock, and the close to my heart Enlightened. Obviously he smoked a lot of weed as a youngster as he barely articulates his disappointment with wigs interfering with his ability to get laid on the shoot in Gentleman Broncos, which he also produced.
Perhaps a perpetual Peter Pan, his obsession with and impressive participation in reality TV series The Amazing Race with his dad Mel (twice), and as runner-up of Survivor Season 37, play into his every guy meme.
As an undergraduate at Wesleyan University, White expressed his admiration for Camille Paglia’s Sexual Persona as he couldn’t understand Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble, and that explains a lot about the disparity between his male and female characters. For the more academic Butler, gender is performative - a social construct without a fixed essence, emphasizing fluidity in identity. Interestingly, pop theorist Paglia finished Sexual Personae on the primacy of biological sex differences in the early 1980s, but could not get it published. She supported herself with part-time teaching jobs including a 1980 visiting lectureship in English at that same Methodist Episcopal Church founded private liberal arts University in Middletown, CT, were White would start his writing career less than a decade later.
Paglia's self-proclaimed status as an intellectual provocateur, allows some to forgive her arrogant self-aggrandizing; but to others view her as a sloppy researcher who totally missed the point with her simplistic reading of the multi-layered complexities of French feminisms. Fitting perfectly into a Trumpian dynasty, Paglia criticizes woke ideology , doesn’t believe in climate change and survived a 2019 Students petitions to have her fired from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia for mocking survivors of sexual assault and the #MeToo movement - stating transgender individuals are merely participating in a fashion trend, as well as decrying late reported assault cases because she thinks they consist of women who regret having sex. Go ahead and grab anyone’s ass Donald and Jeffery, oh and that Kevin guy who played a president!
But back to Mike and his fascination with human behavior. TWL Season 3 reportedly focuses on spirituality, but apart for a few sticks of incense, some orange robes and a statue or two I haven’t seen it yet. It seems to be about the perversion of human instinct - following Paglia the men crave sex, power, money, and revenge in any way possible, while the women are mostly drunken gossips, naïve victims or window dressing. With reportedly many close long-term woman friends in Hollywood, one could politely avoid the subject and say everyone on White Lotus is despicable (yes he wrote Despicable Me 4 and for The Emoji Movie) but the male characters have way more depth, breath and agency than their female counterparts. But let’s see how it plays out…
What a triumph of casting is the Schwarzenegger-Shriver progeny Patrick as Saxon Ratcliff – an alt right ultra masc, horrified by being the passive object of a drunken kiss and being jerked off by his onscreen bro Sam Nivola’s Lochlan. But the disappointment is when Patrick, the actor, unprofessionally proclaims in an interview he almost vomited kissing his on-screen brother, and sad for a gay Writer/Director/Producer to have that sort of homophobic press about males kissing. But then why is White listed as “openly bisexual” in his Wikipedia entry? Should he update it? My god the man can’t be expected to write day and night, between only doing things that are fun in his signature t-shirts and shorts, downing Mai Tais, walking his dog(s) and snorkeling.
White acknowledges that as a white, privileged man there are limits on his critique of white privilege. There may be a political take on who dares to admit to voting for Trump, but I prefer the unsubtle hilarious pool side reading of college friends Olivia (Sydney Sweeney) and Paula (Brittany O’Grady) in S1. While Sweeney admits the books are just props, the appearance of Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Elena Ferrante, Jacques Lacan, Aimé Césaire, Judith Butlers’ Gender Trouble and of course Camille Paglia’s Sexual Personae, made me laugh out loud. Now the reading lists and the lux watch product placement of S3 are way too much. Irony is eating itself – they really are just glimpsed theatrical props, click bait with little agency.
Maybe Mike’s mind is slightly atrophied by the workload of TWL S3 and by what he calls too much dumb TV, but he does brilliantly cross reference the fabulous Simpsons S36 E2 Yellow Lotus where Marge reads the 970 page Barbra Streisand autobiography. Now Michelle Monaghan’s Jaclyn Lemon is skipping merrily thru My Name is Barbra by the pool, in that sadly stereotypical brutally bitchy, blond blob, trio of cis hetero women friends. While speaking of Yellow Lotus there seems to be an odd absence of wealthy Asian characters in this luxury travel bubble too.
The Thailand location, a sex tourism hot spot, with the highest rate of transgender people in the world, becomes an opportunity to have a conversation about sexuality, gender and sex work. Highly visible and accepted Kathoey, or to use the English term Ladyboys, are mentioned in early Buddhist scriptures as a third gender alongside male and female. Sam Rockwell’s Frank, disillusioned after trawling through a few manifestations of his sex addiction - from being the top to Asian women sex workers, to becoming the bottom for ladyboys and then white men, while an Asian women watched - was astonishing. But it’s also highly problematic in that the spectrum of sexual desire is not so siloed or straightforward. We are all multiple and mutable. Addiction is the opposite of desire, and celibacy is not necessarily a spiritual solution.
I read a fan review speaking of White’s lonely and anxious characters as full of love and care and an earnestness that's simultaneously the most uncomfortable thing in the world and the most desirable. Maybe that spirit of grace, forgiveness and love is yet to emerge next week in Samui?
I will leave you with some red herrings:
- Perhaps the dull romance between Tayme Thapthimthong’s security guard Gaitock and Mook, played by Lisa Manobal from the K-Pop band Blackpink, would be more contemporary if Mook was played by a Kathoey actor.
- I am saving a special bullet for Jaclyn as I can’t bear to hear her again say We are not dead yet, to justify filling her hungry void with gossip and random drunken sex.
