Carnival Comedy and Crap 💩

Trigger Warning: faeces

Mikhail Bakhtin elaborates on how medieval comedy helped to build a second world outside officialdom. Similarly, the first season of The White Lotus is set in a holiday resort in Maui, a form of escapism that serves as a second life for the show’s vacationing characters, as well as the audience who have the privilege of engaging with the show’s events from afar. The season finale features the hotel manager, Armond, complying with Wolfgang Kayser’s definition of the grotesque as a form of ‘expressing the id’ as he defecates in a suitcase that belongs to a hotel guest with whom he has had an ongoing feud throughout the series. Such grotesque behaviour derives from carnival culture which, as described by Bakhtin, has the power to temporarily suspend hierarchical ranks that are impossible to overcome in the real world. In reality, no one would be able to achieve this cathartic, liberating action without facing social consequences – although, such social repercussions are unlikely to result in death, which indirectly becomes Armond’s unfortunate fate. Regarding common tropes traditionally found within tragedies, Umberto Eco illustrates how ‘comic pleasures means enjoying the murder of the father, provided that others, less human than ourselves, commit the crime.’ In The White Lotus, Armond takes the form of the father and Shane, the narcissistic hotel guest with whom he shares a rivalry, commits the crime that the audience has the comic pleasure of witnessing.
The comic tragedy of Armond’s death also falls in line with Eco’s interpretation of humour and its purpose of warning audiences about the impossibility of goal liberation, reminding us of the presence of a law that we no longer have reason to obey. The show’s central theme explores the dynamics between different social classes, as well as relationships between workers and consumers. Armond’s character is punished for his animalistic act of rebellion, demonstrating how the patriarchy, represented by a rich, heterosexual male hotel guest, will always prevail against those considered socially inferior (in Armond’s case, homosexual hospitality workers) who seek to rise against them.