Straight allies mean well when they support gay marriage. “It’s not gay marriage,” they assert; “it’s just marriage.” Likewise, they mean well when they envision a time when gay pride is no longer necessary. “Gay people will be so integrated,” they argue, “that parades and all that will no longer be necessary.”
Love is love.
I don’t blame straight allies for making those cringey statements. They are, after all, taking their lead from gay folks whose singular purpose in life is to fit in, to walk the straight and normal path laid out for them.
Gay parents are often leading the efforts of gay normalcy. “There is no gay way,” these parents contend, “to brush a kid’s teeth.”
If parenting were only that simple, right? Maybe it is, and perhaps that is why we have so many assholish kids running around nowadays. Just a thought.
Who is afraid of gayness? A lot of people apparently.
Here is my obligatory gay statement this June:
I am proud of my gayness. It is the best thing about me.
I am deeply grateful for my gayness. Devoted to it. It delights me.
Gayness animates my personhood, my intimate/married life, my fatherhood, my faith, my scholarly artistry, my style, my hopes and dreams.
I recently received The Book of Delights by Ross Gay from a dear friend. I started reading it (delight!) while waiting for my car to get serviced–and it inspired the recognition of this delight:
I am delighted by a spot in the middle of a major intersection near my home where various items gather. Auto parts, rocks, shards of glass, and the like find their way to the exact center of this intersection. The stuff there is so perfectly centered that cars turning or passing through don’t run them over or otherwise disturb them.
It’s all the rage in sophisticated circles to go on about de-centering this or that. Well, I am delighted by these weird, radically centered things of the world that few people notice and cannot (easily/safely) be reached.
I am further delighted by the thought of walking out into the middle of the intersection–not so much to investigate the items gathered there but rather to become one of them.
Will I be so perfectly centered in the road that people will ignore and not disturb me? Perhaps such radical centering requires a lot of practice or luck or . . . ?
The dramatic conclusion of Byung-Chul Han’s gloriously terse The Burnout Society (2015) calls forth–for me–an image of a sow in a gestation crate.
The sow may be genetically engineered to produce upwards of 20 piglets a year. According to Big Pork, the gestation crate is necessary for the sow’s health. In her crate, she lives a healthy life, but a life without what Han describes as “livingness.” The sow lives a life–but not “the good life” (50, emphasis original)
The life of the industrial sow is a vestige of an earlier form of human society. Her health is required–and it is enforced/policed by the Master, by Big Pork. When age or disease makes health impossible–the sow is killed. She becomes what she can no longer (re)produce: pork.
Unlike the industrial sow, living as she does in a disciplinary society, Han argues that we live in an achievement society. In our case, we have returned to the wild, and the internalized imperative of absolute survival is our Master.
The distinguishing feature of the achievement society is self-regulation. Gone are the days of an external Master ruling over their sows. Nowadays, we enter the crate of (re)production of our own “free” will.
Our eagerness to (re)produce breeds burnout because closure or an end to (re)production is not forthcoming in our survival society. Ultimately, our inability to live up to our ideal–to endlessly live/produce–stuns us.
II. Humans in a Crate
The achievement society is a “capitalist economy [that] absolutizes survival” (50). The survival society is, according to Han, an active, multi-tasking society:
Multitasking is commonplace among wild animals. It is an attentive technique indispensable for survival in the wilderness. An animal busy with eating must also attend to other tasks. For example, it must hold rivals away from its prey. It must constantly be on the lookout, lest it be eaten while eating. . . In the wild, the animal is forced to divide its attention between various activities. . . . The animal cannot immerse itself contemplatively in what it is facing because it must also process background events. Not just multitasking but also activities such as video games produces a broad but flat mode of attention, which is similar to the vigilance of a wild animal . . . . Concern for the good life, which includes life as a member of the community, is yielding more and more to the simple concern for survival (12-13).
As driven animals, we do not require external motivation to (re)produce. “That is, the achievement-subject competes with itself; it succumbs to the destructive compulsion to outdo itself over and over, to jump over its own shadow” (46).
According to Han, I am “predator and prey at once.” I “exploit” myself (10, 19). I am unable to be unproductive.
Yet, we are not aware that we have walked into and are living entirely within the gestation crate. The achievement-subject “thinks itself free of all foreign constraint” but is “entangled in destructive self-constraints” (47).
III. Stunned
What our entanglement in the crate of our freedom achieves is burnout and depression. “Burnout . . . often precedes depression” (44).
Burnout is the fatigue experienced by the “entrepreneur of the self” (Agony of Eros, 9). It is the result of “voluntary self-exploitation,” of being a “flexible person,” of constantly changing to meet the current demands of the market (Burnout, 44, emphasis original).
The real ego strives to keep up with the demand, the ever-new market, now projected as the ego ideal. The problem is that closure/gratification is not forthcoming—one never arrives at their desired destination.
Thus, I turn on myself. “In view of the ego ideal, the real ego appears as a loser buried in self-reproach” (47).
Depression is the deepening of fatigue/burnout. “The exhausted, depressive achievement-subject grinds itself down . . . it locks its jaws on itself . . . this leads the self to hallow and empty out” (42).
The depressive subject is characterless, formless, chaotic. The depressive lacks the strength to rebrand. It is stuned.
IV. Blood Bath
Han offers a promising antidote to the (re)production of the achievement society: the tired society. We may appreciate his constructive proposal more if we address an aspect of his analysis that I think is incorrect, in addition to some reservations I have with it.
My reservations are as follows:
First reservation: Is the split between an older disciplinary society and the contemporary achievement society (even more regressive than the previous disciplinary society) as clear and radical as Han seems to think it is?
The success of Donald Trump in the U.S. indicates that the distinction between the two societies is not so clear. Trump masterfully deployed the immunological imaginary of the disciplinary society, casting the Other as a contagion–a dire threat to the pure blood of the social body. Trump’s strategy would not have worked if the idea of otherness had been weak or powerless, as it is in Han’s achievement society.
It does seem like the old disciplinary logic is lurking in the background. Perhaps repressed, it erupts into view every so often.
Second reservation: It is also hard not to notice in Han’s writing what I call a mystical flair. In Agony of Eros, Han asserts that “[e]ros conquers depression” (4). The Other is salvation from what Han calls absolute positivity or “the inferno of the same.”
But at what cost? The self.
In his Forward to The Agony of Eros, Alain Badiou reminds us that the “vanishing of the self in the Other–has a long and glorious history: the mystical love of God . . . ” (xi). While Badiou cites Saint John of the Cross as an example, there are others, like Mechthild of Magdeburg, Angela of Foligno, and Marguerite Porete.
From them we learn that self-evacuation/immobilization tends to lead in one of two directions: either to 1) the reification of the self–i.e., to auto-eroticism–(e.g., Mechthild); or to 2) the evacuation of the self (e.g., Angela, Porete). The outcome is not guaranteed.
Moreover, the difference between them is not clear. The inferno of the same melts identity down, leaving it to suffocate in its blood, while the freeze(?) of the Other immobilizes the self, incapacitating it.
The idea seems to be that immanence/same without transcendence/Other is a kind of hell (or a deadly illusion) and transcendence/Other without immanence/same is a kind of heaven (i.e., the real). Ok, but if the same/self/Own is irrelevant in either case, why are the respective “destinations” evaluated differently?
Third reservation: Han does not consider animal development in his philosophy. Animal development is not a novel philosophical topic. For example, Rousseau observes that the infant begins in monarchy (i.e., the same).
Her Majesty then enters into a relationship with the maternal parent(s) (i.e., Other[s]). Only then, if she is lucky, does she begin to leave the family sphere and enter society–hopefully as a citizen committed to love and reciprocity.
For example, Nussbaum consistently points out the ongoing threat of monarchy, or what Han describes as “the inferno of the same.” However, what Han considers a return to animality, Nussbaum recognizes as an aspect of human animal development.
So much for my reservations. What do I think Han gets wrong? I think he is wrong about the status of psychoanalysis in the supposed era of the absolute achievement society.
V. In the Beginning: the Unconscious
In Burnout, Han asserts that “Freudian psychoanalysis is only possible in repressive societies that found their organization on the negativity of prohibitions and commandments.” Han claims that the “late-modern achievement subject possesses an entirely different psyche than the obedience-subject for whom Freud conceived psychoanalysis” (36, emphasis original).
“The Freudian unconscious,” Han recognizes, “is not a formation that exists outside of time.” The unconscious is also not, pace Han, “a product of a disciplinary society . . . that we have long left behind” (36). The formation of the unconscious does not depend on society.
Jean Laplanche, for example, argues that the unconscious is formed by “enigmatic signifiers,” messages from adults (what I am calling the maternal caregiver[s]/Other[s]) that are untranslatable by the infant/child. Consequently, these messages are repressed–forming “a certain type of reality, called the unconscious” (“A Short Treatise on the Unconscious”, 92).
Han may respond that Freud ultimately rejected the seduction theory that Leplanche revives, giving primacy to the Other in the formation of the unconscious. Yes, Freud argues that the unconscious is formed in response to the instincts. In so doing, Freud makes otherness an intractable, internal feature of the human being (i.e., the biological organism, the human body, or the same).
Society, of whatever kind, need not play a (primary) role in the formation of the unconscious. The unconscious originates as a result of trauma, specifically the shock of human existence, starting at birth.
VI. Entangling/Entangled Desire
The formation of the unconscious does not depend on social organization–and this detail is significant because without the unconscious, there can be neither an achievement society nor a viable source of resistance to it.
The unconscious is the source of desire, and Han’s achievement society, it seems to me, is driven–not by instinct–but bydesire. Desire is inherently unentangled. As such, it drags the subject of desire in various directions. In this way, meaning is (re)produced.
Desire flits from this to that, like a hummingbird, (re)producing meaning out of originally disentangled, unconscious materials. Desire perpetually entangles–that is, it (re)forms the unentangled chaos of the unconscious.
The unconscious is also an occasion, at least within a Lacanian framework, for the entanglement of desire. This is an important observation because Han’s achievement society is, it seems to me, both frenetically active and frozen in place.
In the achievement society, the hummingbird flits about in a cage. The cage is the death drive.
The drive captures desire, entangling it in a cycle of repetition. Now, the hummingbird returns to the same flower again and again. In this way, the drive tires desire.
Tiring desire, the drive, the cage in which desire is captured, potentially frees it from the confines of the crate in which it is unknowingly circulating. Slowed, desire is potentially forced to see the crate/the thing in which it has unknowingly constrained itself.
Han’s achievement society is entirely diagnosable, if you will, from within a psychoanalytic framework–and in a sense that is entirely consistent with Han’s argument. The unconscious is a powerful resource for rethinking–and even for refocusing–political desire.
VII. The Entangled Society
In my view, the Other is the figure of the death drive in Han’s Burnout Society. The Other entangles or tires (as opposed to exhausts) the same–potentially opening it up to a new relationship with the world, women, and men.
Han, commenting on Peter Handke’s work, “Essay on Tiredness,” locates a form of tiredness that opens up “a space of friendliness-as-indifference, where ‘no one and nothing dominates or commands'” (31). Han observes that “[s]uch ‘fundamental tiredness’ brings together all the forms of existence and coexistence that vanish in the course of absolutized activity” (32).
Handke’s “we-tiredness”–a tired with you, as opposed to “I-tiredness,” a tired of you–opens up a potentially playful space between Others (33, 34). Han defines the space between as the Sabbath.
Han notes that Sabbath “originally meant stopping” (33, emphasis original). It is a day to stop commanding and being commanded. Duty and/or desire rest. This is the single day God calls holy. “It is a day of tiredness,” Han writes, “a time of, and for, play” (34).
The religion of the entangled society is “an immanent religion of [fundamental] tiredness” (34, emphasis original). It is a society in the grip of a playful drive, one inspiring new connections, curiosity, and openness without yielding to the pressure to achieve anything.
The entangled society is not the society of no! or yes we can!–it is the society of see what happens when you (are) stop(ped)and you play.
In my view, Han comes very close to theorizing a society that recombines duty and desire, reality and pleasure principles. Isn’t that what play enables, relationships with Others that are also pleasing–and even potentially new? But at the last moment, Han dances away, escaping “the achievement-principle entirely” (24).
I recently visited a friend who is in hospice care.
I listened as she shared memories of her ministry. She recalled being tasked with presiding over communion after her Association had declined to accept an Open and Affirming church into its communion.
That’s all history now. That church was eventually welcomed and is now thriving in that Association.
But the image of her presiding in this moment of sadness for many LGBTQ Christians and their allies (and she is one) worked on my unconscious:
Remembrances of Communions Past:
In college, I read Henry Nouwen’s Can You Drink The Cup? I preached a sermon inspired by it, “Sharing Our Lives,” to my rural hometown church. After hearing it, a friend observed, “I don’t think you know it, but you just came out to your church.” Looking at the text of my sermon now, I get it. I described lifting the cup as coming out and sharing (i.e., intimate connection) as a lifestyle. I even read a story from the book, Holy Homosexuals. I don’t have Nouwen’s book in my library today. As a college senior, I was invited to speak at a gay youth support group. I remember giving the book to a high school student. I wonder what the book did for him?
One of the first things I did when I moved to Chicago (and mostly out . . . though I had not yet explicitly told my family!) was force myself to begin exploring the city. I jumped on a bus, and I headed downtown. I made it to Michigan Avenue (on the south side of the river) and chickened out. I ducked into Subway(!) and sat down to read Leonardo Boff’s Sacraments of Life, Life of the Sacraments. Boff describes the old aluminum mug he and his ten siblings drank from: “It has shared everything. It has always been there. It is the ongoing mystery of life and mortal existence. The mug endures, old but still shiny . . . . We must drink in other people before we can love them. Eyes that drink in people speak the language of the heart.”
Several times, as others spoke to her, our eyes connected. I felt her love, and I smiled lovingly–and we looked, I am sure, lovingly sad.
On the last day of a challenging ecclesial assignment, I received my friend’s ordination gift in the mail: a beautiful communion chalice (pictured). Before leaving my friend’s bedside, I told her I would use her chalice whenever I preside over communion.
I’ll lift the cup up and share, through Messiah, communion with her.
The first episode, Change Happens, is ready for your ears. Lizzo is our guide as we think about our vulnerability to change and what to do when change–good or bad, fair or unfair–happens to us. We can change our stories when change happens to us.
The Introduction to New Thoughts is posted below for your convenience.
In the next episode, Small Changes, we will think with Legally Blonde (the 2001 movie). We will learn about the big difference small changes make from the inimitable Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon).
We will also consider what happens when we are pessimistic about the possibility of change. In that spirit, I’ll review Mel Robbins’ latest book, The Let Them Theory. I’ll argue that the first thing to go when we are pessimistic about change is the we, the us, the relationship between I and other.
Jon Favreau and Jon Lovett of Pod Save America recently interviewed the inimitable Representative Sarah McBride (D-Delaware). Among McBride’s interesting insights and arguments is the idea that the two major U.S. political parties are gendered. Republicans are gendered masculine (or identified in terms of fatherhood). Democrats are gendered feminine (or identified in terms of motherhood).
Here’s their conversation (if you prefer to watch, jump in at 12:44):
Rep. McBride: I’ve been thinking about how do you fight back against Trump in a smart way . . . because we are so susceptible to sort of this Trump derangement syndrome dynamic. We’ve been screaming about democracy. . . rights and the rule of law for so long—and clearly, this country voted for someone who incited an insurrection. . . .
The Democratic party is the woman of politics and the Republican party is the man of politics. It’s why Donald Trump can scream and yell and people see him as strong—and why when [Democrats] scream and yell we’re seen as hysterical and shrill. It’s why Donald Trump can hate and insult more than half of this country—because we tolerate deadbeat dads, but Democrats can’t say anything about any voters that [impugn] their motives and their good faith—because a mom has to love every single one of her children. So, I’ve been thinking about how do you grapple with that reality that is a real double standard. . . .
Lovett: Let’s test this new way of talking . . . . You’re trying to make people understand how dangerous it is that Donald Trump is coming after basic academic freedom, but you’re worried it’s not going to resonate with people. How do you talk about it?
Rep. McBride: With all of these actions that we’re seeing against immigrants, against institutions, [the Trump Administration is] picking on the most unpopular, the most vulnerable. They’re picking on people who are easy targets. I do think . . . you have to go back to what we were talking about before, which is that if they can do it [to them], they can do it to you . . . . They can do it to my constituents . . . . I think we can do a better job by making the main character [of our story] our constituents.
Changing our political situation requires, McBride claims, recognizing how political party affiliation is gendered. For example, Republicans can get away with being angry, but Democrats must always be empathetic. “[A] mom,” McBride says, “has to love every single one of her children.”
Motherhood is often the object of politics because the public sphere, the sphere of politics, is gendered masculine. The traditional story is that politics is for men; the management of the home is for women. For McBride, motherhood is the subject of political action.
But what is maternal politics, exactly? In her response to Lovett’s question about how to discuss maternal politics in the context of education, McBride attempts to clarify the character of partisan gendered politics. Her answer, namely that the mother protects “easy targets” of public abuse, isn’t specific enough–so it can’t inspire serious Democratic political action.
In what follows, I ask a revised version of Lovett’s question to McBride: How do you talk about maternal politics in the context of early childhood public education? To answer the question well, we need a definition of maternal politics that is specific enough to avoid confusion (e.g., terrorist organizations like Moms for Liberty claim to love all children) and to provoke serious liberal and/or progressive public action. I propose the following definition:
Maternal politics = public action(s) to secure and defend a boy’s rightto become a man who desires like a woman/mother.
Why a boy’s right to desire like a woman/mother? Consider recent oral arguments before the Supreme Court of the United States regarding an opt-out option for religious conservatives who do not want their children exposed to readings that mention/feature same-sex desire in the public school classroom. It was a book about male same-sex marriage that caught the attention of conservative Associate Justice Samuel Alito.
Conservatives are manifestly not as passionate or concerned about a girl’s public education. What they care about is the reproduction of traditional or normative masculinity. Hence their focus on male same-sex desire. Conservatives think that male homosexuality is especially threatening to the future of straight maleness.
I think my definition of maternal politics helps explain the recurring outbursts of straight anxiety about male homosexuality and the “indoctrination” of boys in our public elementary school. Furthermore, the specificity of my definition of maternal politics (one of many possible proposals) allows us to form a more direct and beneficially partisan answer to (the revised version of) Lovett’s question about gender politics and academic freedom in Trump’s U.S.
Here is the take I will explain and defend below: Conservatives have used the public school system to indoctrinate boys, and we have generally failed to resist it because we (unconsciously) agree with the “obvious” meaning of the conservative premise: boys should be boys. Instead, we should reform early childhood public education by securing and defending a boy’s right to desire like a woman/mother.
A traditional public school education entails learning skills, especially (though it is never explicitly acknowledged) the skill (and appreciation) of straight maleness (i.e., normative masculinity). Between the ages of 5 and 6, boys are forced by law to leave the sphere of maternal power (i.e., the home/family) and enter the public school system. It is in the public school classroom that they begin to learn, formally (i.e., curriculum) and informally (i.e., socially), to desire “proper” manhood or straight maleness.
The irony is that the reproduction of “proper” manhood necessarily requires/inspires homoerotic desire. Boys must be motivated to undertake an education in normative masculinity. Thus, they are taught to want men/manhood.
You may argue that what boys are taught is the protocols of normative masculinity rather than to desire adult males–but the foundation of straight logic is that sex, gender, and sexuality are inextricably linked. Male/penis > masculine > heterosexual. In other words, a boy can’t want masculinity without also wanting men.
A second irony: the propagation of masculinity requires a boy to desire like a woman/mother. The transmission of normative masculinity from one generation to the next requires, at least initially, the misalignment of sex, gender, and desire (i.e., male/penis desiring man/masculine). It is at this early stage that normative masculinist logic shows its ass (= its vulnerability).
The vulnerability of normative masculinity is its unnaturalness. In other words, “proper” maleness does not inevitably proceed from being born with a penis. “Proper” maleness must be taught.
The fact that straight maleness is taught is not exactly the problem. The way normative masculinity is taught is the source of its tyranny.“Normal” masculinity is presented uncritically, and it requires uncritical acceptance to be mistaken for normal (i.e., natural) or, as the Trump Administration prefers, for “biological truth.”
Traditionally, this is why the acknowledgment of (male) homosexuality in public schools has been a source of straight panic. It exposes the hole of straight maleness: straight masculinity is not natural. It is optional.
Nowadays, homosexuality is not as often considered inherently opposed to straight masculinity. It’s an interesting development. Today, dudes sucking dick (homie head, brojob, etc.) is just another way for boys to be boys.
Straight ideology is flexible, and gay identity politics is clever. It’s a win-win situation: straight masculinity remains (if not natural) inherently desirable, and male homosexuals are welcome to enjoy its privileges–well, at least if they are good students, willing to learn/embody the protocols of “proper” masculinity.
So, recent arguments before the Supreme Court about readings in public schools that mention same-sex desire may be read as a form of social progress. Before books that acknowledge the reality of happy adult male homosexual relationships (happiness being what I think Justice Alito means by the “subtle” moral message of the book that offends religious conservatives) defiled God’s male children, the biggest threat to the “proper” education of our male children was the gay male English teacher. And before the English teacher became sus, the “gay” male philosopher was considered the corrupter of male youth.
“In a famous passage in The Divine Comedy,” writes David M. Halperin in “Deviant Teaching” (2007, 146-167), Dante represents himself as encountering, in the course of his journey through Hell, the soul of [philosopher] Brunetto Latini . . .” (146). Why did Dante put poor Brunetto in Hell? “His sin is tellingly not named in Canto 15, but other passages in Inferno remove any doubts about its identity. Brunetto is damned for sodomy” (146).
When Dante asks him about his companions in Hell, Brunetto answers that “all were clerks and great men of letters, in the world defined by one [and the] same sin” (148). “Sodomy,” Halperin declares, “is evidently a sin to which literary scholars, critics, and writers (such as Dante himself) are particularly prone” (148).
Halperin, a public university English professor trained as a classicist–and no stranger to controversy–reminds us of “how ancient is the association between teaching and sodomy, between paedagogy and paederasty” (149). “[T]he abolition of any clear or firm distinction between the relation of teacher and student and the relation of lover and beloved is,” Halperin writes, “one of the most notorious consequences of Plato’s metaphysical theory of erotic desire” (149). Teaching “has an extended history of association with deviance and has long figured as a deviant practice” (151).
If gender were a “biological truth,” as the Trump Administration claims it is, then straight anxiety inspired by the fantasy of homosexual indoctrination in public schools would be a genuine absurdity. The reality of old school straight anxiety exposes a glitch in the code of masculinist transmission: gender is a social–not a biological–reality. It must be taught and learned.
For a boy to become a man, he must leave the maternal sphere, the home. He must also leave his father’s side. A boy’s father “is too closely tied to the boy by blood and domesticity . . . so they cannot fully . . . incarnate the cultural ideal of male identity . . . ” (151).
“Every proper boy,” Halperin writes, “has to have at least two daddies” (151, emphasis original). Boys learn to become traditional or “proper” men in the public sphere (e.g., schools, sports teams, etc.).
The glitch in the heteronormative educational regime is further exposed by how it represents the social transmission of masculinity (154-155). Consider how the Sambia of Papua New Guinea ritualize the reproduction of strong warrior men.
Elder males take boys ages 8-9 off into the forest where they are forced to perform oral sex on adolescent males. Halperin observes that the young boys are taught to think of “cock-sucking as a kind of breast-feeding” (155).
Ingesting semen, the boys receive the nourishment they require to grow “into real men who will be strong warriors” (155). They continue to ingest semen until they turn 15, at which point they become “the breast” for younger boys.
Listening to social and religious conservatives today, one would never know that third and fourth grade boys in the U.S. are not being taught to suck cock in public schools. What they are being taught, and in ways not entirely different from how the Sambia “represent to themselves symbolically the means by which they reproduce themselves socially,” is how to become proper Western men (156, emphasis original).
Halperin considers the 1953 Western movie Shane an example of a Western form of masculine transmission. The movie’s focus on the mechanics of masculine reproduction makes it a standout Western (157).
Shane is about how a 9-year-old boy, Joey, is made into a man (i.e., taught how to shoot a gun and fight) by a mysterious stranger, “a gunfighter and a killer” (i.e., a social deviant), a cowboy named Shane (158). Joey’s father cannot teach Joey how to become a man because he is too busy managing and defending the family farm. For obvious reasons, Joey’s mother can’t possibly teach him how to become a man.
Halperin compares Shane to the Holy Ghost. “It is only when Shane’s potent shadow falls across the holy American family that the family succeeds in . . . reproducing masculinity . . . and ensuring its own futurity” (159–for my reading of the Holy Ghost, go here). And “[g]unfighting in Shane is,” Halperin observes, “like cock-sucking among the Sambia: both are cultural practices connected with initiation into the symbolic order of masculinity and heavily laden with phallic meaning” (160).
The relationship between Shane and Joey mirrors the relationship between Shane and Joey’s mother, Marian. It is not sexual, but it is erotic. Marian wants to play with Shane’s pistol, too.
Like his mother, Joey feels some kind of way about Shane. In desiring him, Joey gives Shane the “charismatic power necessary to enable those enamored of him (Joey and male viewers) to accede to manhood by means of identification, emulation, and endless, unfulfilled desire for him” (160).
Moreover, Joey’s desire for Shane is no accident. Like Socrates, Shane has a way with his young male students (160-161). Shane makes his manhood hot to both Marian and Joey (= it’s object a). He inspires Joey (and male viewers) to observe his gunobsessively. Masculinity is transmitted “ocularly” in Shane (162).
In seeing/receiving Shane’s manhood, the male viewers “make the supposedly identity-affirming, gender-consolidating experience of masculine identification coincide, as if nothing could be more normal, with the urgent and inescapable solicitation of homoerotic desire” (162).
Question: Did Shane indoctrinate Joey? Did Shane require Joey to accept his warrior manhood uncritically to begin becoming a “real” man? No. Joey wanted the manhood Shane offered him.
Masculine indoctrination requires boys to accept Shane’s manhood as “biological truth.” In that way, Shane becomes the “proper” man, the kind of man boys must become to be considered real men, the type of man women must desire and whose prerogatives they must support to be identified as pious/conservative/real women.
Shane’s “Republican manhood,” if you will, undoubtedly continues to appeal to women/mothers and their boys. I accept that, and I am prepared to secure and defend a boy’s right to want Shane and to become a man who either desires women/mothers or other men who desire men like Shane.
There is nothing inherently wrong with conservative masculinity. That is, I think, a liberal (if not progressive) position to hold–and it is consistent with McBride’s–and my own–definition of maternal politics. “[A] mom has love every single one of her children.”
Apparently, dads have a choice in the matter.
What I reject is the fascist spirit that often animates a traditional education in straight maleness. Republican manhood is manifestly not appealing to every boy. It is not even appealing to every boy’s parents, and there is no reason to believe it will appeal to all who will enter a boy’s life as an adult male.
Moreover, it is an offense to common sense and reason (and I, as a biblical Christian theologian, think it is an offense to the gospel of Jesus Christ) to enforce, as a matter of (unacknowledged) policy or law, Republican manhood. If “biological truth” requires the enforcement of norms and/or the sword of law, just how biological–or true–is it?
The assertion of the biological truth of gender reveals that social and religious conservatives have, like a God, forgotten themselves:
For with the old Gods things came to an end long ago–and verily they had a good and joyful Gods’ end! Theirs was no mere “twilight” death–that is a lie!
Rather: one day they–laughed themselves to death!
This happened when the most godless words issued from a God himself–the words: “There is one God! Thou shalt have no other God before me!” . . . a God, most jealous, forgot himself thus:
And thereupon all the Gods laughed and rocked their chairs and shouted: “Is just this not Godliness, that there are Gods but no God?”
In a gloss on this passage, psychoanalyst Adam Phillips writes, “God, in Nietzsche’s fabulation, forgot Himself, and even His own name; He thought he was God, THE God, when He was simply one among many others (inner superiority means we are on the wrong track, it means we are too intimidated) (Unforbidden Pleasures [2015], 42).
In another text–but in a similar context–Halperin describes how the “inner superiority” of straight maleness may work out in the context of sexuality and gender, nowadays:
If homophobia sometimes functions less to oppress homosexuals than to police the behavior of heterosexuals and to strong-arm them into keeping one another strictly in line with the requirements of proper sex and gender norms, for fear of appearing queer [remember: declaring “no homo” after receiving, e.g., homie head will protect you from appearing (too) queer] it may be that one of the functions of transphobia is to police the behavior of lesbians and gay men and to terrorize them into conforming to the gender style deemed appropriate to their respective sexes (How To Be Gay [2012], 307, italics mine).
As we discovered earlier, the propagation of straight maleness can accommodate a disconnect between sex and sexuality. Nowadays, being a homosexual doesn’t necessarily make you a sus male (i.e., gaaaaaay).
The chronic misalignment of sex/penis (male) and normative gender style (straight maleness) does, however, remain socially problematic. At some point, one must put childish ways behind them.
At this point, straightness has shown a lot of ass. It concedes that heterosexuality is not natural. No one (bi, lesbian, gay, straight, none) knows what determines one’s sexuality (or lack thereof). It also concedes that straight maleness (i.e., normative masculinity) is not natural: it does not proceed naturally from having a penis. It must be taught (and even enforced).
And given that gender does not proceed naturally from sex or depend on one’s sexuality, it follows that anyone, of whatever sex or sexuality, can, if they so desire, learn a specific gender style. Women can, at least in principle, learn to embody normative masculinity.
What all this means is that the claim of straightness to have no other Gods before it is laughable. But the Gods before it need not laugh themselves to death! Instead, they can get on with baptizing newly persuaded converts.
The epigraph of How To Be Gay, a description of gay male masculinity, or masculinity that is gendered feminine because it is resistant to straight maleness, reads: “Let the pagans beget and the Christians baptize” (see also How To Be Gay, 532-533).
The epigraph of How To Be Gay echoes the central argument of Halperin’s essay, “Deviant Teaching”: The “introduction . . . to [non-sexual methods of instruction in maleness,] to non-standard ways of seeing, to distinctive ethical and aesthetic modes of relating to the surrounding culture, to a unique set of sensibilities, and to dissident ways of reading cultural objects (movies, opera, Broadway musicals, emblems of fashion and styles, embodiments of masculinity) [is] what I have been calling deviant teaching,” and what, in How To be Gay, is called gay male subculture (“Deviant Teaching,” 165).
Gay male subculture, as a deviant form of masculine propagation (i.e., it resists the allure of straight maleness), is similar to straight maleness in that it does not depend on either one’s sex or sexuality. It is a style that anyone who finds persuasive may learn to embody.
Gay maleness is among the gods a boy may reasonably desire. Accordingly, maternal politics entails defending and securing a boy’s right to become a man who desires women/mothers or other men who desire gayness.
As a non-normative gender style, a lifestyle misaligned with one’s sex, gayness is a form of Trans*ness (I use the * to indicate gender nonconformity in addition to sex nonconformity). However, Trans*ness moves us well beyond gender misalignment to sexual misalignment.
In her interview on Pod Save America, McBride addresses one of the challenges of Trans* politics (42 minutes in):
I think one of the challenges that we have in conversations around Trans identities that’s different than conversations around gay rights is that most people who are straight can understand what it feels like to love and to lust –and so they’re able to enter into conversations around sexual orientation with an analogous experience. People who aren’t Trans don’t know what it feels like to be Trans–and for me the closest thing that I can compare it to is a constant feeling of homesickness, just this unwavering ache in the pit of my stomach that would only go away when I could be seen and affirmed and live as myself . . . .
I imagine one reality that Rep. McBride is expressing here is that her body initially provoked a conversation: Is this you? She answered either “No” or “Not exactly.” I am guessing (because I am unfamiliar with the details of her experience) that McBride desired a new alignment of sex and gender–and one made possible by a radically new understanding of sex: sex, like gender, is not a natural fact. Sex is an opportunity for conversation rather than indoctrination.
Although Evangelical men really want women to have penises, male to female Trans* experience constitutes an upheaval of normative thought. It inspires intense—and, unfortunately, intensely irrational—emotions.
The animus directed toward Trans* women is a fruit of the fascist spirit that often underlies the commitment to the reproduction of Republican manhood–and one that more than a few fruits enjoy. We have only to think of Andrew Sullivan.
Sullivan is usually an interesting and nuanced public intellectual, but his screeds against “big trans” are becoming increasingly overdetermined (i.e., inspired by irrational forces). On a recent episode of Real Time with Bill Maher, Sullivan comments:
I love the idea that Democrats should get back into building things, into making things happen, into deregulating, into supercharging the economy. I just think that until the Democrats address some of the core issues, they seem not to want to control immigration. They have extremist views about race. They think that boys should compete with girls in sports, and that children should be… have their sex reassigned. Until they grapple with that. . . .
We have not taught civics in this country. They’re too busy learning that America is white supremacist without learning that there are three branches of government. They’re all separate. They’re kept apart so that we can be freer than other countries. Why are we teaching that? We should be teaching that (italics mine).
The claim that Democrats “think . . . that children should be . . . have their sex reassigned” is blatantly false. I am curious, though, about the Levitical themes of Sullivan’s commentary: separation and purity.
Sullivan seems to think biological males should not be separated from their penises–even when they desire to be so separated. In his view, effeminate gay boys are being misled by “big trans” into thinking they are Trans* women rather than gay males. “Big trans,” again in Sullivan’s view, is “transing away the gay.”
The second of Sullivan’s falsehoods, related, I think, to the first, is: “We have not taught civics in this country.” Sullivan seems to believe that “we” have not learned anything about the separation of powers–and too much about the separation of racial groups enforced by those same powers for several centuries.
Is his argument that “we” would become less preoccupied with white supremacy if “we” were taught the philosophy of “separate but equal”? If I am not mistaken, “we” were taught in school that Sullivan’s approach is not unique in history. Hence the focus on white supremacy.
I don’t think it’s uncharitable to read the argument of the unruly forces underlying Sullivan’s Leviticus-like political theology this way: In a good society, penises should remain attached to their original bodies; races, like the branches of the U.S. government (like the sexes?), should be separate but equal.
Maternal politics, at least as I understand it, entirely rejects Sullivan’s (unconscious) definition of a “good” society. Instead, it defends and secures a biological male’s right to discern who they are, really–including a woman/mother who desires women and/or men who desire a new alignment of sex and gender.
Maternal politics, as I understand it, is a form of deviant politics. Securing and defending the right of boys to become (wo)men who desire like women/mothers takes us into scandalous and fraught territory.
How do we talk about maternal politics across a range of issues that are important to our fellow citizens? In other words, how do we make it an electorally desirable politics? If we allow ourselves to have a real conversation about the political body, what is our answer to the question, Is this us?
If maternal politics appeals to us, it could be defined more broadly as taking public action(s) to secure and defend everyone’s right to have complicated conversations about the political body, especially now. Among the lessons Trump has (unknowingly) taught us is that we require a genuine upheaval of political thought.
Quick thought(s) on the sense of resurrection, the interruption of sentient animal thriving, and the experience of life:
Resurrection: an unnatural event (i.e., an act of God or a miracle) whereby sentient animals are returned to significant striving/thriving (i.e., to purposeful living) after the experience of dying and remaining dead for more than one day.
The resurrection of the dead is surely an irrational/unnatural idea. Yet, I think it does make sense as an expression of sentient animal desire for uninterrupted thriving.
Sentient animals strive significantly; that is, they engage in long-term projects, like family building (see, e.g., Martha Nussbaum, Justice for Animals: Our Collective Responsibility–or my reading of the relevant philosophical arguments, though for a different reason, here). Significant striving is purposeful living. Purpose is an enjoyable characteristic of sentient animals’ thriving.
Thriving is a source of pleasure, although pain may be a temporary feature of it. Child-birth, for example, is typically painful–but the aim of family-building requires it. The aim of thriving may require a brief interruption of it.
Long-term or incurable pain impedes thriving. Thriving does not require it. Thus, sentient animals rightly avoid the experience of such pain.
Pain is caused by either natural or social causes. Pain is caused by, for example, certain genetic abnormalities that are unrelated to social factors, like environmental pollution. Pain not attributable to social causes is necessarily a form of harm because it is not the fault of any sentient animal or group of animals and impedes thriving.
Pain attributable to social causes can also be a form of harm. For example, the attainment of academic or artistic achievement may require the short-term experience of pain. Its cause is social/cultural–but it is not directly caused either by the neglect or intent of a sentient animal or group of animals. Nonetheless, it does temporarily impede thriving.
Pain is unjust when its cause, due to neglect or intent, is attributable to another sentient animal or group of sentient animals (i.e., society). It seriously impedes sentient animal thriving. Its duration is irrelevant, as it is pain unrelated to the aim of thriving.
Death interrupts animal thriving. Thus, it is also a source of pain. As such, death is either a very serious harm or, when it is directly linked to social factors, it is an injustice.
The desire for resurrection does not make sense if death is morally neutral–simply a natural fact. If life is not an unqualified good to us, then why would we want more of it?
As an obviously serious interruption of animal thriving, death harms sentient animal life. The resurrection of the dead makes more sense if life is a good that death interrupts. Resurrection makes sense as an expression of desire for uninterrupted animal thriving.
Animal thriving is good. It is the embodiment of justice. Thriving is what sentient animals want. Death gets in the way of it.
Resurrection is, by definition, an act of God. And while you may be willing to grant that resurrection makes sense as an expression of desire to cure the suffering caused by death, namely the interruption of sentient animal thriving—you are likely not as eager to entertain the idea that it is reasonable to think that a divine being will, in fact, overturn death.
Surely, logical argument will fail to convince us of the reasonableness of divine intervention in the natural order of things (i.e., death interrupts thriving). Widespread agreement to the main premises of such an argument—for example, the reality of a divine being—is not likely. Moreover, appeals to authority (i.e., “It’s the word of God!”) will fail us. Thriving entails the freedom to think for ourselves.
But what of our experience of life?
Our experience of life is a source of information when logic or reason cannot help us. Experience, for example, of the tenacity or exuberance of life—the way in which nature is constantly churning out life from death—is not proof of the resurrection—but such experience (and desire for more time to live, to carry out one’s projects) is intimately related to the shared reality of sentient animal life.
It seems feasible for us to use our shared physical senses to observe/feel that life is not easily knocked down—and when it is, it tends to get back up again. Even nature seems to point beyond itself–to something it cannot achieve on its own.
Reason and experience take us to the banks of the Jordan. Death is not good for us. While we may recognize a shared desire to thrive, we can’t be certain of future thriving. But if we are willing to look, there seem to be promising signs of future thriving within and before us.
“The common sort of men,” wrote Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan, “seldom speak insignificantly” (I.viii.27). Perhaps among Donald Trump’s more surprising achievements is proving Hobbes wrong. Today, the “common sort of men” often speak insignificantly.
By insignificant speech, Hobbes means a train of words without clear definitions or with contradictory definitions. Such are the words of “schoolmen”—especially Christian theologians (I.v.3). “Incorporeal body . . . , hypostatical, transubstantiate, consubstantiate, eternal-now” are, for Hobbes, a train of insignificant words (I.v.14).
This “stuff,” the speech of academics, is an expression of madness, “too much appearing passion,” or drunk speech (I.vii.23). The speech of a drunkard is noise.
It is hardly controversial to assert that Trump’s repertoire includes speaking insignificantly. So, his manifest hostility toward prestigious universities (e.g., Harvard) may be an expression of envy. He wants to own insignificant speech.
The original objects of Hobbes’s critique, those we know nowadays as the “liberal elite,” surely agree with my analysis: Trump’s speech is all too often insignificant. What the liberal elite may find inconvenient is the idea that “common men” enjoy Trump’s meaningless speech. Jealousy?
What’s the contemporary appeal of meaningless speech? Three ideas:
Academics/the elite have enjoyed the privilege of meaningless speech for decades—and they have looked down upon “common men” for just being too stupid to get it. Well, now it is the turn of “common men” to enjoy the privileges of speech sans the mathematics of reason. Revenge! Populism!
Insignificant speech is just everyday life. Contemporary social experience is filled with drunken speech, meaningless trains of words: “Hi, how are you?” “Well, thank you.” “And you?” “I’m fine.” Think also of “bandwidth,” “circle back,” “deep dive,” “pivot,” etc. And I have not even touched upon the au courant language of faith. Such speech keeps things moving–like elevator music.
It is also possible that Trump’s insignificant speech is a form of free association, a train of words without apparent or widely accepted meanings. So, it is unconscious speech: a welling-up of nature, the very thing from which the State was, according to Hobbes, created to save us. It is armor-piercing speech. In that case, Trump’s insignificant speech is our speech, too: another inconvenient truth.
Still, White Lotus, Season 3, Episode 8, “Amor Fati,” Lochlan Ratliff reaching for the surface.
“Western dramatic climax was produced by the agon of male will. Through action to identity. Action is the route of escape from nature, but all action circles back to origins, the womb-tomb of nature. . . . Western narrative is a mystery story, a process of detection. But since what is detected is unbearable, every revelation leads to another repression.” – Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae, 7.
“But blessed are your eyes because they see. . . “ – Jesus, Matthew 13:16
“I look at you guys, and it feels meaningful.I can’t explain it, but even when we’re just sitting around the pool talking about whatever inane shit, it still feels very fucking deep.” – Laurie, White Lotus
I.
Superficial is not serious. For instance, a superficial wound may be painful but not life-threatening. It’s not that deep. What is superficial—or merely “sweeps over the surface of the waters”—is not really serious.
Culturally and religiously, the concept of depth is taken seriously. There is a constant stream of chatter about getting and going deeper. According to fitness guru Shaun T, digging deeper can get you that hot, toned body you’ve always wanted. Alternatively, if you enjoy the hit series Severance, you can get deeper by hosting a dinner party without food. These experiences of depth supposedly foster meaningful relationships and healthy minds and bodies.
I am not opposed to depth, meaning, or truth (I’ve worked out with Shaun T, and he’s not wrong). However, conflating truth, health, value, or legitimacy with depth tends to make one paranoid, anxious, over-earnest, and, perhaps worst of all, dismissive of what is there to be seen with one’s eyes. An obsession with depth is not inconsistent with anti-democratic instincts.
Getting or going deep may make you a fascist. Ok, but is it possible to find meaning in “inane shit”? Mike White seems to think so. White Lotus (Season 3) encourages us to celebrate and enjoy superficial pleasures.
Spoiler Alert! Important plot details of White Lotus (Season 3), especially of the final episode, are discussed below.
Still, White Lotus, Season 3, Episode 8, “Amor Fati,” Lochlan’s vision
II.
Timothy Ratliff (Jason Isaacs) is in deep. He is facing the collapse of his business and is on the verge of losing his family’s entire fortune. Confronted with destitution, he becomes obsessed with his family’s ability to survive without money and the status that comes with being ultra-wealthy. His wife, Victoria (Parker Posey), confesses that she can’t live without the finer things in life: “I just don’t think at this age I’m meant to live an uncomfortable life. I don’t have the will.”
Timothy’s son, Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger), seems to believe that his identity is tied to the success of his father’s business: “I don’t have any interests. If I’m not a success, then I’m nothing. And I can’t handle being nothing.” This is a curious confession because, in the previous episode, Saxon asserts that he is not one thing and is capable of change.
Mr. Ratliff’s daughter, Piper (Sarah Catherine), spends the night in a Buddhist monastery to explore her desire to live there for a year. She returns to the resort the next morning with vocational clarity:
Like, the food. I mean, it was vegetarian, but it . . . . You know, you could tell it, like, wasn’t organic, and. . . it was just kind of bland and . . . I don’t know, it was kind of like, ‘Could I, like, really eat this for a whole year?’ And then . . . . Oh, my God. And then I went back to my room, and it was this, like, tiny little box with, like, a mattress with stains on it and no air conditioning, and . . . . I don’t know, like, I guess I am spoiled, ’cause, like… ’cause, like, I can’t live like that.
Only his youngest son, Lochlan (Sam Nivola), believes he can live sans wealth. He seems somewhat believable because, after accompanying his sister, he is not offended by the idea of living at the monastery with her. Accordingly, Loch is the only member of the Ratliff family spared from his father’s violent “cure” for an addiction to wealth.
The cure for an addiction to wealth is located just outside the villa, growing in a tree. The locals call it the “suicide tree” because the seeds of its fruits are poisonous. People kill themselves by grinding and eating the fruit seeds.
Mr. Ratliff grinds up the seeds in a blender before adding them to his piña colada mix. He offers each family member, except Loch, who gets a Coke, one of his deadly concoctions.
Timothy does not want to murder his family out of hatred. Rather, they have conveyed to him that they cannot bear poverty and humiliation. Everyone agrees that safeguarding the family from life’s challenges is his duty and the primary way he expresses his love: “Um . . . I couldn’t ask for a more perfect family. We’ve had a perfect life, haven’t we? No privations, no suffering, no trauma. And my job is to keep all that from you, to keep you safe. Because I love you. I love you so much.”
Mr. Ratliff repents of his suicidal and murderous desires at the last moment, but the next morning, tragedy strikes. Loch prepares a protein shake using the remnants of the lethal piña colada mix.
The drink’s effect is intense on Loch; we are certain he will die from ingesting the seeds.
As he loses consciousness, Lochlan experiences fleeting visions of his sister and mother. His eyes close, and he finds himself underwater, swimming gracefully toward the surface as if emerging from a full immersion baptism.
He sees four statue-like figures gazing down at him as he swims beneath the water’s surface. Lochlan feels neither panic nor pain; he seems curious about the figures on the surface even as it becomes clear that he will drown.
Loch suffocates before surfacing for air in the arms of Mr. Ratliff. Lochlan tells his dad, “I think I saw God.” I believe what Lochlan saw was a superficial way of relating to (his) family.
III.
Lochlan’s revelation is one moment of an multi-season conversationbetween Buddhism and Christianity (along with psychoanalysis). Mike White, the writer and director of White Lotus, is evidently well-versed in Buddhist philosophy. As a pastor’s child—his father is Mel White, a well-respected gay Christian pastor and activist—he is no stranger to Christian theology (or psychoanalytic thought). Therefore, it is unsurprising that Lochlan’s vision is part Buddhist shrine and part Christian baptismal pool. But what is Lochlan reborn into?
What surfaces is Lochlan’s connection with his father. After nearly killing his youngest son, Timothy is completely sober—he is prepared to confront what he has been avoiding with his wife’s lorazepam: the collapse of his business and the devastating financial consequences for him and his family.
On the boat ride to the airport, Lochlan sits between his mother and sister on one side and his brother on the other. His father stands apart, gazing into the ocean. He delights in the spray of water droplets (an image of life and death in White Lotus [Season 3]) created by the boat as it glides across the ocean’s surface.
Superficial playfulness inspires Mr. Ratliff to address the four (un)known figures before him: “Things are about to change. We’ll get through it as a family. ‘Cause we’re a strong family, and you know, nothing’s more important than family, right?”
His question is not a rhetorical one. As he asks it, the traditional Christian Advent hymn, “Lo, How A Rose E’er Blooming,” plays. It is a hymn of hope.
Mr. Ratliff is hoping for grace. What is Lochlan hoping for?
Earlier, Lochlan explains to Saxon why he gave him a “brojob“: “Look, all you care about is getting off, and I saw you lying there, and I thought you looked a little left out, and I’m, you know, a pleaser. I just wanna give everyone what they want, and I’m in a family full of narcissists.”
I initially interpreted Lochlan’s brojob as an attempt to gain control over his brother. Now, I don’t believe it was a power move–or even a very serious incestuous act (= an expression of real sexual desire for his brother). The brojob was intended as an act of compassion.
Lochlan’s compassion is problematic because it stems from his need to please others, to shelter others from their intense feelings. The brojob is an attempt to protect his brother from feeling left out.
Here’s the thing: feeling left out is a formative experience for most of us, psychoanalyst Adam Phillips argues, as we develop out of our first exclusion. If we are lucky, we are left out of our first intensely desired sexual relationship, namely with our parents.
The Buddhist teaching he heard while staying at the monastery with his sister–and reinforced by his vision–suggests another way for Lochlan to use his hands:
Sometimes we wake with anxiety. An edgy energy. What will happen today? What is in store for me? So many questions. We want resolution, solid earth under our feet. So, we take life into our own hands. We take action, yeah? . . . It is easier to be patient once we finally accept there is no resolution (emphasis added).
Loch does not reach the surface—(his) family or belonging—until he stops taking life into his own hands. Striving to please others by resolving their intense feelings, he remains hidden in the depths. But what if he, like his father, begins to question the wisdom of being the source of his family’s satisfaction?
Still, White Lotus, Season 3, Episode 7, “Killer Instinct,” Saxon touches Chelsea.
IV.
In a previous post, I speculated that Chelsea is not entirely unsatisfied with Saxon. In fact, I argued that she unintentionally transforms Saxon into a lover. I further wondered what would happen if she allowed herself to acknowledge what is there on the surface of their relationship: genuine desire.
In episode 7, Saxon becomes a lover. He asserts that he is not just one thing but is capable of change. He asks Chelsea to teach him her spiritual ways.
While learning to meditate, Saxon reaches out and rubs Chelsea’s palms. His touch seems to evoke intense feelings. She quickly gets off the bed where they are meditating and awkwardly starts throwing spiritual books by her favorite author into Saxon’s lap (i.e., onto his crotch). Chelsea insists that he leave and read the books. She calls Rick, but he does not answer her call.
In episode 8, Saxon finds Chelsea sunbathing on the beach. She is impressed when he reveals that he has nearly finished reading one of her books—specifically one that contains “sex stuff,” which Saxon finds “interesting.”
Of course, Saxon misses the point of Chelsea’s surprise, and he reminds her that he is a Duke graduate; he can read! But what astonishes Chelsea is his sincerity, embodied by his actions. It appears that Sax is not just trying to get laid. She feels connected to him.
The author of her favorite spiritual books proposes a theory about how we belong to various groups made up of people we know and those we don’t, and that we somehow work together to “fulfill [a] divine plan.” Chelsea wonders if she and Saxon “are in the same group and don’t even know it.”
Just then, she spots Rick walking toward her on the beach. He has just returned from a dangerous trip to Bangkok. She abandons Saxon and runs to Rick.
It is a fateful decision, one echoed in the episode’s final moments. Now a multi-millionaire, Belinda (Natasha Rothwell) rides off into the sunset—leaving behind the man she loved and with whom she agreed to start a business. Belinda’s departure mirrors the late Tanya’s (Jennifer Coolidge), the ultra-wealthy woman from seasons 1-2 who agrees to loan Belinda money to start a business but then backs out and leaves her behind.
With Tanya’s money in the bank, courtesy of her surviving husband/accomplice in her murder, Belinda embodies the message of the song that plays as we watch her boat back to the airport with her son, Zion (Nicholas Duvernay): “Nothin’ from nothin’ / Leaves nothin’ / You gotta have somethin’ / If you wanna be with me.” The obvious irony is that the wealthy Ratliff family leaves the resort with nothing, while Belinda and Zion, who arrived with modest means, depart rich.
Leaving Saxon behind, Chelsea follows Rick to the grave. After he has gunned down the object of his hatred—who, tragically, is the man he imagined was the object of his righteous love: his own father—Chelsea finds herself caught in the ensuing gun battle. She is shot and killed.
Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong) shoots and kills Rick as he attempts to carry Chelsea’s body to safety. Rick falls into the water with Chelsea. Her body floats facedown toward the deep, while Rick’s lifeless face gazes at the sky as his body floats on the water’s surface.
Next scene: Lochlan surfaces; his eyes open, and he sees the cloudy sky above him–and then his father’s face. We assume it is the poison, rather than his father’s face, that makes Loch vomit before saying to Mr. Ratliff, “I think I saw God.”
Rick and Chelsea end up dead because they could not bear the faces of their lovers. Chelsea and Rick’s fate does not bode well for Belinda and Zion.
Yet, in my opinion, Rick genuinely loved Frank. When he abruptly ends his session with Frank (I refer to their meeting and Frank’s incredible monologue as an “analytic exchange” here), Frank asks, “Don’t you like me anymore?” While Frank has already jumped back onto “the never-ending carousel of lust and suffering,” Rick has nonetheless become an object of his love—a potential template for a loving relationship. Rick’s final lesson in love is embodied in his refusal to get on the never-ending carousel with Frank.
His experience with Rick brings Frank full circle. We last see him worshipping in a Buddhist temple. Failed therapy? Perhaps, but sometimes, our symptoms keep us safe. Life is very fucking hard.
Still, White Lotus, Season 3, Episode 8, “Amor Fati,” Laurie expresses her sadness and the meaning she finds in “inane shit,” like friendship.
V.
Life’s hardships contribute to the only clear relational success story in the third season of White Lotus. The only group of people we might truly believe belong together, to echo Chelsea’s spiritual theory, is the trio of blonde friends, what Mike White describes as the “blonde blob”: Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan), Kate (Leslie Bibb), and Laurie (Carrie Coon).
Their friendship seems troubled by superficiality—but I argue that what genuinely distresses them is the shadowy depths. They spend most of their time hiding from one another. In those depths, they can only perceive the vague, shadowy figures of their adult selves. Their long-standing friendship feels suffocating.
As they share communion, a final meal together before heading back to the airport, their conversation is again disturbed by their unwillingness to surface. They shy away from the spontaneity that is characteristic of what pediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott defines as the “True Self.”
But Laurie decides to surface for air; she decides not to hide her life from her friends. Laurie surprises Kate and Jaclyn with new words about God, the inane depths, time, meaning, and love:
[I]f I’m being honest, all week, I’ve just been so sad. I just feel like my expectations were too high, or . . . . I just feel like, as you get older, you have to justify your life, you know? And your choices. And when I’m with you guys, it’s just so, like . . . like, transparent what my choices were, and my mistakes. I have no belief system. Well, I mean, I’ve had a lot of them, but I mean, work was my religion for forever, but I definitely lost my belief there. And then . . . And then I tried love, and that was just a painful religion, just made everything worse. And then, even for me, just, like, being a mother, that didn’t save me either.
But I had this epiphany today. I don’t need religion or God to give my life meaning because time gives it meaning. We started this life together. I mean, we’re going through it apart, but we’re still together, and I look at you guys, and it feels meaningful.
And I can’t explain it, but even when we’re just sitting around the pool talking about whatever inane shit, it still feels very fucking deep.
I’m glad you have a beautiful face. And I’m glad that you have a beautiful life. And I’m just happy to be at the table (emphasis added).
Laurie embodies the wisdom revealed to Lochlan in his vision: she gives up striving. She can’t explain it. She is “just glad to be at the table.”
Her past, partly shared with her friends, no longer constrains Laurie. Now, she discovers meaning in “inane shit,” in the superficial stuff that “still feels very fucking deep,” revealed on the surface of their present friendship: “I look at you guys, and it feels meaningful.”
If Lochlan’s vision reveals a relational formula, friendship–or family–comes in fours. So, there is a place for us at the table, too. We are invited to join “the blob” and see if superficial friendship “feels very fucking deep.”
Still, White Lotus, Season 3, Episode 8, “Amor Fati,” Kate, dressed in red, looks out over the ocean as the “blonde blob” sails to the airport.
VI.
Mr. Ratliff is anxious about his place at the family table. He stands apart from his wife and children. “[A]nd you know, nothing’s more important than family, right?” Delighting in the play of the watery surface, perhaps he will see an important truth revealed right there before his eyes: family is just not that deep? It can be playful.
Lochlan surfaces in his father’s arms, but what, if anything, he makes of his vision (“I think I saw God”) is unclear. Is he willing to stand apart from the family? And finding himself there, sweeping across the surface of the deep, what new words will he learn to speak? What words will he learn to forget?
Forgetting is a privilege of adulthood. Children can’t forget, for example, that life is very fucking hard. So, kids use the deep end. If they are lucky, they are certain the figures on the surface are attuned and attending to their hiddenness.
Adults remember the depths. But we may also want to recall the playfulness of surfaces.
Superficiality reveals something deeply meaningful, something as close to us as the watery surfaces of our eyes: “inane shit [that] still feels very fucking deep,” like surprising forms of reciprocity, love, friendship, and faith.
Caravaggio: Ecce Homo, circa 1605–1609, Private collection/Museo Nacional del Prado
Attributed to the wrong artist and in poor condition, Caravaggio’s Ecce Homo was nearly auctioned off for a mere €1,500. But, according to Ingrid Rowland, the painting caught the eye of art experts, and it was reconnected to its true maker and restored. Ecce Homo eventually did sell to a private buyer for €30 million, and it was recently on exhibit at the Prado.
The painting is inspired by John 19:4-6 and bears the name of the Latin translation of “Here’s the man,” Ecce homo, of John 19:5: “Pilate went out again and said to them, ‘Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no case against him.’ So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, ‘Here is the man!’ When the chief priests and the police saw him, they shouted, ‘Crucify him! Crucify him!’
Caravaggio’s unique take on John 19:5 is needed right now. His imagination is required because we, at least in the U.S., lack leaders who can inspire us to rethink our values.
Rowland’s description of Caravaggio’s Ecce Homo is worth our full attention:
The scowling Pilate, caught in the coils of Roman law, leans over the parapet of his palace, visibly racked by doubt, the tousled hair peeking out from his velvet cap suggesting an official so confused he can no longer bother with his personal appearance—he seems to have been tearing his hair before he put on his headgear, the sign of his rank. If Pilate’s face says “Don’t make me do this,” his hands are obeying the swifter movements of his heart: his right gestures open-palmed at the hopeless conundrum, but his left has stretched out to support the bruised, swollen hand in which Jesus still clutches his mock scepter. Pilate is changing his mind, which means that we, caught in the position of the crowd gathered beneath the governor’s window, are the ones who are called upon to shout either “Crucify him!” or “Let him go!”—not the Jews, not the Romans, no one but ourselves.
Pilate and the boy are looking at us, the crowd, asking, “Do you really want to kill this man? Why, he has done nothing wrong?!” Rowland observes that “[n]o other Ecce Homo has dared to turn Pilate into a comforter, or one of Christ’s tormentors into a hierophant. . . .”
Today, Jesus has no such comforter or hierophant. Rowland rightly points out that “Jesus, who lacks the rights of a Roman citizen, can be, and has been, swiftly subjected to the empire’s most ignominious punishments: flogging, torture, and the prospect of death by crucifixion, an excruciating public form of execution reserved for enemies of the state.”
And the crowd? We are of no comfort to Jesus. The electorate has made its choice clear, “Crucify him!” His life is not as important to us as the price of eggs or the politics of petty vengeance. We gather at the Tesla dealership while the nails are hammered into Jesus’s wrists and ankles.
