Savage Love’s Dan Savage returns to the podcast for a deep dive into Episode 7 and a discussion on the season so far with host Jia Tolentino. Together, they explore the psychosexual dynamics between Lochlan and Saxon, desire and identity, and Dan’s take on the overarching themes across all three seasons. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What are the key themes of The White Lotus Season 3?
Hi, everyone. I'm Gia Tolentino. And welcome to a midweek bonus episode of the White Lotus official companion podcast to season three. So White Lotus is always about desire and transgression and identity and what's buried and what comes to the surface.
And so much of it bends itself around money, but because this is the show that it is, it all is focused around human relationships and specifically a lot of it around love and sex. That's where you see the way people hide from themselves and reveal themselves and what they say they want and what they really want and how they lie and whether they lie, etc., etc.,
And so we thought, why not talk to Dan Savage, the author of Savage Love and the host of the Savage Love cast. He is someone whose work I have been consuming since, I don't know, 20 years ago when I was 16 and kind of learning about what sex could be other than what had been taught to me in high school. I feel like I spent so much of college reading Savage Love columns.
And I, you know, one could argue that to whatever extent we have developed a kind of healthy, open sexual culture in adulthood, we owe a lot to dance work over the last few decades. So I was really excited to talk to him. You might have already heard him on the Look Back portion of this podcast, Breaking Down Ethan and Daphne's Relationship.
And so we're excited to have him back to talk episode seven. I'm so excited to talk to Dan Savage, who I've been a fan of for a really long time. Dan is, of course, the host of the Savage Lovecast, author of Savage Love. Welcome.
Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.
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Chapter 2: How does Dan Savage view the psychosexual dynamics of the show?
Let's talk about all the fucked up psychosexual dynamics going on in season three of The White Lotus. You talked on the Look Back podcast about how, you know, season two, it was the bedroom farce. It was, you know, this was much more about sex and romance in season one. Where do you place season three on the spectrum?
Oh my God, there's a lot of frustrated desire. Mook's desire for Guy Talks to be someone else, to be someone that she could possibly desire. But of course, the psychosexual drama that everybody's obsessed with is Sax and Lachlan, the brothers, and what we just saw happen. That was really teased in episode one.
Yeah, talking about fully grown genitals, etc.
Yes, yes.
Chapter 3: Who are the compelling characters in Episode 7?
Well, and it's like, I mean, who is here looking for love? It's kind of Belinda, kind of, or who has kind of found a real-ish version of it. It's kind of Belinda. Guy Talk's looking for love. Mook is looking for a sufficiently aggressive man that can then arouse her sort of romantic loyalty or something.
Yeah, somebody that she's almost, it's almost like she's begging Guy Talk to be the kind of man she's a little afraid of.
Yeah, yeah.
And it's odd that she has options. Like there are the bodyguards who are clearly signaling their interest in Mook to Mook. But they're scary in a way that Gaitak is safe, but she wants Gaitak to have that dangerous edge that there's too much of in the bodyguards and perhaps other people that might be available to her or have already signaled their interest in her.
And so she kind of wants to have her bad boy dangerous edge sort of adrenaline pumping love interest, but have the safety boy too, the nice guy too. She wants both in one package and she's begging in episode seven, Guy talk to become that man.
Right. And it's as if she knows that she can't tame the bodyguards into being sort of emotionally available and forthright. But perhaps she could get Guy talked to. I mean, she has a point in that, like, he does need to get better at his job. He's actually quite a bad security guard.
Oh, yeah. Who didn't say, why are you leaving a gun laying around?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why are you gift wrapping it for suicidal patrons?
But in episode seven, he does prove that he at least has it in him. to, you know, go on that secret mission to retrieve the gun.
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Chapter 4: What is the significance of Frank's monologue?
I love them, too. I want to see... More like I almost feel like there's part of their relationship that that isn't shown to us that we've had to read in or infer, which is the joyful part of their relationship. You know, Rick is going through something really intense right now. And it's almost like kind of forensic accounting that we can see that there was some joy in that relationship.
Chelsea a couple of times says, when are we going to start having fun again? Yeah. And so, like, we know that they enjoyed each other's company or they were having a good time at some point. But I just feel like I wished I'd seen more of the joy in their relationship. Because at this point, if I was Chelsea, I'd be out.
Yeah. Well, before we get to the Ratliff drama, I wanted to ask you about Frank and, you know, the monologue. The shocking, perfectly delivered... That no one saw coming.
Yeah.
And probably not Frank himself either.
We're suddenly in this bar in Bangkok and there's this character we haven't met before who winds up unspooling this story that is insane and yet... some people's sexual journey really is that complicated. And there is a sort of fracturing of self in Frank's sexual experiences, sexual adventuring, where in some ways it's kind of beautiful.
He talks about basically all these women that he's using, but then he sees maybe some narcissistic spark of humanity in other people because he projects himself into their experience and wishes to experience what they're experiencing.
And maybe there's some crawling up your own ass redemptive arc in there because the type that the show keeps presenting to us, the losers back home, the bald middle-aged rich guys in Thailand with the hot girlfriends, it's indicting them, right? And their consumption of... the women and the people of Thailand as sex objects.
But there's something in that, in what Frank talks about where you see suddenly this not quite identification with them, but this desire to fully possess, perhaps a desire to ultimately own by claiming the experience, the lived experience, even the body of one of the people that he's having sex with and then fucking himself in that body. It's such a funhouse mirror around identity.
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Chapter 5: How does desire and identity play into the show's narrative?
Being the one that wants to fuck them. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, it speaks to to also like sex being a realm in which you can be something completely other. Right. Like you put aside all the specific dimensions of him, you know, first exploiting and then thinking that he is an Asian girl or whatever, et cetera, et cetera. It's you know, there is something within that where it points to.
it is a zone where none of the rules have to apply per se.
And there is something about human sexuality that I think it's hardwired, that there's something about our capacity for abstract thought and speech that lends itself to this thing that you see funneled through sex and desire where there's often this desire or this real aching need to be outside yourself, to transgress against your performance of self. Totally. And you see that...
I think that's relatable to almost everyone because you see that in women who are feminists and want egalitarian relationships. But then in the bedroom, in a consensual way with a partner they trust, they want to be called a slut or slapped around a little bit or held down.
Don't I know it, Dan Savage. You want to be the opposite of what you are.
Yeah, you want to be the opposite. And that can go into really, you know, for many people, I think most people, that goes to an easy place that's easily grokked, right? I'm a feminist, but I want my hair pulled and to be held down and fucked.
Yeah.
But for some people, that can continue to a place that most other peoples need to transgress against self or play as the opposite erotically. Their erotic imagination goes to a whole other dimension where it's desire to be the opposite gender, desire to be another species, desire to be everything that you're not or an additional thing that you're not. And someone who wants to...
be freed from the self, from the prison of how they're perceived and how they present, that can progress to a point where the character of Frank makes sense.
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Chapter 6: What role does power dynamics play in relationships on the show?
And then you ask the next person at the spanking party, and there are such things, why they're into spanking. And it's because they weren't spanked. Right. And they were sort of morbidly fascinated hearing about other kids getting spanked. And it's just, we're not reliable narrators.
You can retrofit any fantasy onto, yeah.
Yeah, we're not reliable narrators of our own sexual interests. There's something about Greg and Tanya's relationship that... is recognizable to me as a gay man my age. I'm 60 years old.
And I watched a lot of people partner up during the AIDS epidemic with people they thought were about to die, as Greg was about to die in episode one, or with people when they thought they were about to die, as Greg was in episode one.
And then along came protease inhibitors in 1996, and all these guys who thought they were gonna die or thought their partners were gonna die were suddenly gonna live. And it changed the calculus. around the relationships they were in, a lot of breakups. And what Greg had, you know, Tanya funded his treatment, some experimental treatment, saved his life.
In the flush of that, they married, and then Greg realized, oh, this is somebody I could stand for a year. This isn't somebody I can stand for decades. which is what a lot of guys who got off their deathbeds in 1996, they called it Lazarus syndrome in 1996, guys getting off their deathbeds, suddenly were like, oh, I loved this person when I thought I was on my way out.
And I could love this person for three months. I can't love this person for 30 more years. And that's where Greg found himself with Tanya, but there was half a billion dollars on that.
Right. So what else is he going to do? He's going to tip her over into that dark water.
There's that episode in season two where I think it's clear that Greg was involved in Tanya's murder, set it all up.
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