‘Sicily Can Be Very Seductive’: The White Lotus and the Transnational ‘Making’ of the Mediterranean

Abstract

This article examines how, in the second series of The White Lotus (2022), Sicily is portrayed as a backdrop for wealthy North Americans to live out touristic fantasies. This relies on a stereotypical portrayal of Sicily as a repository of ‘pre-modern’ gender roles and racial dynamics. The Sicilian setting facilitates the series' critique of white, male privilege. Although the series uses irony to satirize North American attitudes towards, and beliefs about Sicily, it ultimately ‘recycles’, however knowingly, familiar clichés about the island, particularly ones that recur in twentieth-century films. Thus, while at first glance The White Lotus appears to critique its characters' conception of Sicily as a Mediterranean playground or ‘an idealised space of tourism’ (Hom, p. 52), upon closer inspection the series is ultimately an extension of a long line of transnational portrayals of Sicily that rely on familiar stereotypes, made by and for English-speaking observers.