HBO’s The White Lotus is about privilege and power – who has it, who doesn’t, and who’s afraid of having it taken away from them? While the first season of the hit series was about class, the social satire in the second season aims at gender politics.
Typical of The White Lotus, none of the characters get off easy. Everyone is just pointing out another ugly truth about the state of the world today – even those who are initially presented as heroes, or at least not-so-bad people. Such is the case with Albie Di Grasso (played by Adam DiMarco), who is portrayed in sharp contrast to the other men as a self-proclaimed “nice guy”.
Compared to his father Dominic (Michael Imperioli) and grandfather Bert (F. Murray Abraham), Albie, the representative of Gen Z, seems nice – at first. But the most recent episode, season five, began to reveal a darker possibility: Albie might feel just as entitled to the desire, attention and body of women as his grandfather and father did. And while Bert and Dominic are more open about their toxic masculinity, Albies is no less damaging.
@ethanforyou #Sting with @jazmelodyy #green screen and claim! And don’t get me started on Theo James #white lotus
♬ Renaissance (Main Title Theme) [from “The White Lotus: Season 2”] – Christobal Tapia De Veer
one TikTok user breaks down the generational shift in misogyny as portrayed on the show: from Bert’s uncompromising and blatant molestation, to Dominic’s exploitation behind closed doors, to Albie’s particular brand of entitlement, in which he exposes his toxic masculinity not just in front of a romantic partner, but in front of hides himself . “The next generation says, ‘No, both are evil. We’re going to learn third wave feminism and read everything and we’re going to understand women, that way they MUST sleep with us because I get it. I totally get it,'” says TikTok user @ethanforyou in his video, before summarizing, “They’re all bad.”
Some spectators Twitter despite his recent fumbling for getting Albie and Portia (Haley Lu Richardson) together. Others note that he’s allowed to be disappointed (which is true) and that Portia took him with her until she met someone (as if she weren’t a single woman in an Italian resort) — that doesn’t mean he’s a villain is guy.
But for many other different characters – his “pretty wounded bird” comment, his self-identification as a nice guy, his slowness to accept that Portia just . . . wasn’t that on him among other things – suggesting that Albie could be a “white knight”.
Albie, the whitest knight of the white lotus pic.twitter.com/RaiwRU3X8X
— 𝙎𝙝𝙤𝙘𝙠 𝙅𝙖𝙘𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨 𝘿𝙚𝙢𝙮 (@EmmaTolkin) November 28, 2022
White knighting has an informal definition, but it’s often used to refer to someone trying to fit in as the knight in shining armor nobody asked for, all with a not-so-sneaky ulterior motive — for social currency or to obtain returned desire, for example.
in one Reddit thread Definition of the term, one user offered this one: “Men jumping at you [woman’s defense] in every argument, even if the woman might be the wrong one.” (People of any gender can be a white knight, however.) This harks back to a moment in episode five when Albie is talking about sex worker Mia (Beatrice Grannò) and Lucia ( Simona Tabasco) with his father and grandfather: “They probably don’t want to be escorts. They’re just poor and victims of a shitty system,” he says over breakfast. To which Bert replies, “Women aren’t all saints, Albie. They’re just like us.” While it’s terribly ironic that this line came from the male chauvinist, the sentiment is based on justice. Being put on a pedestal solely because of your gender can be dehumanizing.
In the same Reddit thread, another user added this nuance: “The dark side of the white knight is that some are just trying to get laid. They’re like nice guys, male feminists just trying to gain women’s trust. They’re opposed to bad boys.” This juxtaposition becomes quite apparent when Portia falls in love with the Essex fuckboi introduced in episode four, rather than “cute Albie”.
If you listen quietly, you can hear comments typed in incel communities around the web: “Nice guys finish last.” But DiMarco himself said in an interview with vanity fairthat it was purposeful to play up Albie’s sweet side, saying “when it comes to being a nice guy, I don’t know if there’s any such thing in the world.” And while it’s true that Portia is put off by Albie’s lack of brains, his Reaction to the fizzled romance suggests his behavior may not have been as innocent as it first seemed.
“We should really ask ourselves why our loyalty is to him just because he’s mild-mannered,” writes Anna Silverman for grace. Although Albie knows the definition of approval, he’s very good at getting Portia to spend time with him and his family, pushing for hangouts, and taking her back to her room when she clearly wants to stay by the pool. Sure, Albie clearly believes he’s better than his dad. But what’s a white knight without his high horse?
Time will tell if Albie is a “nice guy” or really nice. But reading feminist literature ultimately means nothing if one still cannot acknowledge that women, like any other gender, are complex human beings with individual needs and desires, and that sexual desire is not earned through “good behavior.” In 2022, we hope that would have been a lesson Albie would have learned well before his first gender studies class at Stanford.