Review: The White Lotus, "Bull Elephants" | Season 2, Episode 3
Separating men from women leads to introspection and the first cliffhanger of the season
Midway through “Bull Elephants,” the Di Grassos go on a tour of shooting locations for The Godfather, discussing the movie over lunch on the set where Michael Corleone’s wife Apollonia gets killed by a car bomb. Bert names it the best American movie ever made, a pretty uncontroversial opinion, but Albie immediately pushes back. “Men love The Godfather because they feel emasculated by modern society,” he says. He goes on to claim that the movie reinforces unhealthy male fantasies of violent heroism, consequence-free infidelity, and subservient wives. These fantasies aren’t innate to men, he reminds them; pop culture tells men what to fantasize about. “Gender is a construct,” Albie says. “It’s created.”
It’s an interesting conversation at a point in the season where gender is a bigger theme than ever. And it reminds me a bit of the Mossbacher family conversations in season one, in a good way—except Albie is generally much more well-meaning than Olivia and Paula in his regurgita…