By the time we get to WHITE LOTUS 205, Mike White has given us a couple different examples of one of my favorite screenwriting techniques: Reference to Other Stories.
When you refer to another story in your story—and as White shows, this can be done in a lot of different ways—you give the audience a new context for what they're seeing. It's actually a technique that probably shouldn't work, because it's very clearly an "The Author Of This Show Will Now Overtly Direct You To Think About What You're Seeing In One Certain Way" move.
But rather than take away from a viewing experience, referencing other work can add another layer. It can make the work we're watching seem better or more important—the references allow the new work to "draft" off the reputation or ideas of the prior work. Also, when you reference I don't know, Terry Gilliam's BRAZIL (what a random reference to come into my head) in your movie, you're in a sense presenting yourself as a conversation partner with it, i.e. as something of similar insight and value.
And I think when the technique works, it does so first because it's done in ways that are organic to the story, that bury to some extent the author's hand, and second because in fact it is trying to be a conversation partner with that work.
And it's inviting we the audience into that conversation, which is fun for us (and also makes us feel smart). So for instance early in the season (in a scene I can no longer fine, argh) someone—either Tanya or Harper (I think Tanya)—is reading Kate Chopin's The Awakening, which is very much one of those novels that every English major read in college and kind of blew us away. (White loves to use the books that people are reading as glimpses into what's going on within them. And because people so often are reading at resorts on vacation, it feels completely motivated.)
But then on top of that in 204 after Harper believes that maybe Ethan has had an affair and succumbed to Cameron's horrible bro-y world, we get that scene where she walks out to the edge of a pier and stares out at the water. The Awakening ends *spoiler spoiler spoiler* with the main character Edna Pontellier walking out into the sea and drowning herself as an act of liberation from the patriarchal world in which she finds herself. Harper just stares out at the water, but the reference seems really clear.
White loves to use a literary reference to beg questions about both his characters' state of mind but their future. With Harper here, we're wondering whether she wants to kill herself? Or do something else to resist the techbro patriarchy she fears her husband is a part of?
With Tanya the questions that come from literary references are much more about her fate. In 204 the mysterious Quentin invites Tanya to tell him everything that she's going through. His reaction afterwards is "You're like the heroine of your own Italian opera." To which she responds: "Does that mean I'm doomed?" Cue flashing lights.
Then in 205 Quentin actually takes her to an Italian opera, Puccini's Madame Butterfly, in which the lead discovers that her husband is cheating on her—which Tanya suspects as well—and then kills herself.
Obviously our main focus in all of this is on Tanya and what's going to happen to her. But there's also the question of Quentin. Who is this dude? And why does he seem to fucking with Tanya like this? After the opera he shares how it's not love but beauty that has been his Achilles' heel. When Tanya replies that she lives for beauty, he replies. "I know you do. I'd also die for beauty. Wouldn't you?" Like, what?
But here, too, I think White offers some subtle direction for our thinking by way of other literary references. 205 also features a bizarre and hilarious church sequence, in which Guiseppe ends up sitting with Mia in the pew of an abandoned chapel looking penitent because he can't manage to perform for her. This sequence has no connections to the Tanya/Quentin storyline, but simply by virtue of adding Christianity—another set of stories—to the overall psychological soup of the show, White primes us to consider Quentin more broadly. Maybe this guy isn't just some awful dude. Maybe he's the Devil.
Which also begs the question, What the hell is White Lotus?
(I'm still two episodes from the finale myself, and very much looking forward to seeing where this goes!)
Looking at your own work, are their literary or pop references that might add layers of meaning or mystery to your text? Or if you're getting notes that people don't quite see where you're going or what you're getting at, maybe a reference to another text can help provide some greater focus or clarity.
