“Eat the Rich”: Moral Entanglement of Class and Gender in The White Lotus

The White Lotus is renowned for its satirical depiction of wealthy, upper-class individuals. The show deliberately invites its viewers to reflect on a set of moral/ethical questions about ambiguous characters and their behaviors. This study investigates viewers’ responses to this invitation to morally deliberate in relation to class. First, a narrative analysis traces the moral plotlines in Seasons 1 and 2 of The White Lotus. Building on this, thematic analysis is used to examine viewers’ moral discussions on the online platform Reddit. In this way, both the show’s invitation and how viewers navigate this invitation are unraveled. Results show a relation between characters’ class and gender, the amount of empathy the characters evoke among viewers, and viewers’ deliberation on moral issues these characters are involved in. Viewers actively engaged with the moral plotlines concerning female and middle-class characters. The male and upper-class characters received remarkably less attention, and their immoral behavior was taken as a given characteristic of the upper class. We argue that these patterns show a connection between empathy felt for a character and readiness to engage in moral deliberation of their actions. This finding contributes to our understanding of narrative imagination, its connections to class and gender, and its manifestation in an online context.