Since the third season of The White Lotus began with a (mostly) new group of guests stepping off the boat to the luxurious resort in Thailand, my social feed—which admittedly skews toward gay men and women whose weekly screen time reports would make their parents shudder—has been obsessed with the Ratliff brothers.
Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger) and Lochlan (Sam Nivola) are on vacation with their parents, Timothy and Victoria (Jason Isaacs, Parker Posey), plus their sister, Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook.) On paper, there doesn’t seem to be anything weird about the brothers—Saxon is arrogant and buff, while Lochlan is shy and skinny. They’re the archetypal twunk-twink, alpha-beta duo from households across America.
Slightly less typical, however, is the fact that fans can’t stop talking about the sexual tension between the brothers.
There seems to be a vibe of repressed homoeroticism that is clearly legible even amongst Saxon’s loud, chauvinistic behavior, which is confusing to both characters and the audience, too. And a potential incest storyline isn’t the only taboo here: I keep seeing people arguing about whether it’s OK to have a crush on Saxon—the cookie-cutter MAGA frat bro who has had everything handed to him.
When a viral post of a shirtless Saxon strolling by the pool was captioned, “the men on this show keep getting hotter,” the reaction in some quarters was one of mild fury. “The bar is in hell,” one person said, while another posted: “I want to kill him with a hammer.” Others have compared Saxon to Donald Trump’s sons, Eric and Donald Jr.
With his obnoxious bravado and admittedly great abs, Saxon prompts the question: Is it OK to thirst after men who, politically and ethically, represent everything you hate?
Even by the usual standards of the guests on The White Lotus, Saxon is a lot. In one of his first scenes, he tells Lochlan how horny he gets on long haul flights, before announcing that he’s going to masturbate just feet away from him in their hotel bathroom. Next, he makes a slew of creepy comments about his little sister being “uptight” because she’s a virgin, which he thinks is “weird, because she’s so hot.” And in the Ratliff family, it’s equal opportunity grossness: When Saxon complains that his Thai massage didn’t come with a “happy ending,” his mother bursts out laughing—it’s a snapshot of how his bad behavior was probably encouraged throughout his childhood.
The complicated (and vaguely arousing?) relationship between Saxon and Lochlan is where we see him in a more caring role—or at least, behaving in a way that he perceives as nurturing.
He seems obsessed with making his little brother drink protein shakes. When Lochlan asks if the shakes taste nice, he thumps his chest and says: “It’s not about the taste, it’s about the pump!” He’s also fixated with his brother’s sex life. “We need to get you laid, like, this week!” he insists. Amongst all the talk of “getting p---y” and fist-bumps and slaps on the back, it’s never quite clear how much Lochlan is humoring his older brother, or whether he really wants these things too. In that sense, it’s a fascinating glimpse into how masculinity is learned and constructed.
In terms of Saxon’s politics, it doesn’t take genius to work out who he voted for. Not only is he a wealthy, WASP-y white man who works in finance in North Carolina (a combination that practically screams “taxes are theft!”), but the language he uses suggests he is particularly plugged into the “manosphere”—a network of podcast hosts and content creators who promote traditional gender roles and hyper-masculinity, often combining talking-points from the worlds of wellness and business. (Saxon repeatedly tells Lochlan no one will take him seriously until he gets buff, and he insists he never takes drugs, before his sister interjects: “You take adderall all the time.”)
The comparisons between Saxon and President Trump’s offspring speak to the political moment we’re in, where it’s difficult to look at anyone—real or fictional—without assuming who they voted for, or trying to slot them into our political reference-points.
And on the question of whether it’s “OK” to find someone attractive when you don’t agree with their views I would suggest that, in the case of Saxon, doing so probably infers a degree of distance from what he represents. This might be why I’ve mostly seen gay men, rather than women, publicly thirsting after him. They’re less likely to end up in some sort of tradwife relationship in the real world and, as men, occupy a different position within the patriarchy.
I also worry that the idea that it’s “wrong” to be attracted to someone who represents values you don’t share—or even despise—flattens the complicated politics of desire.
Sometimes, we’re attracted to people or things precisely because they might hurt us, or ignite a sense of anger, insecurity or shame within us. In the case of Saxon, he represents a specific type of white heterosexual masculinity that many people have been socialised alongside, while being purposefully excluded from. The attraction might not be to him (or his abs) but to a dominant form of machismo that has always seemed tantalisingly out of reach, no matter how much it has been loudly thrust in our faces, or promoted as an ideal.
At a time when masculinity is being relentlessly politicized, and where one side of the aisle claims so have a monopoly on what it means to be a “real man,” Saxon’s character is about finding arousal in the taboo—whether it’s incestuous sexual tension, or still finding him hot despite the fact that he’s a creep with terrible views. Returning to the question of whether it’s OK to thirst after someone who represents everything you hate, maybe the answer is another question: What if, to some people, that actually makes Saxon even hotter?
