Jia Tolentino
speaker
981 appearances
13 recordings
3 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Apr 2025
Jia Tolentino’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
The White Lotus Official Podcast · Season 3: A Final Goodbye with Aimee Lou Wood · 10 Apr 2025
podcast
I don't think that Frank experiences anything as inherently better than the other. Like, I think he probably understands sobriety as something that is a necessary structure for his life to be clear about himself and his flaws and the danger zones. But I don't think he's beating himself up at the temple the next day as he's bowing.
I think he's just like, wow, the great wheel of life contains multitudes. And that was me and this is me and I'm a terrible person and I am a transcended person. Right.
He is under zero illusions about who he is. You know? Like, he is not bullshitting himself. He's scrubbed out all of his bullshit. And I don't know, there's something to be said for that. Like, there's obviously a hard limit to where self-knowledge will get you morally, but...
within the framework of the people we've been presented with this season, there is like a profound freedom he has in this absolute self-knowledge of his failures and his freedoms, kind of.
There's something interesting about how Piper and Saxon almost switch places. There's a symmetry in the way that they begin the season, and Saxon is like, I'm American Psycho. I'm a man of the world. I'm about money. I'm about conquest. I'm about sex. Piper is like, I'm wearing a white nightgown. I have pure thoughts. I transcend my position.
I merely wish to be a beautiful flower floating on the wind. directing my thoughts towards peace or whatever. And then by the end, Piper is like, hmm, like, I'm going to text my girlfriends and set up cocktail night or whatever, you know?
Yeah, she floats back down to earth. She's like, okay, what if actually I just stay rich and volunteer biweekly? And like, perhaps that's like the version of life that I... And Saxon is like, what if... everything I've ever believed is wrong and I need to find love and a soul. And that's fascinating, they slinch.
I think, I mean, really specifically within the dynamic of female friendship that these ladies have been, you know, playing out this entire season, um, It's extremely important that the way she does that is by instantly unlatching them from mandatory happiness, which is the main thing that has caused all of the characters to deceive themselves.
The sort of layered, mirrored, reflecting self-consciousness and self-righteousness kind of builds into this nuclear relationship. arms race of just perpetual escalation of like, no, I'm happy and I've done it right and this is actually what I've always hated about you or whatever.
There are lots of different versions of the life you have, but you've chosen very specifically some relationship to the things that Lori says she's placed her religion in, right? In work, in love, in motherhood, in their beauty.
They have chosen a particular relationship and they have to defend that to themselves as the correct one and objectively the correct one or something and that it has made them happy. There's this way in which that relationship like completely false structure of thinking becomes almost ingrained as a natural slash mandatory one for women, particularly when you approach or hit that age.
And the incantation that she utters is like, but what if I didn't have to pretend that I did it right or that I was happy? And then suddenly they're all actually happy. And she says, and I'm just happy to be sitting at this table.
That I found really, really well written, that that's the magic spell. Her just being like, yeah, I'm actually unhappy, but I'm really glad to be here. Yeah. And I guess the thing that it unlocks in them isn't, it's not happiness as they configure it. It's not happiness as they configured at the beginning, which is something that's visible, that you can photograph, that you can prove.
Like, I think it's the kind of happiness that comes from being at peace and honest. But to me, I'm like, that actually is what I think of as what being happy means. And I do think they are there.
Rick and Chelsea, it's not. We were really sad watching it. That's not what I want for them. It's not what we want for them. I'm rewriting it in my mind.
It's no consolation that they die together. It really does not mean anything in actuality. They should have just continued to... move on from the place that they were in at the dinner when he was like, okay, we're going to be together forever. Like, Chelsea was right about what would happen to them, but she ends her life in utter horror at what her beloved is doing to himself and thus to her.
Like, she ends the show knowing that the snake is out of the cage and coming for her calf and she's going to actually die this time or whatever. And we hate that for them.
Yeah, yeah, except dead.
Except, like, fully dead.
Yeah. Chelsea is too pure.
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