Exoticism and Escapism! Class, Coloniality and Gendered Tourism

This time it's all about westerner's all-inclusive getaways—and the
ideological baggage the characters as well as the viewers bring
with them. But does anybody care about the places they visit and
the workers? In our third English podcast episode, we travel to The
White Lotus Season 3 (US 2025) and revisit the early-2000s Austrian
cult comedy Poppitz (AT 2002), each set in a more or less luxury
holiday resort, each revealing just as much about its vacationers
as it does about the place and the viewer it/him/her/*self. But
what exactly lies beneath the beach towels and palm trees? With a
focus on gender, whiteness, and class, we unpack the fantasies,
projections, and power imbalances embedded in these two very
different, yet surprisingly resonant, resort narratives. Our
analysis builds on diverse-feminist film readings and digs into how
The White Lotus and Poppitz render masculinity in crisis, exoticize
their local contexts, and reproduce—or subtly question—privileged
perspectives. Key questions in this episode include: What does it
mean when white, Western characters escape to the Global South—or
to a fictional place similar to Tunisia, in the Austrian
imagination? What labor remains invisible in these glossy resorts,
and who is allowed to desire, to complain, to act out? *** We are
sorry for the bad sound quality of Bianca's track!