Saturday Essay Is it bourgeois to want to watch TV series about nice people? Ted Lasso has raised sincerity instead of irony

The TV series Ted Lasso and White Lotus both deal with cynicism and the problem of the good life.

The writing includes plot revelations from the White Lotus series.

He coaches an English football team, although not exactly familiar with the sport. He bakes biscuits for his boss every day. He finds good in everything and throws flirtations at the Kansas accent, like “tackling a challenge is like riding a horse – if it feels comfortable, you’re probably doing it wrong”.

He is Ted Lasso (Jason Sudeikis), a nice hero.

AppleTV + comedy series Ted Lasso has been a big hit. The reasons for the popularity of the good-natured series are clear. The script is funny and the actors are excellent, but most of all Ted Lasso dare to ask how to be a good person.

The New York Times James Poniewics wrote in the summerthat when Ted Lasso your ears Office as the most popular comedy series, sincerity replaced ironic bitterness. According to Poniewozik, the sincerity that is now evident elsewhere in our culture is a reaction to all the self-evident and ironic distancing of one’s own reception.

The irony and bitter distance is still not gone. This year’s biggest TV series has been bleakly satirical White Lotus. It tells the story of privileged Americans vacationing in a luxury hotel in Hawaii. The people are so disgusted that at first they are only looked at because they are wondering who is lying in the coffin shown at the beginning.

Philosopher Slavoj Žižek said in an interview that he could not look White Lotustabecause it was too depressing. There were no sympathetic people in it. Žižek laughed with difficulty at the interviewer of the left-wing media Jacobin that he could be bourgeois.

Is there bourgeois want to look Ted Lasson TV series about nice people like that? What is “bourgeois” watching in general?

Fresh Little bourgeoisin his book Anna Kontula writes that petty bourgeoisie likes art, which is superficial and unproblematic, “elevator music”. It is based on an attitude to life that is a threat to the world from protection. When maintaining one’s own security is combined with capitalism, according to Kontula, it forces “people into a constant state of crisis and a playoff, a world without security and solidarity”. Then nothing challenging is needed.

White Lotus guests and staff are in a constant state of crisis. To endure it, they use alcohol and drugs. But they are dependent on a lot more. They are looking for change but are unable to change because they are dependent on what they would like to change.

The desperation of the release attempts is summed up in the series’ spiritual protagonist, the wandering Tanya, presented by an excellent Jennifer Coolidge. “I can break old formulas,” Tanya says, and of course can’t. At the same time, he manages to cling to other people and not care about them. “I can’t get rid of an empty feeling. I want someone to solve it for me. ” Every man is just an opportunity for Tanya to get rid of her biggest addiction, herself.

Only one White Lotus people manage to change, and it is precisely through liberation from addiction. The sea takes the teenage boy’s phone and his life is shaken. Eventually, the same sea will support the boat, where he will row on the depths, as part of a group, a sports team. White Lotus in the middle of the filth rises this one beautiful image, like a lotus rising to the surface of the water, a beautiful flower nourished by disgusting mud.

Bitter cynicism is an attractive option in an insane world. White Lotus The other two teens in the series are trying to keep themselves above the game with ironic distance and cynicism. They read Nietzsche, Freudia and Lacania and do whatever they want, that is, desperately doing everything they would not be like their parents.

Where there are bourgeoisie, there have always been intelligents for whom it is essential to stand out from these bourgeoisie. Hannah Arendt write In the birth of totalitarianism, how the central way for the intelligentsia to distinguish itself from the bourgeoisie is precisely the ironic distance. It can go so far as to despise human values ​​rather than commit anything that could be considered bourgeois hypocrisy.

White Lotus shows how there is always some teenage rebellion in the intellectual opposition to bourgeoisie.

Ted Lasso not rebellious. The series is a counter-argument to cynicism built in the form of comedy.

A very cynical journalist interviews Ted, who replies sincerely, “For me, success is not about winning or losing. It’s about helping these young guys be the best versions of themselves, on and off the field. And it’s not always easy, Trent, but it’s not about having to grow up without anyone to believe in you. ”

The reporter changes his mind after realizing that Ted isn’t just a loosely flattering positivity speaker. He is serious. Ted Lasso sees through complexity and always finds the same simple answer based on it: “I believe in believing.” It is not pleasing to be identified with a complexity or ironic distance woven over a simple truth, such as White Lotus lost guests.

Not everyone Ted Lasso’s seriousness. The popularity of the series has, as expected, provoked a backlash – too superficial, too warm, too male and too white. The New Yorker TV critic Doreen St Felix intout to write: “Ted Lasso can’t save us.”

Ted’s warmth is not superficiality, but rather the sympathy seen from the depths. Ted has a tragedy that changed his mind. “I knew I wouldn’t let anyone pass by without realizing that he might be suffering inwardly. Because life is tough. It’s really tough. ”

Critic in the column of the Buddhist magazine Lion’s Roar Jennifer Keishin Armstrong says Ted Lasson is the hero of our time because he doesn’t strike back or argue. He has empathy for another person’s situation. Only a truly strong person can do that. Ted Lasso has power.

“The kind of power that Tony Soprano or Walter White couldn’t even dream of,” Armstrong writes.

Maybe that’s why America, a beaten, torn America, fell in love with Ted Lasso. Sincerity is not bourgeois submission. Aristotle write In the ethics of Nicomachus sincerity, truthfulness, to be a man-appropriate attitude to life, as it is the middle ground between self-denigrating irony and bragging. Sincerity is disarmament, and nothing is as disarming as disarmament.

Ted Lasso is right. Talking about positive and negative thinking is secondary. They both take place in a state and the real strength is to be in a state where others can be just as they are.

That, I understand, is Ted Lasso’s strength and it’s also the series ’response to how to be a good person: Enabling others to be as good as possible.

Read more: Ted Lasso, who is in the world of football, is a rare series as it is suitable for the whole family

Read more: Ted Lasso is on the good side – Jason Sudeikis backs down young Englishman who failed in World Cup final

Read more: The White Lotus is the most talked about series of luxury tourists: The most praised role is played by the surprise American movies

Read more: Hit series In a new series by the creators of Big Little Lies, a group of anxious rich people go on health leave, where their traumas are treated with drugs

Read more: In HBO’s brilliant The White Lotus Satire, the white elite drifts to the basics at a Hawaiian beach hotel

Read more: The little bourgeoisie accepts only one way of life, and now such thinking has become normal in Finland, says Anna Kontula

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