“The Curse” is set in the New Mexico desert, where newlyweds Asher (Nathan Fielder) and Whitney (Emma Stone) Siegel have declared themselves pioneers in a new field: ethical gentrification. Whitney designs high-quality, eco-friendly homes whose mirrored siding and interiors by local artists literally and figuratively reflect the surrounding community—the predominantly Latino, working-class town of Española. As they explain to a local reporter, their plan is to set aside a portion of home sales to offset the rent of any tenants displaced by rising property values. Asher jokes in a playful TV voice: “Nobody worries about the G-word more than us.”
He's not exactly lying. This is exactly what the two are betting on gentrification. Whitney and Asher are filming footage for a possible HGTV series tentatively titled “Flip-lanthropy.” Although their brand is forward-thinking, their actual business plan has ancient roots in the American West. They are land speculators. The couple has been buying up properties across Española in anticipation that property values would increase once their show goes to series.
Asher and Whitney expect a lot to happen in the future – that their TV show will get the green light, that Española will be the next big thing, and that a local artist from the area will want to feature their work on the show “one of the biggest names in contemporary art”. Part of their tendency to speculate is generational. In the 2022 book “Speculative Communities,” sociologist Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou argues that “while capitalist societies have always relied on their ability to anticipate, imagine, and speculate about the future to manage their uncertainty and volatility “. In the first two decades of the 21st century, these impulses have gone into hyperdrive thanks to an unholy merger of technology and rampant economic and political uncertainty. Whitney and Asher are millennials, members of a generation that came of age watching the New York Times election ad on their phones and watching billionaires on “Shark Tank” determine the future value of small businesses. Like their peers, they have internalized the lesson that a finger to the wind is a greater advantage than a nose to the grindstone. About Española, Asher tells his father-in-law, “It’s going to be a neighborhood that no one expected.”
The people who have long called Española home, including its indigenous community, would likely disagree, but the series is precisely about whose predictions about the future go unchallenged and whose fate is decided as a consequence. As satire, the sharpest knife “The Curse” has in its scrap cabinet is its analysis of how much of our lives are subject to reckless and often unfounded predictions about the potential of markets and individuals. The speculative practices—the financial and cultural predictions—on which Asher and Whitney staked their future would be considered occult forms of divination if white people were not involved.
The show offers a black witch to illustrate this point. As Asher and Whitney forge their destinies, misfortunes begin to befall the couple. The perpetrator, Asher suspects, is a disadvantaged girl named Nala (played by Somali-American actress and charming scene-stealer Hikmah Warsame), who may or may not have mystical abilities. By injecting the supernatural into a show ostensibly about housing and the influencer economy, The Curse co-creators actor-director Benny Safdie and comedian Nathan Fielder invite us to consider how deeply the uncanny is rooted in our lives economic processes in which it is easier to imagine the haves and have-nots than the blessed and the cursed.
The curse in “The Curse” comes about after a chance encounter if you believe in it. One day, a resident of Española, whose future Whitney and Asher shuffled like a deck of tarot cards, the magic returns. A producer wants to film a B-roll of Asher “giving back to the community.” You know, charitable things.” All Asher has is a hundred dollar bill, but he gives it to Nala, who sells soda cans on the street. As soon as the cameras stop rolling, Asher demands his money back. When she protests, he snatches it out of her hands. After these rapid fluctuations in her own fate, Nala's sweet face suddenly contorts into an almost paranormal seriousness. “I curse you,” she says quietly but with conviction.
It later turns out that Nala didn't learn her magic from a magic book; She's just recreating a TikTok trend. But Whitney and Asher are possessed nonetheless, and perhaps feel deep down that they deserve some kind of karmic burden (in fact, Asher is desperately searching for an ATM to withdraw twenty dollars for Nala, hoping that it will lift the curse). “Now we have it all under control,” Whitney says, annoyed with him. As a plot device, the curse makes it clear that Asher and Whitney believe in magic, at least a little. And why shouldn't they? Their entire business model is based on magical thinking – a fact underscored when they have to hire actors as they struggle to find clients with deep pockets who won't call their neighbors to the police or fight the local pueblo over land rights issues to pass off their show as a home buyer.
A few episodes later, we learn that Nala's curse was harmless, but not ineffective. By further coincidence, it turns out that one of the empty houses that Asher and Whitney bought is occupied by Nala and her family, who live there. The couple agrees to let her live there rent-free out of guilt or, more likely, fear. While Asher repairs something in her house, Nala reveals what the curse was. “I took the chicken out of his dinner,” she admits sweetly, seeming to think it was all just a silly prank. Meanwhile, Asher's face freezes like the chicken and penne dinner that was just penne the other night.
As we cut back and forth between Nala and the flip-lanthropy shoot, the little girl's magic and TV magic mix in a cauldron of predictions, and Asher and Whitney's marriage begins to crumble under the heat. By betting everything on getting “Flip-lanthropy” picked up by HGTV, they've essentially turned their lives over to de facto fortune tellers, like Asher's old friend Dougie (Safdie), a freelance reality TV producer Previous credits include a “Love Is Blind”-style show called “Love to the Third Degree” about a burn victim whose condition is only revealed at the very end. Dougie assures them that he knows how to work the system, but when HGTV puts together a focus group for the pilot (a form of corporate fortune-telling), Whitney and Asher realize that they are subject to the vicissitudes of people from “some mall.” Dougie informs them. The feedback is discouraging, particularly when it comes to Asher: “He should be funny?” asks one subject. “Right now our entire livelihood is based on the fact that you said they were probably going to take over the show,” Asher yells at Dougie like Mr. “Love to the Third Degree” was Nostradamus.
Much has been written about Safdie and Fielder as writers of cringe, joining forces in The Curse to test our nerves. But they also share an interest in prophecy—financial, spiritual, and sometimes a heady mix of both. The Safdie brothers' “Uncut Gems” centers on Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler), a Jewish jeweler in New York's Diamond District with a penchant for sports betting. After lending NBA player Kevin Garnett (playing himself) a special black opal mined by Ethiopian Jews, Ratner bets in a six-way game that Garnett will score enough points to pay off his old gambling debts to settle – a leap of faith in every respect.
Fielder's breakout hit “Nathan for You” on Comedy Central was rather secular, unless you consider blind belief in capitalism to be an American religion. The series parodied business makeover series such as “Undercover Boss” and “Kitchen Nightmares.” Fielder, as host, boasts that he “graduated from one of Canada's top business schools” and offers consulting services to real small business owners, but – much like real consultants – his solutions only introduce new problems. In one episode, Fielder advises the owner of an antique store to adopt the “whoever breaks it, buys it” rule and stay open 24 hours a day, then walks in drunk at a nearby bar while wearing an antique sumo wrestler -Costume.
“Nathan for You” was partly influenced by the 2008 financial crisis; Fielder was “obsessed with it,” as he told the AV Club, and curious about why people caught up in the subprime mortgage system didn't come forward when they sensed something was wrong. “The Curse” contains a subplot that feels like a callback to the earlier series. In one episode, we learn that Asher used to work at the local Indian casino as a sort of in-house “Nathan for you,” developing methods to potentially increase profits. One of his pitches — a recreation area for players' children — is a disgusting idea that would have been farcical on Comedy Central. Here it is scanned as a legitimate sounding pitch. The only difference is that Fielder, as Asher, uses a lot of business jargon and consultant-speak, such as “The stickiness is off the charts,” and wears an ill-fitting blazer. “The Curse” is also about a housing crisis and the danger of treating predictions from men in suits as science. The real estate speculation that Asher and Whitney engage in is as reckless as gambling – they are gambling with their own future and the future of the city – but no one would blame them for having a problem or for letting their imaginations run wild, Writing checks This reality cannot be cashed.
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