Nathan Fielder as Asher and Emma Stone as Whitney in The Curse. Photo / John Paul Lopez/A24/Paramount+ with Showtime.
Nathan Fielder as Asher and Emma Stone as Whitney in The Curse. Photo / John Paul Lopez/A24/Paramount+ with Showtime.
Opinion by Karl Puschmann
Karl Puschmann is Culture and entertainment writer for the New Zealand Herald. His fascination lies in finding out what drives and inspires creative people.
The Curse is a cringe-comedy that’s largely devoid of comedy. It’s an experiment in both viewer limits and the cringe-comedy genre as a whole. It’s as uncomfortable as a porcupine seat. I can’t stop watching it.
My initial reaction was one of disappointment. Comedian Nathan Fielder made his name on the quasi-reality series Nathan For You, which saw him posing as a business guru and designing elaborately terrible plans to turn real people’s real struggling businesses around. Think of it as Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares hosted by a less personable Mr Bean.
The series ran for four seasons and Fielder followed it up with The Rehearsal. This show can be considered a meta-examination of his schtick. It once again involved real people being subjected to Fielder’s ultra-awkward and single-mindedly uncomfortable comedy persona but along the way it began blurring the lines between reality, the fiction of the show and Fielder’s reality as a fiction in - and out of - the show. It was startlingly original and wholly brilliant.
I purposefully avoided all advance word on The Curse but was properly excited from the second Neon announced that they’d be dropping the first five episodes in one big swoop, with weekly episodes expressed over after that.
I was wholly intrigued by the menace of the title and my brain was sent into contortions trying to figure out how Hollywood star Emma Stone figured into the series. While it’d be more difficult to find people who didn’t recognise Fielder than it was back in his Nathan For You days I don’t think it’d be impossible. But most people would immediately recognise Stone.
Turns out all my mental gymnastics achieved was sore limbs. Having successfully milked the comedic possibilities of making real people uncomfortable with his fake character in Nathan for You and then deconstructed the concept with The Rehearsal it appears Fielder decided to move on from that style of comedy altogether. Unlike his previous shows, The Curse is a scripted series. With actors, sets and humorous situations.
The Curse is a cringe-comedy that’s largely devoid of comedy. Photo / John Paul Lopez/A24/Paramount+ with Showtime
The show sees Fielder and Stone playing Asher and Whitney Siegel, a married couple making a reality TV show about their environmentally designed houses and their efforts to integrate into the largely Native American community where they’ve built the houses. The pair talk a good game about social change, looking out for the environment and bettering lives but in their private moments often let slip their concerns that they won’t make money on the properties unless the show is a hit thereby lifting the land value in the run-down suburb.
Whitney is especially idealistic in an over-the-top manner which riles people up. But she’s also egotistical and it’s hard to not see her posturing as a white saviour stereotype. Husband Asher is not too different from Fielder’s usual persona, only here he also possesses an almost uncontrollable furious rage and a micro-penis. The latter of which makes for one of the most squirm-inducing scenes in television history when his father-in-law corners him for a bonhomie chat about it.
The Curse is billed as a dark comedy and that’s half true. It’s more of a dramedy than anything. But while it is certainly dark it’s only occasionally humorous and its drama isn’t particularly riveting. The show is often dull and stubbornly meandering. It mostly feels like it doesn’t want to entertain you as much as it wants to test your tolerance for stomach-churning awkwardness.
It has a point but it’s in no rush to get to it. It also doesn’t go out of its way to explain anything. But in its first six episodes, it deals with the effects of gentrification and colonisation, overt and hidden racism, grief, posturing, spirituality, the deception of television and social media and the lies that people believe about themselves. To its credit, the show doesn’t hammer you over the head with any of this. Instead, it highlights it through the behaviour or weaknesses of its characters.
The Curse is an arty show with a foreboding mood. The soundtrack is unsettling and full of psychological horror and the show regularly employs bizarre angles and off-kilter framing to accentuate its unease. It lingers in situations that have you squirming in your seat, willing for them to end. If you couldn’t stomach the cringier moments of Curb Your Enthusiasm or the UK version of The Office then The Curse will absolutely finish you.
I can’t say I’m enjoying it but I also can’t say I’m not. But what I can say is that The Curse is one of the most fascinating shows of the year.
