"The Curse": Out Now and Happening Everywhere

The Deep End #12

I recently finished watching Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie’s The Curse. I think you should watch it. Let me explain why below.

The show takes you along on the journey of a young married couple moving into a new town. That’s the most polite way to put it. The couple—spearheaded by the ambitious and downright delusional wife portrayed brilliantly and excruciatingly awkwardly by Emma Stone—show us just how dirty gentrifying a poor neighborhood can be.

The show starts here: Emma Stone’s Whitney and Nathan Fielder’s Asher are in the midst of shooting a reality TV series. The series follows them moving into the “up-and-coming” town of Española, New Mexico. I put up-and-coming in quotes because, in reality, Española is an underdeveloped poor town. Whitney and Asher have bought property and turned the houses into “passive-homes” to promote green living—while attempting to sell them for top dollar. The plan behind their realty show is simple: make the dangerous and rundown Española appear hip and exciting. This will drive up the prices of the properties the couple is buying up for cheap, so they can sell for maximum profit—all at the expense of the residents who can barely afford living expenses as it is.

It’s painful, awkward, brutal to sit through at times, and downright hilarious at others. Nathan Fielder is in one of his best roles yet—really bringing his deadpan humor and abrasive personality to anyone that has the displeasure of speaking to into him. Emma Stone deserves an award for her portrayal of Whitney. I don’t think a character has made me cringe more—bringing back memories of run-ins all over New York with women just like her.

Of course, there’s a curse mixed in, but the real brilliance of the show is capturing the real stresses and financial ramifications of gentrifying an area as down and out as Española.

It’s really relatable. Why? Because it’s literally happening. Everywhere.

Right now, I live in Brooklyn—smack in the middle of Greenpoint and Williamsburg. It’s an area that’s been gentrified. I’ve heard stories from residents, former and current, who talk about life here when you couldn’t walk out of your apartment at night without risk of getting robbed.

Now it’s different. Now you can take Emma Stone’s character and plop her smack in the middle of any coffeehouse, teashop, hot sauce bar, skate shop, recycled underwear store, or jean depository and she’d fit in like a glove. Fake friendliness, misguided attempts at trying to fit in with the locals while simultaneously forcing them out. The show is so spot on with this that you can’t help but laugh.

Here in the areas of Brooklyn and Queens I’ve lived in, the Italians and Irish that used to dominate the landscape in the 80s are now treated as caricatures of themselves. See a guy with a strong “New York” accent and it’s cute—a novelty of the time before. It’s also perceived as a sign of lower intelligence to the newcomers, just like what The Curse is portraying with Española.

Other things have changed, too.

Dangerous areas along the waterfronts of Brooklyn and Queens, where factories once stood, have traded their shady underbelly for people searching for Lululemons, Warby Parkers, and astronomically priced apartment buildings—that I may or may not have been involved in the construction of. There’s even a Hermes going up on one of the blocks off Bedford in Williamsburg. That means one thing: big bucks are coming. Like bigger bucks than either one of us could possibly imagine.

Talk about a 180.

From not being able to walk down the streets to not being able to afford rent anywhere close to some of these areas. Instead, the former residents talk about their favorite restaurants and hang-out spots that once stood there, and the current ones are clamoring to get away from the never-ending drove of hipsters—only to sell their homes to rich developers that will price out any future generations of former residents from ever living there without sharing space with three or four roommates.

Where I come from in Queens, the same thing is occurring in a more residential sense. A place once meant for working class families, is now so severely price gouging home buyers that no one’s kids have the chance to raise a family in the same neighborhood they grew up in.

My parents have a dream: for their kids to buy a house in the neighborhood they live in. Keep the tradition going. Raise grandkids and give them the life we gave you—if not a better one. The only problem is it makes absolutely no logical sense. To buy a house in this city now means being house poor for anyone who could even qualify for a million-dollar loan.

There are other problems with the influx of new residents. Everyone’s heard of how rude and nasty New Yorkers are. Right? In my opinion, it’s wrong. For the most part, native New Yorkers don’t fit that bill. Most of us are just trying to scrape by as best we can. Implants come here, hearing stories about how brutal New Yorkers are, and think they need to fit that mold to fit in. They couldn’t be more off base.

Yesterday, Melissa and I went to a diner at the corner of Nassau and Manhattan. The place was packed—only two tables left in the place. “Sit wherever you like,” a waitress said. We shuffled over to the two remaining tables which happened to be right next to each other. The first one had coffee spills on it and a few bucks left for a tip, it hadn’t been cleaned off yet. “Well, I guess we’ll sit here—,” I motioned to toss my jacket into the only clean table in the restaurant, when another patron bolted into the seat.

I never saw anything quite like it—a real NPC type. Carhartt beanie on. Fuzzy red jacket. Rolled up jeans. Sunglasses on with no intention of being taken off. AirPods glued firmly into his earlobes. He threw his used backpack on the other side of the booth and sat, staring in complete stillness, having just stolen our table. He didn’t even look in our direction, let alone address us. AirPods never left his ears either. He just sat there in emptiness, waiting for his order to be taken.

The waitress came over and apologized on the stranger’s behalf that our table was stolen and quickly cleaned the other one off for us. We sat. My back to the NPC’s. His presence reeked of Boise. How many times had he rehearsed that in his closet apartment?

It’s strange times we live in. People don’t care about their neighbors and the people around them. You know why? Because they don’t have to. They’ll go from one town to the next, leaving high rents and used jacket stores lying in their wake. Just like the couple in The Curse.

Anyway. My point is this: I recommend you take a chance at watching The Curse. It’ll set you back one Paramount Plus subscription, but let’s be real—you and I both know you already have one.