Intro

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What happens when the contradictions of living under late capitalism—both internal and external—are revealed in excruciating detail? What happens when our performances break down, when they break us, when they break those around us? What happens when you take all of this and wrap it up in a faux reality TV show which is itself about a reality TV show? 

Well, you get The Curse—the latest masterpiece by comedian, actor, writer, director, and producer, Nathan Fielder. You may know Nathan from his satirical docu-reality comedy television series, Nathan For You. You may know him from his more recent TV series The Rehearsal. Or you may not know him at all—it doesn’t really matter, because in this episode we’re going to explain everything you need to know about how Nathan Fielder produces masterful media and art—and we’re going to do so by taking a deep dive into the 10 episode mini-series The Curse, written by and starring Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie—and also starring Emma Stone.   And to have this conversation, we’ve invited on friend of the show and TV & film enthusiast Carlee. You may recognize Carlee from our episode on Capitalist Realism, or you may recall a couple of Patreon episodes ago when Robert read her piece, “The Puritanical Eye: Hyper-mediation, Sex on Film, and the Disavowal of Desire.”   In this conversation, we discuss Nathan Fielder’s “The Curse”—walking you through the plot and the characters before analyzing and presenting a wide variety of scenes from the show and discussing what they tell us about our individuated, isolated, tortured, exhausted, and often performative lives under neoliberal capitalism. It really is a great show and this is a wide-ranging discussion that will have value whether or not you’ve seen the show. It’s also a lot of fun. 

Further resources:

• Egress: On Mourning, Melancholy and Mark Fisher
• The Puritanical Eye: Hyper-mediation, Sex on Film, and the Disavowal of Desire, by Carlee

Related episodes:

• Capitalist Realism w/ Carlee
• Sex, Desire, and the Neoliberal Subject

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