Rob joins me to talk about The Curse, Season 1.
Warning: spoilers in the show notes and also in the discussion. I highly recommend watching first, because it’s very good.
The first nine episodes were some of the most compelling TV I’ve ever seen. I tend not to like the premise of white liberals being hypocrites. It takes aim at an easy target and is too overtly political for my taste. But this show I think puts politics in its proper place. Asher and Whitney Siegel are human beings first, virtue signallers second, which is far more common than the opposite. Their main emotional investment is in their own financial situation and personal relationships.
Emma Stone as Whitney shines in her role. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. The way she uses humor to deflect tension, establish connections, and try to but not really succeed at eliminating status imbalances is captivating. She’s the most compelling version of the liberal white woman. There’s a kind of fakery that takes itself so seriously that it becomes authentic, even romantic. Rob thinks she’s a completely unsympathetic character, while I see more nuance.
We observe her through the eyes of her adoring husband, who turns out to be a literal cuck. We discuss the meaning of this. I argue that Asher having a tiny penis is central to the whole story, while Rob seems to take pity on the poor man and see it all as a bit much.
We also talk about my idea of there being two kinds of white liberals: those who get into Native Americans, including Hispanics, and those who get into blacks. Leftists tend to gravitate to the minority group that is most similar to them in personality. The ones who are more extroverted, risk acceptant, and into showy displays of submission like blacks better. More sensitive and subtle souls take the other path. Part of this reflects how each minority group approaches identity politics. Black Americans are more likely to lean into their role as designated victims, while Natives are sort of puzzled by the whole thing. White liberals looking to play a savior role or indulge in racial masochism pick up on these differences and choose accordingly.
I was looking forward to the final episode, but ended up truly heartbroken by it. You don’t introduce arbitrary magic into a story that was so internally consistent up to that point. I remember the sinking feeling I got the exact moment I knew they ruined the show. A world that had been absurd because it stayed brutally true to the human condition suddenly became absurd due to a supernatural element. What a betrayal of the audience.
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