Nathan Fielder flips the script on contemporary TV’s obsession with reality. From creating cringe comedy that’s achieved cult status to his latest hyper-real horror show, he shines a light back on the audience, making us reflect on the less pleasant parts of human nature. That might be our awkwardness or our selfishness; or, in the Curse specifically, our obsession with looking at the lives of other people. So what is Fielder really trying to tell us about the world and ourselves? And why has he decided to do it in such a weird way? Let’s take a closer look at Nathan Fielder’s special brand of unreality.
The Reality of Unreality
Fielder’s style plays with our perceptions of what we watch, as he creates fictitious shows that are designed to look like documentaries or reality TV. And this air of mystery extends to real life, too; we’re never entirely sure when he’s playing a part. His documentary style comes from his origins as a YouTuber.
“I started making stuff on youtube in 2005 so I would edit my own stuff and make these shorts… I got used to that being part of my process… I’m sure it was weird for everyone else.” Nathan Fielder
But he’s inspired by many other things, too – from Candid Camera, the earliest incarnation of reality TV, to illusionist and magician Derren Brown (another public figure famous for blurring the lines.)
His previous shows have toed such a close line between reality and fiction that it’s difficult to tell sometimes what, exactly, they are – are they documentaries, or fictitious? And what does it mean, either way? As Fielder has become more successful, the money he has to work with has soared, and that’s only meant that the line between reality and fiction has become even murkier – The Rehearsal showed what Fielder was capable of in this respect, and a lot of it was down to budget. Fans still debate how much of the show was real, and how much was staged – and therefore, how ethical it all was. It seems that Fielder used actors and watertight NDAs to create the illusion of a deeply warped reality – one where he himself comes off badly a lot of the time.
In Fielder’s new show The Curse, which he co-wrote with Benny Safdie, he’s still making a faux documentary – but this time, it’s within a drama. That means we get to see his take on everything that goes into the reality TV we watch – from the manipulations of Safdie’s TV producer character, Dougie, to the comedy classes Fielder’s Asher is forced to take to make himself more palatable to the audience. And although the hyper-real style he favors has always edged into surrealism, this time he leans into it fully – with one of the strangest, most horrifically supernatural season finales critics have seen in a long time.
Between them, Fielder and Safdie ensure that so much of the show feels real, using a wide range of tools and touches. These are as big as the subject matter – the gentrification of Espanola is pulled straight out of real life, but as a topic on TV it is rarely touched on as fully and unflinchingly as it is here. It feels like a forensic takedown of white gentrification, particularly the more we meet the families who are displaced and otherwise negatively affected by Whitney and Asher’s developments.
“You assured us the people you brought into those homes would be in harmony with the community, those exact words.”
As well as things as small as the pervasive yet fleeting nature of TikTok trends – where one of the show’s eponymous curses comes from. Or the inane and contrived content produced by Instagram influencers. Or the use of real viral YouTube clips – while much of the humor is slow moving and sly, one of the laugh out loud moments of the show follows on from Asher showing a former colleague a real viral YouTube clip in a desperate attempt to steal data from his computer.
Fielder’s Lens on Reality TV
While reality TV might feel like a modern phenomenon, it actually began way back in the 1940s with the show Candid Camera – a comedy show that saw unwitting members of the public tricked in innocent pranks, their genuine responses creating the family-friendly fun. As a show and part of TV history, Candid Camera inspires Fielder in everything from camera angles to the voyeuristic edge of his humor.
But since its comedic origins, reality TV has shifted hugely to become one of the most popular onscreen genres overall. Nowadays, it tends to be centered on personalities – whether they’re families or co-workers, famous or not. And despite being about real people, ‘reality’ TV is far slicker now – increasingly scripted or staged.
“In the beginning it was more real, and then as it progressed, it’s a little bit fake, and then more fake, and then everything’s fake before you know it.”
And that’s a huge inspiration to Fielder, too.
So The Curse plays with this a lot. With Emma Stone as the star, it’s obviously a work of fiction – but clever touches lead us to wonder how much of it is drawn from real life. ‘Fliplanthropy’, Asher and Whitney’s HGTV show, is based on the channel’s real shows; and when Dougie claims to have worked on one of them, he confirms that a lot of the scenes are falsified.
“On my Bahamas show we did it all the time - no real buyers, it was just fuckin pretend.”
In a nod to the sad state of reality TV, he describes another show he’s previously worked on – Love to the Third Degree. It’s like a hybrid of real-life shows Love Is Blind, The Bachelor and The Swan – women compete to win the heart of a man they don’t know has severe burns. While Whitney and Asher are visibly horrified as Dougie introduces them to this concept, an audience who knows even a tiny bit about the landscape of reality TV knows that this premise isn’t far off from what’s out there.
There’s also the aspect of both lead characters creating a reality TV persona which is removed from their real selves. This is particularly apparent in Whitney, who comes from a wealthy background and is set on shedding her links to her rich landlord parents. She also attempts to forge friendships with people who’ll make her look better, like Native artist Cara, who resists her advances, yet accepts $20,000 to be part of Fliplanthropy. As the show progresses, Whitney realizes that she’ll never be Cara’s friend – but she uses what she’s learned from Dougie in order to make it appear like she is on TV, anyway. Whitney’s obsession with how she’s perceived is another important aspect of the show – the role that the audience plays.
The All-Seeing Audience
Seeing and being seen, and watching and being watched, are critical aspects of The Curse, and co-writer Benny Safdie’s influence comes into play in a big way here. Safdie’s visual style is apparent in the uncomfortable closeups and surveillant atmosphere, achieved with fly-on-the-wall camera angles through doorways and peepholes, and stalker-like shots from moving vehicles. From the very beginning, Safdie’s character Dougie is shown invading Asher and Whitney’s privacy, trying to pick up audio from their conversations. But he also knows a lot about Asher’s private life – things Asher doesn’t want anyone else to know – and the threat of him sharing this info is always there. Not to mention that the things he knows are about Asher’s own voyeuristic tendencies.
The concept of ‘the audience’ takes on a special symbolism for Fielder and Safdie. The more, as a society, we engage with reality TV and social media, the more we feel entitled to seeing everything – and the more paranoid we are about being seen. The comment that they seem to be making is that we’re increasingly living in a panoptical society – that is, where everything is visible, and everyone is being watched. There are constant references to panopticism in the show – in the security cameras on people’s houses
“I can’t be seen on his security camera.”
and the casino, in the couple’s Ring doorbell. But it’s also there in the mirrors that cover Whitney’s houses – a reflection of how warped we can appear as people watch us.
In episode 4, where many of the references to being watched and filmed come in, we’re even shown watchtowers, which is where the concept of panopticism comes from. The original Panopticon was a prison designed by Jeremy Bentham in the 1790s, where the cells were arranged around a single tower, from which a guard could watch all prisoners.
“So we’d be paying 850k to live in a prison…?” “Prison toilets don’t have lids!” “Let’s stop comparing them to a prison.”
The idea was that, even though they might not be being watched at that moment, the prisoners would behave better because the threat of being watched was constantly there. The interesting thing about the panopticism in The Curse is that, despite being watched constantly, the characters’ behavior isn’t better – they’re still terrible people. They try to make sure that those parts don’t make it onto the show, because they don’t want people to know the real them. But as the audience of The Curse, rather than the audience of Fliplanthropy, we’re privy to those all of those things, even the ones they don’t want to end up on their show.
“Jose were you listening to what were were saying?” “No, the mics are off.”
Jose might not have been listening, but we were. This scene feels overly intimate, almost invasive, as the couple checks repeatedly that no one is listening, while all the while we are. It’s as if Fielder is telling us that the audience – the people who demand more and more from reality TV – are the problem.
It’s also only the audience who can piece together what happens to Asher in the finale. No one in the show is privy to all of the parts of the puzzle – to Asher’s belief in curses, his assertion to Whitney that if she didn’t want to be with him, he’d be gone.
“If you didn’t want to be with me, and I truly felt that, I’d be gone.”
And to her face, contemplative and faintly repulsed, as he sings to their baby in her belly. Only we know why the horrible magic that sends Asher spinning off into space happens – and now it’s our job to theorize about it, which is exactly what Fielder wants.
A Comment on TV Itself
Nathan Fielder’s shows are tightrope walks between actors and audience, reality and fiction, seeing and being seen. He makes comments on the terrible state of TV, but also its beauty – drawing in aspects of what came before, and what’s out there now, while simultaneously creating shows unlike anything we’ve ever seen. Ultimately, every time he writes a new show, it is part celebration, part condemnation – but always a forensic, piercingly accurate analysis of part of television itself. It’s summarized perfectly in the finale of The Curse, as Fielder’s character Asher blasts off into space. A bystander nods acceptingly, saying, crystallizing Fielder’s criticism of the way we mindlessly accept and eagerly consume anything that happens – so long as it happens onscreen.