Satirical new Showtime series curseis created by masters of discomfort, Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie, and gives viewers plenty of reasons to squirm. But for the characters in this work, it is the chicken that functions as a persistent and unsettling ghost. Poultry isn’t where it’s supposed to be and isn’t where it’s supposed to be. It’s just as creepy raw as it is cooked.
The series, which airs its season finale on Sunday, follows real estate entrepreneur couple Asher and Whitney Siegel (played by Fielder and Emma Stone) as they develop the city of Española, New Mexico. They build artistic things.passive house” and attempt to attract a large pool of buyers and inject new business into the area, all while maintaining good relations with the locals and, above all, hoping to be perceived as a good person.and they are filming their work fixer upper– called The Wind HGTV Show flirtatiousness.
chicken comes in curse early. In the first episode, flirtatiousness‘ producer Dougie (played by Safdie) instructs Usher to give money to a young girl in a parking lot to film some B-roll. Asher gives a girl named Nala the $100 left in her wallet, but she quickly takes it back. Nala is upset and she claims that she put a curse on him. That night at his home, Asher is disappointed to discover that his meal kit dinner is lighter than usual. His chicken penne had no chicken in it.
The chicken remained just a customer service complaint until the third episode of the show, when Asher reunited with Nala and learned that her “curse” was for the chicken to disappear from dinner. He becomes convinced that the curse is a real spell, not a TikTok trend, according to his family’s explanation, and begins to see chickens everywhere evilly. While filming a show, he found a chicken on the sink at a fire station. flirtatiousnessAnd he gets Dougie to join in enough that Dougie tries to get Nala to curse him and make the chicken dinner disappear as well.
as stupid as a chicken curseThe Boogeyman — and it’s ridiculous, providing some much-needed levity in a situation like this Characteristic stiffness of fielders —That also makes perfect sense. The same thing wouldn’t happen if Fielder became obsessed with, say, steak. It is the chicken that expresses a very particular kind of anxiety in the cultural imagination.
In the 2010s, we were plagued by the urban legend of chicken nuggets. Made with “pink slime”. The chicken gave the impression that it could not be trusted. Cases of poultry-related food poisoning occur frequently and are alarming (approximately a quarter of Salmonella infections each year are poultry-related). According to USDA). Our fear of chickens is so widespread that some peoplechicken anxiety” refers to the fear of undercooked chicken and the fear of raw meat contaminating other foods and the kitchen.
Chicken production may further increase nausea. labor abuseinclude Child labor in chicken processing factories, has long been documented. The chicken itself bred to grow extremely large Compared to less than a century ago, General case studies When discussing the evils of factory farming.
These chicken fears have been influencing pop culture for a long time. curse. Take David Lynch’s 1977 surrealist horror film. eraser head. in a certain scene, the protagonist is instructed by the host to carve a small chicken at the dinner table. Before he can cut it, the chicken begins to ooze blood from its cavity and writhe on the plate.
Similarly, in the first season, yellow jacketa harrowing series about a high school girls’ soccer team stranded in the woods after a plane crash. dream it She gives birth to a rotisserie chicken. Then she takes a bite of her chicken leg. It not only speaks to her hunger and trauma, but also makes it even stronger. yellow jacketcannibalism motif.
All of this is also reflected in how we talk about chickens. To “be a chicken” is, after all, to be afraid, and as children we are told about Chicken Little and his constant worry as a lesson.in cursewhat on earth do we have to fear?
It’s not really about the chicken, as the chicken symbolizes everything Asher and Dougie have done wrong in their lives, and the shame they feel about it. In the show’s penultimate episode, Asher has a revelation. He was so obsessed with passing off his problems as Nala’s chicken “curse” that it was an easy scapegoat, so he didn’t realize he was the problem all along. “I’m a terrible person,” he admits. If they were better people they wouldn’t have to be so chicken.
