In the Flesh: The Curse s1e08 'Down and Dirty'

Making people say things they don’t mean is the bread and butter of reality television, but it’s one thing to know it and another to see it in action. Watch Dougie (Benny Safdie) coax and prod Asher (Nathan Fielder) through a nightmarish on-camera allusion to and then full-scale revelation of his cuckolding fetish, or plead tearfully with Nala (Hikmah Warsame) to curse him in order to either prove a point or pull an incredibly cruel and Byzantine prank on Asher; the resultant vibe is so revolting you can almost see it radiating off of him, like heat off of blacktop. ‘Down and Dirty’ is all about the act of stealing someone else’s voice, whether through cheap behind the camera trickery, cultural appropriation, or coercive control. In a dozen different ways the callous creators and senior crew of Fliplanthropy speak through the bodies and work of other people, often using those bodies and that work to speak directly back to themselves for the benefit of the show’s future audience, or for their own immediate satisfaction.

Perhaps the single bluntest instance of this phenomenon occurs near the start of the episode. After a tense interaction with an incensed Fernando (Christopher Calderon) during which Asher makes a lukewarm attempt to stand up to the other man, he tells Whitney (Emma Stone), “I was ready to take a bullet for you.” Her reaction is to rip into him in maybe the most ruthless, hateful way I’ve ever seen depicted on television, switching between a sneering imitation of his voice and contemptuous baby-talk as she belittles and berates him for what feels like an eternity. It’s scalding, impossible to look away from. Stone throws herself into the moment with berserker ferocity, her girl next door cuteness contorting into something ghoulishly hideous as her face twists and scrunches around each simpering syllable. It’s a bravura performance, hideously intimate and personal in its loathsomeness.

Its sister scene, closing out the episode, takes a much quieter and more studied tack. Whitney and Cara (Nizhonniya Luxi Austin) attend a gathering of art collectors potentially interested in buying some of Cara’s pieces, a fraught occasion during which Cara seems visibly uncomfortable with the unsavory buyers, at least one of whom works in arms manufacturing. In a back room, Whitney begins feeding Cara lines about her own art during a conversation about their shared college experiences as sculpture majors. Cara woodenly repeats each item of praise, telling Whitney repeatedly how important and unique and artistic her mirrored houses are until you can practically see the native artist’s soul leaking out of her, but when Whitney offhandedly brings up Cara’s tipi performance, Cara delivers perhaps the most eye-wateriingly sincere and pointed barb the show has yet delivered. The meat in her performance piece was her existence as a native woman, and her work as an artist involves cutting pieces off her body and watching white people eat it. “That’s so beautiful,” says Whitney, completely oblivious, and the look in Cara’s eyes as she realizes that no amount of subtlety or intelligence or reframing will ever penetrate her patron’s narcissistic ignorance is almost too much to bear. As long as she's talking, her voice belongs to Whitney.