The Curse of Good Intentions: Specters Haunting the Ethical Gentrification of Española

The phenomenon of gentrification is becoming increasingly difficult to define as it evolves, affecting more communities and taking on new forms. In response to a growing public awareness of its detrimental effects contributing to the displacement of populations, supposedly ethical forms of urban change have emerged. Similar to corporate carbon offset practices that aim to mitigate environmental harm, perpetrators of gentrification justify their actions by offsetting their negative impact on communities through practices such as green initiatives, community engagement or rental assistance. The 2023 Showtime series The Curse, created by Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie, provides an apt representation of such attempts. It follows Asher and Whitney Siegel as they embark on a mission to ethically gentrify the city of Española, New Mexico. This article takes a novel approach by applying Jacques Derrida’s concept of hauntology to a televisual representation of urban change. By employing close readings of the show’s narrative and stylistic devices, including its use of specters and their cyclical hauntings, it is argued that The Curse challenges one-dimensional narratives of gentrification that aim to obscure its detrimental effects, such as cultural erasure and displacement. The analysis of the two key characters, Asher and Whitney, and their interactions with Española and its inhabitants reveals the contradictions in their well-meaning actions, which are obscured by the rhetoric of environmental sustainability. Hauntology’s focus on liminality and the lingering presence of the past in the present offers a deeper understanding of gentrification as an ongoing and unresolved process that, in the case of Española, remains informed by the structures of settler colonialism as described by Patrick Wolfe.