[Pt 1/3] The Shadows and Sexiness of "Disclaimer"
A love letter to Cate Blanchette & Alfonso Cuarón
Before we get started, I would be remiss not to mention I’m hosting an event for artists *especially in film/tv* in Santa Monica on Wednesday, December 11th at the gorgeous Moorish hotel, Palihouse.
We will be breaking some rules. Which one would you like to start with first?
Eff it.
I’m writing this on a Saturday, and I feel like drinking a mostly cold cuppa Earl Grey with almond/oat milk and writing. I told myself I would be painting the casita today, but I gotta get this out of my system.
It took me about two hours to calm down enough to get to sleep last night after finishing the decisive seventh episode of the new series, Disclaimer. “Stunning” barely does it justice. It revived my faith in the people getting their art on the screen in 2024 and made my whole trip to London last month worth it. Seriously, y’all.
We gon’ do this Jungian style, my fellow psychonauts and psyche-freaks.
The Shadow represents everything a character refuses to acknowledge about themselves—their repressed desires, weaknesses, shame, and darker traits. Jung believed the Shadow is the gatekeeper to deeper psychological work because it contains parts of ourselves that we disown and project onto others.
When we can’t handle a characteristic of our true self, we push it into the body of a person close to us and hate them for it. We do this because we are either angry, afraid, or grieving something subconsciously.
Analyzing the Shadow in Characters:
Projection: Often, a character’s Shadow is revealed through their envy, judgment, obsession, etc with another character. This antagonistic figure embodies traits they deny in themselves. These conflicts drive the drama and plot twists.
Shadow Integration: The hero’s journey often involves confronting and integrating the Shadow. When a character accepts their flaws and dark impulses, they achieve a greater level of wholeness or individuation. This confrontation might happen in moments of breakdown, moral compromise, or unexpected vulnerability.
Saint Catherine
Lordy, lord let’s start with Catherine, played by Cate Blanchette who also executive-produced. From the nosebleed seats, I saw her stride across the stage in a panel discussion proceeding the screening at the London Film Festival. She looked 6’7”. The internet says she’s 5’8”, but that’s not including her aura.
Go watch it on AppleTV and then come back here for the breakdown if you don’t want the spoilers below.
The Femme Fatale as Shadow Anima
In Jungian terms, the Femme Fatale is a projection of the male character’s Shadow Anima—the dark, seductive qualities of his inner feminine that he cannot integrate. Rather than recognizing these traits as part of himself, he externalizes them onto a woman, who then becomes the embodiment of his forbidden desires. The Femme Fatale is alluring but dangerous, often punished by the narrative for her seductive power.
In Disclaimer, nearly everyone projects on her – her husband, Nancy, Nancy’s husband, all of her employees, the bookstore clerk who buys the story hook-line-and-sinker, the ICU nurses who judge her to be a crazy bish instead of a mama bear who knows a murderous old kook has taken up a revenge crusade against her only son, etc.
They/we all hate her because we envy her because we grieve the wildness of the feminine in ourselves, but let’s focus on Nancy first because it was she who initiated the scandal. It was her projections that held such a sway as to knock over a veritable village.
Dangerous and Dark Nancy
It’s dangerous out there in the big, wide world to wear the red bikini, but Nancy secretly wants to. Those love scenes with her son arose out of her imagination, not Catherine’s. That’s the little triangle of hair that Nancy wouldn’t allow herself to groom herself into. That was the sex Nancy wanted to be having in the clothes she wanted to wear, and uhh… she wanted it with someone other than her husband.
Incestuous Undertones and Emotional Incest
While literal incest is rare in this archetype, the dynamic often carries incestuous undertones through what is termed "emotional incest." Here, the mother’s unmet needs for intimacy are redirected onto her son, not sexually but emotionally. The mother may confide in her son as if he were her partner, blurring the boundaries of appropriate mother-son interactions. The son becomes a stand-in for the absent or inadequate partner, which inhibits his ability to form healthy romantic relationships later in life.
The mother’s grief, fused with an unconscious layer of sexual repression, transforms into a form of devotion that carries an erotic charge. This is not a conscious sexual attraction, but rather a deep, emotional enmeshment where the son becomes a symbolic lover figure in her mind.
She reveals the depth of this when she moves into his room and refuses the affection of her living, adult husband. She cannot handle the intimacy that would be required to accept his imperfections and share their processing of the grief. Instead, she cements herself in the stale tomb of Jonathan’s bed and wills herself to die so she can lie beside him in the cemetery.
One can easily imagine Catherine making gluten-free brownies and smoking some weed with a hookup if there is to be a season two. Dear lord, I would hope she would get going on her kink after that sad Kleenex of a marriage. What would her fantasies be? Would she be a dom as Nancy imagined?
I rather see her as a submissive given how high-powered she embodies in her career. Who would she pick to dom her? Who would be worthy of her majesty? Can we meet him please, Señor Cuarón? Pleeeeeeease, Ms. Blanchette?
I will beg for it, but you gonna make it drippy, babes.
Ok, that’s all I got in me for today. Part 2 will break down the archetypes of the two forgotten kings/husbands. Part 3 will profile the boys and the cats. Please hit subscribe if you aren’t already so that you’ll get the drop.
Ta for now,
Cris and Team Dragon
P.S. It was a stroke of genius to make her our omniscient heroine of a narrator and wait until the last episode to reveal her as unreliable. Gah, SO GOOD I DIE.
Totally inappropriate but at the last scene w Sacha and Cate I half expected him to say "will you be MY WIFE again"