I’m surprised we made it through Disclaimer, though that’s not entirely true, because both Anja and I would have a hard time quitting anything that involves the acting of Cate Blanchett. Looking back, I feel our experience was exactly as intended (even though author’s intent may well be the most boring of analytical categories in the study of media.)
The show’s disclaimers, both diegetic and non-diegetic, kept me thinking they’re such pedestrian vehicles for spoiling. “Sometimes, meaning can only be conveyed through the shock of the unexpected”, I thought. Still, throughout the show, the disclaimers made me interpret and reinterpret and misinterpret “depictions of sexual, physical, and emotional violence” in ways I thought I had somehow transcended by now.
The series has left me feeling uncomfortably unsophisticated.
Disclaimer is one of those beautiful examples of a terror that can only be rightly experienced once, upon the first viewing, much like Irréversible and Antichrist. I keep thinking “well, I could’ve done with a bit more foreshadowing and character development around the twist”. In all honestly, though, I say this to myself only to alleviate the discomfort I feel as I imagine myself Sacha Baron Cohen in a hospital chair, guilty and bewildered, hearing perhaps the saddest of realities about myself.