Severance Review
Severance (2022)
Created by: Dan Erickson
Should we turn to the media to be scared or just look out the window? The newest apocalyptic dystopian pieces of media that call out the likes of corporate greed are beginning to hit way too close to home. Apple TV’s Emmy award-winning 2022 series Severance is a mind-bending thriller that examines the bleak workday, existential dread, and the role our professions play in our lives.
A lot of viewers turn to thrillers on screen to safely explore the darker parts of the world, with the ability to shut the television off and think, “Phew, glad that’s not me.” But what if it is you? Are we so severed from our realities that we cannot see what is right in front of us?
Severance poses the idea of viewing your own culture as an outsider. While enhanced and dramatized, the aspects we find terrifying on the show are not all that different from our own lives. In this recent streaming success, humans can elect to become “severed” - a procedure that allows for the brain to separate their work lives from personal lives. After being severed, employees are sent to the mysterious conglomerate Lumon. The Lumon office stands as its own being, a sterile labyrinth that mirrors a Daedalus creation. But more frightening than mythological monsters hissing at every corner is the dreaded coworker.
Upon arrival to work, severed employees cannot recall their outside lives. When they leave, they cannot remember any part of their day. Essentially, these people elect to enslave a part of themselves, dooming them off to a Dante's Inferno-esque repetition of the mundane workday. No days off, no vacations, not even the mornings or evenings enjoyed outside of work hours.
Adam Scott leads this phenomenal cast as Mark, an unremarkable but kind grieving widower who has been severed for two years after the death of his wife. When newcomer Helly (Britt Lower) is dropped into the office, her suspicions about Lumon shake up the office status quo. Mark and Helly work in the “Macro Data Refinement” department with Irving (John Turturro) and Dylan (Zach Cherry), where they spend their days sorting encrypted numbers into digital bins. It’s a mindless job, and the department has no idea what the purpose of its work is. The workers dub themselves “Innies' ' and occasionally let themselves fantasize about the lives of their "Outies ". Since the Innies cannot enjoy spending the money they earn, they indulge in incentives - dance parties, waffle-making stations, and cheap prizes to display on their desks. They live the Groundhog Day life but within the confines of a sterile office. The repetition of their work against the harsh fluorescent lights is nauseating and claustrophobic. It sounds terrifying, but let’s frame it differently.
In 1956, Horace Miner published an exercise at the University of Chicago that is used in anthropology classrooms still today. While it serves as an exercise to build cultural sensitivity, it also employs a similar tactic to the show - rewording our same experiences to make it seem far more fantastical than our own. The exercise disguises itself as an ethnological study of Nacirema, a faraway nation that ascribes to bizarre and unconventional practices. As students read on, some begin to catch on that “Nacirema'' is just “American” backward and the odd observances are ones the reader themselves also participates in. For example, the dentist is described as visiting “a holy-mouth-man once or twice a year. These practitioners have an impressive set of paraphernalia, consisting of a variety of augers, awls, probes, and prods. The use of these items in the exorcism of the evils of the mouth involves almost unbelievable ritual torture of the client.” Severance, whether inadvertently or not, implores you to reconsider the day-to-day realities of your own workforce.
Severance is not the first piece of art to raise these daunting questions and will most certainly not be the last. But how are shows like Severance reflecting current-day attitudes toward the 9-5? We are up against severely different times than the capitalistic naysayers before us. With our ever-changing landscape of work with modern technology, our constant connectedness draws in fresh obstacles and an even harder way to shut work off.
