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The danger of a mind split in two: reflections on the TV series Severance

 
31 January 2025   |   , economy and labor, Apple TV+
 
Apple TV+ | Severance
Apple TV+ | Severance

Reflecting on the subject of work, on our present and our future, while watching the interesting social, existential, and philosophical science fiction series Severance on Apple TV+ .

In these times of continuous, exponential change due to technological development, of anxiety over a future that is already difficult to imagine, and which certainly encompasses the world of work, we see new shows like Severance coming to our screens. The second season, following the intense and surprising first season in 2022, is now on Apple TV+.

The theme – in an existential, philosophical, plausible, and dystopian sense – is our jobs, our working world.

Everything revolves around the concept behind the title: this ‘Severance’ to which the company, Lumon, subjects its employees. The idea is that workers submit to a voluntary, legalised separation of the mind, whereby they systematically detach themselves at work. Conversely, in their free time, they have no recollection of what happened to their other half while inside the sterile walls of their workplace.

They leave all their personal belongings in the building’s reception, but the actual ‘switch’ happens in the Lumon lift. While inside, a device interacts with a microchip in their brains, which takes them from one inner dimension to another in mere moments.

As they enter, the employee forgets who they were just moments ago, through a kind of subcutaneous switch that divides the person into ‘inside’ and ‘outside’. The show calls these two selves ‘Innies’ and ‘Outies’.

Work is all that exists for the former, who has never seen the sky, who does not have a surname. That self does not know why they are working, but a small, insignificant company award gives them great satisfaction.

Science and morality, hyper-technology and bioethics, new possibilities and profound nightmares for humankind all form the crux around which one of the most fascinating and accomplished, complex and interesting shows of recent years revolves.

Written by Dan Erickson and directed by Ben Stiller (comic, yes, but also director), this story brings to mind George Orwell’s 1984; both explore the control of power over the lives of individuals and construct a place that is depicted as flourishing and perfect, but which, instead, oppresses and empties people.

Alongside Orwell’s writing is the science fiction literature of Philip K. Dick, which is cast in the same thematic complexity as Severance. Dick’s literature also shares some genres with the series: primarily thriller, existential science fiction, and dystopian drama.

Severance presents an absurd future, but one that is also perceived as possible, given the incredible speed at which developments in biotechnology are bringing about change.

However, it is a future in which, regardless of actual scientific achievements, human beings risk being more like prisoners than free people. This is characterised by a questionable form of willingness that, beyond the metaphor or hyperbole of the show, leads humans to live in an inhuman way at work, without knowing anything about themselves or who they work with. Their relationship with their profession means they live as a nomad, a number, a near-robot. Living completely submissively – being dependent on work itself sometimes – is no form of critical spirit.

This calls to mind another twentieth-century science fiction writer, Aldous Huxley, and the fact that dictatorships, in the classical sense, are no longer needed to tame man. Humans will, instead, be pushed in an invisible way – one that is as intangible as it is certain – towards choices that imprison them.

Severance offers intriguing developments and characters, some of which are played by extraordinary actors, such as Christopher Walken, John Turturro, and Patricia Arquette: not to mention the other great actors, like Adam Scott, who plays the protagonist, Mark. Beyond this, the series prompts us to think about our present, in which, more worried and confused than enthusiastic and optimistic, we see the outside world heading towards the excessively and dangerously new consequences of dizzying, incessant technical and scientific development.

In the minds of Orwell, Dick, and Huxley – as well as Ray Bradbury of Fahrenheit 451 – the imagined, though believable, future seemed somewhat far away; however, the time in which we live makes even a mind divided in two, as is the case in Severance, feel believable. In fact, the company from the show – which idolises itself and is all-absorbing, which engulfs human beings, which is a creature much more powerful than man – already fully exists now.

Another element of that is our work culture, which dehumanises employees by taking away their ability to spend sufficient and dignified time outdoors, which asks a lot and offers little in return, which has taken away unity and solidarity from the workers themselves and brings unease with advances in artificial intelligence.

Dystopian science fiction, it has been said – and it is true – talks about the future in order to reflect our anxieties about the present. It talks about the future in a negative way partly (and in some cases, specifically) to prevent it: change course before it happens.

I therefore welcome, from this perspective, the insights of this noble literary and cinematic tradition. I welcome a series like Severance, because it enables human beings, as keen observers of danger, to react critically to the threats, as well as the benefits, that the future could bring.

Article translated into English by Becca Webley


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