I don’t watch many television series for one of the reasons that make Apple’s ‘Severance’ so resonant with a lot of us; hidden somewhere deep within its serpentine plot is a secret truth we’ve known for a long time—knowing less, feeling less, experiencing less is a great comfort.
This truth is heretical to the thrill-seeking extroverts among us, but I suspect that, deep down, they too feel this way; their fear of missing out or need to measure up just happens to drown it out, and so, the comfort of disconnection finds them cold and confused in the dark night of their gregarious soul. Introverts are generally spared that pain by taking up the cross of constantly keeping up with life’s nagging demands; but this too can only last so long, and as I’ve gotten older, my capacity to make sacrifices before the altar of relevance has waned.
This started to manifest itself in my ever-narrowing circle of tolerance for movies and shows; I was always on whatever spectrum explains why I find some stories painful on an almost sensory level, but it’s gotten “worse” in the last decade or so. I want to see fewer and fewer things. I want to care less and less. And so, I become hyper-selective in my media consumption almost to a pathological level.
So, it’s a true delight for me (and a chapeau to the chef) when something comes along that really captivates me and makes this picky eater even want to give it a try, like Severance has. And its way more satisfying when the cultural consumable leaves me with (pardon the extended metaphor!) food for thought.
I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that the fundamental premise of ‘Severance’ is the dramatization of the psychological process of compartmentalization. And much of that takes place as (non)place, through the extreme spatialization of that concept in beautifully austere and anachronistically furnished office buildings that look abandoned, even though they are very much in use; buildings that remind me of the former Weyerhaeuser campus in Federal Way.
I’d seen this place on social media, like many of you, I’m sure, but didn’t know what to expect, especially when it’s not actually abandoned; there are plans to turn this place into a business park. When we got here, there was a lone security guard making his rounds, and he was nice enough to let us explore, just as long as we parked somewhere else.
“I won’t fault ya,” he said, “this is some great photography. Make sure to go ’round back, there’s a giant rock there that looks really cool.” Then he drove off, leaving us to enjoy the space in peace.
To save time, Christine and I separated as she found alternative parking, so we both got a chance to experience the eerie loneliness of endless walkways, meeting up halfway from two different sides. “This is so Severance,” we both muttered under our breath.
I wanted to come here because I haven’t been feeling inspired to take any photos since Lebanon. The spatial disconnect between here and there and what I’ve been calling my emotional jet lag started to map itself across the show’s central metaphor more and more, so I wanted to think about that, and maybe figure out a way to express it, as well.
I definitely took a lot of photos. It remains to be seen if I’ve figured out what I want to say.
‘Severance’ is about more than psychological compartmentalization, however; it’s about self-alienation under capitalism. The severe disconnect between the worker’s authentic self (outie) and his or her laboring self (innie), and all the cultish and otherworldly layers of the plot, are merely the amplification of what we all experience selling our labor-power, taken to its logical extreme.
How many of us achieve “work/life balance” by splitting ourselves in the same way, such that “what I am” is not exhausted by “what I do” in a valid attempt to stay sane, while tending towards the kind of “promethean gap” that Gunther Anders wrote about when critiquing nuclear war’s short circuiting of moral responsibility? The work is mysterious and important because we’re told that it is, not unlike the show.
Profits flow in one direction because jobs are created in the other. Wealth is distributed by the invisible hand of providence. Who are we to question Kier?
And yet, many of us do. Marxism is many things to many people, with disagreement over what it actually means, how to rigorously defend it, and what to do about it all, but at its core, Marxism is about how to overcome alienation; in other words, Marxism is about “reintegration.” We want out of Lumon. We want our fucking lives back.