In “Severance,” work becomes literal escapism. Ben Stiller’s fictional world is one where employees at a company, Lumon, undergo a procedure known as ‘severance’ that separates their work selves known as “innies” from their outside selves known as “outies.: The operation essentially cleanly cuts grief, happiness and suffering into two distinct halves. We all know this isn’t too different from how many of us live currently. The glorification of “grind” culture until we have no time left to feel our emotions wholly is an anesthetic. For most, work has become a way to sever the self. Though work intends to purely foster economic growth, it ultimately serves as a form of escapism from emotion which traps us deeper within it. We clock in, we clock out and leave behind parts of ourselves. Severance is more than just a psychological thriller, it’s a mirror.
In the show, no character embodies this escapism more poignantly than Mark Scout. As an “outie,” he is a man consumed by grief from the sudden death of his wife. Rather than healthily processing this loss, Mark decides to go through with the process of severance to literally split himself in two. His decision carries undertones of selfishness and self-betrayal because in choosing numbness, he chooses to neglect the memory of his wife who deserved sincere and genuine mourning.
Many of us deal with grief, not just due to death, but poor mental health too. Characters like Irving and Dylan showcase alternate compelling narratives that deviate from grief, and rather focus on escaping other forms of pain. For instance, Stiller portrays Irving as suffering from a form of anxiety or obsessive-compulsive disorder as he isolates himself in a hyper-regulated workspace. These characters show us how every form of a fractured mental landscape can lead to falling on hyperproductivity as a form of escapism. With our society propelling the current “grind” culture, we tend to escape our pain by simply working longer and harder, much like these characters.
Grief, pain and mental illnesses used to be communal. It was something that villages and communities would work through together. Now, pain is privatized and hidden. In the broader sense, we have no place for sorrow when all we prioritize is constant dynamism. In a broader sense, grief is systemic.
Enter: therapy. Therapy quite literally saves lives. It offers essential services to people who need it. However, therapy, as it exists in commercial framework, is also a luxury and a business.
We are asked to heal ourselves in a society with a system that is essentially designed to keep us wounded. Audrey Lorde once warned, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” We are asked to heal ourselves in a society with a system that is essentially designed to keep us wounded.
At best, these services are a band-aid. The house is burning, and the way out is collective realization. In Stiller’s Severance, Mark splits himself into two whole consciousnesses to escape his pain. In all of our own lives and our current society, we push ourselves to a similar bargain. The solution to escaping isn’t purely making appointments for therapy or installing mindfulness apps, but rather eradicating and dismantling of conditions that make grief feel like a task on a to-do list instead of a natural and intrinsic part of life.
Severance has definitely made me ask myself why healing is behind a paywall and why therapy is considered to be a premium feature to life, rather than a right. The antidote to Severance isn’t just escaping the system, but the capability of imagining a life outside of it. A world that does not encourage segmentation or compartmentalization, but rather wholeness.