While that era is often remembered as the “golden age” of capitalism-at least for white men-at the time, many a text registered discontent with the rising conformity of the corporate workplace. That is, Severance feels like a show set in the 1950s or 1960s: think Mad Men without the late-season countercultural flourishes. Instead, we get tailored dresses, buttoned-up suits, and a Brutalist corporate campus with fluorescent-lit interiors. There are no hoodies, no jeans, and no sleekly designed partitions. Severance is a show about the contemporary workplace, but if you’re familiar with these, you may (like me) find the show’s look a shock. Their work selves-“innies” in the show’s parlance-toil away their home “outies” recall nothing of the toil. Severance tells the story of a group of white-collar workers who have volunteered to undergo a unique surgical procedure, whereby they forget their home lives while they are at work, and vice versa. This year, Dan Erikson has offered us the show Severance, an oddball hit from AppleTV starring Adam Scott, Zach Curry, John Turturro, Britt Lower, Michael Chernus, Patricia Arquette, and Christopher Walken. In 2018, Ling Ma used it for the title of her apocalyptic work novel, wherein her protagonist keeps working her publishing job after everyone else drops dead. But if you’re older, or fear finding another job, severance may feel all too literal, like someone just cut off your arm.įor all these reasons, “severance” has recently been an irresistible term to describe the state of work at the end of the world. If you’re young and have other plans, severance might revive you: instantly, you go from living paycheck to paycheck to a flush bank account. In the leadup to each, workplace conversations converged on a single word: severance, the slasher-flick term for the dough you get when your boss cuts you loose: a feverish name for a feverish thing.
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