Severance & the Critique of Late Capitalism in Media

This video is brought to you by my patrons. In the fifth episode of the show *Severance*, there is a moment when the main character is reading from a self-help book. It's a book that many of us would see as mostly useless drivel, written by a hack using nothing more than pop psychology phrases that he’s regurgitating to fill space. Bullies are nothing but bull and lies. However, to the main character, Mark, that book is everything.

Space. Bullies are nothing but bull and lies. But to the main character, Mark, that book is everything. They are the only words that he has ever read that haven't been spoon-fed to him by a company that wants nothing more than to use him for his labor and drain him like leeches, then cast him away when his usefulness has run out. Yet, however silly this montage is throughout, it ends on a rather poignant line, one that seems to be directed just as much at us, the viewers, as it is to Mark.

Should you find yourself contorting to fit a system, dear reader? Stop and ask if it's truly you who must change, or the system. In a previous video, I mentioned the phrase "late-stage capitalism." It wasn't a part of some long-winded diatribe; it was a brief passing phrase that I uttered once and then moved on from. The video really had nothing to do with it.

Despite that, I have received numerous comments on the video arguing against my usage of the term and expressing general disagreement with the term's validity. I'm sure many of you have heard this term before, but for those of you who haven't, or for those of you who left one of those comments—and will surely leave one under this video where it is the main topic—let's discuss "late-stage capitalism," or just "late capitalism." This idea was coined around the turn of the 20th century by the German economist Werner Sombart. Sombart argued that capitalist economies go through different stages throughout the life of a nation. First, there is proto-capitalism, which in his estimation began somewhere in the early Middle Ages and lasted until 1500 AD. Next was early capitalism, which lasted from then until about 1800, followed by the "heyday" of capitalism, which spanned from 1800 to the First World War. Finally, late capitalism is the stage we have been in since then.

Later, the term was adopted by European Marxists, who saw the downfall of Western economic stability and capitalism as a whole as an inevitable truth. But I'm not here to argue that point. In a more modern context, though, the term "late capitalism" refers more to the distortions created by a society in which the ideals of capitalism are so entrenched that they begin to dictate how we live our lives and the lenses through which we perceive value and morality, and even reality. In common usage, it's a catch-all term to describe the ennui of living in a system with vast wealth inequality never before seen on the planet, where our self-worth is so tied up in our jobs that it is basically the second question we ask someone when we meet them. Yes, I already used that line in another video, Sumi, where we are taught to see wealth as being equivalent to intelligence, cleverness, and even flat-out superiority, where we suffer through a worldwide pandemic, climate change, and the contradiction of famine amidst a surplus.

Yet the biggest concern on many people's minds is how fixing these issues will affect the economy. It results from companies seeking the almighty profit at the expense of everything else while exploiting the dwindling natural resources of the planet, all within the theoretical framework of an infinitely expandable system. This perspective assumes that the economy isn't a zero-sum game where nobody gets to take your slice of the pie because we can always just make the pie bigger, right? Even when the evidence to the contrary—finite natural resources—stares us directly in the face. Ultimately, it leads to the inevitability of shrugging it off and going back to work, because what else are you going to do?

That is late-stage capitalism, in case you were wondering. In the last few years, especially, critiques of late capitalism have been in vogue in all forms of media, though it's not a truly new phenomenon. Originally, this video was going to be a bit different and less focused. I was going to look at the various ways that these different forms of media choose to frame their criticisms and the different angles they take. However, once I tried writing that script three times and failed, and then watched "Severance," I knew I had to pivot.

So instead, let's take a brief tour through some of the best examples I've seen. In television, my favorite, aside from "Severance," has been "Aggretsuko." It's an anime by Sanrio, which is pretty iconic considering that they are one of the biggest names in anime horizontal integration, with their ownership of Hello Kitty, a brand that has spawned all sorts of media offshoots, merchandising, etc. However, that didn't stop the creator, Retsuko, I'm sorry if I mispronounced that, from absolutely skewering the practices of large corporations and the woes of living in a late capitalist society through the protagonist, Retsuko. She works as an accountant by day, enduring the worst of office abuse, and then channels it all into heavy metal screaming karaoke at night.

While it's a very cute show, don't let the look fool you. It does not pull its punches when exploring issues like workplace sexism, corporate fraud, and other serious topics. There is even a main character who dreams of creating a world where people receive a universal basic income, and it isn't laughed off as some fantasy. Though he is essentially an Elon Musk-type character trying to be a savior, so take that for what it's worth. I feel like "Squid Game" and "Succession" don't really need much of an introduction, as basically everybody's watching. Watch them!

They are two of the biggest shows in streaming at the moment, so we'll just touch on them briefly and move on. The former looks at a dark, very near future when income inequality is so severe that the wealthy are able to get away with having contestants sign their lives away to play in deadly games for their amusement. The latter is just a look into the lives of the modern 1% and is a clear criticism of the Murdoch family specifically, who run the Fox media empire. They prioritize profit over journalistic integrity, which naturally leads to a more conspiratorial right-wing style of reporting. However, while "Succession" is really a cutting look at the absolute debasement of the ultra-wealthy, I feel like sometimes it veers too close to the glorification of wealth, even if that isn't the intent.

Or at least that's how some people will see it, anyway. Just look at the people who thought "The Colbert Report" wasn't a parody. In video games, there have been many examples recently, so we'll just pick out a few. "Cyberpunk 2077" is probably the biggest name in this. The title offers a glimpse into a grim future where corporations rule everything.

While I did enjoy the main story of this game, setting aside all the performance issues and the treatment of the developers during the development cycle, I feel like it fell too much into the realm of satire to convey anything real. Granted, that was probably the intent, but it definitely presents a dark vision of what our nation could be like in the distant future. However, I believe a lot more could have been done with the premise. "Night of the Consumer" offers a chilling look at what our nation could become in the future. It’s an indie game that somehow communicates more while attempting to do much less. It's a satirical take on the life of a retail worker. There is so little to this game, yet it is extremely powerful in the emotions it evokes.

If you've ever worked in retail or the restaurant industry, then you know exactly the type of dread they play on here—trying to juggle needy customers and various stocking jobs that need to be done, seemingly simultaneously. That's exactly what you do in the game, except it's set to a very John Carpenter-esque score, and the customers resemble zombies—mindless consumers who will turn into a Karen if you're too slow to help them. It's really successful in evoking that horrible dread mixed with adrenaline that you experience in those jobs. "Say No More" is another excellent indie title that is all about workers self-advocating and feeling empowered. Basically, the only game mechanic is to say no to any request around the office.

Oftentimes, the only game mechanic is to say "no" to any request around the office. Often at our jobs, we feel forced to say "yes" to any request from our superiors, for fear of being punished or even fired if we refuse. We are left feeling helpless, as if we have no autonomy. This game deals with that directly. It is a literal office power fantasy mixed with some silly humor.

I love it. So anyway, severance. That's what this video is about, right? How am I going to tie this back into the intro? Do you even care?

I mean, have you even seen the show? It's on Apple TV, which basically nobody owns because there are like a hundred other platforms, and most people don't treat them like Pokémon. Whatever, I've already written this script, so we're doing it anyway. Just a heads up, I'll be spoiling some of the concepts and other bits of the show, so be aware of that. However, I will not be doing a full episode-by-episode breakdown, as this isn't an unpacking video, and I'm not spoiling the ending.

Regardless, the show is really amazing, and I highly encourage you to go check it out first. *Severance* is a show about the power of a corporation operating within a late capitalist America, left unchecked to do basically whatever it pleases. It is a treatise on the unimaginable power that these companies wield, both on the world at large and more specifically on the employees that make up the organization. It was created by Dan Erickson, with episodes directed by, and again I'm sorry if I mispronounce this, Aoife McCardle. Huh. Uh, yeah, I would have never believed it if his name weren't at the end of most of the episodes, but Stiller did indeed direct many of them.

The name "Severance" comes from a medical procedure within the fiction of the show in which a person has their mind separated into two basically autonomous units. For our protagonist, this is done as part of their employment. When an employee undergoes the procedure, their personal and professional lives are kept separate, literally. They wake up and drive to work as their outer self, or "outie," as they call it. However, once they enter the elevator to go down to their department, a brain implant switches their brain to the "innie," the person who is actually aware of working.

Eight hours later, the outie regains consciousness, not even aware that any time has passed since they started their elevator trip. This might not seem that bad; it might actually seem kind of cool. But think about it from the innie's perspective. They wake up on an elevator, go to work for eight hours, go back to the elevator, only to wake up and repeat the process ad infinitum. To them, life inside the office is the only thing they know. They have no knowledge or memory of their lives outside and are basically born anew on a conference room table.

Now, this brings to light some interesting philosophical questions about what the self actually is. If all of our memories and relationships were suddenly stripped away from us, would we really still be ourselves? Am I, merely, my thoughts and actions, aspirations, and personality all the sum of the experiences in my life? And who would I be without those? It's truly thought-provoking material, but honestly, that's not why I made this video.

In fact, that video already exists. The link is in the description. No, I am more interested in what the show has to say about the follies of unchecked corporate greed and, yes, the late capitalist society in which it exists. But first, let's talk about what "Severance" the show is actually about. It centers around four main characters: Mark, Helly, Irving, played by the great John Turturro, and Dylan.

These four individuals are all macro data refiners, or the MDR team. It's an enigmatic position at an enigmatic company called Lumen. The story reveals their struggle to come to terms with their existence as "innies," stuck inside an office for their entire lives, and what that life looks like. While Mark is arguing the main protagonist who has the most screen time, it is actually Helly who serves more as the audience's insert. She is the newest member of the MDR team, filling the opening left by the previous department chief.

Each of the four members of the MDR team serves as a different archetype of an employee. Dylan is the jaded realist in denial, Irving is the true believer, Mark is the opportunist, and Helly is the newbie outsider who sees through the bullshit. As viewers, we identify with Helly. Up until the end, we only ever see it from her perspective. This is 100% emotional manipulation on the show's part; if we only saw it from the Audi's perspective, we would probably view the severance procedure in a different light.

It would also probably be boring as hell. "Severance," the show, is meditative, often very quiet and reflective. It uses a lot of imagery and is absolutely filled with symbolism. The creators could have just as easily made a documentary following around a menial worker in an actual cubicle farm. But instead, they chose to create a much more thoughtful narrative that simultaneously shows what America could look like if corporations continue to grow more powerful, while also being only a slight exaggeration of the conditions that already exist.

And the exaggerations are only there to highlight the fact. Yet at the same time, the writers could not have been more clear with their message. "Severance" is a lot of things, but subtle is really not one of them. Unless you're an absolute potato, the meaning behind the show should stand out like a red cap at a BLM protest. It begins with a woman waking up on a conference room table. This is Helly, the newest member of the Macrodata Refinement Team.

Mark is taking her through orientation, which is basically just rubbing her face in the fact that she has been severed and has none of her memories. To start, imagine yourself as a seesaw. Ow! On the same day, the previous chief of the MDR team, Petey, suddenly and mysteriously quit without any notice, making way for Mark to take the lead on the team. Hence, he is the one to take Heli through orientation.

When someone leaves the company, all communication is cut off due to the realities of the severance procedure. If they quit or otherwise leave suddenly, like Petey did, they are treated as excommunicated, as a heretic, and employees are even discouraged from discussing them within the company. Petey was just gone. I don't know if he got a new job or if he's dead. That’s enough, please.

This may sound familiar to you. When someone blows the whistle at their company for bad practices, whether labor-related or otherwise, they are immediately shunned as management scrambles to close ranks. Meanwhile, the remaining employees are told over and over again that the treatment they receive from the company is the best they could hope for and that they should just be thankful. It's like being in an abusive relationship. From the start, Ellie does not like the situation she finds herself in.

She is, for all intents and purposes, a captured slave held against her will to work a job destined to never see the compensation for her labor. Both the company that she works for, Lumen, as well as the actual job that the Macrodata Refiners are doing, are mysterious. We have no idea what goods the company produces or what services they render. Similarly, even though we see the work that the MDR team does, including being shown their screens and witnessing them explain their job, it remains totally inscrutable. It's just a large array of seemingly random numbers that they put into digital bins.

But even they have no idea what the numbers mean or what the bins represent. My job is to scroll through this spreadsheet and look for numbers that are scary. It sounds dumb, and Mark said it is dumb. I've seen some think pieces and listicles discussing the secrets behind the show, speculating that the meaning behind their job may be revealed in Season Two. However, to me, those articles are missing the forest for the trees.

It's not important what exactly their job is, at least not for the story. The important part is that it's menial; there is no true satisfaction in finishing a job apart from a kitschy, low-resolution, 24-bit DOS picture of the founder with a pre-recorded message. That was absolutely a deliberate decision by the writers, as the feeling of doing a job that holds no intrinsic or visible value is something that many workers experience. Even though they are constantly told that the job is important, the refiners never actually experience that importance themselves. They are going completely on blind faith, which is not enough for most people. Throughout the first few episodes of the show, Mark and the others in management try their hardest to break Hellie's will to leave, as they have done with all others.

It seems to be a classic case of a middle manager drunk on the little power that is given to him. In fact, throughout the first part of the series, Mark is not only unlikable; he's also a complete bootlicker. Ultimately, though, it is the executives who are setting all those below them against each other, as it's in their best interest to do so. The more the peasants fight among themselves, the less they think about their actual situation, and those at the bottom of the hierarchy are constantly reminded of their place through various dehumanizing means. For instance, the refiners and their peers in other departments are not even allowed full names; their only identification consists of a first name and last initial.

Simply put, they are seen as less than human, valued only for the work they are to produce. Meanwhile, management is given more freedom. They are not severed from their identities; they have their full names and are even referred to by their surnames exclusively. These are all perks of the job and clear markers of hierarchy.

It allows them to view themselves above the menial laborers and therefore do unconscionable things that you might not convince a person to do otherwise. If you think this is all fiction, I would argue that it happens all the time, perhaps in a less dramatic fashion, in companies all around the world rather than just in the U.S. In the show, management is constantly scrutinizing and micromanaging frontline workers. It is infantilizing, making them feel inferior. Just as their title and power set them against those people, they also set those below them against one another.

They start rumors about the cruelty, savagery, or sheer alienness of the other departments in order to foster hostility and suspicion. More on this in a bit. The only real rewards for the work the employees do are meaningless trinkets like finger traps, caricature drawings, or, if they're really lucky, a dance party that lasts for a single song or a weird waffle ritual in which they stay the night in a replica of the company founder's childhood home. Meanwhile, Helly's escape attempts escalate, becoming more drastic as she is constantly rebuffed. Her outside self refuses her demand to be set free.

I am a person. You are not. She snaps and hangs herself in the elevator. It seems that, while she's prepared to die, she is primarily doing it to send a message to her outie that she is willing to do anything to escape. The event serves as a catalyst that changes any mark. Along with finding the book I mentioned in the intro, he finally begins to wake up and realize the situation they are all in.

But that's just Mark. The others have their own motivations. Irving spends most of the show as a true hero, a believer, pious in his worship of Lumen and its founder. His admiration goes far beyond what would be considered normal under any circumstances. The Lumen founder, Keir Egan, is worshiped like a god within the company. His words are enshrined in the employee handbook, which is, for all intents and purposes, a bible.

I mean, just look at it. The creators knew exactly what they were doing when crafting the look of this tome. Passage 31, page 110. Be content. I mean, just look at it.

The creators knew exactly what they were doing when crafting the look of this tome. Passage 31, page 110. Be content in my words, and I will... The book isn't just a code for being a good employee; it is a code for life to these people. Remember again that their entire life is as a Lumen employee. There's even an entire wing of the Lumen facility dedicated to Kier and his successors, called the Perpetuity Wing.

There are sculptures of each of them enshrined in a room dedicated to their greatness, as if they were conquering Roman emperors or something. Deeper within is a full recreation of Keir's childhood home that I mentioned before. All of it is really bizarre, just off-kilter, and it was pretty clearly intentional. We are meant to see this bizarre cult of personality as unnatural and wrong. Now, I have worked at a few different large corporations in various roles, including a Berkshire Hathaway company, and I can attest that this depiction is not entirely fiction.

Granted, I never saw a wax statue of Warren Buffett or read a Bible of his words. However, I definitely spent time in my training learning about these various CEOs and why they're these super awesome individuals that started from nothing and pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, which is a saying that literally doesn't make physical sense, by the way, and why you should totally respect them. Anyway, as the story progresses, Irving finds somebody else to care for, an employee from a different department, played by none other than Christopher Walken. I gotta say, seeing a gay relationship between Jesus Quintana and the D. is something I never knew I needed before I had it. Regardless, Walker's character, Bert, ends up retiring, which means that he will forget that Irving ever existed. This is the last straw for Irving.

Let's burn this place to the ground. Finally, we have Dylan. As I mentioned, Dylan is the jaded realist of the group, although I'm using that term in heavy quotations. He seems to see through a lot of the bullshit of Lumen.

He pretends not to have drunk from the cooler. Like Irving and Mark, he still has major blind spots. He tries to act above it all, but he ends up getting manipulated by the childish rewards and some of the propaganda from management. Notably, management's attempt to set the different departments against one another is quite blatant. Along with the company Bible, there are paintings all around the facility depicting different scenes from either Keir's life or some important events from the company. These are all created and distributed by the Optics and Design Department, of which Burt is the leader.

That's Christopher Walken's character, for those of you playing at home. Management uses these drawings to manipulate the employees' emotions, none more so than the painting titled "The Grim Barbarity of Optics and Design." You see, there is this lore within the MDR team that Optics and Design once staged a coup against them, slaughtering many in the process, and that is exactly what the painting depicts. From the very start, the entire idea is totally nonsensical. How would attacking another department with the same amount of power constitute a coup?

What possible motivation would lead to large-scale murder among employees? It's pretty clearly an attempt by management to instill a sense of distrust between the departments, even before it's made explicit. Later on, we find out that there is another painting, the Macro Data Refinement Calamity, which is basically the same as the first, but with the badges swapped out to make it look like the MDR team is perpetrating the slaughter on OND. What the management team is doing here is something that, once again, is practiced often in real corporations. They are sowing the seeds of distrust between the two departments and likely between the others that we haven't seen. Why, you may ask?

Because the more time and energy the MDR team spends worrying about O&D, the less attention they pay to how they are being treated by management, and vice versa. It's the classic move of setting your enemies against one another, rather than wasting your energy constantly stamping down rebellion. But rather than stories about slaughter, employees in the real world are often told or otherwise discouraged from discussing salaries, among other things. Workers are completely in the dark about how much the person next to them is making, and this creates a sort of silent distrust between them. Management doesn't want employees to know how unfair the system actually is, and that you're getting paid less to do the same job as your friend. My entire point is that Dylan, despite his above-it-all attitude, falls for this tactic hook, line, and sinker.

He is constantly suspicious of Bert and the rest of the O&D team, even going so far as to temporarily lock him up in a room to prevent fraternization with Irving. The thing that eventually wakes Dylan up is, well, Dylan waking up. Lumen, up to that point, had been pretty clear on the fact that the severance procedure was completely location-dependent. But when the need arises, they use what is called the overtime contingency to wake up Dylan's innie when he's at home. This reveals that Lumen's insistence on those geographical limits was complete nonsense and that they have the power to wake up employees at any time they choose.

By electing to become severed, they are truly putting a loaded gun into the hands of the company and praying that they don't pull the trigger. Have you ever had a company phone that rings when you're about to go to sleep? Have you ever felt anxiety about not doing work when you're supposed to be off the clock? Have they ever tried to get you to use your personal phone and then abuse their contact with you afterward? Anyway, these are the situations that eventually lead our protagonists to finally decide that enough is enough.

I'm going to hold off on the specifics of their plan because I really do want you to watch this show, and I've left a lot out. Generally, though, they realize that each of their individual attempts to affect change within the company has been futile and that they must come together to unionize. Helly tried to break free and quit, but she was rebuffed at every turn, even when she attempted to take her own life. Mark tried to advocate for his employees and his former manager but was shut down and told to get his team back in line. Dylan just wanted a better work-life balance.

He wanted to know his kid's name, goddammit! And Irving, well, he just wanted to get it on with Christopher Walken. And if that's a crime, then lock me up and throw away the key. Individually, they are weak, but they all realize that they don't have the ability to do any of this alone. As soon as they were able to get over their fear of O&D, they had them as well.

The company, like many real companies, does everything in its power—both proactively and reactively—to dismantle any signs of a union. Yet despite their best efforts, manipulations, rules, and physical barriers, they were ultimately helpless against the overwhelming and frustrated labor force. If we learned anything from Amazon, it's that while things are pretty bleak and the odds are constantly stacked against us, victory can still be achieved. Just look at the JFK8 facility, which successfully pushed back against all of the union-busting tactics that the nearly trillion-dollar megacorporation could throw at them, and established the first-ever Amazon labor union. Change for the better is possible.

Don't let anyone convince you otherwise. If you find yourself contorting to fit a system, dear reader, stop and ask yourself if it is truly you that must change or the system. In a sense, we are already severed when we work for a company like this. There's no real need for a physical procedure. We are of two minds, two personalities: one at work and one away. We are made to accept the idiosyncrasies, both benign and malignant, at work to mold ourselves into the ideal employee, even when that person may not really represent who we are.

Maybe we aren't literally forced to work as he is, but by virtue of living in a capitalist system, we are certainly coerced to do so under the penalty of homelessness and starvation. I can see you now. I can see you going to your keyboards and beginning to type. But that's how it's supposed to be. How do you expect to survive if you don't work?

It's certainly how we've always known things to work, but we are going to have to shift our paradigms, to use a little corporate speak, with the advent of automation looming on the horizon. We are already at a point where there aren't enough jobs paying livable wages for everyone in society. And so we have to make that choice. Do we let those people just die, or do we act collectively and help them?

If we choose to stay in our own departments and remain afraid of those around us, if we don't put limits on companies like Lumen, then they will make those decisions for us. No matter how much a corporation tries to gaslight you into thinking that they are looking out for you, the employee, or you, the consumer, ultimately, the company only does what is best for the company. And if those interests don't align with your own, they will take care of themselves 100% of the time. In an interview with Writer's Digest, Dan Erickson describes his thoughts on the show. One thing that we talked about a lot was that you're never really outside of Lumen.

You can be outside of the building, but their tentacles are still everywhere. It's in a slightly more insidious way, similar to how many corporations or institutions insinuate themselves into culture in a way that’s not often obvious. If you're watching the show and you've seen both sides of it, you can notice that all the companies have the same name as the CEOs. You know, the Egan CEOs that you see in the Perpetuity Wing. However, that may not be obvious to someone on the outside who isn’t very familiar with the company.

So we tried to create a creeping sense of dread with the company, making it feel like it’s always present. Even if you can't see it watching you, it's probably watching you. Thank you so much for watching this video.

I love you. It really shows how long it took to make, but I kept going back and second-guessing myself on what exactly I wanted it to be. I wrote the script multiple times and scrapped it, but I'm pretty happy with how this turned out, and I hope you are too. If you enjoy this content and the other stuff that I create, please consider joining and becoming a patron. Thank you very much to my patrons for making this possible and for waiting even longer for this shorter video to come out.

Thanks especially to Gay Very and Freedom for becoming my latest patrons. You guys rock, and I'll see you in the next one.