Severance is a cool show. Because, like. What if you knew nothing. No context. No idea who you are. No history. And, of course, you are scared, but you can’t leave unless you get permission from someone— the person who put you here— someone who will never listen. Someone who makes all the decisions, who says “I’m a grown-up person and you’re not.” And you’re naive and lonely, but at least there’s other people in the same boat as you. Someone, just been there slightly longer, is trying to shield you, trying to protect you, taking responsibility and taking on punishment they “can handle and grow from.”
Like. Oh yeah. I recognize this one. Someone else dresses you. Someone else feeds you. Someone else, who's just like you, but they get everything. The little toys and the waffle party. Helly is desperate and suicidal, but she still has to go to school work. You have to do work that doesn't make sense, but you'll understand eventually. The meaningless, manufactured rivalry between departments. The rumors??? “they have larvae that eat them?” “I’m livestock grown for food” “I’m a bodybuilder who has loads of girlfriends, but you don’t know them they go to a different school?” Punishment in the form of apologizing over and over, having to use all the right words, until you are believed. Endless hallways. Scary authority figures. "Are you mad at me?" Religion being the only type of media you see, until you read some shitty book that changes your life. Confusing, sudden camping trips that are supposed to fix you. Condescension. The words "innie" and "outie" are brought up multiple times as infantilizing. Of course his innie's voice is higher pitched????
Everything you're forced to do -- and everything done to you -- is for your benefit, you're told... but not for the benefit of YOU-you. For the benefit of an alternate version of you, a version of you that you can't communicate with, a version of you that you don't even know really exists, but that everyone assures you is you and is, in fact, the version of you that matters more than and should be prioritized over YOU-you. You're not allowed to question this.
Yeah. Reminds me a lot of a kid's Hypothetical Adult Self.
Your future self will understand. Your future self will thank me. Your future self will want you to have done this. This is for your (future self's) own good.
Kid Me wasn't supposed to ask "If I'll want this when I'm older, why can't I just wait to do it until I'm older and want this?"
Wait, I can take this further.
The appeal of severance, at least as we've been shown it so far, is that subjects can have unpleasant experiences (childbirth, a tedious workday, a dental exam) already having happened, to skip directly to the "afterward" and have the unpleasant experience actually experienced by another, lesser version of yourself. Right?
Which is also how a lot of adults feel about children -- either their own retrospective child selves, or the children currently in their lives (whose lives must be structured to best serve their future adult selves). The purpose of childhood is to get unpleasant experiences over with so that the Future Adult Self (the self-that-matters) can have them already over with.
It's so telling that the boss at the door factory who interviews Dylan compares severance to circumcision -- a surgery commonly performed on infants, without medical necessity, based purely on the justification "They'll want/need it done as adults." Now, that's not necessarily true (the world is fully of happily uncircumcised adults), but even if if were, it would raise the inevitable question "Then why not wait until they want/need it as adults?" and the answer is "Because surgery is unpleasant and we assume adults don't want to go through it. The Future Adult Self (the self-that-matters) will want this surgery to already have happened, to have been experienced by the Lesser (childhood) Self."
And people even do this with learning skills!
"I wish my parents had made me learn to play piano as a kid."
Why can't you learn to play piano now? What's stopping you?
What you mean is "I wish I were already good at piano-playing, I wish the awkward, frustrating, beginner stages of learning piano-playing had already been gotten over with by my Lesser Self who exists to get unpleasant things out of the way for Me, the Self Who Matters."
Also telling is that Dylan, the only person who talk to his innie like they're an actual person, is also the only one (that we know of) who has children. When he writes his innie a letter, he acknowledges where they're coming from and lays out his side of the story, but still gives him the option to leave if he wants.
