Severance and Theatre of The Absurd

Severance on Apple tv+ and Theatre of The Absurd

I was wondering why Severance on Applet tv+ was so good and why I, personally, liked it so much. Then,it dawned on me: It fulfills all the attributes of an old theatre genre called “Theatre of The Absurd”!

Let’s examine the elements of Theatre of the Absurd together.

1. Fragmented narrative

2. Circular conversations (do we ever really connect to people?)

   1. Non-sequiturs

3. Existential humour

4. Blurred boundaries

5. Minimalist sets

6. Physical comedy

First off, the whole premise of the show is absurdist because that technology doesn’t exist now. Moreover, even if it did exist, severing people’s brains would be absolutely immoral and would be illegal as an elective surgery because it constitutes physical brain damage in otherwise, perfectly able, healthy individuals. It certainly would not be administered by a company like Lumen. In this aspect, the series is very similar to Black Mirror (it’s technology that’s conceivable, maybe even in our near future, but certainly not in existence at this moment).

(Section 1) Fragmented Narrative - we jump forward and backward in time, sometimes we see the innie world, other times the outtie world. The digital sound cue of that single note in high reverb is always played when those lines, those severed individuals, get blurred.[SHOW INNIE & OUTTIE WORLD. PLAY SOUND CUE]

(Section 2) The best example of a non-sequitur and weird dialogue has to be Bert's video to himself and co-workers [PLAY CLIP S01E07 33:51]. But, Ms. Casey’s wellness Session, which I personally can’t get enough of, are also a source of humorous dialogue [PLAY CLIP S01E02 44:08]

(Section 3) Existential humour abounds. A perfect example of this would be Dr. Ricken Lazlo Hale’s Book “The You You Are”. The same text is mocked in the outtie world, but revered as valuable and a great work of literature for the innies.

(Section 4) Blurred boundaries are really ramped up when innies are exposed to real-world experiences outside of the Severance Floor [INNIIE DYLAN WOKEN IN HIS CLOSET S01E06 27:23]

(Section 5) Minimalists set [SHOW THE MACRODATA REFINEMENT SPACE]

(Section 6) Physical comedy is seen in the four tempers, Woe, Frolic, Dread, and Malice. [S01E08 34:48]

So, we can easily argue that Severance is a revival of Theatre of The Absurd. That part is easy to identify. The question is why? I think that we can too easily dismiss entertainment as being trivial, frivolous, or untethered to our real world. It is not. Art is always undervalued, certainly in popular culture, as an unimportant endeavour. But, all we need do is examine the parallels to “Invasion Literature” of the late 1800s. We had War of The Worlds by H.G. Wells and Dracula by Bram Stoker just as two examples from this period. It fascinates me to no end that this “Invasion Literature” appears just before the outbreak of The Great War (World War One). Was that a premonition? Or was that a result of astute literary artists that were very good at reading the room, tapping into the zeitgeist and warning us on a symbolic, metaphoric level? These artists certainly tapped into our strong, visceral emotions of the topic of invasion. And then, to our collective horror, it came true.

Fast forward to all the zombie movies and television shows that cropped up in the last couple of decades in every country! The French had a TV series called The Returned (French: Les Revenants) about a zombie epidemic in a small mountain town in the French Alps. The show ran from 2012 to 2015. Britain, of course, had to deliver zombies to us in comedic form with Shaun of The Dead in 2004 starring Simon Pegg. And of course, the Americans had The Walking Dead that lasted for 12 seasons starting in 2010. And of course, being American, gun culture was revered.

Zombies are brain dead. Is this commentary on how we feel about our fellow human beings? Those whose religion or politics is so different from ours that we wish to smite them all? Is this ancestral memories of genocide so prevalent throughout the globe and in all of our pasts?

Now, we see a revival of Theatre of The Absurd on the level of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot or his Endgame or his Krapp’s Last Tape (all masterpieces, by the way). Does this genre fill the void in our lack of critique of corporate culture or government control or our inability to protect democracy. Did the COVID-19 pandemic shift us from our innies to our outties and we suddenly “woke up” to a tsunami of coercion and disinformation.

This is what Theatre of The Absurd has to offer my friends. It is a rich genre. And it helps explain why we are so addicted to Severance.