The word “liminal” has taken on a really particular meaning for numerous folks on Twitter. A liminal space is a term for a vacant waiting room, an overlong hallway or an empty stairwell: somewhere eerie with nondescript features and no occupants. Twitter users agree that something about these spots is otherworldly and unnerving. Entire accounts are dedicated to finding and sharing liminal spaces.
In fact, liminal really just means transitional, the unanchored state between where we were and where we might be. Liminality is simply scary once we consider being trapped there, unable to maneuver forward or return to our origin.
The majority of the Emmy-nominated TV series “Severance,”from Apple TV+, takes place in a liminal world.
The majority of the Emmy-nominated TV series “Severance,”from Apple TV+, takes place in a liminal world. The show follows 4 coworkers, working 9 to five at a company leviathan called Lumon Industries, wandering through an online of otherwise empty, pristine white offices and corridors lit by fluorescent bulbs. Each detail of their constructing, the linoleum tiles and gently worn swivel chairs, evokes the identical discomfort as, say, an abandoned mini-golf course.
The characters of “Severance” are trapped in liminal lives, as well. The protagonists have agreed to a surgical implant of their brains that blocks their memories of labor during their free time, and vice versa. In effect, they’re each two people living in a single body: one who doesn’t know what they do for a living, and one who was born within the office and won’t ever leave.
The series’ director, Ben Stiller, (yep, that Ben Stiller) starts with an easy premise which may not sound too bad to most of us. Who hasn’t spent a workday gazing the clock and wishing we could fast-forward to the top? Turn our brains off? Over the course of the primary few episodes, though, the show does a wonderful job of demonstrating the mind-bending and insidious implications of the severance surgery.
For instance, Britt Lower plays Helly, a recent worker who’s justifiably freaked out when she wakes up within the office with no memories. She requests to depart. Her supervisor Mark, played by Adam Scott, walks her to an exit. She opens the door, steps out and suddenly finds herself back within the hallway with Mark. When she demands to know why Lumon is detaining her, Mark informs her that she did in truth leave and was gone for a couple of minutes.
The show critiques the faceless American company, for whom staff are interchangeable cogs and poor mental health is the collateral damage of productivity.
Her non-work personality, her “outie,” selected to return back, so from Helly’s “innie” perspective, it’s like she never left. Later within the show, we get to see the conversation that her “outie” had, but within the moment, we experience the jarring lapse in time the best way she does.
That is essentially the most intriguing and original feature of “Severance”: The work personalities could quit their job at any time—but provided that their “outies” approve. With no memories of what their “innie” experiences, the typical “outie” has no reason to approve a request to quit. And for the “innie,” ending the job would mean their death as a sentient being.
The show critiques the faceless American company, for whom staff are interchangeable cogs and poor mental health is the collateral damage of productivity. More intriguing, it presents philosophical questions on what role our trauma plays in our personalities.
Mark undergoes the severance procedure after losing his wife in a automotive crash, hoping to ignore his inner pain for just a couple of hours every day. The arrangement initially works the best way he had hoped. His work personality is completely satisfied within the office, and his “outie” takes some solace knowing that a part of himself can live blissfully ignorant for a part of the day.
Nonetheless, the effect, as we see it play out over the course of the primary season, is that “outie” Mark is trapped just as his “innie” is. He knows that a version of him exists that doesn’t feel the pain of his wife’s death, and that fact deters him from starting the painful healing process. Quite than try to maneuver on, he drinks and waits to return to work. Every night looks the identical.
To me, all of this adds as much as a reasonably profound statement about how human beings process trauma.
As “outie” Mark wonders increasingly more about his job at Lumon, and with the assistance of other characters uncovers disjointed clues to his occupation, he finds some stability in his personal life as well. Dates go higher, and he drinks less. He begins to maneuver away from the complacency that had taken hold of him. Although his trajectory just isn’t straight, over the course of the season he overcomes much of the inertia he had once we met him.
To me, all of this adds as much as a reasonably profound statement about how human beings process trauma. When the bad things in life come for us, we’d attempt to wrestle them under control with work (or exercise, or food regimen, or whatever solutions we turn to). There’s an expectation that strong, self-sufficient people can take care of their problems on their very own time. They push through in stoic solitude and keep living their lives. We’ve an unspoken reverence for many who can keep their personal turmoil and work productivity separate.
But we cannot distract our way out of grief, loneliness or fear. We cannot remain on the limen of our emotions and expect to ever get well. Our trauma requires time for reflection and healing, identical to a physical wound, and in today’s work-obsessed world we’ve little room for that. “Severance” pushes us to think about how we prioritize productivity over growing as a human being.
As work-from-home jobs free people from their cubicles, the company wasteland setting of “Severance” might begin to fade from cultural memory. The brand new liminal challenge that lots of us have found through the pandemic is defining the boundaries of labor hours when our bedrooms double as our offices.
Does working from anywhere mean that all over the place is our workplace? Can we put aside time for our emotions and our growth if we never physically leave the space meant for working? I actually have found that balance to be a challenge myself over the past two years. I believe that the show’s questions on our relationship to our jobs will grow only more relevant.
