BLOG #07: DEREALIZATION IS SEVERING IRL
Week 7 of being unemployed. Few signs of life on this planet. Had a dream about Paul Revere and his little bell but it was actually made of chocolate. I took a bite out of it, we never learned the British are coming.
Anyways.
Re-cap of last week: Did my very first reading at art dealer-curator and proud owner of very healthy shiny hair Ashlee Harrison’s Upper East Side townhouse alongside Yatta, Cara Schacter, and Maya Martinez and everyone was brilliant; went to my very third appointment of free therapy which is actually $40/session with my “Essential Plus” insurance plan; went to the On The Rag launch party at the (Manhattan) Ace Hotel which was very fun; watched like two seasons of Sex and the City; watched a lot of other TV because there’s so much good TV right now; ate a delicious dinner by my dear friend Luke who came to visit from Arkansas; partook in Pisces birthday activities, a keg, several beers that honestly were way too many beers. Here are some pictures.
And most importantly: the Severance season finale. Normally I’m the smug fucker who’s like, ‘I predicted that,’ and this one, I could not. I’ve been somewhat afraid to talk about Severance honestly because I see a lot of people talking about it on the internet as “obviously biblical” but I haven’t read the Bible so I don't want to be loud and wrong. I’ve since shed that fear. Spoilers incoming. Also this won’t make sense if you haven’t seen.
First, what I love about season 2 of Severance: it is goalless. There is no linear “I have to do this to get this” that characters—be they Innies or Outies—try and accomplish in each episode, instead, each objective is shrouded by Lumon’s nefarious goals, which remain a mystery. Not only that, Severance critiques the idea of productivity as its premise. The show asks, “what if there was a procedure that could literally split your personality according to location so you could better compartmentalize your work life from your personal life?” but that question isn’t a platform for considering the ethics of problematic office dynamics in a literal way. That dry, Music Dance Experience kind of sanitized, dare I say chaste, transparency we see on the Macro Data Refinement floor isn’t the point, instead an aesthetic behavior that implies Lumon’s evil through a resemblance to real life cubicle-culture but swagless, soulless, and on steroids. That secondary, almost funny feeling “office vibe” is an edge to the still-unfolding story of Lumon and its history. It obstructs it, much like the marching band scene during the season 2 finale (I personally think it’s obvious but the show doesn’t expressly tell us this; the marching band is supposed to be so loud as to cover up the sound of murder on the other floors. Just a thought). This idea of manmade distraction is what I’m talking about at the heart of Severance’s brilliance. Questions are answered with only more questions, in a way that moves up the corporate ladder, getting closer and closer to discovering the truth about Lumon, but figuring “it” out isn’t a goal. In fact, at the end of the first season when Dylan G. activates Helly R., Irving B., and Mark S.’s Innies on the outside world, Lumon was only able to use that revolutionary act to re-tool their messaging as a “we hear you, and we apologize for not listening” moment. The goal at the end of the first season was to expose Lumon, and even though the Innies literally did, the company is too big to fail. This is a rupture for the Innies; there can be no goal, just an attempt to understand themselves as individuals created as infinite labor sources. They only exist when working. They are still orienting how to have desires. It’s deep!
Ok so the finale. We learn that each file completed for MDR creates a new Innie personality for Gemma, Outie Mark’s wife who we thought was dead (the whole reason why Mark severed was because he couldn’t process her death) but was actually Ms. Casey, the wellness counselor for the severed floor...Innie Mark notifies Outie Mark of this when Dylan G. activated the Innies on the outside world end of season 1. The onus is put on Innie Mark to pull a rescue mission and save Gemma; once Cold Harbor, the final file for MDR is completed, he and Gemma will be eliminated. Once the mission is assigned, by last season’s villain Harmony Cobel, of all people, we see Innie and Outie Mark communicate to one another via a camcorder. The stakes here are: if Innie Mark can rescue Gemma from Lumon, she and Outie Mark can not only live happily ever after but expose Lumon once and for all. But, if the severed floor no longer exists, Innie Mark and all the other Innies die, their personalities subsume into their Outies, lest they reintegrate like Mark and the other guy who died in front of the convenience store in season 1. Cobel and Mark’s sister Devon convince Innie Mark that he’s gonna die either way, so he might as well help his Outie live happily ever after, but after he successfully completes Cold Harbor and, with the help of Helly and Dylan, thwarts Milchik and a marching band called in to celebrate Innie Mark’s big accomplishments, Innie Mark saves Gemma but doesn’t go with her, where he’d switch back to Outie Mark and live happily ever after. He runs off with Helly in slow motion, covered in blood from accidentally killing Drummond in the fray, the chief Lumon goon/muscle. He chooses his own uncertain future versus the uncertain future Outie Mark promises him, where he may or may not still be a part of the now-severed personality of Mark S. as a whole.
There are more questions, than answers: what is Lorne of the Mammalians Nurturable department (Gwendoline Christie) doing with the goats, and is it like a weird spiritual Satan thing or a delusional Kier thing? Is Innie Mark gonna take both himself and Outie Mark out of the game? Who is Ms. Huang and why is she a child? Did Cobel actually invent the process of severing? What’s Gemma gonna do when she escapes? When faced with action, these are the practical questions you ask. And, in answering none of them, allowing them to hang in the absence between this season and the next, Severance makes us understand that sometimes, not everyone’s choices can be accommodated. In fact, sacrifices may have to be made to cut through the man-made delusion, of a marching band, an ORTBO. There is no right side in Lumon, and that’s what makes Innie Mark’s decision so fruitful; he exercised true agency, as in making a choice that potentially fucks everyone else up. He makes a choice for himself, even when his existence is not considered valid. Agency is not polite. Innie Mark makes his selfhood known and while dissatisfying to viewers who spent the whole season assigning a goal to reunite Outie Mark and Gemma, Innie Mark is a person too. It’s deep deep.
That’s the conceptual framework behind the finale. Formally, the cross-cutting and general pace throughout is attention holding as well as dynamic, plot-wise. The lighting is insane, also, specifically in the beginning scenes with Innie and Outie Mark communicating via camcorder, and the blue-green tones from Innie Mark’s computer screen as he completes Cold Harbor. I’m also really into the Super Bowl-halftime-show style angles from the Choreography and Merriment department’s performance as well...Truly a 10/10 television moment for me, and I havenÆt said that about any show that isn’t House, M.D or The Sopranos.
I ended up free bleeding at the On The Rag launch party because, well, I didn’t know I was on the rag until I was on the train home. The new publication, printed like a little newspaper, is an art and literary tabloid by Sammy Loren, the writer and curator behind the Casual Encountersz reading series, which even has a personal ads page in the paper. On The Rag takes a witty approach to the sleaze rags we love to peruse in line at suburban grocery stores. It’s “a print tabloid as it is a digital platform,” to quote the press release, with an intellectually meme-y Instagram to match. Picture Page Six but Lynne Tillman. Loren and, like, his 100 closest e-friends and fans of Casual Encountersz showed up in droves to W 29th street and Broadway to celebrate On The Rag at the Ace Hotel’s swanky brown leather-clad bar, featuring readings by contributors, like Canada gallerist Tif Sigrids, artist Alex Auder, debut novelist Stephanie Wambugu, and New Yorker writers Alexis Okeowo and Krithika Varagur. A literary salon in print, on the internet—gossip reincarnate via the tabloid, a truly beautiful idea! Maybe all the excitement made me menstruate to participate in the theme more closely. Excited to read more. Subscribe to their newsletter here.
You know when you’re looking at something but it doesn’t look like anything, and then you go outside and outside also doesn’t look like anything, and then you go for a walk but you might as well be levitating. I’ve learned that this is called derealization. It’s not depersonalization, but it’s a professional term for the thin veil between the understanding of yourself as an orb like wisp of soul contained in a body, and the understanding of yourself that interacts with matter. Kind of like the relationship between Outie and Innie. Derealization is akin to reintegration in Severance. I’m trying to find a way to reintegrate myself into being able to look at a tree and feel air on my face and not think it’s some ghostly or cosmic ice flash from an alternate universe selfishly targeting me and only me. I feel weird. Trusting that shopping is the answer to this one.
Speaking of shopping...something very exciting soon come. I can’t tell you what it is yet but if you’ve ran into me on the street and said “hey Maya what are you up to” you probably already know what it is, along with all my I-haven’t-killed-myself-yet jokes that concern my parents. STAY TUNED is all I will say officially.
We talk on the horizon.
One love,
Maya
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