A Critique of Late Stage Capitalism. Or is it?
By Emirhan Aydinoglu
The long wait seems to be over, as the new season of the Apple TV original series Severance is out. I remember watching the first season back in early 2022 and I was really captivated by it. But now being three years older, and three years really makes a big difference on your psyche when you are a teenager, I can see this show in a different light.
I won’t get into any spoilers but to quickly outline the series, it takes place in Lumon, a massive company that makes its employees undergo a procedure known as severance. In this procedure, your work memories and regular memories get separated and you gain 2 personalities that share a single vessel without having access to one another’s daily life or memories. The show centers around 4 co-workers; Mark, a long-time worker for Lumon, Helly, a person who is newly employed in Lumon and the one who questions everything about the company’s practices, Irving, an almost older brother figure to the main characters who is also very loyal to Lumon and Dylan, the show’s funniest character who provides comic relief which is much needed. As you watch the show you can easily tell apart these two personalities of these two characters and they do feel like different people. For instance, Mark, while being a soft-spoken and a very gentle guy in the office, once his other personality takes over after he is done with his shift, we are left with a character who is in a major depression and spends his nights drinking, a sharp contrast with his other personality.
As the narrative of the story is deeply interwoven with Lumon and its mystery, the show forces you to spend a considerable time dwelling upon questions you have about this company called Lumon and you spend endless hours trying to figure out what their objective is. As you watch several episodes, you can think that Lumon is really similar to some companies we have in real life, Amazon, Microsoft, and ironically, Apple. The marketing campaign for the second season was very intensive, including partnerships with various different companies in different ads, numerous appearances in late night talk-shows by the actors. However, one single marketing event stood out the most for everyone and it was talked about endlessly on the internet for days. On January 14th, New York City, they brought the acclaimed show’s main 6 actors to Grand Central Terminal and placed them into a big glass box, in which they acted several scenes.
Once I saw a clip from this event, It got me thinking, how ironic that a show made by one of the most valuable companies in the world also seems to be a very intense criticism of capitalism and unethical business practices? Overall visual design of Lumon as a company is a very strong reminiscence of Apple and If you search up the infamous glass box I mentioned above, you will probably come to realize that it looks very similar to some of the Apple Stores within the US. I suppose this is what makes capitalism really different from its counterparts, as it can market and profit from a product that is essentially a criticism of late-stage capitalism. All things been said, it is a really well-made show and I eagerly wait how the story will play out. So, if you are looking for something original and engaging, definitely check out Severance!