so the thing I like about Severance is how it captures the absurdities of modern and corporate life and turns them up to 11 in a dramatized thought experiment yet, by embedding certain artistic tropes (alienation, autonomy, dualism, biopolitics, etc.) so overtly into its premise, it also ironically obfuscates and questions their intended teachings: it’s arguable that the default state of the self, even without Lumonian manipulation, is already in severance, with innies rotating to be the outie, and it’s relieving to acknowledge their coexistence as sparring partners — “enjoy equally” in Lumon’s newspeak — and the cacophonous nature of the self. reintegration in this sense is a more inauthentic and condescending alteration than severance to the extent that it attempts to impose a canonical, consistent narrative of identity.