Abstract: Severance (Erickson et al., 2022) is a psychological thriller, science-fiction TV series set in a not-so-distant future. Mark, the main character, is an employee of Lumon Industries where he works on the ‘severed floor,’ an insular area within the larger organization where all employees have opted to undergo ‘severance,’ a cutting edge invasive neurological procedure that promises to separate an individual’s work life from their personal life by dividing the two different memory centers within their brain. The series chronicles Mark and his co-workers as they navigate their growing despair given the profound dissonance between their two selves and their fate as employees of the all-encompassing Lumon Industries.
Fictional genres such as horror and science fiction have often been used in literature and film to tell us something true about the human condition and the human experience. Monsters and monster archetypes within the horror genre have been “said to reflect the anxieties of their times” (Calafell, 2012, p. 112) through the imagined story or creature, and also represent “a code or a pattern or a presence or an absence that unsettles what has been constructed to be received as natural, as human” (Cohen, 1996, p. ix). While there are no traditional “monsters” in Severance, dystopian stories such as this can perhaps be understood as depicting the ‘horror’ that exists within human nature itself, waiting to be unveiled initially through seemingly innocuous societal shifts and advancements, in this case, at the office. Severance and its eerie dystopian fictional story reveal something profound to viewers about the place that work, office life and corporations have within this modern moment, as the typical ‘white-collar’ workplace is the landscape for this sci-fi thriller.
This work in progress piece will use thematic analysis to explore the chilling portrayal of office life and corporate culture as depicted in the TV show Severance and analyze what this fictional story tells us about a modern cultural understanding of work through three main themes: (1) office life and work as mundane, sterile, and meaningless, (2) extreme workplace surveillance and (3) corporate culture, and the corporation itself, as both doctrine and a form of transcendent ‘religion.’ The essence of something real, relevant, and urgent resides within each of these fictional themes. The meaning derived from work (Bailey et al., 2019; Chalofsky & Cavallaro, 2013; Fairlie, 2011; Ardichvili & Kuchinke, 2009; Rigby & Ryan, 2018) workplace surveillance (Tredinnick & Laybats, 2019; Ball, 2010; Anteby & Chan 2018) and the ethics of large corporations and the culture and values they promote (Frye, 2020; Garavan & McGuire, 2010; Ardichvili & Jondle, 2009) are all relevant topics within HRD and the broader economic landscape. This piece of television media can provide another unique, yet still insightful, dimension of scholarship. While this is a fictional television show, consuming this story in a symbolically analytical way and validating that there is something intrinsically important being articulated in this portrayal of work, the office environment and the corporation can help HRD scholars understand the shifting, modern conceptions of work in a novel way.
This conceptual paper aims to contribute to the ongoing conversations around these three themes using the television series Severance as a perhaps non-traditional data touchpoint to pair textual thematic analysis of this show with HRD and other relevant interdisciplinary scholarship related to these issues. This paper also aims to explore what Severance as a media cultural artifact tells us about work and organizational life, in this fictional context, but also broadly. Further, this piece presents an initial example for the potential of a new area of study for HRD; to examine how work, organizations, and various workplaces are depicted in art, culture, and media to garner insights for the field and understand how these representations shape cultural understandings of work.
