I just finished watching it and as someone who rarely enjoys television shows i think it was amazing and thought provoking. What do you all think?
Also, does anyone know of a place that discusses the show from a marxist perspective? I'm kind of obsessed but would rather not listen to some lib brained shit if I don't have to.
Fantastic show. Worker alienation, worker organizing, billionaire cult etc. Last episode is one of the best season finale I have ever seen in any TV show.
BTW, the protagonist, when at work, is called Mark S, or together Marks/Marx. I mean, it can't get any more obvious than that, can it?
He is probably clueless about it all. Otherwise, I am hilariously wrong and the next season will reveal it was always an accidentally Marxist themed show made by hyper libs.
Just director though, stiller accepted to pitch but idk how much he had in coming up with the concepts. The writer, Dan Erickson, worked for super deluxe before it folded and not much else, so he might have some class awareness going on
Honestly i liked it from episode one i thought the concept was awesome
I just started watching it based on your recommendation, I think you would probably like Counterpart too.
JK Simmons is great in it.
:rat-salute-2: (we also have the best emojis on the whole internet)
The ending had me so upset that there wasn't any more to watch
Meanwhile episode 1 or 2 i turned to my partner and said "this is exactly what corporations want workers to be now!'
We watched it this week while suffering from covid and it is so good
ya its been my fav show this year, that ending killed me. when i was watching it, it felt like the workers were organizing together. im not 100% sure if anyone or any place really discusses the show from a marxist perspective, besides people here.
its also one of my fav christopher walken performances. him and john turturro are so great together
The concept of them needing just the tiniest bit of class and labor awareness, via a mediocre self help book albeit with good intentions, to break their chains was both hilarious and great to watch.
I watched it with some of my family. It's a good show.
Also, does anyone know of a place that discusses the show from a marxist perspective?
I'm not really sure what the point of that would be, tbh. Like, it's never made clear what the company Lumon actually produces, or what the significance of the random numbers on the screen is, so there's not really much to talk about in terms of political economy.
I’m not really sure what the point of that would be,
I like hearing other people's opinions on things I like and it's nice to not have to listen to some lib when doing so.
I think you can still make some analysis even with abstract work of dubious value.
When it was airing and
spoiler
Helly's outie rejected her plea, everyone was going "Oh my God how heartless, this is clearly proof that she's an Eagan!" That may well have even been the authorial intent, but my reaction to the situation was "Oh of course she said no, she has a slave."
The innie/outie dichotomy seems like a pretty clear class relation, even if it's mediated through the employer. The innie lives a life of servitude so that the outie doesn't have to. The outies react to the idea that their innies are exploited with incredulity and hostility, denying the plain truth in front of them as parasitic classes always do.
Like, it’s never made clear what the company Lumon actually produces, or what the significance of the random numbers on the screen is
Sounds like a bullshit job
It seems like what is being produced and what the workers are doing will be explained in a second season if there is one, but imo the nature of work in a massive corporation is really captured by the show in that to many workers their jobs are so focused and somewhat repetitive your work can become something as crazy and boring as organizing numbers until they feel right and that your job is so detached from the products that you may not really know what you make (take it far enough and you could make comparisons to people making drone parts at Lockheed or something, "I just make the chips / code a module")
It's irrelevant what the company does. The point is the relation between workers and work. This is the ultimate class relation show - theres no clearer way to talk about alienation from work.
it’s never made clear what the company Lumon actually produces, or what the significance of the random numbers on the screen is
Lumon seems to be a very broad Mega-Corp that makes everything from electronics to medical equipment and pharmaceuticals. Literally everything in the severance floor is made by Lumon and apparently everything in the town surrounding it is made by them as well, including the houses themselves.
As for the work itself, I always saw the work as testing proof of concepts rather than actual work, with each of the departments being a simulcrum of the "kinds" of work out there, with Macrodata Refinement being boring ass office work (Excel sheets, diagrams, inputting data) and Optics and Design being more creative jobs (video game design, product design, graphic design). The guy raising goats is likely testing to see if they can utilize Severance in farm jobs.
The final goal being selling Severance to corporations as the ultimate means to break apart class consciousness and worker solidarity, and in addition being able to get away with abusing their workers. Its why Lumon has spread rumors of departments killing eachother in a "coup" its why the severance floor is designed like a maze, why the departments are kept far away, and why they have myths about Eagan and Wellness sessions.
They're trying to work out the kinks of creating a bicameral mind slave class to work forever.
However it doesn't work, because a human's natural instinct is to reach out to others for love, freedom, connection and social liberation. It's why Helly R refuses to be controlled by Helena and constantly fights for her freedom, its why Irving seeks out Burt for companionship against the company culture they revere, its why Mark insists on banding together across departments against the rules to try to seek help from the hell they're subjected to, and why Dylan volunteers himself to hold the levers for the Overtime Protocol despite having knowledge of having a son on the outside in order to help his friends gain their own freedom.
They're so many minute details about this show that I love, like how the company only ever serves low-calorie snacks for them during parties and in the vending machines (raisins, edaname, eggs, and melon?) so that their "outtie" isn't effected by their "innie"'s food choices, when the reverse isn't true.
I really fucking enjoyed it, and it radicalized an office worker I know
Did nothing for me. I've seen the whole "corporate, bureaucratic dystopia with a blue filter" a hundred times already.
The ending was okay, I was pretty whelmed. Sill, I wish I hadn't wasted my time on this.
You've seen shows with this same concept before? Could you recommend one? I thought the severance idea was pretty novel but if something else does it even better I'd love to watch that, too. As I mentioned I don't really watch TV much
thank you so much for recommending this, binged it all after reading this thread
best show I've seen in a while
Hey no problem I'm always excited when i find something I actually like!
