Apple TV+’s new series Severance is disorienting at first. That’s intentional. The show, starring Adam Scott and Patricia Arquette, is about a company that severs its employees memories of the outside world. In Severance, memory of home is disabled while at the office, and memory of the office disabled at home. Creator Dan Erickson has more details.
Where is Lumon located?
The memory wipe also begs the question of where exactly the Lumon office building is. Where do these employees go home to? Erickson has pinned down the city.
“We’re clearly in the well-known U.S. city of Kier, you know, the beloved city of Kier,” Erickson said. “We sort of intentionally kept a lot of ambiguity to the time and place. You know, we obviously shot mostly in New York, in New Jersey. So there’s sort of a vague New England, East Coast-y feel to the city. But we didn’t really want to know exactly where it was or tie it to a specific locale.”
Lumon is imaginary, but the building is not. It’s in Holmdel, New Jersey, and it was the home of Bell Laboratories, the research operations of AT&T. Designed by Eero Saarinen and opened in 1962, it was a showpiece for the monopolistic, cash-rich corporation that dominated American communications for the telephone’s first century. This iteration of Bell Labs was — in the words of the institution’s biographer, Jon Gertner — an idea factory, the place whose thousands of scientists and engineers discovered or created so much that makes the modern world what it is. The laser, the cell phone, the Big Bang theory: They all came from here. Its researchers won nine Nobel Prizes. It was an extraordinary technology incubator. It wasn’t accidental, of course, because Bell Labs represents the height of an era when offices were designed as a sort of corporate utopia, at least in the eyes of the people who made them. “I always felt a sense of power in these [corporate] spaces,” says Jeremy Hindle, the show’s production designer. “They’re there to dominate you and make sure that you know the rules.” It was the perfect backdrop for a show about a workplace with near-total control over its employees.
I just began watching Severance last night. Without even finishing the first episode, I am already seeing some significant concepts being encoded in the series. So, I will begin here with my first impressions, and then continue as I proceed watching the show. I can already see that it is a compelling watch.
Off the bat, I would caution that watching the show could potentially cause subtle mind alterations if not consciously aware – simply by observing the aesthetic (ie - long white, stark hallways that traverse like a maze; anechoic chamber-like rooms (implying isolation); haunting and whimsical, yet trance-inducing background music; hypnotic language/NLP, etc) . . .
One of the first lines of the show (As part of a company survey, Mark interrogates new employee, Helly):
What is Mr. Eagan’s favorite breakfast?
Anagram deconstruction of Mr. Eagan (almost a perfect anagram, as there is an extra “a”) . . . engram
Esoterically speaking – in terms of anagrams – we also see ngram, as in n-gram:
Another one of the first lines in the show (incorporated into the NLP hypnotically-inducing script being haphazardly expressed by the main character, Mark S.) references the idiom – Right as rain.
What Is The Origin Of “Right As Rain”?
To find out the origin of the word, we have to go back about two centuries. There are a few cases of it used throughout history, and it’s important to know what the most significant ones are that sculpted its meaning today.
Unlike some other idioms formed in history, “right as rain” seems to have no clear meaning. Most people don’t enjoy “rain,” which makes it a strange thing to include when talking about something being “right as.”
The reason why this curious (non-sensical) idiom would be utilized in a consciousness-splitting script is because the mind cannot make sense of the expression, “right as rain,” as it is not a coherent statement. Thus, it induces a non-coherent split of the mind (this disorientation technique is often used in hypnotic programming). It is important to note that in the beginning of Episode 1, the purpose of the initial “orientation” meeting/survey is its opposite, disorientation. So, the viewer is presented with a paradox that can induce in the viewer a subtle split in consciousness.
{Note: I (Stephers) was trained/certified in NLP in the late 1990s.
Thus, the beginning “script” (the script featured within the TV show script) being read erratically by the main character is familiar to me.}
In reference to elevators – which seem to be used continuously throughout the series (at least in Episode 1)… the notion of an elevator is often applied to induce hypnotic states (elevator induction) in facilitator-induced hypnosis, as well as self-hypnosis:
Returning to my initial deconstruction…
RE: Delaware
The state of Delaware is mentioned in the beginning of the “script” (being read by Mark S. in Episode 1) within the script (of the show). This script embedded in the script can itself be hypnotizing, as it induces a sense of nesting – circles within circles, for example.
In the show…
Mark: Please list any U.S. state that comes to mind.
Helly: …I don’t know…Delaware.
As most people (corporeal beings) are aware, Delaware is renowned for being a central hub of corporate law – where many individuals form their corporations – essentially, creating a corporeal being (a physical body with legal rights) out of nothing, on a sheet of paper (ostensibly now digitized).
For more than 100 years, businesses around the world have chosen to incorporate in Delaware due to the State’s advanced and flexible corporate statutes, the expertise and efficiency of our judiciary, and our business-friendly state government.
Forming a Delaware corporation is a formal, streamlined process and the following sections provide a practical overview.
Sevan Bomar - How Corporations Become Entities (only 5 minutes, and very important context)
Transcript relevant to above deconstruction:
00:03:44 Mark: Question three, please name any US state or territory.
00:03:48 Helly: Fuck. I… Mark: First that comes to mind.
00:03:49 Helly: I don’t know. Delaware. What is this? Mark: Delaware.
00:03:52 Mark: Question four, what is Mr. Eagan’s favorite breakfast?
00:03:57 Helly: I don’t… That one makes no sense.
00:03:58 Mark: Right? Unknown. Question five. And as a reminder, this is the final question. To the best of your memory, what is or was the color of your mother’s eyes?
00:04:27 Helly: Okay, what’s hap… What’s happening?
