Doylist Severance take
Severance is in conversation with the film industry producing it. These actors are letting the character “borrow” their bodies, and we, as viewers, have to deliberately engage with this metanarrative, this false equivalency.
We do not know these people. They are getting paid for this job. Whether it’s personally fulfilling for them or which parts they’re doing it for does not weigh in on the fact that they are selling their body in exchange for a salary. Who owns the body? Is it the actor or the person paying them? What kinds of bodies are profitable? How does one’s self settle into the body when one’s livelihood is based on performing as someone else? What is a good performance but a surgically precise awareness of one’s body served on a plate for an audience to consume, digest, and incorporate into ourselves? What is a good performance but a successful attempt at verisimilitude? You are a person, but your worth lies in how effectively you can pretend to be someone else. The better you shroud your body and personhood in smoke and mirrors, the more valuable your labor will be.
How are we talking about the actors in this show? How much are we thinking about the body behind the action? How much are we conflating them with their character? How entitled do we feel to their intimacy? Are we also the ones watching surveillance footage and claiming their personal experience as rightfully ours, pretending they know us and we know them?