What The Hell America!

Apple TV+’s Severance is more than dystopian fiction—it’s a chilling allegory for real-world labor exploitation and the ongoing fight for bodily autonomy in the workplace.

Imagine waking up in a sterile office with no identity or history, only to learn your right to bodily autonomy has been ceded to a corporation. At Lumon Industries, the dystopic biotech setting of the AppleTV+ series Severance, this is the starting point for “severed” employees. 

The severed are individuals whose memories and existence have been divided into two categories—the workplace where “innies” exist and the outside world where their “outies” live. Outies sign a contract with Lumon, thus creating an innie, and outies can choose to quit or retire, which effectively kills off their innie. Threatened with termination should they defy management, innies’ bodily autonomy is severely compromised. 

The power imbalances and abuse in the Lumon workplace alongside morally and ethically questionable legal practices encourage viewers to read the series as dystopian.

The severance procedure is well outside modern technological advances and values, which risks making the resulting abuse and horrors feel unrealistic or extremist. Yet, while marketed as a dystopian workplace thriller, Severance should also be read as a cultural text that builds upon and expands our understanding of exploitative labor practices and threats to bodily autonomy. 

Lumon is clearly an unsafe environment, and harassment and exploitation are condoned by management. 

The show’s depiction of the fictional corporation Lumon Industries builds upon a history of real-world corporate malpractice and worker exploitation. Historical and contemporary examples include: 

• Industrial Age factory owners forcing laborers (often women and children) to work in dangerous conditions for low wages.
• Company towns renting homes and selling goods at rates that ensured most employees remained perpetually in debt to the company.
• Corporations such as Starbucks, Amazon and SpaceX firing pro-union workers, refusing to bargain or stalling negotiations and intimidating workers. 
• Employers demanding long hours and constant availability while offering limited support for time off or a need to balance work and life commitments. 

These examples are by no means exhaustive, but they provide a partial lineage for the exploitation of labor seen in Severance. 

When cultural texts such as Severance show how characters experience and endure attacks against bodily autonomy, it can help make the threats more salient for viewers. Helena (an outie and daughter of Lumon’s CEO) infiltrates the innie group by pretending to be Helly (Helena’s innie). Helena sleeps with Mark (another innie) who believes he is having sex with Helly. Helena compromises Helly’s bodily autonomy and, through deception, rapes Mark. Lumon is clearly an unsafe environment, and harassment and exploitation are condoned by management. 

Questions and commentary about bodily autonomy pervade Severance and are a key concern for protecting and strengthening workers’ rights in the real world. Yet, bodily autonomy in the contemporary workplace is under threat. For example:

• Exposing harassment in the workplace, an employee at the Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBOP) filed suit alleging the government “failed to address a sexually hostile work environment” in which a co-worker posted derogatory content online about the plaintiff. 
• Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency ordered the closure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau headquarters and told employees not to perform any work tasks, thus undermining employee’s ability to make decisions in line with their role and expertise. 
• In violation of the American with Disabilities Act, Dollar General required a medical exam prior to hiring and forced applicants to disclose preexisting conditions.

Severance features storylines that echo these contemporary threats.

Helena rapes Mark and compromises Helly’s bodily autonomy, creating a sexually hostile work environment.

Lumon management conceals the effects of severed employees’ macrodata refinement work, which diminishes innies’ control over their life and understanding of how Lumon uses their bodies and minds.

Innies have no medical privacy as Lumon conducts experiments on their bodies without their consent. Severance depicts workplace abuse as a threat to innies’ physical, emotional, mental and sexual well-being, while underscoring the power dynamics that stifle their ability to report, resist or effect change. 

When cultural texts such as ‘Severance’ show how characters experience and endure attacks against bodily autonomy, it can help make the threats more salient for viewers.

Organized resistance is often slow to build, difficult to sustain, and unsuccessful even in the best of situations. Yet, severed employees organize; they plan, air grievances and go public. Even after Lumon discovers the resistance and terminates one of the innies, remaining severed employees lean into obstruction and noncooperation to advance their mission and desire for bodily autonomy. 

Severance is not a blueprint for collective, real-world resistance, but it also should not be viewed as simply a workplace thriller. The series builds upon historical and contemporary examples of labor exploitation and threats against bodily autonomy. These stories matter as they raise and reinforce the brutality and dehumanization workers have long suffered while also depicting the power of strategic and collective resistance in the struggle for autonomy and choice. 

As threats against bodily autonomy in the workplace increasingly attract public attention and critique, resistance stories such as those we see in Severance can amplify language, ideas and tactics for mobilization and resilience.