No. 68 - Severance
Don't mind me, just writing about a TV show from last year and an art-horror piece from last year.
Hostile Work Environment
The 2022 television show Severance depicts a world where, through the use of some dubious super science, workers can go under a controversial procedure known as Severance. Those who undertake this procedure at the “benign” corporation Lumen have no memory of their life outside of work while on the work premises and no memory of work while off the work premises. While, to some, creating this blunt of a separation from work seems ideal, it proves ultimately hell-like for the brain wiped drones who have to work in the Lumen building. They have to work with no memory of sleep, no leisure, no real humanity, and those who don’t comply are punished severely. It is a world where even people with no memories need to be brainwashed into believing a life of work is satisfying.
The show is cloaked in Lost-like mystery where there’s little clues and references in each episode for those hungry to formulate theories about what Lumen is really up to, but, for me, that’s not nearly as interesting as the themes and atmosphere Severance creates. The severed workers spend their days doing heavily abstracted office work that doesn’t really have a clear goal. Mark S, our protagonist played by Adam Scott, insists that the work is “mysterious and important” while the newest severed employee to the office, Helly R (Britt Lower), suggests an alternative opinion, “The work is bullshit.” I’m more inclined to agree with Helly. Outside of strange useless rewards like Chinese finger traps and dance breaks (brings to mind the real life phenomenon workplace pizza parties) the only incentive to doing a good job is an almost religious belief that the company and all its workers are family. Never mind that reprimands at Lumen come a form of a psychological torture in “The Break Room” that no one would ever subject family to. The aesthetics of the show call to mind video games like Control (2019) and Portal (2007) where desolate office spaces try to make frequent reminders that you are safe, loved, and completely disposable. Later in the season, even management level employees learn that no matter how devout one is to the core values of their company, work won’t love you back.
Severance is available to stream on AppleTV+
What is Your Mad God?
Lately, I’ve been spending my time looking out windows and getting lost in reveries. Fantasizing or daydreaming about some story I want to tell, some art I want to make, some life I want to live. I’ve been thinking a lot (longtime readers of the newsletter can attest to this) about what I want to do with my life. If one’s job isn’t the thing they live for, surely it supports whatever they live for outside of work. I think about what I’m passionate about (movies, art, personal relationships) and the thought keeps coming to me “am I spending enough time on those things and what do I have to show for it?”
Phil Tippet started working on his passion project Mad God (2021) while he was doing special effects work for Robocop 2 (1990). Tippet had worked on everything from Star Wars to Indiana Jones to Robocop to Piranha before this, accumulating awards and notoriety. With all this acclaim for a craft he was passionate about, he still embarked on making Mad God with just a twelve page treatment and “a vibe” to go off of.1 He would work on the film on the weekends and his days off. Even after some hiatuses, like a ten year break, he eventually finished the film with the help of some volunteers and a kickstarter. No streaming service or studio initially wanted Mad God, but after 30 years the final product stands tall as a fantastic and horrifying art piece.
Mad God follows a very simple narrative. An assassin travels a hellish world (similar to a Hieronymus Bosch painting, but sandblasted and covered in mud) to reach his destination. He encounters monsters of all kinds, ravaged debris ridden lands, and corpses of long dead things. The assassin’s goal is initially unclear, as is any explanation as to how this nightmare world came into being. Some elements are explained in environmental storytelling while others are completely left to interpretation. To put it as reductively as possible, Mad God follows a character walking from one end of the screen to the other while horrible monstrous things occur around him. This chaos conjures memories of the first image of the entire film; a tower being assaulted by soldiers as lightning strikes it. It is undeniably a visual reference to the tarot card “The Tower” which depicts The Tower of Babel being struck by God’s lightning, descending the world into chaos by scattering people around the world and giving them different languages so they can not understand each other.
There is a distinct lack of language in Mad God, but that helps facilitate what it’s true purpose is. Throughout the film, there are plenty of stories and images that feel like Tippet drifting off into different interests, styles, and creatures. Whatever seems to have fascinated him in the moment takes center stage. It becomes less about “understanding” the film and more about marveling the craftsmanship and creativity. It has a consistent tone of nihilistic horror, but seeing Tippet’s unbounded imagination at work has the opposite effect.
This is my second time watching Mad God, the first being last year, and it threw me into a frenzy. Phil Tippet devoted a significant amount of his free time to this. Tippet started working on Mad God out of passion and assurance from his colleagues, not for the some lofty goal. It was highly publicized that this was thirty years in the making and that’s inspiring. I’m not saying that I want to make something that looks like Mad God, but now I wonder what it would look like if I spent a portion of my free time for thirty years on something. What would my Mad God be. What would your Mad God be?
Mad God is available to stream on Shudder and AMC+.
Stray Observations
After so much time waiting, I am so incredibly pleased to see that the Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd detective show Moonlighting is available on Hulu! I have been wanting to watch the show for some time now, but it had been unavailable on streaming services for quite some time due to licensing issues regarding the show’s frequent use of music. Apparently, as many of these songs have been retained in this streaming release, but if one wants to watch it as it had originally aired, then the expensive DVDs and VHS tapes are the only option.
I am in the process of watching all of Adventure Time (2010-2018) and it is a total delight. In a manner similar to Mad God, a lot of elements throughout the show feel as if the production team is chasing whatever interests they happen to have in the moment and letting the show bend to it. It wavers between genres and storytelling styles (murder mystery, zombie horror, fantasy adventure, science fiction, fabulist tragedy, post-apocalypse, etc) while retaining its lighthearted tone. Excitingly too, it develops its in-universe lore in a deceptively easy to ingest way through joke characters getting slowly humanized, glimpses of crucial world information, and piles and piles of throwaway gags. A friend joked with me “there are no filler episodes of Adventure Time,” but it also feels like they’re all so fun and seemingly disconnected that they’re all filler episodes. A marvelous show. Currently streaming on Hulu and MAX.
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