The Aesthetic Virtue of the Severance Procedure: Pledging Spectatorial Allegiance to Both Innies and Outies

This chapter explores how Severance exhausts different patterns of spectatorial allegiance to the characters elicited by the viewing of their two contradictory selves. As the characters choose to impose an impenetrable boundary between work and private life on themselves, the show is focalized around its tackling of the moral issues over the essence of the self. This hinges on the concept of “allegiance” in Murray Smith’s tripartite model of character engagement: a key device that activates and sustains the spectatorial drive. Through close textual analysis theoretically anchored by spectatorial allegiance, this chapter reveals the error-ridden process in viewer cognition of such dual character development as both an aesthetic virtue and a moral challenge. The moral dilemma of granting the outie complete authority over life choices or rooting for the innie in a burgeoning workers’ movement engages the viewer in different patterns of spectatorial allegiance, overlapping each other at times.