“Who Are You?”: Memory, History, and Nostalgia on the Severed Floor

This essay explores how Severance uses history and identity to create a textual and visual world that is simultaneously futuristic and nostalgic. For each of the innies, the context that their outie’s consciousness would provide to them is supplanted by corporate culture and history. For instance, in Episode 3 of Severance, “In Perpetuity,” the co-workers visit the “Perpetuity Wing” where the lives of Lumon’s founder and CEOs are immortalized in waxwork figures. Upon hearing of former CEO Myrtle Eagan’s childhood, Helly opines that she wishes she could remember her own. Irving responds that knowing they serve a company that serves the world is enough for him. Irving’s response is conditioned by the company’s nostalgic mythology that permeates the severed floor of Lumon. When the characters begin to question this constructed history, they map their place and space as a way to create an alternative context as well as an escape.