COVE

Severance is a popular Apple TV+ show, in which employees of a mysterious mega-powerful corporation called Lumon undergo a procedure to place a chip in their brain, which is activated when the employees go down an elevator to the "severed floor" to clock in to work. When the chip is activated in the employees brain they are essentially split into a work self (their innie), and their not work self (their outie). What ensues is similar to the gothic doubling of a character in gothic fiction. In many ways the representations of the fracturing of the self that is portrayed in Severence is like that of the deracination and loss of self that is so characteristic of gothic fiction. The representations of Severence can most easily be attatched to the representation of Dorian Grey in Oscar Wilde's A Picture of Dorian Grey, in which Dorian sees himself doubled in the painting of himself, and while he might not change in looks, his painting seemingly does. Is this a hallucination, is it real-life? who's to say, and that is what is so terrifying is the inability to reconcile the fractured parts of the self. Another classic gothic example of the fragmentation of the self is the Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde separation. In essence the two are the same person, but there is a spontaneous and uncontrolable go between within the self that dictates when the self is Dr. Jekyl, and when its Mr. Hyde.The same can be said for Severence, since there is a strict split between the innie and the outie of a person, and one does not have the ability to interact with the other, and the actions of one are the actions of the other, however only one version is ever in control.