There’s no separation between the work life and the home life in the TV show ‘Severance’ (Apple TV+)
It’s now up to Ontario employers to create work-life balance policies regarding work-disconnect. Can they take inspiration from the TV show Severance, in which workers volunteer to have their separate work and home lives surgically separated?
The show illustrates the ultimate paradox of work-life balance: even though companies are unlikely to implant chips into their employees’ brains anytime soon, the show emphasizes the importance of complete submission. A powerful corporation that controls the worker’s body in order to relieve the stress of work or home life.
Despite Severance’s dystopian message, there is no escape from today’s all-encompassing digital capitalism.
Work-life balance was thrown out of whack by the pandemic. And Ontario’s right-to-disconnect legislation reflects the permanent shift toward remote working.
In fact, right-to-disconnect policies dated back at least six years before the pandemic. So the disarray was not a result of the pandemic but rather its culmination.
Keeping work-life balance and home separate
Disconnecting from work goes beyond switching off devices after 6 p.m. or not responding to emails after 6 p.m., which is what Ontario’s definition of work-life balance implies.
It is necessary to separate work time from personal time. According to Ontario’s labour, training and skills development minister Monte McNaughton. It is also important that people spend quality time with their children and their spouses.
The idea that work and family should be separated stems from the Anglo-American suburban model: drive along newly constructed highways to the downtown office in the morning and return to the suburban idyll in the evening.
Home and work are no longer easily separated. (T M/Unsplash)
In 1962, suburban planner and theorist Humphrey Carver wrote that bureaucratic work lacked the nobility of labor. He was one of the most keen observers of the separation of work and family life. So people should leave their jobs behind in the suburbs in order to become consumers and community members.
The surgical procedure used by Severance makes it possible for individuals to access memories in a spatially confined manner. Whenever a severed worker arrives at Lumon Industries, he or she enters the elevator as his or her actual home self and when they leave. They are as their actual workplace self.
Bell Labs Holmdel office park in suburban New Jersey was the location of these scenes. Demonstrating the arrival and departure of employees. Designed by noted modernist architect Eero Saarinen. The complex was constructed over a period of five years (1957-62) and pioneered a new type of architecture: suburban corporate campuses.
A modernist symbol of separation is evident in the building’s generous parking lots, artificial lakes, rustic surroundings, oval ring roads that separate pedestrians and cars, and a water tower that is reminiscent of the optimism and dominance of American technology.
Several scenes of ‘Severance’ were shot at Bell Labs Holmdel Complex, which operated as a research and development facility for 44 years. (MBisanz/Wikimedia Commons), CC BY-NC-SA
Separation
As a result of the suburban corporate office park’s evolution, futurist Alvin Toffler went a step further in his book, The Third Wave. According to him, overturning work hours from 9 to 5, blurring the line between work and home life. and turning the house into an electronic cottage would transform the workplace. With a personal computer and networked connection, workers living at home do not require an office.
During the shift from industrial work to the post-industrial era, Toffler emphasized the electronic cottage, flexibility, and flextime. Forty years before the pandemic forced us to work from home.
It was viewed differently by Toffler — post-capitalist and post-socialist. But it was designed to fit the digital capitalism of Amazon, Google and Apple. Whose business model relies on the erosion of boundaries: you can order goods at home, work, edit, and meet from home, all with a phone, iPad, or laptop.
In spite of his influence, Tippler merely charted trends that began in the 1970s. When corporations began demanding, if not demanding, the whole person, body and soul, and promoting flexibility. This was corporate speak for a rise in precarious and unstable jobs and the end of permanent jobs.
The characters in ‘Severance’ feel tired all the time. Due to the separation of their work life and their home lives. (Apple TV+)
In the past, separation has been mostly artificial. especially for women who manage the household, whose unpaid labour has always been exploited and remains so today. Severance’s subplot has women out-sourcing their labour — the labour of giving birth — to their surrogate self, which exacerbated this during the worst waves of the pandemic.
As ironic as it sounds, Severance makes the “work you” feel as if you have never left the office. Even after relaxing away from work.
A global communications company, Edelman, which instituted a policy of no email between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m. in 2013. Explained why the policy was instituted. Having some time to recharge is very important to us because it is a valuable resource for our clients.
A great description of the current state of work-life balance can be found in Lumon’s philosophy: united in severance.
