Sometimes identity-related storylines can feel clunky or forced (see Emilia Perez), especially if the writers have added it purely as an “add on” or to tick a box. However, Severance’s subtle exploration of race feels natural to the story. The divisive, exploitative and dehumanising nature of racism is, for some, an essential component of capitalism. In Severance, the suggestion is that race isn’t a separate issue from capitalism, but that it can determine how different characters experience power, labour, and control within Lumon’s corporate dystopia. It’s revealed in Season 1 that Lumon was established in 1865, the same year slavery was abolished in the U.S. suggesting that the company represents the evolution from chattel slavery to corporate exploitation. After abolition, the U.S. economy found new ways to extract labour from Black people: sharecropping, prison labour, and low-wage industrial labour. It also begs the question was the company’s wealth originally built on slavery? Lumon seems to be a corporate embodiment of how racial and economic oppression are symbiotic, and essential to how our modern world functions.
