Body and Soul dualism in Apple tv+ Severance

Dualism

The popular show Severance got its second season this year on Apple tv+. And even more than last season, the show tries to explore what it means to have the soul or mind severed. At the time of writing this post, the 7th episode just aired, and especially in the episodes 6 and 7 I had the feeling that I recognized a certain pattern from my own work as an IT engineer.

In fact, the 'severance' happens at two levels: first, between what is called the Innie and Outie - the person at work, and the person outside working hours. Severance is advertised as the opportunity to leave work really at the office, so you can be unbothered in your free time. There is no memory shared between the two personas; although in the second season, the cracks in the blockade are getting bigger and bigger.

There is another level of severance I observe in the series, but this one might be completely unintentional. It is the severance of the mind and the body. In the 6th episode of season 2, Helena (outie) has an intimate moment with Mark; and when Helly (innie) discovers this, she wants to have the same experience 'of her own'. The shared body of Helena and Helly is used here as a means to gain that experience.

The question is, what is the meaning of the body in Severance? It looks like it is a vessel, an 'empty' enclosure that can be fitted with a soul that carries the real person. The Innie or the Outie is not the body, but is the mind or soul only. The body is needed by the personas to express themselves; but one could very well imagine that a soul in Severance does not need to be bound up to the same body.

While until episode 6 of season 2 all severed people appeared to be cases of a body with an innie and outie soul, this changed in episode 7. There Gemma is depicted as having several innies. And when she is forced to write cards, her Innie is wired to left-handed writing while her body is right-handed.

So, the role of the body - in my opinion - is depicted as less important compared to the soul, the personality. The body can be easily re-used to host two completely different characters like Helena and Helly R, and can even be forced by a soul to perform tasks it isn't used to (like, left-hand writing).

What I noticed is that there is a lot of talk about this concept of severed memories, of the two (or more) souls that cannot communicate with each other. But the severance of soul and body is discussed far less, as if this is not as controversial - as if people already use their body in this way, as nothing more than a medium for expression. The body on its own has no authoritative meaning, its meaning is dictated by the soul of the person. This is a form of explicit dualism, not in the sense that the body is bad and the soul good, but in the sense that the soul has meaning and the body doesn't.

As a christian, I can sympathize with this way of thinking, but within limits. On the one hand, the soul can live without the body and will do so between death and resurrection. The Catechism speaks about the soul as being "created immediately by God", and it "does not perish" at death (nr. 366). But, at the same time, the Catechism links the body very closely to the soul, speaking about the soul as the form of the body (nr. 365); together they are "one nature". It is especially this last part that I see as a possible correction to the way the body is depicted in Severance. Body and soul are closely related, you cannot mix souls and bodies.

Virtual Machines

For my work, I regularly use something that is called a virtual machine. This is an environment with a complete software installation (like, Windows 11, Word, Excel) which runs completely isolated and can be easily manipulated inside a computer. It is a computer in a computer, as it were. This virtual machine is like the soul in Severance, where the physical computer is like the body. With a single click this virtual machine can be replaced by a completely different one, while the physical computer stays the same - so it shares, for instance, the same display, keyboard and mouse, but it does different things with it. The virtual machines offers the actual functionality, the physical computer will determine the limits of this functionality. And you can easily move a virtual machine to another physical computer to run it there.

Now, with virtual machines, if you run one, shut it down and start another, the second machine won't know anything about the first one. But - it is also possible to run two machines at the same time on the same physical computer, and then those machines are able communicate with each other. Looking at Mark, we see that in season 1, the elevator in fact functions as a switch that turns one machine off and the other on. But in season 2, he starts with the re-integration process, which means that both the Innie and Outie will be active at the same time; like two machines operating simultaneously. 

I'm interested to see where this analogy between Innies and Outies and running virtual machines will work and where it will break down!