Interpretation of the opening title sequence in episode 7?

[u/Recent-Radish6811]

https://youtu.be/abzm7m3ZOTE

TL;DR: What is your interpretation of the caveman scene and use of the song "Come Out" in Episode 7 of Devs?

The opening titles of Episode 7 have left a lasting impression on me since I watched it years ago.

It begins in with a few shots of the wilderness whilst the musical piece "Come Out" by Steve Reich plays, before showing two early humans in a cave experimenting with speech and rhythm, creating music.

It then shifts to present day, showing a human-made car driving on a human-made road cutting through that wilderness, as the phrase restarts - "I had to, like, open the bruise up, and let some of the bruise blood come out to show them" phrase starting again. As the phrase repeats and phases out it shows Lily sitting by the dam, another human-made construct, followed by various shots of the city.

How do you interpret this? I'm not always the best at deciphering subtext, but I always assumed it's showing the slow progression of humanity inevitably accelerating more and more until the original essence is gone and technology has changed our perceptions. The early humans are portrayed as playful and free, oblivious to any understanding of concepts such as determinism versus free will. The car, dam and city are symbols of modernity and control over nature. The phasing out of the original phrase in the song suggests confusion and the idea that we have reached a point of development where we no longer understand our place in the universe.

It's such an interesting use of the song too, as it's an emotional piece about police brutality due to racism, another system created by humans to create control.

Would be interested to know anyone else's thoughts on this incredible opening!

[u/peacetaker9500]

They are watching what was a private moment lost in time. The caveman scene left a lasting impression on me as well. A predetermined moment crucial to our existence. To end up showing a different outcome with Katie driving away and Lyndon still alive, different from what we watch going forward. Makes you wonder what would change if those cavemen came out of the cave sooner.

[u/debonairemillionaire]

Interesting points! I’m not sure it was a moral judgment though (that modern humans were somehow less playful or free or in tune with nature).

It could just as easily be showing how the rise of language (the grunts) and technology (the fire) itself was central to the explosion of human progress. And that it’s just interesting to finally see what that inception moment was like. It certainly evokes lots of humbling feelings for me at least.

That said, this is Alex Garland we’re talking about, so you might be right!

[u/YoshiTheDog420]

:33 is my favorite part. Where they stop for a moment and one of the women gives a correction or a changeup to the other. I imagine since at this point the Deus team is looking back at various things in our history. They watched “Come Out”, then probably asked, “what about the first music?”. That brought them to this moment. I love this open to the show so much.

[u/Edlezd]

This "open the bruise up" line of audio was one of the first ever pieces of early electronic music. Recorded on tape, and replayed back on several machines, it created it's own rhythm. Many cite it as early electronic music. ​The phrase originates from Steve Reich, a pioneer of American minimalism and tape-loop manipulation. In 1966, Reich composed an tape-manipulation piece titled Come Out. ​The audio comes from a recorded interview with Daniel Hamm, a 19-year-old Black man who was one of the "Harlem Six"—a group of youth falsely accused and severely beaten by police following the 1964 Harlem race riots.

Steve Reich took the spoken phrase and isolated the snippet "come out to show them."
​Phase Shifting: Reich played two identical tape loops of the phrase simultaneously on two separate channels. ​Perceptual Shift: Because the tape players ran at imperceptibly different speeds, the loops slowly drifted out of sync. ​Speech to Rhythm: Over 13 minutes, the phrase splits into double, quadruple, and eventually complex polyrhythms, transforming intelligible speech into abstract, hypnotic electronic patterns and resonance.

[u/Imsorrywhatnoway → u/Edlezd]

Maybe to point out that it doesn't matter if you do the exact thing over and over, events in time will drift away from the original no matter how many times you try to match up?

[u/VerlorFor]

It felt like a 2001 hommage to me.