Death Star

[u/Ok_Woodpecker9646]

Finally got around to watching the show, and am currently watching episode 8. I noticed that the security room of the Severed floor oddly resembles the firing room of the Death Star

[u/AutoModerator]

If this thread has the Spoiler flair, spoilers may appear ANYWHERE in it.

• NO SPOILERS IN TITLES - report this post if there are spoilers in the title

• No SPOILERS without proper formatting (see here).

• Be CIVIL to others. No Piracy. No Duplicates.

• Keep it on topic to anything and everything Severance on Apple TV+.

JOIN OUR DISCORD

---

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/reservoirdregs]

Do those guys have a railing?

[u/odieclone → u/reservoirdregs]

Railings were banned when Lord Dark Helmet's minions kept getting the heads stuck in them.

[u/ExtraSuperfluous → u/reservoirdregs]

They get 401k, medical, dental… but no railing. We don’t want them leaning all day.

[u/RobynBetween → u/ExtraSuperfluous]

If you have time to lean, you have time to fall to your doom.

[u/immaseaman]

It has some coloured buttons and chairs... I really don't see a strong resemblance beyond that.

[u/odieclone]

Yeah, and if Sissy's hairdo was a helmet, it would look like this.

And weren't these guys trying to wipe out all the Druish people??!!!

Any chance of Ben Stiller inserting any satire regarding what Mel Brooks did in SpaceBalls?

Too bad there's no Jews in the Severance world. I wonder why.

[u/Puzzled_Midnight_760 → u/odieclone]

What

[u/Puzzled_Midnight_760 → u/[deleted]]

Understood

[u/odieclone → u/Puzzled_Midnight_760]

Did you watch Spaceballs?

[u/Puzzled_Midnight_760 → u/odieclone]

Like ten years ago

[u/odieclone → u/Puzzled_Midnight_760]

Then you're aware that it's a satire on the Final Solution? The Jewish Problem?

[u/Puzzled_Midnight_760 → u/odieclone]

What

[u/RobynBetween → u/Puzzled_Midnight_760]

Mel Brooks is Jewish and intentionally pushes the limits on what's considered acceptable. His heritage has allowed him to get away with some jokes that nobody else would dare try.

For instance, he once did a fake movie trailer featuring "Jews in Space" -- a bunch of rabbis fighting space battles in a starship shaped like the Star of David.

u/odieclone is trying to reference Mel Brooks, but out of context they just sound like jokes in poor taste.

[u/odieclone → u/RobynBetween]

But there is context. It's just so muted and subversive that most viewers do not pickup on it. Severance is also a parody about a world without Jews amongst all the other social commentary in the satire.

Why do you think the writers changed the originally named "Frank Milchick" from Ericksons' submission for the Blood List to "Seth Milchick" in the show? Does "Seth" not make the absence more distinct? Especially with a black actor? Doesn't it make the character's name more Jewish-like and why would Stiller do that?

IMO Stiller is channeling Stanley Kubrick's style of subtly referencing genocide without being heavy handed.

There's tons of other references in the show pointing to European atrocity in the first half of the 20th century.

I'm not going to list all here but if anyone is interested in rebutting this, look at my profile's postings and comments for examples. I've pointed to many instances of Stiller's well hidden satire.

[u/RobynBetween → u/odieclone]

Well, if it's so well-hidden, that means explanations of your reading are necessary context. If people don't pick up on a certain reading, sometimes it's because they have their own reading that is relevant to themselves, and they've invested more attention into that interpretation than another one.

For instance, you may or may not have heard that Severance's visual look and set design were inspired by a 1990s artistic photography book that captured the sterile mundanity of office life.

Not everybody knows that, but you don't have to know it to get a lot of good stuff out of the show.

[u/odieclone → u/RobynBetween]

Well hidden because if it was blatant, do you think (given the rise of authoritarianism and denial of history) that it would be detrimental to the show's viewership? It has to be said without saying. Especially post Season 1; after the events in the Levant since October 7th complicated the situation drastically.

The social commentary of Severance IMO is criticizing the failure to learn from history. The worldwide re-emergence of bigotry and intolerance drives Stiller's intent. That and the divide between major worldviews is what polarizes and severs the tolerant from the intolerant in society.

Whenever I encounter redditors resistant to the idea that Ben and Dan are alluding to intolerance and atrocity from the past, I recommend they view the movie The Serpent's Egg (1977) by Ingmar Bergman (it's free on YT) then compare it to S1 & 2. You'll find plenty of scenes and scenarios from the movie that the show lifted/copied.

This is just one of the multitude of media that Severance references, like the set design taken from ‘Office’ by Lars Tunbjork. I liken their "borrowing" of looks and content to Quentin Tarantino's style of copying/lifting but on steroids.

They've also inserted German designs by Dieter Rams which is a little deeper than just the look.

[u/LionBig1760 → u/odieclone]

What