Selling 'Severance': what happens when Apple offers us a critique of capitalism?

MA Global Media and Digital Cultures student, Claudio Antonio de Angelis, discusses the irony at the heart of the dystopian workplace thriller Severance, available on Apple TV.

Severance is one of the most striking recent critiques of corporate life. It shows a world where work does not just take people’s time, but splits their identity in two. Employees at Lumon Industries undergo a procedure that separates their work memories from their personal memories, turning 'work-life balance' into something sinister. Yet the more I watched the series, the harder it became to ignore a deeper irony: this anti-corporate story is sold to us by Apple TV, part of a global technology company whose own brand depends on sleek design, closed ecosystems and platform control.

Why Severance feels so familiar

The horror of Severance is not simply that Lumon Industries controls its workers, it is that the workers are made to accept that control as normal. Their tasks are obscure, their office rituals are absurd, and their identities are split so completely that the 'innie' exists only to work. 

This is where the series connects with the Frankfurt School’s critique of the culture industry. 

For Adorno and Horkheimer, capitalist media did not just entertain people, it trained them to accept the world as it was, turning culture into a product shaped by the same logic as the factory. Severance updates this fear for the platform age: work becomes total, identity becomes manageable, and even rebellion risks becoming part of the system.

The Apple TV paradox

This is where the contradiction becomes difficult to ignore. Severance asks us to distrust the corporation, but we encounter that message through Apple TV, a subscription platform owned by one of the world’s most powerful technology companies. 

Apple does not need to reject anti-capitalist critique. It can host it, package it beautifully, and turn it into prestige television. 

In that sense, the show becomes part of the very platform logic it appears to challenge. Its critique of corporate secrecy, surveillance and control is transformed into something we consume inside Apple’s own branded ecosystem. This is precisely what makes Severance such a useful example of platform capitalism. Dissent is not censored, but commodified. The system sells us the feeling of critique while remaining fundamentally untouched.

Critique, but on subscription

The problem is not only that Apple sells us a critique of capitalism. It is also how that critique reaches us – through subscription, recommendation systems and platform exclusivity. 

Severance may make viewers suspicious of corporate power, but it does so inside a fragmented streaming landscape where cultural experiences are increasingly personalised and isolated. 

Instead of gathering around shared public texts, audiences are split across Netflix, Apple TV, Disney+, Amazon and countless other platforms. Critique becomes something we watch alone, discuss in niche online spaces, and then move on from when the next recommendation appears. This creates a strange form of political passivity. We recognise the problem, enjoy the discomfort, maybe share a meme – but the critique remains safely contained within the rhythms of consumption.

Why it still matters

This makes Severance both powerful and limited. On one hand, it exposes something real about contemporary capitalism: work reaches into identity, corporations present control as care, and even our leisure is organised through platforms. On the other hand, the show’s critique is absorbed by the same system it questions. Apple can sell us corporate dystopia without threatening its own corporate power. That is the pessimistic lesson of the culture industry: capitalism does not always silence criticism. Often, it turns criticism into content.

Yet this does not mean Severance is pointless. If critical stories do not occupy mainstream platforms, those spaces will not remain empty. They will be filled by safer, flatter and less challenging forms of entertainment. For me, this is also where the MA in Global Media and Digital Cultures at SOAS becomes relevant. The programme has helped me approach media not only as something to watch, but as something to question: who produces it, who profits from it, what kinds of power it makes visible, and what kinds it leaves untouched.

The task, then, is not to stop at Severance, but to use it as a beginning: a way to question the platforms we watch, the corporations behind them, and the systems that turn even discomfort into something we can stream.

Main photo picture © Kate Sade, Unsplash.