“Severance,” the Gothic Double, and Our Increasingly Fractured Selves

Summary

Critics at Large | The New Yorker
Episode Summary: “Severance,” the Gothic Double, and Our Increasingly Fractured Selves
Release Date: February 27, 2025

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Introduction to the Episode

In this episode of Critics at Large, The New Yorker team delves deep into the intricate themes of duality and fractured identities as portrayed in the acclaimed TV series "Severance." Hosted by Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Frye, and Alexandra Schwartz, the discussion expands beyond the show to explore the enduring trope of the double in literature and modern media, tying it to contemporary societal issues.

"Severance" Season Two: Expanding the Universe

The conversation begins with an overview of "Severance," particularly its second season, which has recently premiered on Apple TV and surpassed Ted Lasso as Apple's most-watched series ever (10:43). The hosts highlight how the show continues to explore the concept of severed selves—Innies (work selves) and Outies (home selves)—and the evolving power dynamics between these identities.

Alex Schwartz provides a masterful synopsis of the show, explaining how it follows office workers at Lumen Industries who undergo a procedure to separate their work and personal lives neurologically (11:38). The second season intensifies the narrative by focusing on the protagonists' quest to reconnect and understand the true nature of their severed existences.

The Enduring Trope of the Double

The episode transitions into a broader discussion on the theme of the double, a motif that has persisted in literature and media for centuries. Nomi Frye poses the central question: "Why has the trope of the double endured, and why is it making a comeback in our entertainment right now?" (05:03).

Vincent Cunningham references classic literature like Frankenstein as examples of the double, emphasizing its role in reflecting creators' fears and societal anxieties (03:48). Alex Schwartz adds examples from diverse genres, including The Shining and classic works by Dostoevsky and Poe, illustrating the double's versatility in expressing internal and external conflicts (04:19).

Philosophical and Psychological Underpinnings

The discussion delves into the philosophical and psychological aspects of the double. Alex Schwartz introduces a Freudian perspective, explaining Freud's concept of the "uncanny" and how encountering a double can evoke deep-seated fears and existential questions (30:25). Nomi Frye connects this to the show's portrayal of severed selves, likening the severance process to psychoanalytic repression and the struggle to reconcile different aspects of the self (31:41).

Vincent Cunningham expands on the idea by likening the double to the Apostle Paul's internal conflict between spiritual aspirations and carnal desires, highlighting the universal struggle for wholeness and identity (32:57).

Doubles in Modern Culture and Media

The hosts explore how the theme of doubles manifests in contemporary culture and media. Alex Schwartz discusses the prevalence of avatars and social media personas as modern doubles, reflecting societal pressures to curate idealized versions of oneself (37:06). Nomi Frye elaborates on this by pointing out how influencers navigate their online and offline identities, often oscillating between authenticity and performance (38:24).

The conversation also touches on the concept of "Post Traumatic Split" as seen in Severance, where trauma leads to a division of the self, prompting questions about the permissibility of happiness and the integration of fractured identities (44:32).

Comparative Analysis with Other Works

The episode draws parallels between Severance and other cultural works that explore the double. Vincent Cunningham mentions Nickel Boys and A Different Man as examples where characters confront their doubles, leading to profound personal and societal revelations (22:57).

Nomi Frye references The Parent Trap as a positive portrayal of doubles, contrasting with the more ominous representations in horror and psychological thrillers (33:48). Alex Schwartz further contrasts these by discussing Shakespearean doubles, such as Rosalind's transformation in As You Like It, highlighting the versatility of the double in different narrative contexts (35:06).

The Double in Historical Context

Alex Schwartz takes the discussion back to the Victorian era, identifying it as the birth of the modern double, especially in Gothic literature. He explains how the expansion of the British Empire introduced ethnic myths and the concept of the terrifying doppelgänger into English literature, leading to horror moving from setting-based to self-based narratives (29:07).

Vincent Cunningham adds that the double serves as a reflection of societal and personal traumas, embodying the fragmentation and quest for identity that persist through different historical periods (33:12).

Contemporary Doubles and Future Implications

The hosts speculate on the future of the double trope, asserting its inevitability due to the inherent human struggle with identity and wholeness. Vincent Cunningham suggests that the double will always exist as a symbol of the unresolved internal conflicts and the desire for an ideal self (45:57).

Alex Schwartz emphasizes that as life progresses and choices are made, the allure and fear of the unlived life keep the double as a potent metaphor for personal and societal division (47:26).

Conclusion: The Double’s Enduring Relevance

In wrapping up, the trio agrees that the double remains a fundamental and versatile trope in storytelling, capable of encapsulating the complexities of human identity, societal pressures, and existential fears. The episode concludes by affirming that as long as humans grapple with questions of self and existence, the double will continue to be a compelling narrative device.

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Notable Quotes

• Nomi Frye: "Is Severance giving us a new version of the double? Like, what is the kind of larger point it's trying to make?" (18:06)

• Alex Schwartz: "Every era gets the doubling it needs." (18:11)

• Vincent Cunningham: "I think the double will always exist because of the hope of... the hope for wholeness." (45:57)

• Alex Schwartz: "The terror of the double, the terror of encountering yourself, is a fundamental human terror. It's cross-cultural. It endures." (47:26)

Key Takeaways

1. "Severance" as a Reflection of Modern Identity: The show encapsulates contemporary anxieties about work-life balance, personal identity, and the fragmentation of the self.

2. Historical Roots of the Double: The double is an age-old trope that has evolved from Gothic literature to modern media, continuously adapting to reflect societal changes.

3. Psychological Dimensions: The double serves as a metaphor for internal conflicts, trauma, and the human desire for a unified self.

4. Modern Manifestations: In the digital age, avatars and social media personas represent new forms of doubles, highlighting issues of authenticity and self-perception.

5. Enduring Relevance: The double remains a powerful narrative tool because it addresses universal human experiences and fears, ensuring its continued presence in storytelling.

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This comprehensive exploration in Critics at Large not only dissects "Severance" but also situates the theme of the double within a broader cultural and historical context, offering listeners profound insights into why this motif remains so pivotal in understanding ourselves and our society.

Transcript

[Nomi Frye]

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try [e-mail], progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states.

[Vincent Cunningham]

We the people shape our country's story. America250 is gearing up to celebrate the 250th anniversary of of the founding of America's democracy by collecting and preserving diverse stories from across the nation. Nominate any living person you think has a story to be preserved and celebrated for generations to come. Help tell our American story, every unique version of it. Visit america250.org nominate to submit. Welcome to Critics at Large, a podcast from the New Yorker. Hello there. I'm Vincent Cunningham.

[Alex Schwartz]

I'm Alex Schwartz.

[Nomi Frye]

And I'm Nomi Frye. Each week on this show, we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now and how we got here. Hello, Alex S. Yes, hello. Hello, Vincent C. Hello, Naomi F. So traditionally, this time of year is all about movies. We're coming up towards the Oscars, my friends, and, you know, it's all about the magic of cinema. But the occasion for today's episode has to do with tv, actually. And one show that's very much on our mind right now is Severance.

[Alex Schwartz]

Hello, my name is Mark S. And I have, of my own free accord, elected to undergo the procedure known as severance.

[Nomi Frye]

It follows a cohort of office workers at a corporation called Lumen. Now, the twist is these workers have undergone a kind of neurological procedure that separates their work selves, what's called on the show Innies, from their home selves that are called on the show Outies.

[Alex Schwartz]

I acknowledge that once the procedure is complete, I will be unable to access my personal memories whilst on the severed.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Floor, say gratitude, nor will I retain work memories.

[Nomi Frye]

This is the second season of this show that started coming out a few weeks ago on Apple tv. If season one was kind of largely focused on the office politics and the office doings of the Innies and kind of like the mysteries that they begin to uncover within the Office, the lens in this second season kind of widens a little bit to kind of think about the power dynamics between the Innies and the Outies, what happens when each of these respective identities develop their own priorities and their own agency or agencies, if you will. And this theme of doubling, kind of like the idea of a split self segmented into discrete pieces, is in fact, showing up a lot right now. It's front and center in severance. It's actually, I mean, to go back to the Oscars, it's actually in some of the big Oscars movies, there's the substance. Have you ever dreamt of a better version of yourself?

[Alex Schwartz]

Younger, more beautiful?

[Nomi Frye]

There's a different man. Which has to do with kind of the doubling of the self, the doubling of the protagonist.

[Alex Schwartz]

That guy's amazing.

[Vincent Cunningham]

What do you know about him? Who is he? He's leading a double life.

[Nomi Frye]

I'm saying Mysterio. But really the theme of the double has always been with us, it's nothing new. What are some examples that come immediately to your guys mind when you think of the double?

[Vincent Cunningham]

One thing I think about, you know, is the idea of the monster as double for creator. So I was thinking about Frankenstein a lot, definitely, when we were going with this and another Oscar movie that's out right now, which is the Apprentice and the way that Trump is sort of like the Frankenstein's monster of Roy Cohn and how mentor and mentee relationships become exercises in Dublin.

[Nomi Frye]

Oh, my God, I love that analysis. I think it's so true. I didn't think of that.

[Alex Schwartz]

I mean, may I just mention the little Shining Girls Come play with us.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Oh, no.

[Alex Schwartz]

There are two of them. Also, every Halloween, my neighbors across the street put out doppelgangers of the Shining girls. Terrifying, because two is scarier than one. And the thing about two being scarier than one is what the devil is all about. Like, I go right back to the 19th century, as I so often do. You know, we got Dostoevsky's the Double. We got William Wilson by Edgar Allan poe. We got Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Either your double is the evil version of you, or your double is coming to take over your life and destroy you.

[Vincent Cunningham]

That's right.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah. I mean, it's not good, but it's. But it's. But it's fascinating today what's on the docket is this. Split personalities, severed selves, ominous doppelgangers.

[Alex Schwartz]

Wow.

[Nomi Frye]

We've got it all. And we're gonna figure out, or we're gonna try to figure out why this trope of the double has been with us for so long. And also why it's making a comeback in our entertainment right now. What is it about the double that makes sense for this moment in time? And as a bonus, you guys, we're checking in on the Oscars races and making some predictions because this, the season, that's the day on Critics at large. Doubles yesterday, today, forever. Okay, Doubles, doubles.

[Alex Schwartz]

Toils and troubles.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I like that.

[Nomi Frye]

Okay, you guys. So I just want to start with something that I think our listeners should know. How we're spending Oscars night. No, it won't be on the couch with some popcorn and a beer.

[Alex Schwartz]

Certainly not. We are on the clock.

[Vincent Cunningham]

That's right.

[Alex Schwartz]

We're going to be live blogging this thing.

[Nomi Frye]

No rest for the wicked.

[Alex Schwartz]

That's right. We're going to be chatting on your screens, on the New Yorker website, newyorker.com New Yorker.com about everything that's going on at that ceremony.

[Nomi Frye]

I mean, last year we did it. Last year we did. Sipping flat champagne.

[Alex Schwartz]

Damn, is it glamorous.

[Nomi Frye]

So glamorous. Talking about like the Rock's too tight suit, as we did last year.

[Vincent Cunningham]

That's right.

[Nomi Frye]

I recall Vincent saying it looks like an oil slick.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I did. And then you said it was mouse hued.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah, he was veritably bursting out of his mouse hued trousers.

[Alex Schwartz]

And maybe he will be again.

[Nomi Frye]

I mean, we need to hope.

[Alex Schwartz]

This is why you need to tune in. It feels like a party.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah. What are the races you'll be watching most closely?

[Vincent Cunningham]

I think I've started to care a little bit about lead actor just because I really wanna see Kieran Culkin win for a Real Pain. I watched A Real Pain in the Modern Way, which is on my laptop the other day. And it's not a perfect movie, but it's just one of my favorite kinds of movies, which is like just a bunch of talking. I don't know, there's something charming about it. And Culkin was like just throwing his sort of slightly psychopathic fastball, you know?

[Nomi Frye]

Gotta love that psychopath.

[Alex Schwartz]

You know, there's just one problem with this, Vincent, which is that Kieran Culkin is nominated for best supporting actor.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Oh, no.

[Alex Schwartz]

But maybe that is the race now to get invested in because we got Jeremy Strong coming in hot from the Apprentice also in that one.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Right?

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is what I'm saying. Best supporting Guy Pearson, the Brutalist. I actually thought that was an excellent performance, which is going under recognized. And maybe the award that I would most like to see that film get for Guy Pearce. It's the Pierce Essance.

[Nomi Frye]

It's the Pierce essence. I have to say that I thought Jeremy Strong, much like Roger Stone, I thought Jeremy Strong's performance as Roy Cohn was excellent. I'm interested in the lead actress race.

[Alex Schwartz]

Because I'm guessing that you're a big Demi Moore person. We know that you love the substance.

[Nomi Frye]

Yes.

[Alex Schwartz]

We know that you love the 1980s.

[Nomi Frye]

Yes.

[Alex Schwartz]

These two things combine.

[Nomi Frye]

It's true. And I know that Mikey Madison of Honora fame is a strong contender for the prize, which is kind of surprising in a way because she's 25 and she hasn't done much. So it'll be kind of like an interesting face off substance. Like perhaps the older actress, perhaps for many years, kind of like overlooked, shunted to the side. And this like, very young, untried actress.

[Alex Schwartz]

She's been tried. She's in a movie that's nominated. I say let Mikey have it. You only have to win for the movie you're in. You do not have to win for your entire body of work.

[Nomi Frye]

I guess so.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Nomi looks pained.

[Nomi Frye]

Well, I just.

[Alex Schwartz]

I'm here to stir some stuff up.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah. I mean, as Morrissey once said, you just haven't earned it yet, baby. Anyway, is there anything that you'd swear on the Bible, Wow, that is gonna. A prediction that is gonna come to pass. I mean, maybe the stakes are too high. Maybe.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I think it's one of those. Because there's no clear frontrunners. I think I wouldn't be surprised by anything. I do think that there's a chance that we will see the true reign of Timothy start to rain down. I feel like Oscar voters like Timothee. Shalom.

[Alex Schwartz]

You're ready for it.

[Nomi Frye]

Well, he got a sad glass, and.

[Alex Schwartz]

I'm so ready for it.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I like Shalom.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah, I mean, I mean, listen, I noted shallow. As I have already said on this podcast, I believe I was surprised by my love of a complete unknown. I even shed some tears.

[Vincent Cunningham]

So you did say you were moved. You said you were moved. I can't remember if you mentioned the tears.

[Nomi Frye]

I literally cried several times.

[Alex Schwartz]

Oh, my God.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah. It's kind of hard to know who's gonna come out on top. But, you know, you guys, for this, you'll have to follow us.

[Alex Schwartz]

That's right.

[Nomi Frye]

We'll be there and see us, you know, blog and quip and, you know, the whole deal, the whole thing. So, okay, onto our topic of the day. Doubles, doppelgangers, evil twins. Let's start with Severance. The second season of the show premiered last month. Executive produced by Ben Stiller, created by Dan Erickson, directed many of the episodes, directed by Stiller himself. It's actually. This is an interesting factoid. Just recently surpassed Ted Lasso to become Apple's most watched series ever.

[Alex Schwartz]

Thank God.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah. Which is, you know, the lasso verse says, we're done with that.

[Alex Schwartz]

Oh, good.

[Nomi Frye]

And now we're in the Lumenverse. You know, the first question I guess I want to ask you guys is, were you fans of the show from the beginning? Like, did you watch the first season when it. It first aired?

[Alex Schwartz]

I did. I did. I watched the first season.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Me too.

[Alex Schwartz]

I was left on tenterhooks.

[Nomi Frye]

Okay.

[Alex Schwartz]

I then proceeded to live my life. Exactly.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Alex Schwartz]

I then proceeded to live my life for three years and returned to the show as if I had been severed, trying desperately to remember what had happened. And I'm finding that it's coming back to me.

[Nomi Frye]

So for those of us who are in need of kind of a reminder, perhaps Alex would like to do the synopsis honors. Or Vincent, or, I mean, or me. Whoever wants to go there. The floor is open.

[Alex Schwartz]

All right, I'm gonna try it. I'm gonna try it. Let's see what goes down.

[Nomi Frye]

Okay.

[Alex Schwartz]

So Severance takes place in a cold world, in a kind of permanent late January, February, in a town in a rural area we don't exactly know where, except that it's the United States. And this town is dominated by something called Lumen Industries, which is God knows what. And Lumen has pioneered this technique called severance, where workers, some workers who go to work for this company can have a chip implanted in their brains that allows their experiences outside the building to be completely separated or severed from their work experiences inside the building. They come in, they click their passes, they go into an elevator, they do a little flutter thing with their eyes, and they emerge having no memory of what happened except for the day before work. And the workspace is very strange. And what starts to happen in season one is that a number of things go on where this severed Workers try to figure out what is actually going on at Lumen and outside of Lumen. They're led by a character called Mark Scout, who inside the building is known simply as Mark S, who is played by Adam Scott, who, outside his outy self, is very depressed because his wife has died in a car accident. He's a widower. He can't get over his grief. This is the reason why he's chosen to become Severed. And by the end of season one, it's revealed to Mark that, in fact, his wife is actually alive and working at Lumen. And that's where season two picks up. They're trying to find her, and they're also trying to figure out the connection between the outside world and the inside World.

[Nomi Frye]

Okay, this was a masterful synopsis, Alex.

[Alex Schwartz]

Thank you.

[Nomi Frye]

I mean, I was always really shitty at like logic and philosophy. Kind of like these big abstract questions of like, the self and like, what does it mean to. You know, it always seemed kind of like math to me. And I thought the show did a really good job, especially in the first season of kind of like dealing with these hefty, deeply conceptual, metaphysical notions. And I was wondering, you guys, what you thought about the second season. Kind of like how it expands on these kind of like deep philosophical, metaphysical questions that the show builds up.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Well, I think there is definitely plot happening.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah.

[Vincent Cunningham]

But what I like about it is that season two, honestly, I have to say it's one of my favorite seasons of TV in the past, like five years. Oh, well, I love season two of Severance. It's just like a lot of odd images. They go into a. The indies go into a room and there's a sort of weird pastoral scene with a bunch of goats and stuff. They're just amazing images. But because the premise, right, you have this person inside, this person outside, never, except in the many exceptions that we are witnessing, the twain shall meet. Because the premise is so strong, you can do a lot of bending of the premise by asking questions, well, what if they meet out here but they haven't met inside? Or all these what if questions can sort of stretch the premise such that the. It seems to me that the show in the second season has become more fractal, more like prismatic in shape as a result. It gets blurry.

[Nomi Frye]

It gets blurry. And I think it expands the world of the show in really interesting ways. For instance, there's Dylan, Dylan G. And management approaches Dylan G. And says, if you're a good worker and you don't share this with your co workers, will allow for your family, for your wife. You have a wife. Her name is Gretchen. And we're gonna allow for short visitation.

[Alex Schwartz]

We have three kids.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Right.

[Alex Schwartz]

And you know, he or my husband.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Has had trouble keeping other jobs. He dumb?

[Nomi Frye]

No.

[Vincent Cunningham]

He a dick? No.

[Nomi Frye]

What is wrong with him?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Oh, nothing's wrong with him. He just. He never quite found his thing.

[Nomi Frye]

So he's actually.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Kind of a fuck up.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah. I mean, to come back to what you were saying, Vincent, like, you're right that we're in this world in which all the permutations of this very seemingly simple idea start to be explored and you start to realize how anarchic the world of the double is. One thing that's interesting about the way the double is treated on Severance is that everyone is voluntarily doubling themselves. But of course, because there's no correspondence until there is between the two doubles, the one doing the choosing is kind of totally out of power. There's a really interesting moment. This is a mini spoiler. I just want to give a huge warning to anyone who has not started the show yet. But there's a character called Helly R. We discover at the end of season one that Helly R is actually. Her Audi is Helena Egan. She's the inheritor of the Dynasty that controls Lumen. And her outtie Persona is basically as evil nefarious as you can be. She's like running this whole machine that is keeping all these innies trapped, doing this data refinement stuff. And yet her innie is a very sympathetic person who wants to escape. And at the beginning of season two, Helyar's Audi impersonates her innie. And what happens when Ini Helyar realizes that this has happened is actually quite heartrending because she starts to refer to herself as she.

[Nomi Frye]

That she used me to track my friends, use my body to get close to you. That she dresses me in the morning like I'm a baby. That she controls me and this company and all of us. It's disgusting. I mean, is. Is there. Is the show kind of. Is Severance giving us a new. With the innies and the outies? Is it giving us a new version of the double? Like, what is the kind of larger point it's trying to make?

[Alex Schwartz]

I guess what I'd say is every era gets the doubling it needs.

[Nomi Frye]

Nice.

[Alex Schwartz]

And we're gonna go and talk about different eras and how that occurred. But in this era, I do think one point that the doubling in the show Severance is making is a fairly straightforward Marxist point about the alienation of the workforce.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah.

[Alex Schwartz]

So I think that's the kind of contemporary point that's being made about work. And then I think the. What season two is going towards is a kind of bigger point, a more, I wanna say, spiritual point, about what it might mean to become two different people who start to develop two different experiences. And I know we're gonna talk about Freud because I think there was a Freudian reading of this show to be done. But I think a lot of it has to do with the life unlived. What would happen if I fell in love with a different person? What would happen if I didn't have this condition? All of these different questions start to get explored and it quick to reconcile who has the rights to experience and to call themselves a self.

[Nomi Frye]

I mean, it's a classic sliding Doors Gwyneth Paltrow situation.

[Alex Schwartz]

A classic sliding doors.

[Nomi Frye]

You know, is it like a short haired blonde moment or is it a long brunette moment?

[Alex Schwartz]

These are the questions of life.

[Nomi Frye]

Okay, guys, we're about to dive deep into the double verse. Do you want to give us a hint of your favorite double?

[Alex Schwartz]

I just love a Victorian gentleman split in two.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I like it when a lady in the 1920s decides she doesn't want to be black anymore.

[Nomi Frye]

I love a scary laugh from the beyond. Mr. Hyde.

[Alex Schwartz]

Hi there. I'm Lale Arakoghlou, host of Women who Travel. At the start of this year, I spoke to my friends and colleagues at Conde Nast Traveller, Megan Sparel and Arti Menon, who've masterminded a bumper list of where to travel in 2025. It was fascinating to hear the places they're excited about, like Kodiak island in Alaska.

[Nomi Frye]

The thing that I'm really excited about is the native owned Kodiak Brown Bear Center.

[Alex Schwartz]

And if you stay in one of their lovely cottages, there's the opportunity to share space with the largest subspecies of brown bear in the world. And this both terrifies me and makes.

[Nomi Frye]

Me all warm and tingly inside.

[Alex Schwartz]

In 2025, there's going to be like banya style steam baths and saunas and whatnot. So you can come face to face with a bear and then go to your steam bath to face to face. If I come face to face with.

[Nomi Frye]

A bear, I better get a steam bath or share the steam bath with a bear. I mean, stranger things have happened.

[Alex Schwartz]

Join me on Women who Travel for more adventures. Wherever you get your podcasts.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Before we get back to the episode, we've got news. We're doing a special live event that's coming right up and we want to see you there. Maybe we need to see you there. I don't know. On March 11th at the Bellhouse in Brooklyn, we're doing a live show about a classic conundrum for critics.

[Nomi Frye]

What happens when you write a review and you get it wrong?

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, we're doing this live on stage.

[Nomi Frye]

I know. That's very brave of us, right?

[Alex Schwartz]

Absolutely. We will be looking back at some of the classic pieces of New Yorker criticism that may have missed the mark. Like, for example, a scathing review that declared the wizard of Oz a stinkeroo marred by eye straining Technicolor.

[Nomi Frye]

Not a stinkeroo.

[Alex Schwartz]

Oh, yes. And of course, we will also talk about critics who got it right as.

[Nomi Frye]

Well, so if you're in New York or if you feel like traveling, come see us live at the bell House on March 11th. Bring a friend. Don't come alone. Or you can come alone as well. Anyway, we'll see you there. All right, back to the episode. We've been talking severance, but there's a lot to say about. Weirdly, the Oscars race is kind of replete with. With. With doubles as well. We have the substance Coralie Forge, Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley starring movie about a woman who decides she's sick of, you know, growing older and wants to take kind of like an off market, you know, scary black market drug to make her young again. That results in a young hot version of herself emerging from a crack in her back. And the kind of like sharing of life seven days at a time between these two bodies that are in some senses one and in some senses two. You know, what other movies are we thinking about with Oscars and doubles?

[Vincent Cunningham]

I mean, they're really. When you start to look at it through this lens, a lot of them have this feature. Even if you think about Wicked and Elphaba and Glinda, the sort of nemesis becomes a kind of mirror of the self. Nickel Boys, which is about, as we've discussed on the show, about two young boys who are in a racist sort of correctional facilities for young boys. Spoiler alert. By the end, you realize that there is an issue of kind of stolen identity, shared identity, and the usefulness or non usefulness of that sort of act of appropriation of the other 100%.

[Alex Schwartz]

Such a great call about Nickel Boys.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah. I mean, even a complete unknown, you know, Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie. You know, we have Bob, the young Timmy Chalamet, you know, about to go electric. His mentor, Woody Guthrie, he emerges, you know, much like sue in the substance from kind of like the Huntington's disease back of his hero and mentor, Woody Guthrie, who's kind of like the old guard of folk music. So it seems that one needs to break free in a sense as kind of a new version, a double in order to make culture move forward. Can you think of other, like, there's a different man.

[Alex Schwartz]

Oh, they're all over the place. A Different man is quite literally about a man who just encounters his double. It's a more classic scenario of meeting the doppelganger in the true uncanny sense where you actually see the other. This, the original character played by Sebastian Stan, has a disfiguring skin condition that makes him very distinctive. And he seems to be one Of a kind. Suddenly he comes across a man who has exactly the same condition. Looks quite like him, but a totally different personality. The movie is all about what would happen if I had a different personality and could be different in the world. And he gets to watch that play out, to his horror, through this other character.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, this theme of doubles, there's a lot of it right now, but it's not just of the now, it's also of the past. Right. It's a trope that shows up over and over again in different periods and different genres. What are some of your favorite doubles stories, you guys?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah, I've been thinking a lot about one of the classic tropes of sort of 1920s and 30s black literature, which is the passing novel as a way of talking about how societal pressure asks you to split or depart from yourself. The great prototype of this is Nella Larson's 1929 novel called Passing. And it's about two friends. So there's this weird.

[Nomi Frye]

If you haven't Double love.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Double.

[Nomi Frye]

It's like the best novel.

[Vincent Cunningham]

It's great. These friends, Claire and Irene, who are both light skinned black women who could potentially pass for white. And one of them, Claire, does do this. And it's about the sort of fractures in the self that happen when one divorces oneself from one's origins and sort of tries to create a shadow self.

[Alex Schwartz]

I love that you bring up the example of passing, Vincent, because as we were thinking about this episode, I started to think in general about code switching, the phenomenon of, you know, switching up your aspect, your voice, whatever, to fit culturally in with the group you happen to be with. So I was thinking of an example of this that's on the comic end rather than the tragic end. Yeah. The great, very, very short Key and Peele sketch called Phone Call.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Because you're my wife and you love the theater and it's your birthday.

[Alex Schwartz]

Key is speaking, you know, to his wife about taking her to the symphony. Suddenly, Jordan Peele appears.

[Vincent Cunningham]

The orchestra is already filled up, but they do have seats that are still.

[Nomi Frye]

Left in the dress circle.

[Vincent Cunningham]

So if you want me to get.

[Nomi Frye]

Them theater tickets right now, I'm gonna do it right now.

[Vincent Cunningham]

What's up, dog? I'm about five minutes away. Yeah, okay.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah, cool. No, they all good singers. They all good singers.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah, son.

[Nomi Frye]

So we were talking about relatively, I mean, I guess passing is like, you know, late 20s, but key and Peele certainly much more contemporary. How far do we go with this double thing? Like, what are some early Examples of this trope. This is not necessarily the earliest example I can think of, but one of my favorites is Jane Eyre.

[Alex Schwartz]

Oh, yes.

[Nomi Frye]

You know, the Bronte, the Charlotte Bronte novel. And the kind of notion of Jane kind of like the friendless, the famously friendless plain governess coming to Thornfield hall to work for Mr. Rochester and help teach his ward his kind of illegitimate daughter. And a spoiler. Sorry, I mean, it's actually not a spoiler. It's actually not a spoiler. It's like, Adele, what is this little French, like little girl doing there? Yeah, he like got her. Her, you know, sort of slutty mother, you know, quote unquote, like pregnant in Paris. And this is a spoiler. Okay, so if you haven't, don't listen, you guys. But Jane discovers, you know, after agreeing to marry Mr. Rochester, that in fact he has a mad wife who he's been keeping in the attic. Bertha Mason, who he brought back from the islands. There's also kind of like a racial component to it. And she, she is like a crazy, A crazy bitch.

[Alex Schwartz]

She's the mad woman in attic.

[Nomi Frye]

She is the mad woman in the attic. And, and there's been much kind of like proto feminist criticism written about what it means for the kind of Victorian, the well behaved Victorian woman to have this crazy, mad, angry double shunted away in order for the angel in the house to be able to kind of thrive and exist. You know, that's a Victorian example. Can you guys think of others?

[Alex Schwartz]

Well, I like that you're taking us to that era because there is a whole kind of double. And this is, I think, I think this is the birth of the modern double. Basically, there is a kind of double that is called the gothic double. And it has to do with exactly that period in the 19th century when this kind of disturbing doppelganger starts to appear in fiction. And one reason for it which is really interesting is because of the expansion of British Empire. I mean, I'm talking mainly about English literature, which is what I know best here. You start to get all kinds of ethnic myths and ideas that creep into England and into the literature. You get, you know, the Celtic fetch, which is this uncanny double, the German doppelganger. The English have their wraith and all of these figures are terrifying. And so what you start to get in the literature of this time is horror moving from a location, moving from a place like the haunted house, which is a kind of double itself of the home to the self. And that I think takes us right into the Freudian era In the late 19th century, early 20th century, when the idea of the double and the other becomes so big in psychoanalysis. So if we can just, like, go to Freud for a second. Are you guys into going to Freud, please? Always. Is that something you guys like to Freud?

[Nomi Frye]

Always.

[Alex Schwartz]

Cause do you know about the Freudian doppelganger and the theory of the double? It's a whole bunch of stuff here.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Come on, let's hear it.

[Nomi Frye]

Give it to us.

[Alex Schwartz]

All right, so Freud writes this essay about the unheimlich, the unhomely, the uncanny. And that's where we're going with all this, the uncanny. And what makes something uncanny is that it has all these resemblances of the familiar, but is different and is other. And he talks about encountering this kind of alternate version of the self. But to encounter the uncanny is absolutely terrifying. Freud has a whole thing about how it's. The child's ego has, you know, in its formation, leaves behind other selves. And encountering those other selves in adulthood brings out the terror. But I kind of think, just to go back to severance for a second, I think severance is doing all kinds of stuff with this, you know, elevator. I think the elevator is all about suppression and repression. Down, down, down, down, down. Getting rid of all that other stuff. And then the little bits of the Audis that start to come out, those are, like, little signs of neurosis that are sending up flares from the interior. And the whole project of severance is much like psychoanalysis to try to go back into what has been repressed and reconcile it with your social world outside.

[Nomi Frye]

I love this. I love this analysis. Yeah, yeah, Vincent.

[Vincent Cunningham]

You know, it's interesting. I was trying to think, what is the first example I can think of in my formation of what a double is? And I was thinking it's kind of like the converted self, Whether it's religious conversion, the kind of conversion that occurs through something like sobriety and aa. The Apostle Paul in the New Testament, he's, like, writing this letter to the Romans, and he's telling them, you know, I love the law of God. I really do. But I find that in myself there's another law warring within me, the law of the flesh. And then he goes into this, like, reverie, oh, wretched man that I am, who's gonna deliver me from the body of this death? He says, it's like, even when I'm trying to do my best, there's this other self within me that wants to pull me back into sin. And I think, so Much of these sort of more modern versions of the repressed self or the monster have correspondences to this pre converted self. I know the things that I liked when I wasn't saved, just when I.

[Nomi Frye]

Thought I was out, they draw me back in. They pull me back in.

[Vincent Cunningham]

And, yeah, I think so much of that 19th century American stuff is about that on so many deep, terrible, dark levels.

[Nomi Frye]

Guys, I have a question for you. Oh, yes. You know, we've talked about a lot of horror versions of the double. We've talked about warring versions of the double. Can you think this is kind of a thought experiment, I guess, of kind of like versions of the double that aren't that. That are kind of like, let's say, the positive of that? I can think this is admittedly like a children's story, and it has its own darknesses, but what was known in, you know, the Anglophone countries as the Parent Trap.

[Alex Schwartz]

I was gonna say three words for you. The Parent Trap. Yeah.

[Nomi Frye]

But I read in translation to Hebrew when I was a child, the original book, Lottie and Lisa. They were named like Lotkin and like Lisa, Ken or whatever in German. I forget the original in the Eric Kestner 1949 book that, you know, became known as the Parent Trap. But the idea of the double as a kind of like. As something that has productive capabilities, you know what I mean? To like, let's work together. Even though we are opposites, we are the same, but we're opposite of each other. And a doubling that was severed but is now kind of brought back together through circumstance.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah. The other positive double I guess I can think of often, for me, comes back to Shakespeare, who uses doubles all the time and for many different effects. One quite famous example is from as yous like it, where Rosalind goes into the Forest of Arden and transforms herself, disguises herself as Ganymede as a young man. And of course, hijinks ensue, as they often do. Yeah, as they. As they often do. There's an enormous amount of fun and enjoyment to be had here, but to be honest with you, I'm struggling to think of another one, another happy doubling.

[Nomi Frye]

So that's it? That's it. Alex, you made this point earlier about how every era gets its own double. What's our era and what's our double? Critics at large. We'll be right back. Hi, I'm Deborah Treisman, fiction editor of the New Yorker. Each week on the Writer's Voice podcast, New Yorker fiction writers read their newly published stories from the magazine. You can hear from Authors like Colson.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Whitehead, Turner nudged Elwood, who had a look of horror on his face. They saw it. Griff wasn't going down. He was going to go for it, no matter what happened after.

[Nomi Frye]

Or Joy Williams, her father was silent. Slowly he passed his hand over his hair. This usually meant that he was traveling to a place immune to her presence, a place that indeed contradicted her presence. She might as well go to lunch, listen to news stories, or dive into our archive of great fiction. You can find the work of your favorite fiction writers and discover new ones. Listen and follow the writer's voice wherever you get your podcasts. You know, Alex, you made this point about how each era gets kind of the double it deserves or the double that suits it, right? So what's the double that we have now? Or doubles, I mean, because there's no single one version, surely. But what is the type of doubling that suits our particular historical moment?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Well, at least one of them, and maybe this is the lowest hanging fruit, but one of them is the avatar, the sort of absolutely. The social media presence that is a kind of performance, a performative agent. One thing about the double, especially when it's willed into being, is that it's an agent of a kind of curation. That the avatar only shows the best moments is the most fun, least conflicted, least neurotic version of the self, which in turn, maybe this is the classic problem of Instagram, especially with young people, causes a kind of alienating doubling within the watcher who thinks that because this person's avatar is having so much fun, why aren't I? Is there another version of myself that I've been sort of suppressing with my sort of all of the drudgeries of dailiness? And is there a more ideal self, ideal way of life that I could be sort of again, acting out this sort of system of appearances and the envy that the appearance pushes into being is this sort of endlessly dividing version of selfhood.

[Nomi Frye]

Absolutely. And I think, you know, it's so true. The kind of like social media versions of ourselves or our friends or strangers who we follow online, and the kind of like endless, endless loops and confusions around that splitting. I often find it interesting when this type of doubling is kind of seemingly at least addressed self consciously. For instance, when influencers like, I'm not sneering at this, but like when influencers get real and they're like, you know, I know it seems as if my life is all like getting, you know, free gifts from PR and going on yachts for free Et cetera, et cetera. But I'm also a person, and there are things that I don't share with you and I don't share my stresses. Or when influencers are like, I'm gonna share my real self for a second. Here's what I look like when I get up in the morning, or like, here are. Or when they say, you know what? I've shared too much. I'm gonna pull back and present more of my avatar. These kind of like endless permutations of kind of selfhood that take place on this stage. Yeah, I just find that endlessly, endlessly fascinating.

[Alex Schwartz]

Oh, completely.

[Nomi Frye]

I mean, you know, there's also this is. This happens on the virtual plane, let's say. But I feel like there's something else that's happening nowadays. The idea of kind of like optimizing yourself physically speaking into a better double of yourself. I mean, the name Brian Johnson.

[Alex Schwartz]

Brian Johnson is the running theme of this podcast.

[Vincent Cunningham]

We've talked about him a lot.

[Alex Schwartz]

I mean, he is a prism for the contemporary experience in so many ways.

[Nomi Frye]

So many ways. Do you want to.

[Alex Schwartz]

Wouldn't that be great if that ended up being used as a blurb for some Brian Johnson project?

[Vincent Cunningham]

He is a prism. The New Yorker says. The New Yorker.

[Nomi Frye]

I'm on board, you guys. I'm on board. Alex, do you want to synopsize for us who Brian Johnson is?

[Alex Schwartz]

Brian Johnson is an entrepreneur. He created some kind of payment platform that acquired Venmo and this sort of thing. And we might not be thinking about him as exceptional, except that he is on an anti aging crusade, the goal of which seems to be that he will revivify his own body and basically live forever. And one way that he's doing this is by using transfusions from his son, Right? Like plasma transfusions from his son, who is obviously younger than he is, to flush out his body.

[Nomi Frye]

Another thing that happened with the son recently is that this was a couple weeks ago, Brian Johnson tweeted. So he has a little sort of sensor on his penis that measures the strength and the duration of his erections as he sleeps. Okay, so. And he has similar or the same, I'm assuming, sensor on his son's penis. So he has this data about the boners of both him and his son, and he can compare them. And so this idea of data, you know, macro data refinement, let's call it, of measuring himself against kind of another double, you know, the double that is his newer version, who is his son. But then his claim that he will Best that, you know, he is besting that and he will best that. He will never die. He will live forever and his boners will be, you know, stronger and longer and whatever else.

[Alex Schwartz]

May I just read you something quickly, please, from Freud's essay on the uncanny. I'm sorry, I'm really into this right now. We want it. We want it because it's Brian Johnson all over the place. Freud is talking. Freud says biology has not yet been able to decide whether death is the inevitable fate of every living being or whether it is only a regular, but yet perhaps avoidable event in life.

[Nomi Frye]

Oh, my God, it's Brian Johnson all over again.

[Alex Schwartz]

It's Brian Johnson. And here the uncanny and the double come together to suggest that if you replicate yourself, you can simply go on being. And this is the subject of a lot of sci fi replication mutants, versions of the self that keep coming. So there's something I can understand appealing about it and there's something also terrifying about it.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah. I mean, terrifying is one word.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah. It's a kind of. I mean, we're living. We're talking about the doubles that we get in our age, and we're living in the age of data, the age of optimization, the age of AI, which also presents a very real doubling crisis. We're afraid that our species is going to be doubled and then overtaken by its own creation.

[Nomi Frye]

Mm.

[Alex Schwartz]

We are afra that we are living in Frankenstein and there is no stopping it. And then there's one other modern concern that I think has to do with the doubles of our era that I want to add to our mix, please. And it's the trauma plot that's a big part of severance is the idea that Mark S has gone, has decided to be severed because he can't cope with the trauma enough of his wife's death to want to live with it enough. And that there is an escape possible through this severed procedure. And trauma has been seen in the past and in the recent past as the source of doubling. There was a huge trend in psychology in the 1980s where suddenly left and right people were getting diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, otherwise known as multiple personality disorder. This was a very rare condition that suddenly shot up in diagnostic popularity in the 1980s, widely believed at the time to result from suppressed memories of child molestation that you had to kind of create, branch off another version of yourself who could cope in real life because the terrified molested child self had to kind of be repressed and hide. And I do think that trauma is at the root of so much of how we think about experience. Maybe we're starting to move on from it in some ways, but it has been such a big factor, as we all know, in culture, in literature. And one thing that you should see on severance is this interesting question to me, legitimately interesting question. Post traumatic question of, am I allowed to be happy again? Like, if my innie self experiences happiness, can the outy self seed to that? Can that be permissible? That's an interesting philosophical question that I do think the show is handling and maybe shows a way for us to start to engage with the trauma question in such a way that isn't just, you know, x app and therefore I.

[Nomi Frye]

Do Y. Yeah, you guys, why do you think this trope has endured? Like, what is it about the double that has, through the ages, from the dawn of time, you know, like, persisted? Um, do you think we'll ever be rid of the double? Or will it continue to kind of, like, hold us in its thrall as it has for. For the past hundreds of years?

[Vincent Cunningham]

I think the double will always exist because of the hope of. To speak to this trauma issue, the hope for wholeness. It's this universal idea that health is singleness that help. The more common contemporary word is holism. Or even if you think about what people mean by mindfulness, what they mean is being in one place thinking about one thing. Even if you think about the 19th century philosopher Kierkegaard, he says, purity of heart is to will one thing, so that hope that you're on one track forever. Sometimes the double is like trying to make one whole self. I was thinking about this, the play Cyrano de Bergerac. Oh, yeah, about the guy who's like, I'm too ugly to approach this woman and you're too tongue tied to approach her. I can write, you can be good looking. We can create one ideal lover. You know that ideal to be just everything that one needs to have it all. It's such a strong. I feel it every day. It's such a strong desire that the shadow of that whole self, the doppelganger, will always be kind of, I think, lurking at the edges of our imagination.

[Nomi Frye]

I love that. Yeah, Alex.

[Alex Schwartz]

Oh, I think the double is gonna be here forever. You heard it here first on Critics at Large. Check back in in 300 years with this episode and tell us what happened.

[Nomi Frye]

Time capsule vibes.

[Alex Schwartz]

Time capsule vibes. For many reasons, I think the terror of the double, the terror of encountering yourself, feeling yourself to be out of body, is a fundamental human terror. It's cross cultural. It endures. But I also think just something about life fundamentally is that you get more single as you go on. You start with so many different possibilities, with so many different places you could branch off. What am I gonna be? Who am I gonna meet? Who will I fall in love with? Will I have children? What country will I live in? All of these different things. And as you progress, choices are made, options close, and the appeal of the unlived life is still lingering there. And also the fear of the unlived life. What if things had turned out differently? And those are two sides of the same coin. That's why I think the double is this object of desire on the one hand and terror on the other. And that just is what it means to go through life.

[Nomi Frye]

This has been Critics at Large, our senior producers, Rhiannon Corby and Alex Barish as our consulting editor. Our executive executive producer is Stephen Valentino. Conde Nast's head of global audio is Chris Bannon. Alexis Quadrado composed our theme music and we had engineering help today from James Yost with mixing by Mike Kutchman. You can find every episode of Critics at [e-mail] critics and a reminder, come see us at our live show at the Bell House in Brooklyn coming up on March 11th. You can buy tickets at bell thebellhouseny.com we'll see you there.

[Alex Schwartz]

I'm Lale Arikoglu from Women who Travel. In our next episode, I talk to Angenou Ellis Taylor of Nickel Boys, who plays Elwood's grandmother, Hattie.

[Nomi Frye]

I wanted the world to see what it was like. What was was being lost here, which was an adoring relationship this boy had with his grandmother. She doesn't give any sort of defeat in front of her grandchild. That was my grandmama. You can hear this episode of Women who Travel wherever you get your podcasts from Prime.