Without a doubt, the Oscar for the best most influential film in recent years is the one that Bong Joon-Ho He took Korea thanks to the premiere of Parasites The film, which focuses on the differences between a working class family and a rather well -off, The appetite for class criticism and the desire to “eat” some rich who in recent years were being more visible and influential than never than ever Thanks to the presence of social networks.
Of energy launched by Parasites, Tapes arrived approach the theme of class struggle and anti -capitalism from the American point of view; less fine films than that signed by Bong, but that continued to circulate along the same satirical path.
Among the daughters of Parasites On the big screen we can count Daggers in the back, the triangle of sadness and others of more independent cut such as The menu. But Where it has truly triumphed to put inequality in the center of Mira has been on television, Where series like Succession, the squid game either The White Lotus They have managed to fill a theme that seemed exhausted with nuances.
Separation, that premiered his first season only three years after the launch of Parasites, It is also one of these series whose nucleus was closely linked to social criticism. Its creator, Dan Erickson, raised a judgment around the concept of salaried work exposing the way in which “Sell” our time to a company ended up affecting our own identity.
The second season, however, breaks fully with that theme. In the long hiatus that separates both batches of chapters, Separation It has detached from social criticism and has embraced more individual concerns. A turn that also accompanies a palpable turn in the interests of the audience.
Who are you when you are in the office?
Although its popularity in social networks has ended up deforming it until losing the original meaning, the concept of “Emotional work”, developed at the beginning of the 80 by Arlie Russel Hochschild, It is key to understanding the essence of the first season of Separation. According to the sociologist, We do emotional work when we suppress our feelings and our true character with the aim of fitting in the needs of a specific job.
And although the concept applies in a special way to the work that is carried out in the face of the public or that are related to care, Hochschild considers that Almost all jobs within the capitalist system end up demanding that we stop being a three -dimensional person to become the image of the ideal worker shared by society.
Thus, it does not matter what kind of problem a person can be going through or how it relates to others in their day to day, that during the hours provided by service The worker will adopt the company’s philosophy being even able to change his way of expressing or his way of socializing. It is evident that this concept – peeted through the typical deformation of science fiction – is the one behind the “separation” proposed by Erickson.
In Lumon’s offices, Mark (Adam Scott) is not an alcoholic widower incapable of dealing with the duel but an efficient and cheerful employee, that you do not hesitate to help your classmates whenever necessary. Far from being a father surpassed by the lack of opportunities, Dylan (Zach Cherry) becomes a competitive worker that he loves to receive all kinds of awards, while Irving (John Turturro), that outside work is an anti-lumon rebel, it turns out to be the one who more easily adopt the company’s doctrine inside the office.
The first batch of episodes explores the concept of identity – your idea that the individuality of a person arises from the mixture between nature and environment – but always linked to the issue of wage labor. The original approach does not try to discover what makes us be as we are but wants to To expose the way in which the system forces us to reinvent ourselves again only to be able to function as perfect slaves at the service of capital. And that, thanks to Parasites, It was a topic in full during 2022.
The intention of making social criticism in the first nine chapters of Separation It is clear both through Lumon’s own representation – which seems like a pseudosecta inspired by the functioning of technological companies and the reverence they lend to their own history and that of their founders – as through the small eyes of the universe outside the company.
In the second episode of the first season, Mark attends an appointment with Alexa, the midwife who serves his sister, during which he maintains a encounter with some young university students who protest the new policies around the separation in the street. And this is not the only time we can perceive The rejection that this technology produces in society.
From Devon to Ricken’s friends, Everyone seems to look suspiciously the creation of “dentris” to occupy the most annoying tasks of day to day. Erickson introduces this counterpoint very soon for lumon so that it is impossible not to look at the company with suspicion. Know, in other words, who are the true “bad.”
And yet This is one of the plots that is paralyzed in the second season. Dan Erickson seems to have left behind his interest in broad social criticism, being willing to address the issue of identity through a new path. One that, however, also remains quite adjusted to the current social conversation.
We are what we leave behind
He Great theme of the second season of Separation It is the relationship we maintain with our own legacy; with all the elements – material or immaterials – that will transcend us and that will work as the ultimate symbol of our identity. In this sense, the Episode eight It is especially clear in his thesis: Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette) He returns to the town where he grew up to try to find evidence that demonstrates that she is the inventor of the chip that makes separation possible.
Sweet vitriol It helps us to understand the way in which all those elements that have made Cobel the woman who is now – from her mother’s illness until her childhood within a religious group outside society – are also those ultimately responsible for the existence of the separation chip. Because without the close relationship he has had with pain, disease and addiction, Cobel would never have been interested in inventing it. But without the influence of the Eagan and its strange ideology, Nor would he have ever renounced the idea of recognizing his authorship.
And while Cobel tries to reconnect with his legacy after losing his position in Lumon, Burt (Christopher Walken) tries to erase it. After meeting Irving out of the office and understanding the innocent relationship they developed during work hours, Burt begins to believe that It is possible to leave behind the years of violence at the service of the company to try to be better by itself, No need for separation.
If he previously believed that having a “dentri” was the only way to get a part of him to go to heaven with her husband, His relationship with Irving reminds him that he is never too late to start over and be a better person. That our past can define us but does not have to do it in all cases.
The idea of rewriting history and reinvent who we are is presented through The appendices supposedly written by Kier Eagan and that they are nothing other than an attempt by the company to create a great legacy for its founder. In these texts – a chapter four— Kier not only presents himself as wise, benevolent and reflective, but also as a man capable of understanding reality in superior terms.
However, as well learns Milchick (Tramell Tillman) Upon receiving the picture in which Kier presents himself as a black man, The founder of Lumon is more an archetype than a real man. And that means it has the ability to transform into anything. Whatever the corporation needs at all times.
Faced with all these narrative arches, the Mark and Gemma (Dichen Lachman) contrasts. In this second season we discovered the difficulty of marriage to conceive and the distancing that this situation produces between them. Scout are unable to generate the legacy they want and This leads to Gemma to completely lose your identity And she is forced – with the mediation of the separation and work of her husband – to develop many others. Identities that, as Dr. Mauer “expresses” will leave the astonished world “becoming, indeed, the only inheritance that women can leave behind.
Throughout the last ten episodes, Separation is not able to develop a Unitary and integral thesis on the role of legacy. However, it does put the necessary pillars to do so in the next season. The key seems to be in Mark and in that confrontation between the two parts of itself that now does not seem willing to reintegrate and work in unison.
It is easy to think that the series will not give a new turn in its closest future because this change of approach, The jump from the anticorporative satire to the concept of the legacy, It has not happened in a vacuum. This year, movies like Megalopolis And, especially, The brutalist, They also try to dialogue with The liquidity of the history and the way in which we are able to write and rewrite, connect and disconnect, aspects of our memory. In short, it is a rising issue and with a lot of margin to even capture the interest of society.
However, although the concept of legacy is in the public conversation, it is evident that Dan Erickson’s interest in the subject is also quite personal. Because from the premiere of the first to the second season, Separation It has become one of the current reference fictions. It is now the legacy that defines you. A series that the writer can no longer be separated.
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