severance 2x07 thoughts, hella spoilers as usual
okay i normally do funny haha no context thoughts but i didn't have them this episode really. just a lot of thoughts about gemma. i love gemma. (also like yeah mark is hot but ive been on that train it's wtv.)
i get sort of analytical w it but im not really an analyst. i am simply yapping.
a) the association with gemma and spring is my favorite thing ever and the imagery is so so beautiful.
b) what the Fuck are they doing with her down there oh my god. let her ouuuuuttttttt.
c) with the way that severance has dissected and implemented race as a construct in this world what they're doing with her down there is soooo sooo terrifying. like genuinely the letter writing scene is something that rattled me deep in my core in ways that i think the milchick kier portrait thing has done for others. the concept that lumon is taking this asian woman, a character established to have had a lot of her own agency, but struggles with her bodily autonomy (attempts and failures with pregnancy) going through lumon for treatment, and severing her. not only severing her but teaching her innies that she is subservient to the extreme traumas that they're putting her through in those rooms. dressing her up in outfits like a doll. one of those traumas being this submissive traditional wife to a domineering white husband figure, forcing her to say that she loves him, Knowing her outie has a husband but insisting she belongs to the men at lumon. that they are entitled to her and the love (servitude) of her innie is so unsettling. ms casey is a caretaker, forced to take the traumas of others while ignoring her own. to be saved by her white superiors, to be owned by them. it's so scary.
this contrasts her relationship with mark where there is very little of this known racial dynamic in their relationship. he falls in love with gemma because she's gemma and doesn't really base it on what she could be doing for him, or what he thinks she Should be doing for him.
ntm severance is science fiction and dystopic, this depiction of east asian women is a known trope. it is techno-orientalism at its core and the show is Aware of this. it uses the way that asian women/femmes are treated in media as a device. ms casey is supposed to be treated like that not because the show wants you to think that that is how it portrays asian women in this world but how it comments on the way that lumon (corporations as a whole) still treat and percieve asian women in the workplace. and how the white men at the top of the company will never deconstruct this mindset in themselves because they're benefitting, they'd never need to.
d) dichen lachman has the facecard of all fucking time my god
