Followers of Apple TV+’s Severance, your day is about to be improved: Apple has launched eight chapters of The You You Are, the fictional self-help e-book by Dr. Ricken Lazlo Hale that’s central to the plot of the present. If you wish to learn it, you possibly can even obtain it free of charge, or hearken to the audiobook model, narrated by Ricken himself (actor Michael Chernus).
The temporary excerpts from The You You Are which have appeared in Severance are among the many funniest bits within the present, however the e-book as launched is not only for laughs: It is also an incredible illustration of how propaganda works, each within the Severance universe and in actual life.
Within the “outie” world of the present, The You You Are is a joke, a pretentious self-help e-book solely fools take severely. However on the planet of the innies, an ill-gotten copy of The You You Are is seen as a piece of towering genius with the facility to alter lives and alter the world. That is solely as a result of the only real different e-book within the Lumon workplace is The Compliance Handbook, a ponderous, quasi-religious textual content that exists solely so Lumon can maintain management of its workers. The innies’ response to Ricken’s work jogs my memory of these individuals who learn half a e-book (or a single headline) and immediately suppose they know all the things a few complicated matter, and who hasn’t met just a few of them?
What’s The You You Are about?
Ricken’s e-book excerpt is hilarious and in step with the present’s darkly comedian model. It opens with, “It’s stated that as a baby, Wolfgang Mozart killed one other boy by slamming his head in a piano. Don’t fear. My analysis for this e-book has confirmed the declare unfaithful,” and continues in that vein.
Ricken’s e-book purports to be a sensible information to self-improvement, the place readers are supposed to acquire self-knowledge by following a sequence of steps:
Work out your YouType (extra on that beneath), write it on a bit of paper and affix it to your self-importance.
Write your identify on one other post-it and tape it subsequent to your YouType.
Select a theology and add a “totem” of it to your YouShrine. “This could possibly be a Christianman’s cross, an An-Ra Scarab, or a Masonic sq. and compass,” Ricken writes, additionally suggesting you possibly can “use a photograph or etching of me.”
Add one thing you contemplate attractive. Because the writer places it: “One thing that whispers to your nethers in a voice solely they’ll hear. This can be a pinup picture from wartimes of yore, a beloved undergarment, or a nonetheless lifetime of a sinewy gourd.” Ricken additionally counsel you should utilize an image of him for this step.
Consider an insult you have heard. Write an acrostic poem utilizing the letter of every phrase of the insult and add it to your self-importance. Ricken goes with “Everybody laughs at you the second you stroll out of the fucking room,” which was as soon as stated to him by Severance most important character Mark S.
Print out a replica of a poem that Ricken wrote and paste it to your self-importance.
“Conceive and located a charitable group primarily based on a trigger that you just maintain expensive…Whether or not you want to curtail bear populations, bathe the infirm, or ship bottled water to astronauts, keep the course till the group is procedurally viable. Then, as soon as your licensing paperwork is available in, affix it to the self-importance amongst your different totems.”
That is the place the excerpt ends. Too dangerous; I hear web page 197 slaps.
Does The You You Are embrace any clues concerning the plot of Severance?
In Chapter 3, Ricken mentions going to a theater to see “an American spiritual satire movie which I contemplate to be probably the most over-celebrated piece of business cinema ever produced,” a movie we all know as Sister Act. There’s different proof within the present, however the Sister Act bit confirms that Severance takes place someplace round now in one thing like our world, regardless of the traditional computer systems and everybody driving vehicles from the ’80s and ’90s.
The You You Are additionally offers us a ton of backstory about Ricken’s character and historical past. As an illustration, he was conceived and born as a part of a “nine-month efficiency artwork piece originated by [his] mother and father titled ‘Smells Like Afterbirth, F**ker.’”
There isn’t any details about how, precisely, Ricken has sufficient cash to afford his comparatively lavish life-style. It actually is not from gross sales of his books, and his mother and father had been efficiency artists, so it is not prone to be household cash both—except, as some have theorized on-line, that Ricken is definitely a black sheep member of the Eagan clan.
Perhaps an important factor in The You You Are are the passages the place we find out about Ricken’s emotions towards Mark’s (possibly) useless spouse Gemma. When Ricken writes about Gemma, he appears to be in love together with her. This could possibly be a purple herring, however as Severance unfolds, I would not be shocked if Ricken’s emotions towards Gemma develop into a serious plot level.
The deeper which means of The You You Are inside the Severance universe
The “huge thought” behind Ricken’s e-book is the “YouType,” the sort of made-up psychological idea frequent to self-help books, pseudo science, and cults—suppose “love languages,” the Myers-Briggs persona stock, and Scientology’s “emotional tone scale.”
Based on Ricken, everybody suits into one in all 5 YouTypes: The Coward, The Warrior, The Dove, The Scribe, and The Vestal. This mirrors the concept behind Lumon’s Compliance Handbook. Based on Kier Eagan, there are 4 “tempers,” Woe, Frolic, Dread, and Malice, and everybody else are outlined by the ratio of every inside themselves. Kier’s ponderous religiosity and Rickens’ brain-dead aphorisms look like two sides of the identical coin.
Within the present, when the “powers that be” at Lumon uncover the e-book has impressed the innies to revolt, their response is not to ban or discredit The You You Are. As a substitute, they method Ricken with a proposal to put in writing a brand new model of the e-book, particularly for innies. Ricken, ever the egotist and a focus seeker, is raring to go forward with the venture so not less than somebody will take his e-book severely. Lumon’s plan is little question to coopt the (unintentionally) subversive concepts in Ricken’s e-book and twist them to assist the Lumon established order. It isn’t a heavy carry, given the e-book comprises passages like, “A society with festering employees can’t flourish, simply as a person with rotting toes can’t skip.”
That is all a sly commentary on how revolutionary concepts are routinely manipulated and co-opted to serve the ruling class, and the way simply individuals will be tricked into feeling like they’re “sticking it to the Man,” even when the Man is without delay profiting and defending itself by taking the tooth out of harmful concepts. Suppose Wal-Mart promoting Che Guevara t-shirts, or one of many richest companies on the planet making a TV present concerning the dehumanization and distress of company drudgery.