And I have learned
That even landlocked lovers yearn
For the sea like navy men
— Death Cab For Cutie, “Brothers On a Hotel Bed”
We want you! We want you!
We want you as a new recruit!
— The Village People, “In the Navy”
Come sail away, come sail away
Come sail away with me
— Styx, “Come Sail Away”
The recent photo of Adam Scott posing with two Navy men has the Severance fanbase speculating all kinds of things, yet few seem to be understanding the real point of this very clear message.
The Navy is a branch of the military well-known for gathering men of many different backgrounds and identities and placing them on a big floating hunk of metal in the middle of the ocean far away from their girlfriends and wives. While teaching them teamwork, how to best kill foreigners and how to prance around playing volleyball on the deck in the sun, these men are however deprived of the regular sexual release they often enjoyed back ashore.
This leads to something incredible happening.
“Straight” men in the Navy historically have begun to explore alternative sexual avenues while confined to a specific workspace. Separated from their regular lives, they take on new identities at work, and begin to find themselves in freaky situations they otherwise might never have ventured into. When they return home, these liaisons are often kept secret, yet it’s changed them at heart.
It’s a lot like the journey of the characters on Severance.
What Adam is signaling to viewers “in the know” is that Severance, like the Navy, is a show about people finding a psychosexual freedom while in a confined, compartmentalized space, both mental and physical. When the sailors are serving their country by servicing each other in their bunks, it doesn’t make them gay. It makes them erotically avant garde. They’re explorers. They’re pioneers. They “refine” each others’ “data” until returning to a “cold harbor” where they leave their ships and go back to their prior lives. And by showing us that there are ways to become just like the characters of Severance, what Adam is saying most of all is that we, too, can come sail away with him. For even if you are in a traditional, heteronormative relationship, a part of you will grow to yearn for the freedom of the sea. Why not become a new recruit?
But that’s enough from me, what do you think?