Fetid moppet, a great term that I wish I had come up with but did not. It comes from an episode of Severance, the popular TV show, which is certainly dystopian in content, psychologically edgy, dark, and often unsettling.
The term remains somewhat unclear in episode 2, Season Two, when an angry father calls out his grown-up daughter for seemingly bad behavior, directed at the father’s mysterious corporation that we don’t yet actually know anything about.
“Moppet,” the word, comes from England circa 1600 and means extremely lovable or endearing. It also can mean a puppet or doll made out of cloth. The word “fetid” of course means foul smelling, putrid or stinking.
Severance feels most appropriate in America at the moment. Have we Americans begun living in a fetid dystopia. I’m not sure but are we about to find out and, more important, how many of us will actually stand up and confront our unsettled, severed society.
It is an indeterminate decay hovering over this country at the present time. It has nothing to do with that “shining city on the hill,” real or imaginary. But there will be an ending at some point; there always is. But will we remember it?
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