Amy Ponds of the 99% (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
allchildren) wrote2010-06-22 11:45 am
allchildren) wrote2010-06-22 11:45 am
Entry tags:
i am not asking you to believe in me*
Today's post has a soundtrack: Pandora's Aquarium by Tori Amos.
And now.
Remember this?
The Doctor hastily orders Amy not to open her eyes and stay there, then abruptly disappears. But wait! He's back a second latter, now with a calm and soothing demeanor, to kiss her on the forehead and hold her hand and tell her to trust him. Tell her, "Remember what I told you when you were seven? You have to remember." And then he's gone again.
And he's wearing a jacket, is the thing, even though he had just lost his to the Angels.
So: there is this theory that that was a second Doctor crossing his own timestream in order to comfort Amy in that moment and refer to something in particular he said when she was seven. What was that, pray tell? "Beans are evil"? "Do I even look like people"? "BRB LOL JK RUINING YOUR LIFE"? Probably none of those things, which casts into doubt the moment at the end of Eleventh Hour, of Amelia sitting in daylight on her suitcase hearing the TARDIS noise, looking up and smiling, just before adult Amy wakes up two years later.
Which, to me, instantly cast into doubt all of Amy's life past age seven. I instantly became gripped in the cold fear that Amy herself was not real, that her life would be undone back to age seven when the Doctor really did come back twelve hours rather than twelve years later. (This is a particularly relevant fear given my inability to watch the Ten years without freaking out about women's lives being destroyed and erased. Like a moon-sized-regret-for-even-watching-this fear.) (And my Susan Pevensie issues -- that when she grew up in Narnia it was okay but when she came back home it was undone and she was a child, adrift, with her whole life reduced to a nice dream. And nobody understood why she'd feel alienated from that dream or want to recapture her lost maturity, but that is another issue.)
And as the story has progressed, it hasn't referred back to what happened when she was seven, but it has certainly put her forward as a bit of a mystery, one whose POV is not the story's POV (contrast w/ Rose -- who also had much more agency within the story than Amy; even though Amy appears to be cool and in control and a novice TARDIS pilot, she doesn't set plots in motion based on her choices, even when there's an entire episode devoted to one, and she is more of an accessory to the Doctor) and since Rory's death is explicitly cloaked in dramatic irony as we all know something she doesn't. Amy's favorite artist is Van Gogh? How nice. But Amy's favorite history, Amy's favorite fairy tale? They're telling us that somehow the trappings of the Pandorica are constructed out of Amy's memories, but it feels a bit more like -- Amy herself, the girl whose job is to dress up and pretend, is the construct.
Nice dream.
I know there is a twist in here somehow. Amy will survive somehow, I am sure. But yes, it does indeed bother me, Doctor, that Amy's life makes no sense. :(
* and yet, there is the running question of this series which is that if you believe something strongly enough, can you change the actual truth? It worked for Paisley the robo-bomb. It didn't work for Roman!Rory. And given the Peter Pan moorings of the show -- although they have to some extent been left behind -- I can't help but think that belief, in fairies or the Doctor or one's own identity and personhood, will be crucial.
And now.
Remember this?
The Doctor hastily orders Amy not to open her eyes and stay there, then abruptly disappears. But wait! He's back a second latter, now with a calm and soothing demeanor, to kiss her on the forehead and hold her hand and tell her to trust him. Tell her, "Remember what I told you when you were seven? You have to remember." And then he's gone again.
And he's wearing a jacket, is the thing, even though he had just lost his to the Angels.
So: there is this theory that that was a second Doctor crossing his own timestream in order to comfort Amy in that moment and refer to something in particular he said when she was seven. What was that, pray tell? "Beans are evil"? "Do I even look like people"? "BRB LOL JK RUINING YOUR LIFE"? Probably none of those things, which casts into doubt the moment at the end of Eleventh Hour, of Amelia sitting in daylight on her suitcase hearing the TARDIS noise, looking up and smiling, just before adult Amy wakes up two years later.
Which, to me, instantly cast into doubt all of Amy's life past age seven. I instantly became gripped in the cold fear that Amy herself was not real, that her life would be undone back to age seven when the Doctor really did come back twelve hours rather than twelve years later. (This is a particularly relevant fear given my inability to watch the Ten years without freaking out about women's lives being destroyed and erased. Like a moon-sized-regret-for-even-watching-this fear.) (And my Susan Pevensie issues -- that when she grew up in Narnia it was okay but when she came back home it was undone and she was a child, adrift, with her whole life reduced to a nice dream. And nobody understood why she'd feel alienated from that dream or want to recapture her lost maturity, but that is another issue.)
And as the story has progressed, it hasn't referred back to what happened when she was seven, but it has certainly put her forward as a bit of a mystery, one whose POV is not the story's POV (contrast w/ Rose -- who also had much more agency within the story than Amy; even though Amy appears to be cool and in control and a novice TARDIS pilot, she doesn't set plots in motion based on her choices, even when there's an entire episode devoted to one, and she is more of an accessory to the Doctor) and since Rory's death is explicitly cloaked in dramatic irony as we all know something she doesn't. Amy's favorite artist is Van Gogh? How nice. But Amy's favorite history, Amy's favorite fairy tale? They're telling us that somehow the trappings of the Pandorica are constructed out of Amy's memories, but it feels a bit more like -- Amy herself, the girl whose job is to dress up and pretend, is the construct.
Nice dream.
I know there is a twist in here somehow. Amy will survive somehow, I am sure. But yes, it does indeed bother me, Doctor, that Amy's life makes no sense. :(
* and yet, there is the running question of this series which is that if you believe something strongly enough, can you change the actual truth? It worked for Paisley the robo-bomb. It didn't work for Roman!Rory. And given the Peter Pan moorings of the show -- although they have to some extent been left behind -- I can't help but think that belief, in fairies or the Doctor or one's own identity and personhood, will be crucial.