I’m screencapping the end of 2.04 for something and when Kieren stands up to wipe the coverup off Simon’s face, you can see a lot of Simon’s room behind him.
And first of all it is very obvious that Simon is living in Amy’s gran’s old room. The bedspread is lavender and there’s a white and pink lacy floral-stitched pillow. There’s what looks like a purse sitting on the shelf over the bed. There’s a bookcase full of books but I don’t think any of them are Simon’s. There’s a cross and religious imagery around the room but once again I don’t think any of it is Simon’s. I don’t think there’s a single thing in that room that is Simon’s other than the taped-together photograph of him and his mother.
And it just made me think about the other places we’ve seen Simon living: his childhood room, the two different rooms of the treatment centre.
Simon lives in transience. He exists in places where he is unable to express himself, or express his true self: his loves and interests and passions and feelings.
In Simon’s childhood room we see the things he liked growing up, the things he liked as a teenager. We get an idea of what his life was like and how he was changing. We see awards or certificates on his wall and some primary school (or perhaps church group?) photos, race car and sport posters, posters of Morrissey and The Cure, a possible poem on the wall, and that’s about it. We can figure out that he was intelligent and that his interests were varied, but beyond that, essentially nothing.
The walls of both treatment centre rooms are utterly bare. There is no trace of anything to do with Simon. He’s a subject, a number, nameless and identity-less.
At Amy’s, like I said, it looks like nothing in the room is Simon’s except that photograph. It’s as if he’s house-sitting rather than living there.
So far we have seen Simon’s identity and self existing only with the help of others, whether its his childhood memories or the treatment centre torture and scrubs or his mission with the ULA. It seems as if Simon is uncertain of his true independent self and who he is without others telling him how he should define himself. He preaches self-expression and independent thought, but his identity and his expression is composed of quotes and reiterations of other’s words.
The rooms seem to echo that. He lives within the spaces of others because he has no definition. He moves easily from place to place and person to person because the only definite things about him are his death, his mental illness/trauma (which he hides), and his almost addictive loyalty to those he loves or looks up to.
I think his identity started to peel away when the depression sort of took over and he got heavily into drugs so he didn’t have to define himself by those feelings, so he wouldn’t have to bother with or think about an identity or a self at all. Then it was ripped away from him in the treatment centre. They treated him like an insentient piece of meat, like a test subject who had no emotions or mind to hurt. He was used and abused, physically and mentally and emotionally restrained and numbed. His name and numb broken body was literally the only thing he had in the treatment centre. Then he loses the support of his father and the identity of his childhood home. The ULA hands him an identity and he takes it because it’s easy and he has no other choice. They hand him religion and disciple and charisma and leadership. But that’s not real Simon, either.
And I think that’s a big reason Simon is so attracted to Kieren as well: despite Kieren’s anxieties and depression, he knows who he is. He has a solid, claimed identity and morals which he stands to and things to connect himself to. He knows who and what he is and he expresses it. Simon does not. Simon is not fixed. Simon doesn’t know which parts of him to pin down as his own and which have been given to him by others.
I think Kieren sort of seemed to hint that he believed there was more to Simon, especially in 2.04, but I don’t think Simon thought there was more to Simon, at least not yet. I think by the end of season 2 he’s starting to realize that he’s allowed to think for himself and allowed to figure out that maybe he has his own identity and that he can open up and express himself even if those emotions are negative ones.
