Travelling Sideways in Time (Without a Suitcase): The Aggregate Identity of Audrey Parker on Haven

Abstract

A distinct strand has differentiated itself in television programming in the twenty-first century: television series that feature female protagonists travelling between parallel worlds. The worlds in most of these series are on the edge of destruction through terrorism, war or another traumatic event. The female protagonists, who share the special ability to travel between the worlds, have a unique role to play – they serve as mediators between the universes. Their inbetweenness enables their autonomy and resistance to violence, death, and appropriation. This role is played by Audrey Parker (Emily Rose) in the fantasy/supernatural drama Haven. Audrey’s task is to travel through an interdimensional portal to the town of Haven every twenty-seven years to help as a police officer to protect the inhabitants who are plagued by “the Troubles,” that is, supernatural abilities, which finally threaten them with imminent destruction. The uniqueness of Audrey resides not only in her special status as a traveller between the worlds but also in her identity, which consists of many segments in which different consciousnesses inhabit the same non-ageing body over five hundred years. The essay will analyse the unique temporality of the character, governed by female patterns of travel and her nomadic subjectivity, proposing that her figure links human lifetimes to geological aeons, symbolised by aether, the primary substance of the Void, located between the worlds. That link makes Haven a show of the Anthropocene, the geologic time period defined by humanity’s influence upon the earth. The Anthropocene challenges us to think beyond the usual temporality of a human lifespan, and so does Haven. The imminent destruction as a result of individual egotism leading to the misuse of aether in the show is a trope for the destruction of our planet. Haven uses the figure of Audrey Parker to represent a network of connections and repercussions dispersed over centuries to illustrate how our cumulative actions impact our planet. The show’s anti-linear strategies thus address the environmental concerns of an increasingly unstable environment to propose new ways through which to figure and address imminent threats concerning ecological disaster.