Amanda Young
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Amanda Young is a fictional character in the Saw franchise. She is portrayed by Shawnee Smith. At first a minor character in the original film, her role expanded in the sequels, giving further backstory into her character.
Amanda eventually developed her own unique modus operandi, in which the traps she set were inescapable, and would kill the test subjects even when the victims had achieved the goals of their games. While John always refused to acknowledge his traps as murder, Amanda openly admitted that her actions did define her as a murderer. She chose to execute her subjects because she did not believe anyone would change, including herself.
Huntley pointed out that Amanda's traps are used as a creative tool of juxtaposition with that of Jigsaw's, to effectively point out what the Jigsaw killer was not. Huntley outlined this, stating that: "If Jigsaw's games are encounters with Deleuzian affect, Amanda's games are anti-deleuzian, operating more as encounters with Lacanian notions of the signification of death within the symbolic order and the death drive.