WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS
I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to see I Saw the TV Glow since first seeing the trailer earlier this year. Two outcast teens potentially accessing a portal to another dimension through a TV show, all against the backdrop of some truly stellar neon art design? It looked so weird, and so original. But would it hold up to my expectations, or just be another pretty good A24 film?
As the credits rolled, I actually had to laugh at how devastated I was. The trailer was so full of that climactic feeling of infinite possibilities, that feeling I used to get when I was a teenager that I could go anywhere. But Owen just… didn’t.
The film introduces us to Owen, an awkward young loner, and Maddy, a queer girl two years older. She introduces him to the show The Pink Opaque through an episode guide, as in AN ACTUAL PHYSICAL BOOK that describes what took place. Remember seeing those next to a copy of US Weekly with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck on the cover? What a world. When he finds out what time the show plays, he reveals that it’s past his bedtime. The barriers that his parents, particularly his father, place between Owen and the world of The Pink Opaque cannot be overlooked, as this forbidden quality gives way to an overarching fear and shame that define his choices.
In an act of fleeting defiance, he lies to his parents that he is spending the night at an old friend’s house, and sneaks off to Maddy’s to watch the latest episode with her. Cut to two years later when he’s finally a high schooler, and he nervously approaches her on the bleachers to ask if he can come over again to watch the show with her. This moment gutted me.
Maddy: I like girls. You know that, right? I’m not into boys.
Owen: [HESITATES] I wasn’t… I… Totally. That’s fine.
Maddy: Okay. I’m just making sure. What about you? Do you like girls?
Owen: I don’t… I don’t know.
Maddy: Boys?
Owen: I… I think that I like TV shows. [HE AWKWARDLY LAUGHS, CLEARS HIS THROAT] When I think about that stuff, it feels like someone… took a shovel and dug out all my insides. And I know there’s nothing in there, but I’m still too nervous to open myself up and check. I know there’s something wrong with me.
I didn’t quite process this moment until later in the film. It’s not uncommon for 14-year-olds to avoid identifying with a sexual orientation, but this was something else entirely. I was struck by how Owen could describe this profound sense of disorientation with a foundational aspect of one’s identity, and the accompanying destabilizing terror, in a way that sounded authentic to a kid’s voice and speech. It really is amazing how when people do something brilliantly, they make it look easy.
Schoenbrun constructs a very authentic mise en scène of suburban banality through the eyes of a teenager. This world felt like a very complete time capsule in its attention to detail. This plainness amplifies the magic of The Pink Opaque; when Owen and Maddy are bathed in the colorful glow of the television set, they are spiritually transported from her drab basement.
When high school age Owen asks his parents if he can stay up past his bedtime to watch The Pink Opaque, his father shuts him down with “Isn’t that a show for girls?” Perhaps this moment, and a million others like it, are the things that dig Owen’s insides out with a shovel.
As the film begins to blur the line between fiction and reality, Maddy repeatedly offers Owen a chance to escape. The stakes increase with time because his reality becomes increasingly unbearable. However, each time Owen comes close to leaving with her, he freaks out and stays. Fiction and reality bear a correlation to his performance of being cisgender and the truth of his trans identity, a truth that terrifies him. Or is his life a fiction, and The Pink Opaque the truth?
The flow of the narrative sustains itself seamlessly, I mean I basically forgot that I own a bladder while watching. Shoenbrun creates an aesthetic of psychoterror simultaneously referencing the nightmarish imagery of David Lynch while establishing its unmistakeable queerness. With this second installation of their Screen Trilogy, they build on the themes of isolation and dysphoria established in We’re All Going to the World’s Fair. Whether a TV show or an internet challenge, modern fandom serves as a powerful vessel for the feelings of connection it can provide to people experiencing extreme isolation. Both of these films explore a fixation on a space or idea that exists outside of this physical world and represents a cathartic release for the protagonist.
This reminds me of my time working at Second Life, a virtual world, and the way that many users felt that their avatar represented a version of their true self. During a research interview with one user, I was struck by her suggestion that just as some people are emboldened to cruelly troll people from behind their keyboard, others are empowered to express themselves fearlessly. This perceived freedom from judgment can facilitate a profound sense of intimacy; the ability to control one’s environment creates a type of safety that some feel is crucial to express their authentic selves.
There can be a strong negative judgment against people whose main social contact takes place in online spaces. This overlooks people who are neurodivergent, or for a host of reasons cannot form authentic relationships with those in close physical proximity.
Ultimately, there’s an oooh moment in a flashback scene where Owen comes out of Maddy’s bathroom in a dress. He comes out sheepishly, like a shy girl at a debutante ball. That moment of being on the edge of becoming a woman.
Shoenbrun describes this moment as being about the ‘egg crack’ moment when a trans person realizes that they do not identify as their assigned gender. Frank Falisi wrote an essay on how we can acknowledge how vital this film is without confining it to the category of a ‘trans film’ in which he states, “I Saw the TV Glow is about the pivotal moment denied, over and over again, in history and memory.” Owen can’t be his true self in this place, but the notion of leaving is too terrifying for him to overcome.
I’m still reeling from what this film accomplished. It may have even helped a Letterboxd user named Julie come out as trans. I’m also amazed by how universal the anguish of such a specific experience felt. This is how we normalize historically marginalized experiences, so that one day Owen can leave that town and never look back.
Note: I wish I could take credit for the term sad-girl lesbian music, but those are obviously the words of Jane Schoenbrun from their Letterboxd interview with Katie Rife.
