I Saw The TV Glow | The Trans Perspective Through a Surreal Nightmare

"There is still time"

Jane Schoenbrun’s new A24 release I Saw The TV Glow has been a film I haven’t been able to get out of my head since catching its U.S. release nearly two months ago. There's a myriad of influences from Twin Peaks: The Return and Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Smashing Pumpkins’ 90’s classic, “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness”, running through the film. It creates a gloomy assortment of 90s grunge, small town isolationism and trans discovery that makes a thick layer of atmosphere to be engrossed in. It makes perfect sense that the main characters would be obsessed with a tv show like this from the very first shot.

The TV show in this case is the fictitious The Pink Opaque, of which the plot revolves around. It's an action, monster-of-the-week story that grabs our protagonist Owen instantly after being shown it by Maddy, his quiet but obsessive schoolmate. The Pink Opaque unlocks something inside Owen and Maddy for the rest of their lives. This leads Owen, played incredibly by Justice Smith, to become in denial of his potential awakening from this reality and to join Maddy in the ‘real world’. By doing this they will escape from the midnight realm ruled by Mr Melancholy which is a nice nod to the Smashing Pumpkins record.

The tone of I Saw The TV Glow  is one of dread and entrapment; the inability to leave your hometown and feeling like one understands you, sonically supported with a new score by Alex G and a fresh soundtrack that feels oddly familiar in a dreamlike sense. It’s as if you're viewing the film through a blurred neon glaze drunk on nostalgia, weighed down by reality knocking on your door and choosing to ignore it. It’s a world that feels slightly different from our own, but has a grip that pulls you into the Midnight Realm– it’s easy to feel both intrigued and horrified by what is going on. It’s like ignoring the truth, one you know is so personal that defines your entire existence, so deep inside that you ignore it until it festers– until one day you break down, and no one is there for you. Dissociated from this reality, all interactions become TV static.

I Saw the TV Glow has helped me as a cis man understand the trans world in a whole new way. While the film itself has sensibilities both visually and audibly that I'm interested in pursuing as a filmmaker, the trans allegory is front and centre to the point of being blatant. It's a loud and proud statement that doesn’t pretend to be about much else. The feeling of withering away after not jumping on that opportunity, in this case transitioning, and thinking that was your only chance, spiralling as a result. But no matter how many years have gone by, “there is still time”, as is drawn on the suburban streets in the film.

With this film being the second instalment in Schoenbrun’s screen trilogy, with the first being We’re all going to the World's Fair, I can’t wait for the trilogy to be completed in book form with Public Access Afterworld, which is described as a fantasy epic. If it’s anything close to I Saw The TV Glow, I'll be the first to get a copy. As TV Glow releases in the UK this week, I urge everyone to give it a watch– to see through the eyes of a protagonist aimlessly wandering through life on the verge of achieving their own form of enlightenment.

Written by Michael Tasker | IG: @thegoldenecstasy