I Saw the TV Glow: Life Through a Screen
I Saw the TV Glow is a horror film that derives most of its horror from the idea of a trans person having the realization that they’re trans but fearing what it could mean to fully admit it.
Jane Schoenbrun, the writer and director of the film, was interviewed by A.frame and said:
“[…] that moment of un-repression, that moment of the egg cracking — when you finally see yourself clearly in a way that makes it hard to unsee — was very hard one for me, because I really do think that repression is a survival mechanism."
“Repression is a survival mechanism”. I feel like this final bit deserves repeating, especially because the entirety of this post is about to be about exactly this point. I want to talk about how I Saw the TV Glow uses imagery of television as a means of representing this repression.
Before The Pink Opaque
The opening scene has Owen, the protagonist of the film, seeing an ad for a television show called The Pink Opaque for the first time.
The Pink Opaque is a fictional Buffy the Vampire Slayer-esque 90s series about two girls, Isabel and Tara, who meet at camp one summer but live on opposite sides of the county. The two discover they have a psychic connection and use it to help each other from a distance as they fight back against the villain, Mr. Melancholy, and all his monsters.
Owen’s intrigued, he’s leaning in, this is a show he wants to watch. This ad ends on the repeated line, “they can’t hurt you if you don’t think about them.”
We move on to seeing him in gym class, on one of those fun days where the teacher has the kids play with a parachute. They do that thing where all the kids lift up the parachute together then bring it down really fast to make a dome. Owen walks around beneath it; we see him walled off from the world in this small space and doesn’t quite know why yet.
Quick aside: Especially because of how queer this movie is, I think it’s worth noting that the parachute is white, pink, blue, and purple. The first three are the colours of the trans flag, and the last three are the colours of the bi flag. This movie is very much about Owen being trans, is this an early hint that maybe they are also bi? I think the dialogue in another scene seems more aro-ace, but, we never see them fully come out, so who knows?
Owen meets Maddy soon after this. She is reading an episode guide for The Pink Opaque. Owen’s curious about it, and after Maddy sees he has genuine interest, she tells him all about it and even lets him read her book. Owen would love to actually watch the show, but unfortunately, it’s on after his bedtime.
A plan is hatched. Owen tells his mom that he’s going to sleep at a friend’s house. His mother’s surprised, he hasn’t spoken to this friend in a long time. Owen lied about where he’s going. When he gets dropped off at the friend’s, he waits until his mother drives away and then runs off to Maddy’s to watch the show.
Owen is transfixed as he watches the show, so much so that even when it’s over and he attempts to sleep, he can’t stop thinking about it. Maddy sees this and confesses to him that sometimes The Pink Opaque feels more “real” than her life.
The next morning Owen walks home. He looks very contemplative and sad. This shot fades to one of Isabel walking through the woods, wearing a similar expression. But after a moment, she steps into the light and her expression completely changes. She dances around in sunlight, happy and free.
This fade from Owen to Isabel, from sad to happy, from darkness to light, tells us everything about how The Pink Opaque has opened Owen’s eyes. Owen relates to Isabel in such a deep way that the idea of being her feels truer to them. This illustrates the first moment when Owen begins to recognize that, on some deep level, they are trans.
But as the ad told Owen at the beginning, “they can’t hurt you if you don’t think about them.”
Life as a TV Series
It’s about 22 minutes into the movie when Owen makes this discovery, and there is a clear line differentiating before and after this moment.
The most obvious change comes in the form of casting. After a time jump of 2 years, 7th grade Owen, played by the appropriately aged Ian Foreman, becomes the 9th grade Owen, played a late 20s Justice Smith. Someone nearly 30 playing a high schooler? Seems suspiciously like this is a teen drama on the CW or something…
This new Owen asks to stay up late to watch The Pink Opaque, prompting his father to ask, “isn’t that a show for girls?” The discussion is dropped.
On top of the actor swap, we can look at style. Owen is speaking directly to the camera as they catch us up on their life. As they walk through the halls of their high school, voice over narration continues, with words and doodles splashing onto the screen.
Before viewing The Pink Opaque, Owen’s life was presented in a relatively grounded way. After viewing The Pink Opaque, their life is stylized as a TV series.
All of this is the representation of repression as the survival mechanism mentioned above. Because Owen isn’t ready to admit, even to themself, that they are trans, they’re seeing their life in this removed – seen through a television screen – kind of way. To live in this way that isn’t truly who they are, they have started to see themself as a character in a show rather than actually themself.
A short time later, Maddy wants to run away and asks Owen to come with them. With the metaphors at play, running away here is the opportunity to come out, to be their true selves. But Owen is afraid to risk everything by leaving this safe TV show version of their life behind. Even if it’s not real, it’s the only life they know.
When Maddy leaves, all that is left is their TV. It’s destroyed and burning on their lawn. If living your life as a TV show is representative of repressing who you are, destroying a TV screen is representative of the point where repression is no longer necessary. It’s coming out. It’s transitioning. Or at least, it’s starting that journey.
In the same month that Maddy leaves, The Pink Opaque is mysteriously cancelled.
8 years pass. We get a bit of a glimpse of Owen’s life at this point, mostly enough to see that they aren’t happy, and then Maddy returns. Maddy knows a place where they can be safe to talk: a gay bar across town. It’s here they reveal that they aren’t Maddy. They’ve come back to say that they’re Tara, from The Pink Opaque. And according to them, Owen is Isabel.
Right before this confession, Tara/Maddy says this:
“Listen, I know this might sound crazy, but, when you think back on The Pink Opaque. When you remember watching it in my basement on Saturday night from 10:30 to 11 pm, do you ever get confused? Like, maybe the memory isn’t quite right? Like, does time ever feel like it's not moving normally? Like it's all out of whack? Do you ever feel like you're narrating your own life, watching it play in front of you like an episode of television? Or do you ever have a hard time distinguishing between what happened in the show and what happened in real life?”
Owen is confronted with exactly what they’ve been doing (consciously or not), with how their life is playing out more like a TV series than reality. It’s here we get flashbacks to Owen dressing up like Isabel back when they would watch the show in Maddy’s basement.
Owen goes home and we see moments from the final episode of The Pink Opaque. Isabel is captured and has her heart cut out. Mr. Melancholy shows Isabel a snow globe with young Owen inside (specifically the opening scene of this movie). This is becoming Isabel’s reality. Isabel is becoming young Owen.
Owen watches it all happen. As they watch Isabel being shown the snow globe, they literally see their life as a TV show. Specifically, a TV show in which the villain is “melancholy”. This is the thing about Owen’s repression of who they are: this survival mechanism that lets them feel safe, is also filling them with sadness.
Unfortunately, Owen is still too afraid. The second chance to run away with Tara comes and goes. Living their life in this removed TV show performance way is less scary to them than the alternative.
There is Still Time
Owen is given two major chances to leave and be their true self with a friend, and both times they can’t bring do it.
Toward the end of the movie, we see words written in chalk on the road: “there is still time.”
Owen’s life continues in the same way. More than 24 years pass. Owen gets married and has kids (off screen), continues to work for people who don’t respect them. Overall, they just kind of exist.
In one of the final scenes, Owen starts screaming that they’re dying, but no one reacts. Everyone in the room freezes. They are background characters with no life outside of the show, no way to react when Owen breaks this reality.
Owen goes to the bathroom to try to calm down. They cut open their own chest. As they do, the music becomes happier. They smile. Inside their chest they find a bright light and TV static. Sounds of different channels come through, all the possibilities of who Owen is on the inside.
Here, as we reach the end of the movie, Owen is finally able to look beneath TV series that their life has been.
Even though Owen has grown old, even though we’re at the very end of the movie, there is still time.
Television is incredibly important to I Saw the TV Glow. A lot of queer people can relate to how Owen’s eyes are opened to a truth about themselves because of a character in TV show. But it’s also the means through which Owen can step outside themselves, to repress their truth by not seeing their life as really their life.
The existential horror of this movie is the horror Owen denying who they are. The horror of spending a whole life living as a character rather than yourself. But thankfully, there is also hope by the end. Just like the movie says, “there is still time”.
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