By Renee O’Connor, Opinion Editor
“I Saw the TV Glow” is a staying-of-age story about two queer kids who grow up trapped in multiple different ways.
As you start to realize, you come to slowly understand each other through the little interactions they have over the course of 12 years.
The first is Owen, a closeted trans kid going to Void High School, or VHS (very clever), who seems to have social anxiety and a lack of desire to engage in the world that they were born in. And there is Maddie, a girl with a scandalous secret and a strong affinity for a particular television show.
Much of their initial bonding and later interactions hinge upon their shared obsessive love of this show, ominously titled “The Pink Opaque.” While both teens find a form of escape in their favorite show, Maddie decides that she’s had enough of the world shutting her out and manages to escape for real.
And she tries desperately to bring Owen with her, but Owen can’t imagine a world where escape is possible. And no matter how hard she tries, Maddie can’t get Owen to come with her.
The movie is set in late ’90s suburbia, and you can absolutely feel it. Everything drips with nostalgia for a time when the world wasn’t dominated by computers. And nostalgia, funnily enough, is a major theme of this movie, although not in the way that I would have anticipated.
Alex G made the soundtrack for “I Saw the TV Glow,” which is described by the director as a dark, ambient, post-rock guitar, ’90s TV theme, electronic nightmare. According to the Washington Post, it’s a surreal soundscape that casts a looming shadow over the suburbs that Owen and Maddie inhabit. But also, in my opinion, not enough people are commenting on the rest of the music, which is absolutely phenomenal.
However, later in the movie, as Owen grows up and Maddie ends up leaving, the world actually gets darker, as though life is being slowly drained out of it. The world’s malice is less subtle and more in your face. Where there was once color, now only static remains. There’s a deep loneliness that settles over the world, but somehow now Owen is safe. Nothing’s coming to get you, there are no monsters under your bed, and your family is nothing but indifferent. This idea is incredibly important, and the writer did such a fantastic job of conveying this that I’m still kind of just taken aback by how brilliant it all was.
Over the course of the story, Owen stops questioning. All of that tension that I was talking about earlier gets channeled into the show that they never stop loving, “The Pink Opaque.” Owen stops trying to understand anything and instead fades quietly into the background, slowly becoming one of the least compelling protagonists I have ever seen in any movie.
They learn that by being invisible, they will be safe. As the light goes out of their eyes and their mouth struggles to even squeak anything out, the mystery dies. And with it, their very souls. This film is mesmerizing and terrifying, but not in any normal, conventional way. There’s a comfort that Owen finds in the darkness, and an intimacy that we share with the crackle and glow of the television.
There’s this scene early in the film when Owen and Maddie are talking about “The Pink Opaque,” and Maddie’s gushing about it, and Owen just says, “Isn’t that a kid’s show though?” And then she responds defensively and aggressively. She says, “No, the themes it covers are too complex and the monsters are way too scary for kids. It’s too dark.”
“The Pink Opaque” draws parallels between itself and the main plot of the movie. Owen has experiences that feel ripped out of the show. Maddie expresses similar experiences that are even more intense, and she tries to convince us that those experiences were real. I initially interpreted the film as being just a metaphor and allegory. And on a certain level, it is.
However, critics have gotten that wrong about this film. They assume the metaphor is only for us, the audience. When we see supernatural elements happening in the movie, it’s really happening. In fact, to these kids, it’s almost more real than real life.
There’s a simultaneous critique and respect for nostalgia here. And it’s beautiful and intensely scary. The concept of a show within the film is so satisfying to me that I can barely articulate it.
Owen’s mom, Brenda, shelters and tries to protect them despite not really understanding what’s wrong. Her son is antisocial even from a young age. And as time goes on, they withdraw further and further, eventually not even talking to her. She’s the only source of human comfort, and her warm embrace seems to calm them down when her husband, Frank, starts being abusive.
Frank is an interesting character. He is only present three times total and has one line of dialogue. But every time he’s on screen, I want to violently shake him. Frank’s relationship to his son is an implied one. Told through silent judging stares and glances. He comes to hate his son. His frame looms over the story like a menacing shadow. It’s a struggle for him to even speak because he’s so filled with hatred.
Meanwhile, Owen’s mother is the protector. And though she doesn’t really seem to understand what’s going on with Owen either, she still tries to be a shield. She immediately backs down from confrontation; she’s trying to keep Owen safe by not even engaging with Frank. The tension is horrible, but it’s so, so good.
Movies are a visual medium, which makes the possibilities vastly different from what we get out of books, songs, or paintings. Everything is moving and visual. The language of film is one where the audience is given information through moving pictures. It can be tacky to then waste your precious screen time having characters tell boring expository nonsense.
Jane Schoenbrun, the director of “I Saw the TV Glow,” uses every tool at their disposal to tip off the audience to the world that they’ve built. So kudos to them.
Owen hasn’t found their place in the world, mainly because they’re being actively pushed out of it for reasons that they can’t even fathom. Owen and Maddie have this in common, but they react to it differently. Where Owen is reserved, Maddie is outgoing, outspoken and openly tough although it’s fairly obvious that there’s a softer side as well in quieter moments. She encourages Owen and tries to do everything that she can to help, including one crucial moment when she tells them never to apologize. Sadly, this is all in vain.
Maddie has a scandalous secret. She’s a lesbian, and her identity shapes how the world treats her. Remember, it’s the ’90s, and people aren’t as understanding as they are now. For the first years of their relationship, her only connection to Owen is leaving taped recordings of random episodes of the Pink Opaque for Owen to find and escape in. But after a while, they talk again, and she starts getting more comfortable, till the point where she opens up about her experiences.
Her best friend outed her to the school and betrayed her trust, leading to all the other kids and parents ostracizing her. While this might seem like a bad thing, and it is, Maddie realizes that she’s different and then confronts it head-on.
She doesn’t fit in, and for a while, she uses the show as a coping mechanism because the show seems to understand her. The girls in “The Pink Opaque” are different, and it gives them strength. But eventually, she comes to the realization that she needs to escape for real. If she doesn’t fit in here, maybe she will somewhere else.
On the other hand, Owen is trans and deeply closeted, without the ability or even desire to articulate it. She’s trapped in a body that doesn’t feel right, but the whole world is trying to crush her into a certain form, and she’s just letting it.
What’s interesting about this movie is that unless you are trans yourself, or fairly discerning, it’s possible you won’t understand what’s bothering Owen until the movie’s over. That means that we get to discover it along with her, which I find fascinating.
Reviews addressing this movie seem to skip this part entirely or point to a vague sense that something felt inherently wrong. I saw one Twitter user describe the film in a way I liked, which was bottling up gender dysphoria and simulating it in the audience.
But through this journey of discovery, things start to get darker and more hideous as we slowly realize that Owen isn’t going to do anything about it and actively tries to forget what’s happening.
In the first 10 minutes, we’re looking at Owen, who’s standing underneath one of those big blanket tent things they had in elementary schools, but the colors are literally the trans flag. Later, Owen is walking home from the sleepover, and shots are cut with shots of Isabel, the girl from “The Pink Opaque,” walking in the same place and smiling and laughing.
So now we know that Owen is trans, Maddie is a lesbian, and neither of them knows how to deal with it. Maddie takes an active role and tries to run away, and tries to get Owen to go with her. But not only does Owen not go with her, she tattles like the snitch she is.
I think this is important because, while in every other aspect of the story, Owen is passive. When it comes to someone trying to pressure her to change, she immediately sells out her one friend. She’s committed to staying in place and never changing or growing, always stunted and barely speaking, and the universe rewards her for it with relative safety and invisibility.
The problem with Owen is not so much an actual problem, but more something that is infuriating to see exposed in someone else. Unfortunately, I think it’s something a lot of people, myself included, can relate to. She won’t change. Not only does she not try, she actively goes against trying to fix things because it’s safer in the short term not to.
For her, it’s confronting the truth about her gender. And this indecisiveness will metaphorically and literally kill her. Just rationalize your problems away and disassociate. Look the pain dead in the eyes and say to yourself, “I’m fine. There’s no problem here.”
Let’s talk about sex for a minute. I know, gross. There’s a scene that I think some people are misinterpreting, and I want to hear opinions on it. In this scene, Maddie and Owen talk to each other about who they like in a sexual or romantic context. It starts with Maddie making sure Owen’s not just hanging out with her to get with her, but ends with Owen saying that she doesn’t really like anyone; she likes TV shows. Harmless, right?
Owen elaborates and says every time she thinks about that sort of thing, it feels like someone dug all her insides out with a shovel, and she found there was nothing underneath. A lot of people seem to be extrapolating from this that Owen is asexual. At that moment, I thought the same thing. But then, a few minutes later, after the scene had time to sink in, my opinion started to change. I talked to a few friends of mine to see if my new hypothesis could be accurate.
If a person is a woman trapped in a man’s body, wouldn’t that make the idea of having sex while being perceived as a man difficult, frightening, and dysphoria-causing? If you heard Owen say that line as an asexual and felt represented by that, all the power to you. My idea here is not to disparage that, but to shed light on another possible interpretation. I believe that Owen’s romantic and sexual desires are intact, but greatly inhibited by the body that they were born in.
After Owen treats Maddie as though they’re crazy, which I guess under the circumstances makes sense, Maddie pours her heart out even more and says that Owen has to bury herself alive. Then she’ll emerge as Isabel in the next season of “The Pink Opaque,” and then they’ll go on adventures together and finally find meaning and purpose.
Owen’s response to this is fairly understandable. We’re shown a lot of information here, and it’s out of order, but we go back and forth between past and present and are shown some interesting imagery, such as Maddie painting a ghost tattoo that the girls in “The Pink Opaque” have on Owen’s neck.
This is a super important point in the movie, though. Throughout the film, Owen actively resists Maddie’s attempts to help. For example, scrubbing themselves raw to get off the ghost tattoo. Owen doesn’t end up going with Maddie to bury herself alive, so Maddie leaves, and Owen never sees her again. Owen expresses this lingering hope that Maddie will somehow return and forcibly push her underground.
But it can’t work like that. Owen has to accept herself and also want help, otherwise it’ll never work. Nearly every decision Owen makes is passive. The lesson of taking an active role in one’s own life is a difficult one to learn, and it’s what I think the director is attempting to teach us through her film.
There is a malaise in nostalgia as Owen just fixates on the one thing in her life that made her happy, “The Pink Opaque.” Back near the start, when Maddie runs away for the first time, she leaves behind nothing but her TV set burning in the yard. The best years are behind you; all you can do is look back at them and sigh in fondness and jealousy.
Owen doesn’t seem to care that much about “The Pink Opaque,” except as a device to project herself onto. There’s this heartbreaking and weirdly relatable scene where Owen finds “The Pink Opaque” again as an adult and tries to watch it, only to find it cheap and childish. There’s a shot where scrawled in chalk on the floor outside Owen’s house are four words that encapsulate the film: There is still time.
You see, despite the lies that nostalgia will tell you, even if the greatest years in the history of the known universe were 10 years ago, the best and most important time to be alive is always going to be right now. Now you have agency. Now things can change as a direct result of your actions. The past is the past, and you’ve got to go out and live your life. Enjoy the things you love, find people to spend time with, all that sappy stuff.
Owen doesn’t get it. She knows this isn’t how life is supposed to feel, but she doesn’t do anything with the information and is withering and dying just to feel safe in the environment they were raised in.
Owen ends up staying at her parents’ house long after they both have died, and the only big change we see as an audience is that she gets a bigger TV set. There’s a part where Owen tells the audience she has a family now, but we don’t ever see them, even when we’re shown inside the house. Honestly, I almost don’t believe Owen here. But even if this were true, the ramifications are zero, because the family doesn’t matter. We watch Owen fall into all the trappings of a suburban life without ever really comprehending anything about themselves.
But imagine:
— Imagine those quiet moments of regret.
— Imagine waiting around for the yearning to die down, but only feeling it twist the knife in deeper.
Imagine compromising everything just because other people were a little uncomfortable. Repressing every element of what makes you you, just so it’s a little bit easier for the people who supposedly love you.
If I may, and I’m not trying to be offensive here, but let me ask a question. If they truly loved you, and I mean really loved you, would they still make you feel that way? Near the opening, Maddie asks Owen a question. One that I can pose to you: “Do you ever feel like you’re narrating your own life, watching it play out in front of you like an episode of television?” If you remember, Maddie also told Owen never to apologize, and that’s where the worst part of the movie comes in.
Owen is working at a laser tag arcade now, and she’s gotten significantly older. She’s finding it difficult to breathe and seems weak and frail. The arcade is a hellish sensory nightmare with flashing lights and dark rooms and loud noises everywhere, and Owen seems to be getting overwhelmed by it.
We watch as a child plays that one arcade game where you stay in a booth and it blows fake money or tickets at your face. If you’ve ever seen one of those, do you remember there being like scrolling flashing text over the top of it as well? This whole scene is shot close up to simulate the claustrophobia that Owen is obviously feeling. But for a split second, the camera pans up, and we see the words ‘you are dying’ where that glowing text is supposed to be.
In the most upsetting sequence in the movie, Owen is dying and unable to breathe or walk, just completely falling apart. And she and her coworkers come sing Happy Birthday for a little kid having a party at the arcade. How sweet, right?
And during the celebration of the process of aging, Owen snaps and starts screaming at the top of her lungs, crying out for anyone to help her. She calls for “mommy” and cries and collapses to the ground. As soon as she starts screaming, the lights flicker out, and all of the co-workers and children stop moving or speaking, and they stay suspended there like mannequins or some vulture-like dolls with dead eyes. All the while, Owen is having a panic attack and slowly crawling away to the bathroom. It’s like the spell has been broken and the simulation is malfunctioning.
Then we get to the bathroom, and Owen takes out a blade and rips her shirt open to begin cutting her chest open. No blood, no gore, a clean cut into nothing. Then she stands up and smiles into a mirror as she opens herself up and sees TV static filling her insides up. And then there’s nothing.
Earlier in the movie, right after Maddie leaves, Owen narrates some of her life to us and has a interesting line of dialogue. “But some nights when I was working late at the movie theater, I found myself wondering, what if she was right? What if I really was someone else? Someone beautiful and powerful? Someone buried alive and suffocating to death very far away on the other side of the television screen?”
You want your movies to have a happy ending, right? But instead of giving us a happy ending, we’re left on a horribly depressing note. Season 6 isn’t going to happen because the good girl’s lost.
We can maybe imagine that Owen saw who they really were in that static and later buried themselves alive. Hell, we’re almost led to make that conclusion. But we don’t get to see it, and for us it doesn’t matter.
You’re so uncomfortable in your own skin that now you want to claw it off. The ending is painfully sad, but it’s also a lesson to the audience. Owen’s parents died, Owen’s friends left, and the people around her just didn’t care.
Ultimately, no one else knows where you’re going, and if you have agency, you need to use it. If you feel lost, scattered, hopeless, or helpless, don’t give in. There is great power in this movie, and I hope that by watching it, you can find it.