There is no possible scenario where I can write anything about I Saw the TV Glow without the piece transitioning into something horrifically personal. It’s an odd, though not totally unwelcome, quality that this film seems to evoke by nature. I’ve joked a few times this is a film created in a lab for me specifically, although I’m more than willing to admit that its specific release period coinciding with some big personal changes endeared me to the film from the start. However, considering how strongly Jane Schoenbrun’s sophomore feature resonates with a myriad of audiences, I’d wager the default to an emotional response isn’t unusual.
TV Glow defies categorization. Calling it a horror film or a coming-of-age story feels too simple and hollow. Perhaps it’s because a piece of art like this, with an allegory so obvious it becomes text, rarely reaches mainstream audiences. It’s unapologetic in its handling of unaddressed gender dysphoria while remaining broad enough for anyone who has experienced the horror of dissociation. At the risk of sounding too Lacanian, sublimating one’s life through media as a substitute for a disconnect between the perceived self and the actual self is not a transsexual-specific activity. There’s an understandable, tragic appeal inherent to Owen’s (Justice Smith) and Maddy’s (Brigette Lundy-Paine) that needs to be subsumed into The Pink Opaque.
Of course, TV Glow’s message wouldn’t be half as strong without its stellar creative direction. The film is stunning on every level–even more so for being Schoenbrun’s second feature, and on a considerably larger scale than World’s Fair in every regard. The neon-drenched suburbs of TV Glow are both intimately familiar and horrifyingly alien; Eric Yue’s cinematography captures this sort of liminality with such a melancholic beauty in contrast with the lushness of The Pink Opaque’s fantastical takes on summer camps and ice cream trucks.
Both Smith and Lundy-Paine deliver powerhouse, and criminally underrated, performances. Lundy-Paine sells Maddy as a disillusioned young adult entrenched in a paradoxically true and false world. At the same time, Smith portrays Owen as desperate to find connection and his true self as a teenager before sinking into the mundane despair of repressed adulthood. The package is completed by one of the best soundtracks of the year featuring some sad indie favorites; I’d like to specifically mention Phoebe Bridgers’ and Sloppy Jane’s duet “Claw Machine” which, to me, is the Best Original Song winner.
That being said, it’s easy for me to see the film as a trans allegory and a shining example of the “new frontiers for trans cinema” as Corpses, Fools, and Monsters author Willow Maclay puts it. I had a similar experience watching TV Glow as I did watching 2021’s We’re All Going to the World’s Fair and other films that Maclay and her co-writer Caden Gardner attribute to this new moment in trans cinema, taking place over the past five years.
I said there was no way I could write about I Saw the TV Glow in an unbiased manner. That’s because I can’t separate the feeling of seeing a previously unexplainable, intangible phenomenon play out in front of me on a big theater screen, much less seeing and hearing my friends react to it. In no way do I think this film encapsulates a hypothetical, monolithic trans experience and I’m happy that people who aren’t trans were able to relate to the film as well. But the promise of a new trans cinema that TV Glow, and several other 2024 releases, bring and the personal resonance the film holds with me are truly inextricable from my enjoyment of the film.
Even if the metaphor doesn’t apply or is too heavy-handed for some viewers, the craft behind I Saw the TV Glow is truly a labor of love and a feast for all senses. It’s one of my top films of the year, perhaps of the decade. I will continue to stare at the glow of the TV, and I will feel uncomfortable and probably cry.
Essay Courtesy of Red Broadwell
Feature Image Courtesy of A24