I Saw the TV Glow
The second narrative feature of Jane Schoenbrun is a relentless quest for identity in between analog pixels. They infuse dreamlike logic into harvested memories, such as a scene early in the movie that tries to describe how television’s cosmic glow can offer wide-eyed salvation even to the darkest room. A young Owen (Ian Foreman) gets his mom Brenda’s (Danielle Deadwyler) permission to sleepover at a classmate’s house. Instead, he crosses through manicured suburban lawns at night to see Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine), an older cynical girl he just met at school, and Maddy’s friend who are watching the teen show “The Pink Opaque” on the Young Adult Network.
Owen’s innocence is marked by twisty curls and a broad smile as well as a clear longing for friendship and community. He is not scared when surreal images of the show’s grotesque monsters and slippery mythology wisp past him; he is captivated. That dopamine surge of recognition haunts Owen, and it is one of many moments in this film that have continued to call me back.
Most of “I Saw the TV Glow” takes place during Owen’s later teenage years, when questions about identity, sexuality and personhood arise with particular urgency. Justice Smith transforms into Owen here, playing this outcast with the wounded rawness of something permanently scarred over. Owen’s young adulthood is colored by grief and his on again off again friendship with Maddy which forms around their shared love for “The Pink Opaque,” a series that feels like someone tried to recreate “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” The show gives voice to the crushing angst Owen feels but cannot name, his direct addresses provide intermittent grounding for his self-sabotaging. The push-pull has a way of rocking you into a quiet trance before yanking you out into sheer terror.
Whether he knows it or not, from the moment Owen first lays eyes on Maddy reading an episode guide to “The Pink Opaque,” he is looking for himself. Though his late night visit to her house is ostensibly a one off, his obsession with the show has not waned when they reconnect two years later. Instead of sneaking out to her place, she leaves him VHS recordings of the episodes with titles like “Homecoming to Get You” and “The Trouble with Tara Part 1” scrawled in pink ink, in their school’s dark room for Owen to find. Owen watches these installments with a fervor that nearly keeps him from breathing; he digs deeper into himself and the series’ mythology.
“The Pink Opaque” is equally indelible as a story within the story, Its premise involves two telepathically linked girls (played by Helena Howard and Lindsey Jordan) who fight weekly-villains dispatched by the big bad, a misshapen monster moon named Mr. Melancholy. Schoenbrun films these episodes with a playful wink that at first suggests some kind of goofy pastiche before softly revealing more abstract truths about Owen and Maddy. On the show, Owen and Maddy see their dull suburb whose assimilative gender-norm conventionality and atrophied dreams are themselves asphyxiating reflected back through a queer lens. “What about you? Do you like girls?” Maddy asks Owen on the school bleachers. “I don’t know,” shyly replies Owen.
“Guys?” Maddy prods. “I think I like TV shows,” says Smith. “It’s like when you think about that stuff and it feels like somebody took a shovel and dug out your insides? And you know there’s nothing in there, but you’re still too scared to cut yourself open and check?”
While watching “I Saw the TV Glow” with Owen’s insecurities being most easily read as related to gender dysphoria, I kept coming back to Jordan Peele’s “Us.” The film uses an earlier decade the 1980s and its reductive politics as a jumping off point to render the horrific economic legacy of Reagan’s America through the eyes of a Black nuclear family’s misplaced desire for upward mobility through crass consumerism. Television also plays a powerful role in that film: A commercial for “Hands Across America” inspires a young Addy to plan a revolt after her mind is awakened to the systemic inequality that comes from the many living a nightmare so a few might live a dream.
Like Addy, television unmoors Owen from his place in this sunny town; he becomes animated by Clinton’s lies of America when forced homogenization by way of bills like Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell created the illusion of progressivism and diversity amid consumerist fantasies. It’s telling how not only is Owen one of few Black faces we see in town, but he also immediately gravitates toward Maddy, another person whose identity has been awakened by television’s curated suburban lies (it’s telling how not only is Owen one of few Black faces we see in town, but he also immediately gravitates toward Maddy, another person whose identity has been awakened by television’s curated suburban lies).
For Maddy, television becomes a roadmap for revolt as it did for Addy. On the other hand, television as medium where Black subjectivity is shaken then reimagined then relived, terrifies Owen enough to embrace the safe, stifling fantasy of blending in by leaving yourself undefined.
Too often when filmmakers move up the ledger they become conservative and safe and careerist it feels as though they’re making this movie solely with a current budgetary level to maintain. “I Saw the TV Glow,” the director’s glossy follow-up to their resourcefully executed “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair” is Schoenbrun not wanting to live in regret of the shot they didn’t get, or risk they didn’t take, or leap that never left the ground. The earworm original soundtrack, exciting practical effects, intoxicating photography and risky editing (conscious world/blended world) are big adventurous swings of an undaunted filmmaker.
This creative courage translates into some truly arresting performances. Lundy-Paine does not waver, playing Maddy as someone whose direct exterior belies closed in-frame pain and averted gaze. Smith mirrors Lundy Paine’s posture at first (as Owen). But before long following both character’s emotional journeys their shared physicality diverges: Lundy Paine strikes a broad, self assured pose while Smith shrinks his chest until it is nearly caved in. It is especially incredible from Smith who transforms organically but without ever feeling gimmicky his body is thoughtfully unassured; his voice eventually rattles like a man who died long ago; his eyes become vacant orbs where defeat has found a cozy home.
Schoenbrun’s “I Saw the TV Glow” ends over and over, just like a rerun you’ll always love even if you’ve seen it a million times, and every single ending is brighter than the last.
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