I Saw the TV Glow (PG-13)
A24; Council of Geeks; IMDb; Rotten Tomatoes; Smudge; TV Tropes; Wikipedia
streaming sites: Amazon;
Fandango; Google Play; Hulu; Max; YouTube
Caution: spoilers.
This came out in May 2024, and I saw it in November of that year. Before I watched it, I thought I would put my review under "psychological horror", and while it kind of is that, I later decided not to put it there. While watching the movie, I thought I might put it under "weird movies", and possibly "art films". But in the end, I decided to just list it under "art films". It's a transgender allegory, and as such it's kind of brilliant. But if you don't watch it through that lens, it will probably just seem weird and inexplicable. I guess there are other lenses through which you could view the film and get something out of it, but that's the main one. I'm afraid I didn't watch the movie through any particular lens while watching it, I just tried to watch it for the surface story, and that didn't really work for me. But afterwards, I retroactively applied a trans lens, and that greatly increased my appreciation of the film.
It starts in 1996, with a seventh grader named Owen meeting a ninth grader named Maddy, who watches a TV show called "The Pink Opaque". Owen has seen promos for the show, and wants to watch it, but his parents don't let him stay up that late. The show is about teenagers named Isabel and Tara, who have a psychic connection, and battle monsters of the week sent by a villain called Mr. Melancholy. Maddy invites Owen to come over to her place to watch the show with her, and he tells his parents he's going to a sleepover at a friend's house. Over the next two years, he doesn't really talk to Maddy again, but she gives him videotapes of the show to watch by himself. Then one night Owen (now played by Justice Smith) goes to her house again to watch the show, and she tells him she's planning on running away. She wants him to go with her, but he doesn't. Soon after that, Maddy disappears and is believed dead. At the same time, "The Pink Opaque gets cancelled, after five seasons.
Eight years later, Maddy reappears, and wants to talk to Owen. In the final episode of the show, Mr. Melancholy had captured Isabel and Tara and buried them alive, banishing them to "the Midnight Realm". So Maddy had gotten someone to bury her alive, and she later awoke inside the show, as Tara. And she says Owen is really Isabel, and that the lives they have been living as Maddy and Owen are not their real lives. She wants to bring Owen back to the show with her, by burying both of them alive, thus starting a sixth season. But Owen calls this idea crazy, and leaves her to continue his life as he has been living it. He goes on that way for another 20 years, before having a nervous breakdown.
Well, I really felt like if you don't understand that the movie is an allegory for being transgender, it will all seem kind of pointless. On the surface level... it's hard to tell whether Maddy/Tara was right, or just crazy. And the ending is just... meaningless. But on the allegorical level, it's obvious that "Owen" really was Isabel, which is to say she was a woman trapped in a man's body. And it's tragic that she refused to acknowledge this, and instead went on living life as someone she wasn't. (If you want to get a better sense of just how tragic it is than I'm able to convey, I highly recommend watching the "Council of Geeks" review linked to above.) But as for Maddy being Tara, I'm not sure I understand that part of the allegory. As far as I can tell, in both realities she is a cisgender woman, and she was already open- at least with "Owen"- about being a lesbian. I don't know, maybe she wasn't out with anyone else, and burying herself to be reborn as Tara was her way of coming out. But it doesn't seem to me to be as obvious a parallel as Isabel's coming out, or lack thereof. I do want to say that "Owen" calling Tara crazy seems on the surface to refer to the belief that she was really living in a TV show, and her desire for them both to bury themselves alive in order to escape the Midnight Realm, but I think on the allegorical level it could be seen as referring to people believing being transgender (or even gay) is some kind of mental illness. I'm not sure if that was intended or not, but I did read that into it.
I've left out lots of details, and I'm not sure what else to say. Oh, throughout the film, "Owen" occasionally addresses the audience in asides. (I'm sorry I keep deadnaming her, but I sort of think it's not technically deadnaming, since she never actually comes out and keeps using the name "Owen"; and because she's sort of only Isabel on the allegorical level, it feels weird for me to stop calling her "Owen" when trying to explain the surface level of the film.) I also wanted to say that, without the context of the allegory, it seemed to me as if "Owen" might have been autistic, and also possibly asexual. But with the context, I'm far less sure of either of those things. Anyway, I feel like the movie might have been better if both realities made equal sense, so that we'd effectively have two complete stories for the price of one. But on the other hand, maybe it is better that the surface reality of the movie doesn't make much sense, because that emphasizes the significance of the allegorical reality. Either way, it's a sad story, but far more tragic as an allegorical story. I should probably rewatch it sometime, with a fuller understanding of the point of the movie, but I'm not sure if or when I might do that. Still, I'm very glad to have seen it once, and I hope it can give cis people a greater insight into the tragedy of society forcing trans people to pretend to be something they're not, and even if they stop pretending and embrace their true selves, society continues treating them as something they're not.