The Twin Peak-esque surrealism is not much more than a device that communicates the bloodstream themes in Jane Schoenbrun’s A24 horror I Saw the TV Glow. And I guess you could also see it as the cauldron that holds the effervescent existential bedlam that is queer identity in a cishet-run world. But the gnawing questions Schoenburn’s film leaves you with are hardly about how many of the bizarre circ*mstances Owen finds himself in are actually true. Because that route is bound to keep you blind to the real nature of Owen and Maddy’s suburban existence, which doesn’t feel real.
Spoiler Alert
What happens in the film?
We first met Owen and Maddy in 1996. The fact that Owen’s in the seventh grade doesn’t reflect in the ways his actions are still monitored by his stepdad. And considering how isolated he actually feels, having a good relationship with his mother is hardly comfort enough. Comfort comes in the form of Maddy, the ninth-grader at Void High School (VHS?), who brings The Pink Opaque into his life. The young adult cable TV show was already everything to Maddy, a queer girl with an abusive dad struggling to breathe in the tiny little box that was her life. And the show with Isabel and Tara, two best friends fighting the big bad Mr. Melancholy and only communicating telepathically, has the same soothing, absolutely gripping impact on Owen, too, for some reason. Owen and Maddy don’t really become friends in the years that pass by. But Maddy’s sweet enough to leave VHS tapes of The Pink Opaque episodes in the darkroom at their high school. Things sort of fall apart for Owen and The Pink Opaque when Maddy skips town. The show’s canceled in the same month as Maddy’s disappearance, and Owen once again loses the hues that colored his otherwise depressing life. Owen exists uncomfortably in a world where he barely recognizes himself, let alone his purpose. And Maddy’s unprecedented return eight years later makes things all the more strange when Owen is compelled to figure out if he and Maddy are actually Isabel and Tara from The Pink Opaque.
What’s the meaning of Maddy’s experience?
I Saw the TV Glow manifests its entire style and the cadence of the narrative keeping two things in mind: the inexplicable surrealism that was pervasive in 90s TV and somehow didn’t evoke much contemplation in the audience, and how people, especially those who struggle with derealization, often imagine themselves as characters in the worlds of TV shows. Maddy was always fond of Tara’s character in The Pink Opaque. And while not much is detailed about how things were in her home, just the fact that her father broke her nose once is reason enough to assume that there was no love to be found from her family. I don’t necessarily believe that Maddy was embarrassed or especially secretive about the fact that she was into girls. But her friend Amanda spreading rumors about her being a creep is just one of the ways people likely reacted to Maddy’s sexuality. So you can imagine how out of place Maddy would feel in a life like that. In their first secret sleepover, Maddy acknowledged that The Pink Opaque felt more like life than life itself. While that’s not-too-subtle foreshadowing, a nod to an avid fan’s experience with their favorite show, and a broader observation on the necessity of fictional worlds in the same breath, it’s also quite personal to Maddy. Like I said, she always preferred Tara. And when she went away, looking for a place where she’d breathe better and be more herself, Maddy embodied her favorite character in the show. You also have to remember that The Pink Opaque had a rather hopeless ending, with Tara being buried underground by Mr. Melancholy.
And while Maddy hopped towns, time ran its merciless course without bothering about whether or not she’d found the life she was after. Her existence felt like a lie—a lie Tara was living banished in the Shadow Realm. And the only way she knew how to get back to her existence as Tara was by burying herself alive. Rebirth was what Maddy was after. She so desperately wanted The Pink Opaque to be her real world and for the show to have a more satisfactory ending that she crawled out of the grave to get Owen. She needed Owen to remember why the show meant so much to them. She needed Owen to remember who he really was. Granted, Owen wasn’t too keen on accepting that his whole life had been a lie and that he was actually Isabel from The Pink Opaque. His experience with the burdensome thing that is self-actualization was a whole separate thing. But there was something in Maddy’s story about how she’d come to accept her TV show identity that was similar to how Owen felt during the sleepovers he had in Maddy’s basem*nt. There was a shared desperation to run from the suffocating mold of “normalcy.” And unlike Owen, Maddy did run. At the end of the day, Maddy’s experience was a surreal metaphor for queer identity in a world that has no place for it. Her need to be Tara came from the place where her soul was drifting into the void of what she imagined as the plane between the Shadow Realm and the world of the Pink Opaque. We know which world she actually wanted to live in. So, in her vain attempt to get Owen to bury himself underground, Maddy realized that the journey was hers and hers alone. Maybe she did bury herself and didn’t claw her way out this time. Or maybe, if we’re to take the mystical aspect of the narrative seriously, she did wake up as Tara in the world she craved to be in. And if she did, I think she’d be waiting on the dock where Tara and Isabel met before losing each other to the distance put between them by Mr. Melancholy, who is evidently a metaphorical villain embodying the cruel constraints of real life.
Was Owen actually Isabel?
Owen had grown up thinking there was something wrong with him. How he actually felt about himself is all that you hear in his conversation with Maddy on the bleachers. Schoenbrun, being a non-binary and trans person themselves, has been able to perfectly define the overwhelming confusion that can brew within a trans kid in a heteronormative environment. Owen didn’t know if he liked boys or girls. He felt as though his insides were scooped out and replaced by something that he was too scared to explore. And that was something Owen would always feel—too scared to look in. What else would a kid feel about being raised by a father who deems The Pink Opaque too girly for him to watch? And considering how tremendously scary the process of a trans person accepting that they’re wearing the wrong body can be, you can imagine why Owen would be so wary of acknowledging his truth. Running away with Maddy the first time would’ve pushed him to break out of the cookie-cutter life he was so painstakingly adhering to. And burying himself with Maddy and finally becoming who he really was were things Owen simply wasn’t ready for. So he stayed in the world Maddy thought was the Shadow Realm and did his best to be content with what was “normal” and “acceptable.”
Years later, when Owen was rewatching The Pink Opaque, just the fact that it felt so cheap meant that the show had been a whole different thing when he was a kid. In the fleeting flashbacks, we see Owen wearing Isabel’s dress. He’d locked away that part of himself so far into the recesses of his mind that he doesn’t even remember cross-dressing on his sleepovers with Maddy. The only time he truly felt like himself was when he imagined himself as Isabel. And that’s perhaps why The Pink Opaque seemed to have so much more depth when he was a kid. Maddy’s return triggered memories for Owen. And more than that, it reminded him of the time he’d spent getting close to touching the surface of his truth. That’s perhaps why, after Maddy’s return, The Pink Opaque’s finale looked a lot like it had back in the day. After Isabel’s heart was taken out and she was poisoned with Mr. Melancholy’s signature Luna juice, Owen saw his little self in the snow globe that was in Mr. Melancholy’s hand. If the Luna juice was the lies that were fed to Isabel so that she would live in the purgatory-like Shadow Realm as Owen, you can see why Owen would put his head through the TV set. He’d seen a glimpse of his truth, and he really wanted to get back to it. Owen’s painful actualization of how his life was a snow-globe in an evil entity’s hand and how he’d been living out this miserable existence that wasn’t even his is a surrealistic representation of how helpless a young trans person would feel when they come close to accepting their truth without seeing a way to reach it.
What does the ending mean?
The overarching narrative is undeniably intended to tell Owen’s story more than anything else. While certainly a main character in the technical sense, I see Maddy as more of a door for Owen to open. And on the other side, he’d be everything but a cishet man. But Maddy was a door Owen could never muster up the courage to open. That doesn’t mean he didn’t acknowledge what she stood for in his journey to finding who he really is. Owen was reluctant and terrified of the unknown. He was so reluctant that he’d given in to the expectations of his suburban existence and settled down. He even admittedly loved his family, presumably made up of a wife and kids. I won’t gamble everything on this theory, but I feel like the logo of the big LG TV he got for his home after doing away with his old TV set kind of resembles Mr. Melancholy. And if you think about it, Owen’s buying into the forced contentedness of being a man with a family only means that Mr. Melancholy’s Luna juice is in full effect.
But despite its initial appearance, I Saw the TV Glow‘s ending isn’t as depressing as you’d think. 20 years down the line, Owen’s skin and bones are deteriorating, his asthma’s gotten tremendously worse, and he has this job at an arcade amid games that are clearly inspired by the pop-culture influence The Pink Opaque had. This is essentially I Saw the TV Glow going metaphor-heavy with its subtle discourse on the ever-lingering nature of 90s TVscape. But what this also underlines is how Owen is surrounded by reminders of who he’d be if he were his real self. He might’ve never actually thought that he was literally a character in his favorite TV show, but the whole ordeal impacted him in a more rational way. He wasn’t Isabel. But he wanted to be like her. While playing the part of a cishet man and a functional part of society, Owen always carries the feeling that he’s supposed to be beautiful and powerful, just like Isabel. All the “what could have beens” are painful, for sure, but the chalk writing on the street isn’t wrong. Owen may’ve missed the Maddy train twice, but as the saying goes, there is still time for him. There’s time for him to still come to terms with his truth and leave his agonizing existence as someone he isn’t. Not one word that Owen says as he screams out at a kid’s cheery birthday party is a lie. He is actually dying inside the skin of someone his truth doesn’t align with.
But however freaky the ending of I Saw the TV Glow seems, Owen cutting open his chest in the bathroom and seeing the glowing screen of a TV inside of him isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s a reminder that his truth’s still inside of him, which only means that he’s dared to look in. That’s a step toward a hopeful future where Owen will transition and be who she was always meant to be, right? And if anything, the fact that Owen comes out of the bathroom and apologizes to every person who doesn’t even acknowledge her existence is the truth about the trans experience. One step forward doesn’t come with immunity from the guilt and embarrassment that a trans person would be conditioned to feel by a society that’d always see them as “not us.” Even a happy ending for Owen couldn’t have promised that she wouldn’t feel the distance from the rest of the world that isn’t too keen on letting her be who she really is.
