Anyone who saw Jane Schoenbrun’s We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (2021) understands they’re a filmmaker innately tuned into the fascinating crevices of myth, identity, and how all of that is transfixed by modern technology. I Saw the TV Glow takes those themes even further into the abyss as it weaves a tale of 90’s television culture and its impact on high school friends just crawling to get out of their make-believe skin.
I must admit, upon first viewing, I was left a bit stunned and confused by some of the film. Only after discussing it with other people (as the best films tend to cultivate conversation), I realized I Saw the TV Glow means much more to other people than myself. This is a deeply affecting metaphor for gender identity, and if one associates themselves and views the film within that lens, the sheer bravado of image, sound, and editing becomes horrifying clear.
But, before that, things start out reasonably ordinary as middle schooler Owen (Justice Smith, eventually) meets a cool high schooler named Maddy (Brigitte Lundy-Paine), immersed in a fan fiction novel about a late-night TV show called “The Pink Opaque”. Whether he’s charmed by the cool kid sensibilities of Maddy, or she recognizes a kindred spirit in young Owen isn’t identified, but she takes mercy on him and invites him over to watch the show.
For the next couple of years, their friendship ebbs and flows. Both are outcasts in their school, but the consistency of their love for “The Pink Opaque” binds them together. That is until Owen tells us in his monotone voiceover that one night, Maddy disappears…. and the only thing she left behind was a torched television set in her backyard. A harsh metaphor, indeed.
Their story doesn’t end there. For all its emphasis on these two outsiders and their tenuous relationship based on a television show that plays like a cross between a WB teen superhero drama and a David Lynch experiment, I Saw the TV Glow slowly evolves into a quietly insidious mystery when Maddy suddenly reappears in Owen’s life with a story that mixes together mythos and legend… nothing of which he (or especially us) understand to be true.
And it’s in this universe of possible insanity and alienating images (none moreso stunning than a scene where Owen literally tries to crawl into his television set) that the real power of I Saw the TV Glow excels. It’s a film full of deeply allegorical images that becomes even more powerful after the mystery of Maddy virtually dissipates and we’re left with the ramblings of Owen that venture into the territory of something akin to a Charlie Kaufman treatise on the nature of being something else. But with the mentions of Lynch and Kaufman here, I don’t want to elide Schoenbrun’s keen skill as a writer and filmmaker. They have their own agenda in telling a story about trans identity that certainly makes one sit up and think, and we need more of that in cinema nowadays.
I Saw the TV Glow opens in limited release in the Dallas/Fort Worth area on Friday May 17th.
Dallas Film Now. 