you need to watch I Saw The TV Glow

i don’t have the first idea of how to talk about this movie. you need to see it, especially if you’re trans. even more if you’re transfem, and most of all if you’re transfem or questioning but haven’t come out or started transition yet. i cannot recommend it enough, it’s in theaters now and you should see it there if at all possible. this is going to be kind of a mess because this movie made me feel so many emotions i have no idea how to properly express, but i’ll do my best

this movie is about you if you’ve ever felt trapped in your own body, feeling like you’re drowning and not knowing why. if you’ve ever loved a work of art so much it became the lens you saw the world through and felt alienated because of how the people around you didn’t get it. if you’ve ever been stuck in a small town and known something was wrong, this isn’t how things are supposed to be, life isn’t meant to be like this. but most of all, if you’ve ever looked at yourself in the mirror and cried because you’ll die looking like this. if you’ve known you’ll die as a man and nothing is scarier than that, but what other choice do you have? you might even know there’s another option, but it seems impossible and it’s almost scarier than dying like this

this is a movie about a lot of things, but first and foremost it is about being a transgender woman in that time when you know in the back of your mind that that is what you are but are too scared to truly let that out. some people are saying this is subtext, which is absurd. the main character is transgender. this is the text of the film

there will be some spoilers after this point, because i can’t keep talking around the actual movie itself, though i’ll avoid anything too major outside a spoiler tag

the main character (who i am going to refer to as isabel and with she/her pronouns because it makes me feel nauseous to refer to her with the name she goes by for almost the entire movie) is a closeted transgender woman growing up in the 1990s. the movie is about her and a friend (maddy, who is a lesbian) bonding over a show (called the pink opaque) that they connect to in a way they can’t connect with the world around them. isabel is trans and in the closet and she never leaves the closet. she never says she is trans, or that she’s a girl, or tries to live as a woman. she is in the closet, she is too scared to say the words. maddy recognizes this in her, tries to push her to express herself, but isabel doesn’t. she lives her life as a man, pushes maddy away every time maddy reaches out. maddy gets out of the small conservative suburb they live in, changes her name to tara to reject the past. even so, tara never found a community. she comes back one last time to try and get isabel to come with her

spoilers for the end of the film

the most harrowing scene in the film comes after isabel rejects tara. she’s too scared to leave the home she knows, deciding all the pain that comes with her life as a man is better than going into the unknown and living as a woman. as she walks home she passes by chalk writing on the street in the same handwriting and color as when she would get notes from maddy about the pink opaque back in high school. the chalk reads “it’s not too late” and “there is still time”. she ignores it, walks past it. in a voiceover she says “it was time i became a productive member of society, it was time i became a man.” it still exists in her no matter how hard she tries to reject it, but she buries it as much as she can. we see her decades later, still living that life no matter how obvious it is that the pink opaque and her true identity are within her. there is still time but she doesn’t believe that. she’s convinced herself it’s too late, that she’s made her choice and has to stick to it. she accidentally lets some of these buried emotions slip out and as the film ends she’s apologizing to everyone around her for making such a mistake as they completely ignore her, her alienation stronger than ever

some of the pieces of the transfem experience that show up in this movie i’ve never seen anything else touch on. the way that men around you will try and bond with you and you can’t follow along. you fuck up, and they realize on some level that you’re different and they grow hostile to you. the crushing weight of those around you constantly scrutinizing you for anything you do being too effeminate, and how even when that isn’t the thing they’re looking for it’s what you’re scared they’ll find. the way many of us gravitate towards other queer people even when we can’t define ourselves, and can’t answer why when people ask

this movie is drenched in the crushing weight of dysphoria. it’s impossible to describe to someone who hasn’t seen it, or to someone who hasn’t lived it. the one time a character’s actor changes is when isabel goes from 7th grade, played by a kid of the right age, to 9th grade, played by an adult man. this shift in her body, the way she views herself, is so dramatic it feels slightly ridiculous, but that’s how it is. when she looks at herself in the mirror, when she is talking to her father, when she deals with customers or coworkers or gets called “sir” at the drive through it feels like she’s being hit with a hammer. it beats her down until she has no hope, no matter how much the world around her and the one person who sees her for who she is tell her otherwise. it’s not too late, it’s never too late. there is always still time. but she can’t, she’s been crushed into her assigned role and is too scared to leave. it’s maybe the saddest movie i’ve ever seen

i know people who saw this movie and realized this would be them if they didn’t find the courage to come out. a friend called her mom and came out right after watching it. on letterboxd several reviews are from women who only realized what they were through this film. it might be the single most transgender thing i’ve ever seen

i haven’t talked at all about one of the major plotlines of the movie, because it’s something i think would be better not spoiled and it’s not as important for this pitch. and i want to be clear this is a kind of weird movie, it does not have moments of catharsis and it can be hard to follow from scene to scene. it’s very lynchian in the truest sense of that, it’s david lynch if he was a trans millennial. it’s labeled as horror by many but it isn’t truly scary, more existentially troubling. a movie that makes me feel like i’m dying, but not one that scared me in any kind of horror movie way

i wanna just put some words from other people here, add some slightly different perspectives

I Saw the TV Glow was so good, omg. If you have ever questioned your gender identity, or have even had empathy for someone who was questioning their gender identity, this one will probably hurt. But maybe in a good way

As much as I Saw The TV Glow is about the anxiety and fear that comes before you transition it’s like. I think it’s like, so great about showing what being a latent tgirl looks like and what it feels like and like yeah. Here’s this person that looks like a dude and who thinks they’re a dude but like it’s just not-quite right, but still they have to play along w/ the whole boy thing no matter how not-quite-right it is just out of inertia and others’ expectation. And here’s how like this profound feeling identification w/ another girl and girlness in general looks like as it plays across their face. And this is how having that affects your relationships. Oh and here’s the moment when they dip their toes into occupying a girl’s role socially and it just makes so much more sense, but then how scary that is for someone that everyone expects to be a boy, or a gay boy or something. And here’s how immense and valuable it is to them to have a relationship w/ someone who doesn’t expect that from them. It’s such a dramatic position to be in and like. God what a movie, it did it so well

these ones have spoilers

I’ve never seen a movie so laser-focused at one specific group: this is an arrow aimed directly at trans or questioning people in their mid 20s to mid 40s who have grappled with the fear of transitioning.

The horror of this film is the horror of the refusal of the call, and the comfort of the numbing normal keeping you from true happiness. The horror of “but I don’t WANT to face fear and risk of death to live as my true self”. The horror of knowing deep down that it will all be better, but of being so scared that you never take that horrifying step.

I watched it as a BLINDINGLY unsubtle movie aimed at the genderqueer audience. It hit and it hurt because I KNOW girls stuck in the same cycle that our Isabel/Owen is stuck in. It was horrifying on a level that got under my skin and stuck deep. The metaphor of suffocation and rebirth is a compelling one for transition, and the fear of death that accompanies it is something that I think every trans person has dealt with.

I watched it in theater. I had a cis queer film nerd friend with me, and everyone else watching this matinee appeared to be cis men. I heard a lot of grumbling and questioning from the boys in attendance. Lots of “Going to have to think on it”, which is film nerd for “I didn’t get it”. My cis friend caught the trans allegory but missed most of the connections. I think that it’s not going to land for a lot of people.

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when maddy tells owen she likes girls and asks him if he does too, he says (to paraphrase) “i don’t know, i like tv shows. when i think about that stuff, it feels like someone’s ripped me open and tore out all my organs.” after he watches the finale of the pink opaque, he’s vomiting the blue luna juice and sobbing about how this isn’t real, which i relate to like feeling trapped in this unaccepting environment . he does this right after realizing he is isabel, but he still hides it and shoved it down and represses it. then there’s obviously the end, where he cuts himself open in the bathroom and sees the static inside of himself for what it is. it calls back to the line “it feels like someone’s ripped me open and tore out my organs.” which was a REPONSE to being asked about specifically sexuality and more broadly, queerness. there aren’t organs there. there’s the static. he was right and it’s a relief and it’s terrifying and it’s full of guilt and shame and regret and fear. it’s the experience of seeing yourself after years of hiding and repression and it’s directly a queer experience. like hello

link