Courtesy of the Pink, White and Blue
Queer childhood nostalgia and the depressed fantasies of suburbia swirl in an emotional vortex in Jane Schoenbrun’s bizarre, stunning, devastating sophomore feature.
The best ‘throwback’ films capture both a specific cultural moment and a kind of sense experience. Granted, there are lighter ‘90s moments here — a montage of personalised VHS recording titles in pink text, and the fine-tuned schlocky-ness of the film’s fictional show The Pink Opaque, are highlights. But I Saw the TV Glow offers so much more than hackneyed teen drama, utterly haunting in its examination of desire, suffering and doomed promises of escape through the medium of TV.
Justice Smith is completely convincing as Owen. Rarely has a deadpan delivery felt so layered, with an unsettlingly pitched voice and increasingly zombified gait covering for layered inner burdens. Owen’s purpose, desires and gender identity are processed through the mysterious pull of a supernatural girls’ TV show, whose hold on Owen’s memories becomes distorted into an alternate reality, with the threat that Owen’s ‘real self’ is in danger of annihilation.
Bridget Lundy-Paine is also excellent in their supporting role as Maddy, pulling off a phenomenal monologue at the film’s interpersonal climax. Maddy’s death drive, coded through the unfinished plot of The Pink Opaque, lends a voice of transfixed despair to what is hidden behind Owen’s quiet, disconnected exterior.
And if you gaze for long into a screen, the screen gazes also into you…. Justice Smith in I Saw the TV Glow. SPENCER PAZER/A24
All this may sound overly weighty, but Schoenburn manages a spellbinding tone that makes this journey into fantasy compelling. It feels at points like a dark Barbie, serving both as an unconventional trans story and an uncomfortable look at misplaced emotional investment.
This is all the more so true when considering the place of childrens’ TV in the ‘90s, in the post-Reaganomic years of deregulation, and the legalisation of unfettered advertising to children that spawned glorified-advert-shows like Transformers. Owen and Maddy are stand-ins for an entire generation of children (especially in America) with core childhood memories linked to TV. (Given these reflections on the ‘90s, it’s a slice of genius to cast Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst — a key figurehead of a rebellious soundscape — as Owen’s punitive, uncaring stepdad).
The idea of ‘nostalgia’ (from the ancient Greek nostos, ‘home’, and algos, ‘pain’) is also piercingly transmuted. What ‘home’ does Owen actually have to return to, if even his body is a prison, and if his memory of growing up is locked inside a TV show?
Bolstered by a strong score from Alex G, Owen’s wide-eyed journey into a genderqueer dance of fragmented connection, desire and romance with The Pink Opaque comes with layers of a strange, submerged tragic reflection at times. At others, Schoenburn conjures a sharper dissonance with minimalist macho-phrased school posters, as well as the ominous, soul-crushing Fun Centre. Even as a metal fan, the screams of an underground vocalist in one scene felt truly visceral.
While the film left me in need of a more hopeful story about transness, I felt that I Saw the TV Glow spoke to deep cultural truths. Schoenburn is showing their colours as a filmmaker deftly drawing us into the muddied waters of memory, time, queer displacement, and searing emotion. Be prepared for a crushing ending.