A forward: I understand that this film won’t be for
everyone, some people will not be receptive to the trip that this film takes
its viewers on, and I’m sure this will have its fair share of 1-star reviews.
What I am telling you though is that if this film does resonate with you, you
cannot afford to miss it because it could very easily become a self-identifying
piece of media. I’m going to gush about this film for the next 1000 words or so
and I understand that some people may resent me if I make them see it, but I am
under the film’s spell, so this aggressively positive review is all I am
capable of. Also be warned this will go into spoilers as I feel I need to to
flush out the themes. Please go see this film and then come back after.

Three years after making the cult classic We’re All Going
to the World’s Fair (a film this reviewer will be catching up with in the
upcoming week,) Jane Schoenbrun returns to the big screen with what is destined
to go down as on of the quintessential Millennial pieces of filmmaking, I
Saw the TV Glow.

Taking place in the mid-90s, the film is about two teenagers,
two years apart, who form a bond over a young adult teen show The Pink
Opaque. Owen, Ian Foreman and Justice Smith as young and old Owen respectively,
is the younger of the two, and is unable to watch the show when it airs because
of his mother’s strict bedtime requirements for him. Alone and desperate for
someone to share her interest with, Maddy, Brigette Lundy-Paine, invites Owen over
one night to watch if with her, and then supplies him with taped copies of
episodes to watch when he is able.

One week when Owen spends the night at Maddy’s and she
convinces him to run away with her next weekend. Owen, scared to leave the
comfort of the life he knows doesn’t, show up and Maddy is left to run away on
her own. The film then jumps 8 years to when she returns and tries to explain
herself to Owen in the coolest looking and sounding queer bar caught on screen.

The live music in the bar is the peak of one of many
highlights from the film, the music both score and soundtrack. Schoenbrun had unprecedented
control over the music in her film having budget from A24 to create 12 to 15
original pieces of music. With this much control over the soundtrack,
Schoenbrun and musician Alex G were able to sculpt the exact soundscape that one
would expect the physical manifestation of a memory of a dream. It uses current
artists and techniques but It is such an ethereal sound that it makes sense to
score the 90s because that’s what a memory sounds like.

Stylistically I Saw the TV Glow relies on nostalgia. The
Pink Opaque is clearly a play on Buffy the Vampire Slayer or other
such TV shows that would be passed around on VHS. And while the picture quality
is crisp, the whole movie has a feel of being taped onto VHS. The soundtrack
relies on a lot of distorted synths, and footage of the show in particular are
rather distorted. Everything just feels like it lives in the late 90s, like the
film itself was a relic of the time only with deeper meaning being interjected
from the present.

Much of the deeper meaning that I Saw the TV Glow contains
comes from its surface level and more allegorical queerness. After the first
time skip, Owen approaches Maddy about watching The Pink Opaque together
again, and Maddy announces “You know I like girls right?” clearly announcing
herself as belonging to the LGBTQIA+ spectrum. In this way, she represents the
confident queer person who while they existed in the 90s were rather
countercultural.

Owen on the other hand represents the repressed queer
identity so uncomfortable with the concept that he was scared to admit it to
himself. When explain that he believes that he is ace, he describes it as thus:
“I can take a shovel and dig that part of me out and I know there’s nothing in
there, but I’m terrified to open it and look.”

Both of these ways of “dealing” with one’s queerness in the
90s capture one inevitability from that era, isolation and loneliness. Either
you live open and people reject you or you hide yourself and are too miserable
to have a thriving social life and the loneliness comes for you anyway.

The trans allegory is not a subtle one, Owen wears a dress
in a dreamlike state multiple times, and his father, randomly played by Fred
Durst, dismisses The Pink Opaque as a show for girls. The television
show itself and Owen’s relationship to it take supernatural form, and this
connection represents Owen’s transness. As a child watching the show is
something he keeps from his family, and it can be assumed that Maddy is the
only person he is open about it with. Many kids from that era (myself included)
would have that one friend to which they felt comfortable being open.

After Maddy disappears Owen keeps the show, his transness,
to himself. He becomes obsessed with the show as if the show has power over him.
When Maddy finally does reappear she exposes to him that The Pink Opaque was
more than a show, and that he is not who he thinks he is. She leads him to a
place where he can be reborn as his true self.

Confronted with the truth of who he is, he runs scared to
take the jump. This moment takes place in 2006, and it makes complete sense
that Owen would be scared to make the jump. It was an unknown at the time, and
risking the life he had, even if it has this loud ghost haunting him is at
least familiar. The problem with this decision is that The Pink Opaque never
leaves, in fact it grows like a tumor.

As a trans person myself, I instantly felt like this film is
an inextricable part of me. The pink TV static runs through my body, and brings
comfort to my isolated, closeted childhood self. Jane Schoenbrun created a film
that speaks directly to her, and like years of therapy has offered her a place
to call home. I Saw the TV Glow just resonates with whatever part makes one
feel isolated from the rest of the world. It is more than just a perfect film It
lives on with the viewer who is willing to accept it and becomes a part of
them.