Thanks to a cleverly uninformative trailer, I went into I Saw The TV Glow with no idea what to expect. It had been described to me as both a coming-of-age film and a psychological horror, and while this was true, the horror of the film is of a more existential nature. It explores queer identity and the more niche concept of ‘queer time’ in ways that are deeply unsettling. Despite being referred to as a coming-of-age movie, it is horrifying rather than celebratory in many aspects. Director Jane Schoenbrun relies heavily on metaphor and allegory to explore the concept of ‘egg cracking’ and gender dysphoria; the result is a journey of self-discovery with a deep focus on the horror of resisting change at the compromise of one’s true identity.
The film follows teenagers Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) and Owen (Justice Smith) and their obsession with a TV show called The Pink Opaque. The show is immediately something illicit for Owen, who is told by his father Frank (Fred Durst) that it is “a show for girls.” Heavily inspired by ‘90’s shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the show itself centres around protagonists Tara and Isabel, who through their psychic connection defeat a different villain from ‘The Midnight Realm’ in each episode. Through the years Owen and Maddy communicate with each other much like the fictional protagonists, with Maddy leaving tapes for Owen without the two actually interacting. The film is a tantalising slow burn, culminating in Maddy’s revelation that The Pink Opaque is real – that Owen and Maddy are not real, but are Isabel and Tara, respectively.
What stood out to me the most in the film was Schoenbrun's expertly created yet disorienting sense of time. There is something completely unrealistic about the world Maddy and Owen inhabit; the narrative operates through time jumps, interactions between people seem forced and laborious, and Maddy and Owen seem completely despondent from and out of sync with reality. The Pink Opaque serves as an anchor and, as Maddy says, “feels more real than real life.” What initially seems like two teenagers merely feeling out of place in their hometown, however, becomes more sinister, as it becomes increasingly clear the ‘Midnight Realm’ of the show is in fact the world they are living in. After an eight year absence, a shell shocked Maddy returns with a message for Owen — “I’ve been there, inside the show. Inside The Pink Opaque.”
Having returned to rescue Isabel, Tara/Maddy then delivers a chilling monologue about how her experience of time led to the realisation that ‘Maddy’ was not real. “Something was still wrong,” she says, “Time wasn’t right. It was moving too fast. And then I was 19. And then I was 20. I felt like one of those dolls, asleep in the supermarket, stuffed. And then I was 21. Like chapters skipped over on a DVD.” For Maddy, time moves too quickly as she is living life as someone else.
Ultimately this is something Owen is forced to grapple with. Tara gives Owen a chance to go back to the ‘Pink Opaque’ and become Isabel – her true self – but he (understandably) is too scared and runs away. Forty years later, Owen is still at his dead-end job at a local arcade, and is literally dying. Schoenbrun purposely deprives us from seeing what has happened in these past forty years, because even Owen himself has not experienced them. This leap in time illustrates how quickly life can pass when one is not living authentically, and how Isabel loses a lifetime pretending to be someone else.
Owen stays in the ‘Midnight Realm,’ but what exactly is this? In The Pink Opaque’s season finale, Isabel and Tara are buried alive by the show’s main villain, Mr Melancholy. This sends them into an alternate world called the Midnight Realm, where they become Owen and Maddy. Their whole lives they have been on the wrong side of the TV screen, perfectly illustrated by Mr Melancholy holding up a snow globe with the child Owen inside, transfixed by the TV. In a scene where Owen physically tries to crawl through the TV screen but is pulled back by his father, it’s hard to not interpret this as the world stopping him from self-discovery. Essentially, the Midnight Realm becomes this heteronormative realm where Owen is forced to be someone else.
Maddy has to undergo this burial, in other words kill her inauthentic self to become Tara. Owen doesn’t follow her, yet he can’t escape the haunting implications of what Maddy has said. “What if she was right? What if I was someone else? Someone beautiful and powerful? Buried alive and suffocating to death on the other side of a television screen?” Owen eventually settles down and starts a family, in his own words ‘becomes a man.’ Through more time jumps and chilling fourth wall breaks, he appears completely detached from reality. It’s as if his existence is not real and dictated by something external.
Eventually, in one of the film’s most disturbing moments, Owen finally loses it at a birthday function at the arcade. After his outburst, a surprisingly not graphic scene follows of Owen cutting himself open to reveal TV static. I think this moment perfectly encapsulates the film; for the first time Owen looks genuinely at peace, finally accepting and allowing the TV to glow. It recalls a moment earlier in the film, when Owen says he feels like someone “took a shovel and dug out all my insides. And I know there’s nothing in there, but I’m still too nervous to open myself up and check.” Moments before the end of the film, he finally has the courage to do this. It might be too late however – Owen closes himself back up and begins apologising, and the film just ends.
It’s hard to say whether the film ends on a hopeful note or not. In its abrupt ending, it lacks true catharsis for Owen and brings to mind T.S. Eliot’s, ‘this is the way the world ends - not with a bang, but a whimper.’ As the lights started to come on in the cinema, I felt unable to leave, which I think was Schoebren’s intent in telling Owen’s story. Like many others, I wasn’t ready for the film to end, with the abrupt conclusion mirroring the season and more generally reflecting this sudden loss of time. At a mere hour and forty minutes, the film is representative of Owen’s life slipping away from him.
After ignoring Maddy’s message that there is still time, we never know one way or another whether it’s too late for Owen. Schoenbrun has previously mentioned their choice to abandon a more hopeful ending. “Anytime I get to an ending that feels tilted too much toward a happy-ending or sad-ending extreme,” they said, “I start to feel like I’m not doing my job.” We all wanted Owen to follow Maddy, but in reality it's not that easy.
Schoenbrun’s film is fundamentally an exploration into what happens when identities are repressed, with a paralysing effect. Despite its depressingly realistic ending, there may be some hope. The Pink Opaque never sees its season finale, but even if it is too late at the very least Isabel can die knowing who she really is. The thing about Schoenbrun’s open and suggestive ending is that Owen’s story never truly ends. Although we never see what happens, maybe there is still time.
