The Poppies of Terra #30 - I Saw I Saw the TV Glow

Jane Schoenbrun (A Self-Induced Hallucination; We’re All Going to the World’s Fair) has talked about filmmaking as an act of faith, and for the right viewers, Schoenbrun’s latest, I Saw the TV Glow, may prove akin to a religious experience. Others may find themselves perplexed or irritated, unable or unwilling to follow the movie’s committed gaze into a surreal, neon-drenched world of disaffection and repression revolving around a Buffy-esque fictional television series named The Pink Opaque. But even for those not on these poles–neither moved to tears out of personal resonance with the material nor frustrated by what they may perceive as incomprehensible, over-stylized pretensions–Schoenbrun’s craft, and its potent evocation of mood, merit respect.

The film’s plot involves lonely Owen (Justice Smith) awkwardly befriending lonely Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine). Students at Void High, both coming from homes broken in different ways, they speak in stilted, drawn-out monotones, each lengthy pause a tired existential beat in the great nothingness of their lives–save for the excitement of The Pink Opaque. Owen’s daily “curfew” means he can’t stay up late enough to catch it live, but he’s seen the commercials and is curious. Maddy helps hatch a plan for Owen to see it at her place, and later tapes new episodes for him. In time, Maddy suggests to him that they run away together. He bails. The show is canceled, and she disappears. Does The Pink Opaque end because Maddy severs her connection with it, going as far as setting her television set on fire, or does she vanish because it’s canceled? Which essence presupposes which existence? What comes first, the seen or the seer?

Anyone who’s experienced teen angst or deep ennui will relate, to some extent, with Owen and Maddy’s plight. Seen in this light, The Pink Opaque’s draw to them is, well, transparent: the characters of Isabel and Tara, who occupy different psychic planes, share a deep bond as they battle the insidious Mr. Melancholy.

The film’s deliberate pacing is less lethargic than it is stifling, no doubt externalizing Owen and Maddy’s dissonant interiorities. Dread pervades, and the possibility of change arises for Maddy only out of desperation. A scene in which she cries heavily while watching The Pink Opaque conveys the depth of her experience. Inspired in part by the works of Spanish director Victor Erice, Schoenbrun develops a compelling visual language for the framing of people watching. Passivity becomes an area of active focus; not doing requires significant effort, and exacts a heavy toll.

During the film’s initial acts it may seem that we’re watching an artsy marriage of a Lynchian take on a creepypasta about a young person’s show hiding ominous secrets–see, for instance, the first season of Channel Zero, “Candle Cove”–with the idea that people retreat into fiction when the world is too painful. There’s a moment in Ottessa Moshfegh’s brilliant novel of retreat from reality, My Year of Rest and Relaxation, in which the protagonist, as one of many oblivion-seeking maneuvers, watches back-to-back episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation for days on end. Speaking of which, “Hollow Pursuits” portrays a character whose response to social anxiety is withdrawal into the endlessly diverting virtuality of the holodeck, while Deep Space Nine’s excellent “It’s Only a Paper Moon” depicts how someone suffering from war-related PTSD might seek a similar type of seclusion. Seen within this framework, a filmic debt might be Ben Stiller’s The Cable Guy (1996), whose obsessive cable installer spent a troubled childhood bonding with television rather than learning how to cultivate healthy relationships. A more recent example of this theme at work is Welcome to Marwen (2018), inspired by a true story, about a man who channels himself into a fictional, miniature world after enduring trauma. However, tempting as though this interpretation might be, I think Schoenbrun’s choices as the film progresses actively resist and subvert it. More on that below.

On the technical front, cinematographer Eric Yue (A Thousand and One) deserves mention, as does art director Naomi Munro (It Comes at Night, Dead Ringers miniseries), along with everyone involved in the sound department. Not every decision works, though. Casting-wise, I found it distracting that Justice Smith’s Owen was supposed to be only a few years older than Ian Foreman’s Owen–in real life, these actors are 16 years apart, and it shows! Some of the aging-related makeup choices, and the presentation of several ancillary characters, also didn’t really work for me, momentarily breaking the spell. Finally, while the 90s setting in the bulk of the film was effectively recreated, a few other sequences are less historically believable.

Additional Thoughts

From here on out I’ll be referencing spoilers. 

Years after Maddy’s abrupt exit, she returns, bringing with her knowledge about what Owen can do if he wants to liberate himself in the same way she has. As with her initial urging to leave town with him, Owen actively resists her invitation–in this case, with physical violence. Time then accelerates for him, so that he seems to age disproportionately, and a breathing condition for which he relies on an inhaler becomes markedly worse. Despite, ultimately, glimpsing his inner nature, Owen refuses to actualize his identity, thus becoming trapped in a rapidly withering body.   

There are no doubt several keys along the generalized lines of alienation alluded to earlier that could help unlock the film’s heavy third-act symbolism, but I think one in particular, already mentioned in the public discourse, decodes the narrative most efficiently: this is an allegory for trans experience. Not just for transitioning, I would say, or gender dysphoria and being transgender, but more broadly for transfiguring–and for transforming.

The evidence is sprinkled throughout. The pink, blue, and white colors of the trans flag appear early on in an experience that deeply moves Owen, and later resurface in a snow globe scene; The Pink Opaque protagonists meet, and ultimately part, at Sleepaway Camp, a title that references the slasher known for its trans ending; Maddy finds her true self only after being buried underground and returning to life, so that “Maddy” in fact becomes her deadname; Owen at one point wears a dress that according to Maddy matches his true identity; from what I could tell a brief snippet towards the end shows a scene from the mockbuster Transmorphers; and so on.

Owen is a captive of fear, and so cannot come fully into his own being. I think a noteworthy element in the film’s screenplay, which flaunts conventional storytelling, is the decision to chronicle this resistance to change. The consequences for Owen are painfully visible and dire. While teens, Maddy tells him he shouldn’t apologize; it’s not coincidental that the final scene shows him desperately apologizing to an utterly uncaring audience consumed with its pursuit of fun. 

Compounding Owen’s suffering before working in the entertainment center is his job in a movie theater, which for years brings him into direct daily contact with people’s transitions between worlds, by contrast reinforcing his self-imposed stasis and stagnation. The design of The Pink Opaque’s principal antagonist, Mr. Melancholy, recalls Georges Méliès’s A Trip to the Moon (1902), suggesting the peril of art as escapism since cinema’s inception. Owen’s lack of change and refusal to embody agency render his story that of a parable, a warning against self-repression. In a way, Owen's post-Maddy life, a colorless repetition of the past, parallels what happens to the channel broadcasting The Pink Opaque after it airs each new episode: it shows black-and-white reruns. Owen’s actions turn him into his own Drain Lord; in denying himself honest thinking about who he is, he becomes his own greatest adversary, dooming himself to decay. And yet, the street chalk art reminds us that “there is still time.” If Owen can rouse himself out of his own hypnosis, he may yet transform and flourish.

I Saw the TV Glow boasts a smoky and radiant postmodern aesthetic that leverages nostalgia against itself, creating a world of two hearts literally trapped in an industrial refrigerator. Owen’s observation that the fictional show’s “Midnight Realm” is really “just the suburbs” is droll, but in retrospect, darkly self-undermining. Schoenbrun’s bold approach to color, saturation and shadow seems inspired by early works of New queer cinema notable Gregg Araki. Musically, too, this movie honors said legacy, with Araki soundtracks renowned for their combination of sensitive shoegaze and ferocious industrial tracks, this one blending an ethereal, drone-buzzy score by Alex G with a number of original songs solicited by the director. A cover by Snail Mail of Smashing Pumpkins’ “Tonight, Tonight” (Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness) can be heard briefly at an important moment, and two tracks performed onstage in the movie–Sloppy Jane’s eerie “Claw Machine” and King Woman’s convulsive, dirge-noise “Psychic Wound”–leave a mark.

There are some nice Gothic touches too, with Maddy’s interment, for example, tapping directly into the works of Edgar Allan Poe, but reappropriated for rebirth rather than extinction. Another daring filmmaker that comes to mind is Charlie Kaufman, in particular the film he co-directed with Duke Johnson, Anomalisa (2015), which mines similar sensations of complete detachment from reality and flirts with its potential sundering. In Totally Fucked Up (1993), the first installment of Gregg Araki’s Teen Apocalypse trilogy, characters give contrasting opinions on the existence of love, one opining, “I mean, there’s gotta be something for people to cling to besides TV, right?” and another declaring, “It’s like this lie we’re brainwashed into believing from birth.” Schoenbrun manages to literalize and riff on both of these statements, with results luminous and oppressive.