Recent Movie: I Saw the TV Glow

Owen (Ian Foreman) is a lonely, withdrawn tween in an anonymous American suburb in the mid-90s. A chance encounter with older girl Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) introduces Owen to the long-running supernatural adventure series The Pink Opaque, in which teens Isabel (Helena Howard) and Tara (Lindsey Jordan) use their psychic connection to battle monsters dispatched by the evil Mr. Melancholy. Supplied with past episodes on VHS tapes by Maddy, Owen quickly becomes entranced by the show's tangled mythology, evocative fusion of fantastical and everyday elements, and the close bond between its heroines. But as Maddy becomes more invested in the show, her dissatisfaction with her real life grows, and she eventually disappears. Years later, Owen (now played by Justice Smith) is shocked when Maddy returns, insisting that she has realized their world isn't real. She and Owen, she claims, are Tara and Isabel, who have been captured by Mr. Melancholy, dosed with poison, and buried alive. Owen must come with her before Mr. Melancholy's poison has its full, irrevocable effect.

For a certain kind of nerdy, pop culture-obsessed millennial, watching Jane Schoenbrun's I Watched the TV Glow is an exercise in constant reference-spotting. The suburban setting, down whose late night, empty streets the emotionally-troubled Owen wanders, encountering strange figures and inexplicable occurrences, seems lifted straight out of Donnie Darko. The premise, in which teenagers in the 90s bond over their obsessive love for a quasi-fantastical, quasi-soapy television series that starts to make incursions into their reality, is familiar from Kelly Link's novella "Magic for Beginners". And, as any 90s nerd will sense the first time they see Isabel stride across the screen, ready for battle in a purple satin prom dress, the show-within-the-movie is a mirror of that pop culture stalwart, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (Other references include The Adventures of Pete & Pete, and The Secret World of Alex Mack.)

The first hour of the movie sometimes feels like a game designed purely for people of my age and pop culture interests, constantly courting a feeling of recognition. Remember when you could buy official episode guides for your favorite shows? When the purest expression of friendship was recording the latest episode of your favorite show for a friend who wasn't allowed to stay up and watch it? When you'd spend the week between episodes spinning fan theories and obsessing over how the next episode would refute or confirm them? The film is littered with none-too-hidden easter eggs to delight longtime Buffy fans, such as The Pink Opaque using the same credits font, or a brief appearance by Amber Benson.

Now I have to admit that there's a part of me that finds this sort of thing a bit wearying. Partly this is a matter of having spent a solid chunk of the last twenty years around people who have made Buffy, or other beloved 90s genre fare, into a major component of their personality. Every time the film made a reference that I was able to spot, the thrill of recognition came accompanied with a feeling of fatigue. Is that all there is, I wondered? Is this whole movie just a protracted, elaborate game of "remember when"?

To be fair, that isn't all there is, but much of what makes I Saw the TV Glow special falls in the realm of visuals and sound. Which, combined with the film's languorous pacing and meandering plot, contributes to the sense that it is a mood piece on the theme of being a Buffy fan. The film is full of dreamy, evocative imagery—the rising and falling parachute with which the children in Owen's class play, a projection of star constellations that floats across Maddy's face as she explains to Owen that their world isn't real, a long tracking shot as Owen walks through a corridor at school, the walls plastered with inspirational slogans, finally arriving at the darkroom where Maddy has secreted another tape. Schoenburn commissioned several indie pop and rock bands to write songs for the movie, some of which are performed on screen, a device that stresses the film's unreality. But even at the very heart of these moments, I Saw the TV Glow can never quite escape its referential nature. When Owen and Maddy watch the film's title song being performed live at a local bar, there's a part of us that's clearly intended to think "ah, just like the Bronze".

There is, of course, one thing that sets I Saw the TV Glow apart from almost any mainstream pop culture from the 90s, and that is the growing sense that Owen's gender identity is, at best, confused. No one in the film ever says that Owen is trans, but there are so many sledgehammer-subtle hints—Owen's stern, domineering father (Fred Durst) dismissing The Pink Opaque as "a show for girls"; a memory (which may or may not be real) of Owen dressing up in Isabel's purple prom dress; the colors of the trans flag washing over seemingly every other shot—that it is impossible to reach any other conclusion.

This, too, has the flavor of 90s fandom, of seeing yourself in an entertainment whose creators may not have even intended to mirror your experiences (and who would probably have been prevented from acknowledging those experiences openly even if they wanted to). Of having to make do with metaphor and roundabout reference. When Owen tells Maddy, after she reveals that she likes girls, that "when I think about that stuff it feels like someone took a shovel and dug out all my insides", it's as clear an expression of dysphoric depression as you could ask for. But it might also, as Maddy insists when she returns to Owen later in the movie, be the literal truth, the result of Mr. Melancholy cutting out Isabel's heart. The superposition of the magical and the mundane, which was Buffy's stock-in-trade, can lend immediacy to a story that outwardly might seem disconnected from everyday concerns—the vampire who loses his soul after a night with his true love is the boy who stopped calling after you had sex; the witch who is teaching you how to do spells is the girl you have unexpected and confusing feelings for. But especially for marginalized or uncertain people, it can also offer a mixture of concealment and liberation. For Owen, identifying through The Pink Opaque can be a way of expressing a truth without having to put words to it; but equally, it might be a way of avoiding that truth—being a girl in a fantasy show might be easier, and more palatable, than being a woman in reality.

As powerful and effective as this is, it also suffers from the same slightly-unsatisfying familiarity as the film's constant referential games (I say this, of course, as someone for whom the metaphor of transness that the film develops is an interesting, affecting device and not a lived reality). Which doesn't make I Saw the TV Glow a bad or lesser movie, but for most of its first hour, I couldn't avoid the impression that it was a small movie, constantly overshadowed by the parts it had borrowed, permanently in debt to what came before—even when used to new and different ends. I kept wondering when the film would show me something new, something entirely its own, and I was so focused on the idea that these two things were one and the same that I almost missed the moment when Schoenburn did the one thing that we do not expect a Buffy, Donnie Darko, or "Magic for Beginners"-derived story to do. 

After Maddy finishes telling Owen her story, she insists that they must escape what she has dubbed "the midnight realm". They must bury themselves alive in this world, she claims, in order to emerge in the world of The Pink Opaque as Tara and Isabel. This is actually the second time she has made an offer like this—in their earlier teens, she tried to get Owen to run away with her. Owen, who has been characterized by passivity and acquiescence, seemingly went along with the plan, and then told a parent what Maddy was planning, almost begging to be rescued from her. The rules of a fantasy story demand that there will now be a reversal; that after refusing the call, Owen will rise to heroism and accept it. So ingrained is this expectation that it almost takes a minute to understand what we're seeing when Owen, clearly (and perhaps justifiably) terrified of what Maddy is demanding, instead attacks her and runs away. 

And then... nothing. Maddy disappears again. Owen continues living the same dissatisfying life. The superposition of real and fantastical that the film has established—maybe Owen is Isabel; maybe Owen is trans—continues, but is unresolved because Owen will not do anything to claim either of those identities. Years, decades pass, and Owen remains in the same place—same house, same job, same refusal to claim an identity. It's heartbreaking, but it also cuts through the smokescreen of references and "remember when"s. Finally, there is something in the movie that feels like something only it could have given us. It is a dark and sad irony that we find this only through the protagonist's own refusal to embrace the real and live an honest life, to become the hero of the sort of story we thought we were watching. 

That refusal to choose becomes the essence of I Saw the TV Glow, a darker twist on Buffy or Donnie Darko's dance across genre boundaries. It is reflected in the film's own refusal to commit to an emotional tone, even as it reaches its end. It's heartbreaking to watch Owen live a small, constrained life with no scope for real connection; but it's not entirely hopeless. Despite Maddy's insistence that Mr. Melancholy's poison has set a ticking clock on Isabel's life, what we see in the film's final scenes is that, however faint, the opportunity for change is still there. It will be there for as long as Owen lives—one might even argue that it is the persistence of this possibility, its refusal to go away no matter how many times Owen declines it, that is the most painful thing about it. 

So perhaps the most original thing I Saw the TV Glow does, the most distinctive twist it offers to the stories that have inspired it, is that it ends not on triumph or tragedy, but in the agony of hope. The credits roll without resolving the film's central tension, but also without forestalling the possibility of its resolution. Maybe tomorrow Owen will make a change; maybe the day after that; maybe never. As long as there is art that speaks so clearly and truthfully about the heartbreak of refusing to choose, then maybe it's possible for people like Owen to choose differently. Maybe, just as the characters in the movie find themselves in The Pink Opaque, just as people in the real world found themselves in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, there will be people who find themselves in I Saw the TV Glow.