“”There is Still Time” | Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw The TV Glow
Spoiler warning: I am trying to use spoilers sparingly, but trust me, you will want to watch I Saw The TV Glow before you read in-depth reviews.
For reasons that will quickly be apparent I’ve struggled with what pronouns to use for characters. The director has used he/him pronouns for the Owen character in interviews, so I, at certain points, will.
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 (Justice Smith)
In 2022 I wrote about Jane Schoenbrun’s narrative debut – We’re all Going To the World’s Fair. The film was a kind of coming-of-age horror film. It was a paean to constructing an identity online, and how this relates to finding one’s trans identity. Director Jane Schoenbrun began to transition shortly after the film.
Their sophomore film, I Saw The TV Glow, is similarly about self-discovery as a strange teenager. It is a horror film, of sorts. With their second film Jane, however, focuses on the experience of finding yourself in television as a young queer (particularly trans) person. The film represents a deepening of the themes of their first film. It’s a step up in budget and scope too, abandoning the “screenlife” presentation of We’re All Going To The World’s Fair, whilst still being wholly unconventional. It resonated with me even more than their prior film.
Opening against the backdrop of the 1996 US election, the film follows Owen (Ian Foreman as a younger version of Owen). Owen is an isolated ,sheltered boy (as far as they are aware…) in the seventh grade. They see Maddy (a fantastic Brigette Lundy-Paine) reading an episode guide for a TV show called The Pink Opaque – a young adult fantasy show. Owen is interested in the show, but it airs past his bedtime. Under the guise of staying at a male friend’s house, Owen sneaks out to watch the show with Maddy and her friend, Amanda.
The show within the movie is a loving homage to both Buffy The Vampire Slayer (check out the fonts!) and kids genre TV of the period. Schoenbrun presents a loving simulacrum of 90s kids TV that was often shot on video in Canada, for networks like Nickelodeon. 90s kids will, indeed, remember.
The Pink Opaque follows teen girls Isabel and Tara as they use their psychic connection to fight “monsters of the week” sent by the show’s “big bad” Mr. Melancholy.
Owen is enthralled by the show, Schoenbrun perfectly capturing the moment of identifying with characters who are different to your assigned gender. Through watching the show Owen begins to fantasise about being Isabel, and the lines blur.
Isn’t that a show for girls?
Frank (Fred Durst)
I Saw The TV Glow is an admitted metaphor for the “egg-crack” moment of discovering you’re trans, however Schoenbrun wanted to make it more metaphorical. Schoenbrun previously expressed a desire for less literal trans stories, for films made by trans people for trans people. To be trans is often to see yourself talked about rather than talked to, and depictions of trans narratives by cis filmmaker’s and stars tend to either portray us with harmful stereotypes, or as innocent convenient martyrs, dying for the hubris of living authentically. Whilst it would be reductive to suggest a movement, it’s telling that Jane’s second film is the latest in a slew of transfemme genre films like Vera Drew’s The People’s Joker or Alice Maio Mackay’s T Blockers.
Two years later and Maddy is taping episodes of the show and leaving them in the high school darkroom for Owen. Owen (now brilliantly played by Justice Smith) is obsessed with rewatching the show, hiding watching it from their father in particular. In a key scene Owen approaches Maddy to ask about watching The Pink Opaque together again. Maddy confides up front that she’s into girls. After being asked if he likes girls or boys, Owen replies “I-I think that I like TV shows”. The film is the most beautiful depiction of friendship with other queers, at an age before you understood. For Owen, Maddy is that first friend who – metaphorically or literally – held your hand the first time you tried on a dress.
Maddy plans to escape and invites Owen. Owen cannot go through with the plan and retreats. Maddy disappears, leaving only her burning TV set in the backyard, and from there I will say no more.
This film is incredible, to say the least. The performances are fantastic. Once again, like in Schoenbrun’s debut, the paucity of information we are given is a strength, forcing us to infer characters’ wider lives rather than being spoon fed. Whereas the father figure in We’re All Going To The World’s Fair was kept off screen, we get a mostly silent father here, brought to life by a terrifying Fred Durst (yes, that Fred Durst!). The cinematography by Eric K. Yue is beautiful. Schoenbrun once again demonstrates an innate feel for the liminal Twilight Zone suburbia can become when it’s empty.
Alex G returns from Jane’s debut, to deliver a lush, shoegaze adjacent score. The film assembles an amazing soundtrack of queer artists from different genres, a stand out being Yeule’s cover of Broken Social Scene’s Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl. What Donnie Darko was to the 80s, this will be to the 90s. The film also features several great live performances by Sloppy Jane (with Phoebe Bridgers) and King Woman.
I saw this film at a free community screening for trans people. When I left the screening there were tears, hugs and everyone could feel it.
Before coming out and beginning transition, my life was on one course. In many ways I felt like I should be happy, I was engaged and it looked like I was going to get married and “settle down”. These are the things I felt I was supposed to want. Eventually, however, I had to leave this sure path, for the uncertain one of being myself. I had become obsessed with this feeling that time was running out to be myself…
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…
Maddy (Bridgette Lundy-Paine)
“Queer time” is a known concept, the idea that we experience coming-of-age moments at wildly different times, as we find ourselves. In many ways I Saw The TV Glow is an ode to experiencing rites of passage in queer time.
It’s also about the fear of opening that door to being yourself. I am happy every day that I get to be myself, but you have to consider that it will change every aspect of your life, and can change your relationships. Living a lie is like sleepwalking through life, but there might seem to be certainty there.
I Saw The TV Glow is an instant cult classic that will resonate so deeply with many of us. For some of us however, maybe the greatest takeaway will be a message scrawled in chalk in the film – “there is still time”.
I Saw the TV Glow is currently screening in Irish cinemas.
