I may be a little late to the party on this, but I recently watched I Saw The TV Glow.
I am absolutely obsessed with the dreamcore aesthetic, liminal spaces, and lost episode creepypastas. This movie honestly sounded like the perfect thing for me to watch.
However, despite its glowing (no pun intended) reviews within the community, I personally did not find I Saw The TV Glow to necessarily be a horror movie. It had some creepy imagery, and the atmosphere was a bit unsettling, but overall I found it to be more of a...psychological thriller, I guess? Maybe even coming-of-age drama?
It was not at all what I was expecting and I'm unsure how it's been billed exclusively as horror all this time, especially given how much the horror community likes to cry "That's not scary!"
However, just because I did not personally think it fit into the horror genre, I still found I Saw The TV Glow to be an interesting movie with some pretty incredible symbolism and messages, which made me want to talk about it despite the fact that it wasn't what I thought it would be.
I Saw The TV Glow is the story of Owen, who we meet first as a seventh grader in the 90s. It's election night, and while his mother is voting, Owen roams the hallways of the local high school and runs into ninth-grader Maddy, who is sitting alone, reading the episode guide to her favorite TV series, The Pink Opaque. They strike up a conversation and, despite Owen having never seen the show before because it's on past his bedtime, they soon come up with a plan to meet at Maddy's house the following Saturday to watch it, under the guise of Owen sleeping over at a male friend's house. Owen is strangely intrigued by the show, albeit a little frightened by it, but he clearly can't look away. Despite his attempts to get his parents to change his bedtime (on Saturday nights no less), Owen is never allowed to actually stay up and watch The Pink Opaque. However, Maddy, continually, for the next two years, leaves Owen VHS tapes around the school, so he manages to see just about every episode, and eventually reunites with Maddy to watch in person again after the passing of his mother, continually saying he's sleeping over at that same boy's house. One of these night, Maddy tells Owen she is running away. She begs Owen to leave with her, but he is terrified, going so far as to beg the mother of the friend he was claiming to have all these sleepovers with, to contact his father and tell him he hasn't been sleeping there so that he gets grounded.
Maddy leaves anyway, though, TV set found burning in her backyard. The Pink Opaque is canceled soon after, and Owen moves on with his life, or tries to.
Until he encounters Maddy again, several years later.
This time, Maddy is in deeper than ever when it comes to her obsession with the show, eventually telling Owen a story of how she was supposedly buried alive, after paying someone to bury her, no less, and when she eventually was able to make her way out, she was in the world of The Pink Opaque, and realized she was never actually Maddy, but Tara, one of the show's protagonists whom she had always admired the most. She is adamant that Maddy and Owen don't actually exist, that they are false, mundane personas created by the big bad of The Pink Opaque universe, a sinister man-in-the-moon character called Mr. Melancholy, and that they are actually Tara and Isabel, the two teenagers who met at summer camp on the show and use their psychic connection to fight evil each week. Maddy believes, as per the show's apparent season five finale, that Mr. Melancholy, and his terrifying looking henchmen, captured Tara and Isabel, removed their hearts, wiped their memories and buried them alive, trapping them in the "Midnight Realm", which is actually the world they have been living in. Maddy thinks the only way for Owen to break the spell and return to his true self as Isabel, is to also be buried alive. Owen is terrified, and ultimately refuses. Maddy is never seen again after that day, and Owen goes on to live a normal, mundane life, working at an arcade/movie theater and starting a family of his own, who are never seen onscreen. He decides to watch The Pink Opaque again one night, as it's now streaming, and what we see of it this time is far more juvenile and silly than how trippy and liminal it was when we saw it in Owen and Maddy's younger years. Owen goes on to work the next day, and ends up having a breakdown in the middle of a child's birthday party, which no one seems to notice. He goes into the bathroom and cuts his chest open, revealing TV static within himself, and the movie ends with him repeatedly apologizing as he staggers back through the arcade.
It's never explicitly spelled out, if Maddy's claims were real, or if they were only real to her because she needed them to be, but the ambiguity of that is what makes this movie so powerful, and is most likely why it is still spinning around in my brain, heavily, despite the fact that I was initially disappointed that I didn't get my trippy, liminal, backrooms-set horror movie. There are so many messages, and so much symbolism, to be found within this movie, even if it's not straight-up, in-your-face horror.
For one thing, it's made pretty obvious that Owen is transgender and closeted. Again, it's never explicitly spelled out, but there are flashbacks to him trying on a dress at Maddy's house as a teenager, unclear if he's meant to simply be cosplaying Isabel to Maddy's Tara, but he looks happier and more comfortable in these scenes. It's made obvious throughout that Owen is struggling very much with his identity in general, and in the end we see what the years of living a lie, be it his gender identity or the fact that he may truly be a character believed to be fictional, or both, have done to him has literally rips apart at the birthday party.
I, personally, have never struggled with gender dysphoria, though I know some people who have. It's not something I can speak on from a place of experience, but something I have experienced is the desire to be someone else, and the strength found within that.
Though it's never made clear if Maddy was actually right, if she and Owen were truly just mundane avatars created by a mysterious man in the moon in his plot to take over the world, what is very clear is that Maddy found a great strength in identifying with the character of Tara. Believing in Tara, and becoming her, to whatever extent, saw Maddy through trauma with her abusive stepfather, and gave her a reason to keep pushing on in her adult life, when it became depressing and mundane and empty. Whether or not Maddy was actually intended to be this other version of herself is questionable, but it's what she needed to believe to see herself through her own life. And though I've never believed that being buried alive would bring me back to my rightful universe, on some level, I've been where Maddy is. As a lifelong loner, I've always found strength and inspiration and company in fictional things. When Maddy states, as a teenager, that Isabel and Tara are like family to her, I truly feel that. I have felt that way about many fictional characters throughout my life, and still do. In some ways, they've shaped more than many actual people I've physically known throughout my life. I have seen myself, and aspects of myself I wish I could tap into more, in many characters, and I don't think I would be the me I am today without some of them. And I feel like that's something that's not talked about a lot in media, or is sometimes portrayed more negatively. And while I suppose there's an argument that could be made that Maddy's obsession with The Pink Opaque is a negative thing, despite the extremes she goes to, if it is all meant to be inside her head, I think it ultimately made her a better, stronger person, and helped her confront demons that maybe she wouldn't have been able to on her own. You don't see enough praise or even real acknowledgment of the inspiration we can find in fictional outlets, or even just the power of fandom in general. While I think this movie will especially resonate with members of the LGBTQ+ community, I think anyone who's ever felt like an outcast, anyone who's ever wanted to be more than they feel like they are, will feel touched by it in some way. I think it could actually be an important watch, for anyone struggling with their identity in any way, shape or form, and I truly hope that I Saw The TV Glow reaches everyone who may need it.
It's strange to me, that I initially felt so disappointed in this movie not being the horror jaunt I was hoping for, but ultimately, I think I found something far more meaningful in it and I hope that anyone else who watches it will find the message that is meant for them as well.
Stay spooky, my friends.
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