Review: I Saw the TV Glow (Patreon)

Roger Ebert was right that film is an empathy machine, but I'm particularly impressed by the cis people who grokked I Saw the TV Glow. Jane Schoenbrun didn't make a movie that only trans people could understand — they probably wouldn't have gotten Emma Stone's attention if they'd done that. But I'm fascinated by the idea of watching this movie as a cis person — what is that experience like?

Owen (Justice Smith and, in some early scenes, Ian Foreman) spends his life failing to ask that same question. He watches The Pink Opaque with an obsessiveness that he repeatedly fails to identify as the desperate longing it really is. Owen's fascination with Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) isn't primarily sexual — at least beyond the extent that being trans is inherently sexual. He never articulates exactly why he's drawn to that show "for girls", or the hot lesbian at school. Owen spends his life terrified of putting his greatest fear into words.

Only Felker-Martin's Manhunt has captured the sheer horror at the heart of dysphoria. I Saw the TV Glow identifies the Lynchian alienation of being trans: the of longing, the sense of watching your own life like it's television, the misery of not being seen by anyone, not even yourself, and the claustrophobia of being buried inside your life. It's The Last Temptation of Owen — an abject display of horror. The scariest movie of 2024.

Happy sixth tranniversary to me.