This article contains minor plot spoilers for I Saw the TV Glow.
After their second traditional feature, Jane Schoenbrun has already developed quite a reputation through their one-of-a-kind approach to filmmaking. Prior to their criminally underappreciated debut narrative feature, We’re All Going To The World’s Fair, Schoenbrun was already making waves behind the scenes producing and executive producing projects like Tux and Fanny and Chained For Life, forming industry connections with results that are still evident in their latest project.
Schoenbrun has uniquely defined their creative voice as one of the most media-literate in filmmaking today. Their use of Creepypasta (along with other online horror mythology) as subject matter in their directorial debut requires a level of media literacy that most conglomerate production companies lack, so it seems only fitting that their sophomore feature tackles media obsession in a completely different light.
I first heard of I Saw the TV Glow on February 3rd, 2023. This was a very formative time for me, being in my second year of uni, not quite sure where my creative voice fit in or whether I had anything of value to say. Instead, I found solace in watching movies. Lots of them. February 3rd was the day I watched We’re All Going To The World’s Fair, and I was utterly transfixed by the atmosphere it created. To me, it remains completely singular in the way it explores adolescence with unadulterated access to the internet in a uniquely haunting way. I became obsessed instantly. I checked the director’s Letterboxd filmography page to find this was their only feature, but they had another in production. It had no release date, a cryptic poster, and a synopsis reading:
“Two teenage outcasts bond over their shared love of a scary television show, but the boundary between TV and reality begins to blur after it is mysteriously cancelled.”
I was hooked.
It was December when I heard of it again. An Instagram post with stills of the films announced for the 2024 Sundance Film Festival featured Justice Smith and Brigette Lundy-Paine in a strange, purple frame. The caption read: “Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow will receive its premiere at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival”. I instantly tried to work out if there was some way – if there was even a chance – to get to Utah the following month to see this film as soon as humanly possible, but there wasn’t. So when January rolled around, reviews from people I followed slowly started flooding in, praising it as an evocative, one-of-a-kind, coming-of-age masterpiece. The FOMO was unimaginable.
It was May 8th, 2024 when the Sydney Film Festival (SFF) program was announced. I had already NA’ed for work from the 5th to the 16th of June (SFF is always my favourite time of year), and when I viewed the program and saw that I Saw the TV Glow was playing on the opening night, my heart jumped out of my chest. The money practically disappeared out of my wallet. I finally had a date to look forward to, and felt so incredibly lucky to be one of the few people who got a ticket, because it was the first film of the festival that fully sold out all three of its sessions. I was clearly not the only person excited to see it.
On June 5th, 2024, I finally saw I Saw the TV Glow. I’d spent over a year trying to picture what this film was going to be, but it was unlike any of the possibilities I had imagined. My bias, however, does not take away from the film’s merits, this film is a one-of-a-kind masterpiece. Even though it is marketed as a horror film, I had no idea how truly disturbing I Saw the TV Glow would be. Disturbing in a Schoenbrun sort of way, not quite the typical 'A24 slow-burn horror' genre that is all the rage nowadays.
That being said, this film is so many things at once; it’s a body horror film, not in the Titane way, but in the way it is inherently horrifying to have a body; it’s a coming-of-age, not in the Lady Bird way, but in the way facing your true identity is the scariest thing one can do; it’s a movie about connection to media, not in the Me and Earl and the Dying Girl way, but in the way it acknowledges the innate connection between neurodivergence/queerness and media. It’s a film for all the kids who never understood why they loved Buffy the Vampire Slayer so much growing up, but it’s also so much more than that. It’s a singular portrait of gender dysphoria in a remarkably poignant yet uplifting way that Schoenbrun has proved only they can pull off.
It has been interesting to see how audience’s interpretations of the transness in this film have played out online. As a trans filmmaker myself, I saw this film as one of the most well-done, subtle representations of trans identity and discovering oneself ever put to screen. It keeps the audience at arm's length, never cutting to a shot of Owen saying “I’m trans” like many mainstream properties do nowadays. Rather, transness is coded deep within Owen’s character and is portrayed incredibly by Justice Smith. Owen carries themself with such uncertainty that some audience members could chalk that up to just being an awkward high schooler, but every trans viewer knows the feeling. Feeling different, like a pilot within your own body, unable to control the way it’s changing. Whilst it is a universal feeling to grow up and experience changes, the way Schoenbrun queers time in the film speaks to its intention as a trans allegory.
What is queering time you ask? Much like queerness, time in I Saw the TV Glow reacts fluidly, void of a fixed, linear progression. Schoenbrun plays with its speed, emphasises its importance in some parts and leaves the audience to figure out others.
Owen’s character undergoes drastic physical change throughout the film. During the two-year time jump, from 1996 to 1998, Owen goes from being portrayed by Ian Foreman, just 12 years old at the time of filming, to being played by Justice Smith, who was 27. This is an example of queered time, and works specifically through the trans lens. Obviously, Owen did not do 15 years of physical maturing in the space of two. It is exaggerated, as Owen fears they have wasted time not living as their true self, and they are aging too fast and will soon run out of time. This theory makes more sense when considering the perspective from which the story is told, and how it plays out. In the beginning, we see Owen sitting at a campfire, talking about how they started rewatching their favourite show, The Pink Opaque. This is where the story begins for us, and through the use of voiceover throughout the first half of the film, it’s evident that the perspective we’re observing is of Owen looking back on their childhood. From the point they put out the campfire, they are imagining what the future is going to look like for them. This is why in such a short span of time, Owen’s character loses all their hair, their skin dries up, and their health rapidly declines. The messaging of the final act surrounds itself around the message “YOU ARE DYING”, which is repeated in several frames.
Many people have critiqued this ending for being too negative and left of field, but it is a perfect representation of episodes of catastrophisation that I, and many other trans folk, have had when it seems uncertain whether we will ever be able to live authentically as our true selves.
These choices, which are made specifically to represent the uncertainty and non-linearity that is synonymous with discovering one’s true self, are the choices that have garnered the most criticism from filmgoers. I would argue that a lot of the backlash behind these avenues of storytelling comes from the misrepresentation of trans identities in mainstream media as a whole, leading to a lack of understanding of our experiences.
It’s sad but it’s true – trans characters are GROSSLY underrepresented and misrepresented in mainstream media. Jackson of Variety found that out of the 100 top-grossing films of 2022 (the year I Saw the TV Glow was filmed), there were 4,169 speaking roles/characters, and only FIVE of them identified as transgender. However, It’s not just a lack of representation, however. Problematic representation is just as harmful. The Oscar-winning Dallas Buyers Club (2013) is cited time and time again for problematic trans representation, where trans-woman Rayon, played by cis-man Jared Leto, is continuously misgendered by the film’s script with no creative justification, showing that those involved put no effort into actually understanding trans identity and creating a three-dimensional character.
So, think of 'mainstream transness' as the 'Euphoriafication' of trans characters – the perfect feminine/masculine, or in other words, the trans character that exists just to teach the cishet main character a lesson before being discarded. I use Euphoriafication as a term because Jules of Euphoria may be the most apt example of problematic trans representation in the mainstream – perhaps not the most problematic, but certainly up there for being one of the most well-known. Outside of the one “special” episode written by trans actress Hunter Schafer, Jules is written by a cishet man and professional weirdo, Sam Levinson. Jules’ character is introduced off the cuff as a trans girl who copes with her troubles surrounding her identity by having a lot of sex, which is the basis of the main problem with both Jules’ representation and transfemme representation as a whole. So many properties explore transness as an explicitly sexual thing, which is how it remains for Jules throughout most of the first season. It isn’t helped by Levinson’s creepy, male-gazey style of direction, but that’s a tangent for a different article.
The point here is that Jules explores her identity by becoming sexually involved with men who fetishise her transness, which is not necessarily untrue as an experience for some trans folk, but Levinson does not explore her transness outside of this. That’s not a good sign for a series that centers itself around the identities of its main characters. Yes, the episode written by Schafer is excellent and it’s great to see her identity actually explored through a script written from lived experience, but then in the next season, it feels as if the groundwork Schafer laid is completely steamrolled by being reduced back to being some character’s 'partner' rather than a character of her own. This has conditioned younger audiences to transness and sexuality being explicitly linked, which is far from the truth.
In this way, Schoenbrun subverts mainstream transness through I Saw the TV Glow, using their essential creative voice to create a singular representation of trans identity in a more nuanced, subtler light. Certainly, there are remnants of some of these tropes, but they lend themselves to helping tell the story of Owen’s discovery of their own identity. It doesn’t present a trans character as a 'perfect feminine' or an object of sexual desire. Rather, it frames them as a human being, flaws and all, as a work in progress.
It’s no wonder why people are coming out as trans in waves after watching the film – it’s haunting and uplifting in a way only Schoenbrun has proved they can pull off. No matter how terrifying this movie is, it leaves viewers with a heart full of hope as it reminds everyone that it is alright to be a work in progress. You don’t need to have everything figured out, because there is still time.