I Saw the TV Glow

This isn't the Midnight Realm...it's just the suburbs.

Directed by Jane Schoenbrun

United States, 2024

Do you remember Mike Teevee, ‘the boy who does nothing but watch television’? He was one of the four kids to win a Golden Ticket in Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and he used a Willy Wonka invention to transmit himself through a television set. Well Mike came to mind when watching Jane Schoenbrun’s film, I Saw the TV Glow. In one of the film’s many surreal scenes Owen, one of the two protagonists, gets sucked into a television set only to be pulled out – against his wishes – by his father.

At first glance, I Saw the TV Glow seems like a typical American high school drama. Two outsiders separated by a couple of years, bond over a shared obsession with a TV show. But the film soon morphs into something else… what that something is I’m not too sure. Yet it proves to be a beguiling, bewildering, and at times deeply unsettling watch.

This is Jane Schoenbrun’s second feature, following We’re All Going to the World’s Fair. Both films reflect an obsession with the small screen, whether that is television or these days, social media. That is one theme among the many that the filmmaker explores in a work that not only blends fantasy and reality, but also genre and gender. How well that blend works led to a heated debate at ReidsonFilm. Unconvincing, and failing to capture the fractured reality depicted so effectively in a film like Upstream Color? The argument goes on…

Owen (Ian Foreman & Justice Smith) starts out as a seventh grader at the expressively named Void High School (VHS). Isolated and introverted, he forms an unlikely bond with Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) a Kohl-eyed girl two grades above him. Their connection is The Pink Opaque, a monster-of-the-week TV show about two girls linked by telepathy. The Pink Opaque has a heavy Buffy the Vampire Slayer vibe, although while it shares Buffy’s playfulness the story within a story soon reveals dark secrets. The show airs after Owen’s bedtime so Maddy records each episode for him on VHS videotapes.

The show offers an escape for both, a refuge from lives of disappointment and in Maddy’s case, abuse. It triggers differing responses: for Maddy the show is a call to revolution. She runs away from home, leaving a burning television set in her backyard. She invites Owen to join her, but he prefers to retreat further into the world of The Pink Opaque.

Owen: Sometimes The Pink Opaque feels more real than real life.

However, there is just one more episode to go, as the show is mysteriously cancelled, ending on a cliffhanger where its two heroines are buried alive.

I Saw the TV Glow unfolds as a fever dream, fusing a myriad of visual aesthetics and formats – including both VHS and Betamax – that at times threatens to overwhelm the narrative and obscure Schoenbrun’s oblique vision of gender and sexuality. The film is about fandom and navigating the thorny pathway of adolescence, but conspicuously does an impressive job of capturing the experience of gender dysphoria.

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Owen: When I think about that stuff it feels like someone... took a shovel and dug out all my insides. And I know there's nothing in there, but I'm still too nervous to open myself up and check. I know there's something wrong with me. My parents know it too, even if they don't say anything.

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As well as Buffy, I Saw the TV Glow is packed full of film references, some linked to films we have reviewed on ReidsonFilm, including Synecdoche, New York, and even perhaps The Vanishing. But the clear touchstone here is the world of David Lynch and in particular, Twin Peaks. Laura Palmer’s cousin from Missoula, Montana was another Maddy. And Schoenbrun has no hesitation in digging up the freshly cut lawns of small-town Americana to reveal the depths of repressed horror underneath.

The film jumps forward eight years. Owen, now an adult, has a job at a cinema. Maddy returns after her own journey of self-discovery and pleads with Owen to make a transition. The Pink Opaque really is more than just a TV show, and they are stuck in a realm from which the only escape is to bury themselves alive. Once again, Owen says no.

There is one more chapter which is delivered with an outburst of stylistic and surreal imagery. Twenty years on, Owen has a new house and a new job in a children’s soft play centre. He tells us that he also has a family, although they remain unseen. A kid’s birthday party is interrupted by an existential scream. A man’s chest is sliced open to reveal it is filled with TV static. A confusing ending for sure, but isn’t that the director’s point? Life is really not a television show.

Willy Wonka: There's no earthly way of knowing/Which direction they are going... There's no knowing where they're rowing/Or which way the river's flowing…

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Not all of the team were impressed:

Overall I thought it was a good(ish) idea for a film. It was kind of trying to put its sights on the fact that millennials are “nostalgia-pilled” but I don’t think really offered a convincing critique of it, or said anything of value - C

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Reids’ Results (out of 100)

C - 54

T - 76

N - 70

S - 70

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