All it took was one gatekeep-y Letterboxd comment saying I Saw the TV Glow can ONLY be read as a trans narrative for me to complete a heel turn and say that, NO, IT IS ABOUT WHEN YOU LOVE A TV SHOW JUST THAT MUCH.
More seriously: Reading TV Glow through the lens of the trans experience is intensely rewarding and metaphorically rich. I think doing otherwise leads you into some weird territory! But it's GOOD for people to resonate with the art we make on levels other than "I am trans." It builds empathy!
If a cis friend watches that movie and is, like, "I was lonely as a teen, and I REALLY wished I could live in my favorite TV show," then I can say, "Me too, but too much," and a bridge has been built. That's good! That's why we have art, baby.
Queerness is so porous and hard to define sometimes that letting the cishets see themselves in our stories might help them open some doors in their own brains. After all, we've been reading ourselves into their narratives for centuries! The cisgendered heterosexuals may as well return the favor!
Love this thread. The trans themes were compelling but also as a cis gay who was a ‘90s teen, I definitely found a lot of I Saw the TV Glow VERY resonant in various ways. And if I can separate these feelings, some aspects landed as a gay guy, and some aspects landed as a nerdy fan of things.
one of the x-men i relate to the most is bobby drake even though he's gay and i'm not because telling jokes and everyone gets mad at you for not living up to potential they believe in more than you do is a very close to home mood
The amount of people who say he seems disengaged by the end and not just expressing the scariest, most haunting goddamn thing I’ve seen in a movie. Well, so it goes
