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
I understand the impulse in this case. There's still so little art made by trans people with the trans experience in mind. So members of our community can get overzealous! But I don't think that's helpful to anyone.
as someone who fucked up their life so many times, way before realizing they were trans, I refuse to believe cishets can't find some thread of commonality
The number of different interpretations and takeaways even within the "trans allegory" umbrella should make it clear that there's no monolithic way to view it, or any artwork.
As an A24 horror fan I've been waiting for this to become available for streaming for ages; I also have literally no idea what it's about because the only discourse I've seen is about whether or not it's trans
I was expecting there to be a lot more "Is it horror or not?" discourse around it, I still have no idea how I'd answer that question. I think it's scary but "emotionally scarring" is probably the more accurate descriptor.
Arguably, the most traditionally "scary" stuff in it is part of a TV show designed specifically to remind you of something that might have scared you at 12 or 13 but won't as an adult.
If you separate out existential terror and visceral horror, you can say it’s existentially terrifying but not at all visceral really. I’ve seen situations where “terror” and “horror” are labeled as separate subgenres and that’s important in this case.
It's still pretty specifically trans though. When I watched it (as part of a queer film festival) the theatre was pretty evenly split between baffled cis folks (like me) and trans folks who completely identified with what was on screen.
Which is great! I like it when movies work well for someone.
My kids like Charlotte’s Web. I want the reading of the movie to be that none of the animals talk and really Fern is just making up a story for herself. But the text doesn’t support that reading at all! Fern does lose her connection to the animal world by growing up but they really talk. 1/2
A reading of TV Glow that’s not trans kinda doesn’t work for similar reasons. You can read as pure realistic trans (the magic stuff is just Owen’s dysphoria) or magical realism (Pink Opaque is real and Owen is trapped by Mr Melancholy) or somewhere in between, but not as “Too much TV is bad”. 2/2
I read cool reviews (on Letterboxd) that was, like, "This movie is about how systems of abuse perpetuate themselves." That's not my preferred reading, but I was still intrigued. All of these states live close to each other internally. It's not a binary like "can the animals talk?".
