Lugging his new LG HD TV into the house he has lived in all his life, Owen (Justice Smith), the unreliable narrator of Jane Schoenbrun’s mesmerizing sophomore feature film I Saw the TV Glow, declares that he has finally become a productive member of society. Rarely has the concept of having a steady job and starting a family been captured with such melancholy. The sense of dejection is written all over his face.
A few scenes later Owen is much older, and his lips are chapped as if he as been stranded in a desert for decades without water. The reality is he has been working at the Fun Center, a party place where the neon glow of various electronic games, which dispense tickets that can be redeemed for cheap overpriced prizes, that is the embodiment of a canned sense of happiness. Timed has passed and he still finds himself trapped in the malaise of suburban life.
In Schoenbrun’s skilled hands the suburbs are transformed into a haunting environment where pacification and conformity are the ultimate soul-sucking illness.
This disease has been infecting him since 1996 when only source of air to combat the suffocating doldrums of the burbs was the glow of the television set. The device not only provided 7th grader Owen (the younger version played by Ian Forman) and 9th grader Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) with escapism, but a chance to find their true selves within the characters of their favourite show The Pink Opaque.
A late-night 90s teen drama, think Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Buffy’s Amber Benson appears in a supporting role in the film), the half-hour show told the story of two teenagers, Isabel (Helena Howard) and Tara (Snail Mail’s Lindsey Jordan), who fight monsters of the week via their psychic connection. Determined to stop the big bad Mr. Melancholy (Emma Portner), whose character design and name are clear nods to George Méliès’ Voyage to the Moon and the Smashing Pumpkins’ album “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness,” the teens find strength in their shared bond.
The bridge of connection that shared bonds can build is also found in Owen and Maddy’s obsession with the show. Both outsiders in their own way, The Pink Opaque offered a safe space free of the judgemental eyes of society. Whether it was the betrayal of a close friend who outed Maddy’s preference for girls to classmates or the fear of their volatile and domineering fathers, though only Owen’s dad (Fred Durst) is ever shown, the parameters of their youthful existence outside of watching the show are frequently being dictated by others.
The idea of seeing oneself in fictional characters takes on a darker tone when Maddy disappears just as the show is cancelled. With his only friend missing, Owen is forced to ponder his own reality and whether something more sinister was keeping them connected to the show.
I Saw the TV Glow is as much a film about identity and expression as it is a commentary of the environments that stifle them. Similar to Vera Drew’s The People’s Joker, the film can easily be read as a trans empowerment story. While Drew’s film used superhero tropes and iconography to champion embracing one’s true form, Schoenbrun’s film cautions the dangers of letting others trap you in a version of existence you never felt at home in.
What makes Schoenbrun’s warnings even more haunting is the fact that time moves faster than we think it does. Before you know it, you are an adult and stuck in a life that feels foreign. While Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko had a guy in demonic bunny costume to awaken its protagonist to the fact that the world around him will collapse, Owen remains asleep and unaware of the signs that are literally glowing in the middle of the street and/or posted on the bulletin board of the aptly name Void High School.
Even when life altering events occurs, such as his mother’s (Danielle Deadwyler) health diagnosis, and he is presented with opportunities to flee, the comfortable lure of suburban conformity is too strong to break.
Using the neon pink glow that emanates from the television set, whenever The Pink Opaque is on, as a recurring motif in Owen’s life, Schoenbrun frequently hints to another world just beyond the surface. One that could potentially open the door to a life of freedom if he just reached for the doorknob.
These visual markers are found all throughout the film. Whether mixing pink, purples and blues to make a mysterious ice cream truck a source of potential terror or having the windows of the school hallway turn pink as Owen walks by in a moment of joy, Schoebrun’s colour palette is both unsettling and tranquil in equal measure.
The director sprinkles so much visual flare into the film that even a gripping monologue from Maddy about depression and attempted suicide is mesmerizing to behold. In one of the film’s striking moments, Owen’s mental breakdown, triggered by Maddy’s disappearance and the show’s finale, is presented as a fever dream of terror. As if transposing the iconic Maxwell Cassette commercial, where a man in a chair is blown away by the power of media, Owen is shown desperately wanting to be pulled in by it.
Is this Owen’s own attempt to end it all? Possibly. Much like many key sequences in the film, Schoenbrun leaves it up to the audience to interpret. However, even in his weaker moments, he still cannot rid himself of the sad poison of complacency.
While I Saw the TV Glow carries many of the same themes as the director’s debut work, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, including the search for connection, the sense of suburban isolation, and finding oneself in others, it feels fully realized here. Propelled by the wonderful performances by Smith and Lundy-Paine, the film captures the sense of terror that comes from realizing it is easy to lose sight of oneself in an environment that refuses to truly see you.
I Saw the TV Glow finds strength in the unifying power of art and fandom, while simultaneously reminding viewers that even our beloved shows have an expiry date. Once the glow of nostalgia wears off, we are forced to confront a harsh reality where we are often pushed to be something we are not.
