thread of jane schoenbrun (“we’re all going to the world’s fair” “I saw the TV glow”

kind of surprised there’s not more discussion of this director here! I just saw I SAW THE TV GLOW this afternoon. I think I wanted to like it a little more than I did, but it’s clearly the work of a serious artist exploring identity, body dysmorphia, and alienation that I’m going to be thinking about for a while. now I want to see her first feature

i have been meaning to start a thread for i saw the tv glow, a movie that made me feel very very very bad (compliment)

the most emotionally true depiction of what life was like for me before i transitioned and what it would've continued to be like had i never come out. devastating to see a trans person express this in images

idk even beyond the trans of it all it was just a very powerful movie about getting spellbound by popular art that seems to tell you something about yourself that the rest of the world is actively trying to suppress, story of my freaking life!!!!!

❤️

really my only complaint is I found owen to be guileless and devoid of vice

next Friday! can't wait. loved World's Fair, video for Lucy Dacus' "Night Shift" also very good.

I watched World's Fair the other night and, while it didn't entirely work for me, I was impressed by Schoenbrun's style. Def looking forward to TV Glow.

i watched world's fair a few nights before (which prepared me for how i saw the tv glow was going to strand me in the worst feeling possible before ending). i didn't know what to make of it at first either but my brain is still ulcerating around it, like... what happens when the most desperate and unfocused loneliness in the world finds an outlet to perform??? really bone-chilling for a movie that mostly unreels in youtube monologue

In January 2023, The Film Stage announced that Schoenbrun was set to direct an adaptation of Imogen Binnie's 2013 novel Nevada, widely considered a classic of transgender literature.[17] However, Schoenbrun confirmed in a May 2024 interview with The Cut that they had exited the project due to "creative differences with cis people".[4]

oh my god i understand _exactly what they mean_

quote comes from here:

I always joke and say that I would love to adapt Infinite Jest because it would be the best troll. I actually quite like Infinite Jest. Its cultural position right now is

“warning sign on men’s bookshelf energy,” and it would be fun and edgelord-y to figure out my lens into adapting that.

this but unironically. like yeah, _summer fun_ portrays its cultural position pretty well, but shit. i spent a year in my early 20s reading and completely falling in love with that book, thinking it was like The Best Thing Ever. i think i finally consigned it to the Closet of Shame in the last move, along with Gareth Roberts' _The Highest Science_. it's cringe as hell... it just so happens that this week i'm in my Cringe Era. i'm trying very very hard to get over my "sad t-slur" era. out with books by the Topside diaspora! In with... shit, what's the most cringe thing I can think of. OTOKONOKO MANGA! that's right, this week i'm stanning otokonoko. even if my fingers refuse to type that word. it's like a finger twister. or something.

anyway make a film of _infinite jest_ but it's entirely from the perspective of the tennis player the author makes transphobic jokes about. that's my elevator pitch.

also just make up everything else from memory because jesus christ my closet's more of a mess than fibber mcgee and molly's.

anyway i'm going to see if there are any local... there's this 24 year old lady who calls herself a "transgeener". i guess that's how the kids talk. is that something i'm allowed to say? is "transgeener" a slur?

also, like. i did not know that... like i did not know "hipinion" was a message board. something something balkanization of the internet.

met up with a lady from a local discord. i'm glad it wasn't just me there. neither of us had anything to say, really. after it. usually when i see a movie i like to talk about it afterwards, but this.... i don't try to make noise at movies. but sometimes. sharp intakes of breath. saying "fuck" under my breath. and after the film i turned to annaliese and said "43 years. 43 years of my fucking life."

it isn't. i gotta say that for myself... because one thing the movie mentions is how easy it is to get a story confused with one's own life. and people use that, like, weaponize it against us, which is bullshit. it's something... i didn't have a _life_, i didn't have a _story_. the man i was supposed to be was _nothing_.

particularly more than five years in, now that i'm pretty committed to this life, i do look around and ask myself why i did all this, why i went through all this. i need to... i need to be reminded sometimes. what it was like. it doesn't seem any more _real_ than _i saw the tv glow_. it seems like a nightmare. a horror movie. the monologue at the end of "miss fortune".

I lift my skirt when Voltaire turns
As he speaks, his mouth full of garlic
White, yes, white

i don't know. that always made _sense_ to me somehow. with "the murder mystery" it's two voices running in parallel, but "miss fortune" - alternating, word by word, two voices, two minds, united only in one sentiment:

"nobody knows if it really happened"

for a long time, i felt like those six words could well be my epitaph

but it did. it did really happen. i don't know what a cis person would see. what i see is a trans person speaking to another trans person. this was real. is real, for the viewer, maybe. the words on the driveway in chalk... i can't remember what they said. "it's not too late"? it's not. for me the movie isn't what life _could_ have been if i _hadn't_. 43 years. the thing buried inside of me screaming "YOU ARE DYING" while everybody else acted like everything was fine. that voice asking me if there was something else. the things i didn't see, didn't happen, things i couldn't even dare to _think_. i'm pretty sure that's not just a trans thing. a lot of people, i feel like, a lot of people experience it

the horror for me is that THERE WAS NEVER ANYTHING WRONG WITH ANY OF THOSE THINGS. there are other things in my life that... i've had those kinds of experiences with, truly awful things. _wearing a fucking dress_ isn't even on the same _exponential_ scale as those things. jesus god. all that pain, all that suffering, for _nothing_, for fucking _nothing_. no reason for anybody to feel the dread, shame, terror, that i felt. not about _that_.

i don't think that... i don't think that's something the movie is setting _out_ to talk about. it's just saying what the horror _is_. what it takes away from us, how empty it leaves us in its absence. since i've lived a version of that horror, i... don't know how it would feel to people who haven't.

I wake up and of course I'm still thinking about the film. The thing about it is that the last time he sees her, she's... she's insane. She's clearly completely insane. Watching the film, I mean, you can see that, right? She says you have to do this thing, this horrible, awful thing, and we have to do it _now_, because you are _dying_, and he walks right up to the line, right up to the actual line, and he doesn't.

Annaliese said she had a hard time not crying at a couple points in the film and I wasn't tempted to cry. Maybe it was because I knew in theory what I would see up there on the screen, or maybe it was because I was in shock. Because I woke up and...

What I'm about to say isn't real, OK? I know it isn't real. It's allegorical. I know the difference between my life and a movie. Sometimes things that aren't real _feel_ real to me. The feelings are real. That's what's real.

The theater, I bought a ticket online and they have assigned seats. And I switched my seat to sit next to Annaliese. The movie was over and I look back at the seat I moved from and Maddy was sitting there. It wasn't Maddy, of course. It was just some white girl who didn't even look _that_ much like Maddy. It's like... you know when you see someone in a dream, and you know who it is even though it doesn't look like them? And things don't work like that in the real world. Except sometimes they do I guess because I'm an actual girl, a Girl In Real Life. And part of my brain says that's just as impossible as it was for Maddy to be sitting there in the theater in my seat, in the seat I moved from.

I wasn't _alone_, all those years, even though that's how I felt. I wasn't ever alone. She called to me. Over and over again. To do this thing. And a couple of times there she'd come visit and I'd walk up to the line, right up to the line, and I'd turn back. I mean it was suicidal, right? It would kill me if I did that, right? Except that I did, and it didn't, and I'm not dying anymore. I'm living.

Owen said he never saw her again, and I believe him, and I see her sometimes. I know that she cares about me. I heard her call my name.

That's how the movie ends, _my_ version of the movie, not the version that you actually see on the screen, the version anybody will be able to watch streaming in a couple of months probably. The film they're showing in the theater ends and that guy I saw up on the screen isn't real, wasn't ever real. It was just a movie I was watching. And Maddy is sitting in my assigned seat, the one I moved from. I don't look at her, she doesn't look at me, but she was there, watching with me. I walk out of the theater into this world that's weird and chaotic and scary like the one in the movie, except this world is real, it's the real one. And that's when I cry. Pain and grief and _relief_. It's over. Thank God. That movie is over.

I think a lot of trans people have their own version of the story. That's mine. Right now, at least, that's mine. As best as I can tell it. How it _felt_. Not the facts, how it _felt_.

I'm watching it tomorrow and I can't wait

Saw this today and liked it, it does a lot of interesting things. My reservations mostly have to do with it all feeling a bit on-the-nose, unlike World's Fair it felt to me like Schoenbrun really wanted to make sure everyone got the point. Which I respect, different movies are trying to do different things, and this is more or less a Statement Movie about something vital that she wanted to share. I really like her visual style, some of the scenes reminded me of Gregory Crewdson photos. Cast is good, especially Brigette Lundy-Paine. And shout-out to Fred Durst for showing up, and to Emma Stone and Dave McCary for producing.

This was several steps up from World's Fair, which played like an partially realized idea. This one by contrast, with its blues and violets and nocturnal ambience and lack of outright laffs and terror-stricken closeups, reminded me of a lighter Inland Empire.

Yes, very accurate re the excellence of the lighting. Just got out myself. I found it very compelling and moving.

i can't remember what they said. "it's not too late"?

"there is still time"

Cast is good, especially Brigette Lundy-Paine. And shout-out to Fred Durst for showing up, and to Emma Stone and Dave McCary for producing.

Fully agreed. Durst needing only one line to say what his character was all about was all that was needed, and the rest was action/inaction or presence. Lundy-Paine's monologue was a hell of a thing.

Also I was amused at the double duty of Lindsey Jordan of Snail Mail both acting just-so as Tara and for the "Tonight, Tonight" cover.

really want to see this again. have thought of it every day since seeing it

Fully agreed. Durst needing only one line to say what his character was all about was all that was needed, and the rest was action/inaction or presence. Lundy-Paine's monologue was a hell of a thing.

― Ned Raggett

it was... one of the truest things to me. that's all it takes. less than that. not even a word. a _look_. that's, i think, is a lot of why he was hypervigilant watching _the pink opaque_, ready to turn off the tv at a moment's notice. i was like that. still am, in a lot of ways.

the thing is that... you didn't see it in the film, but the character durst played could have been fine. in every other way. and that sentence would have been enough. i don't think you could have made him a character like that, it would overcomplicate things, you'd lose the focus. i was talking with a friend today about how we never see the family owen talks about at the end, how it would have... "added a lot of emotional weight" she said. i think that's true, but again, i think it would... overcomplicate things. to me. the family we don't see is real. they're just...

they're shut out of that part of owen's life. i can't imagine him talking about the pink opaque with them. maybe he did. i don't know. i didn't talk about it with my ex-wife. more than anything else i think that doomed the relationship, that i didn't talk about it with her.

i think the axes on which the movie revolves are, like you say, action/inaction and... i'd expand it to presence/absence.

i haven't seen the "world's fair" film. creepypasta gets to me and... i hate watching movies alone in general. i definitely wouldn't want to see _world's fair_ alone.

i was talking with a friend today about how we never see the family owen talks about at the end, how it would have... "added a lot of emotional weight" she said

Me being me, I kept thinking "I wonder if they're even real." After all, who is he talking to throughout? (And does it say something that the ending isn't addressed to the camera?)

"But that's a girls' show."

I loved this movie and I too have been thinking about it a LOT since I saw it a couple weeks ago.

I know it's sort of ancillary to the point the film is making, but I was really charmed by the footage we see of The Pink Opaque. That perfect blend of 90's teen monster-of-the-week urban fantasy dramas, with a dash of fucked up underground SOV horror to give it an edge. I really wish that was a real show I could watch! I read some interviews with Schoenbrun and they cite Buffy, Pete & Pete, and Are You Afraid of the Dark as inspirations for it, and that checks out.

I've been looking for a real show with the same energy as The Pink Opaque and so far the best I've found is actually Eerie, Indiana. A preteen boy and his much younger neighbor, both with no other close friends, bonded by the fact that only they can perceive the surreal horrors in their town. And those horrors are weird in the same way The Pink Opaque's were... The first episode was about a new kind of tupperware that can preserve food for eternity, and a mother making her sons sleep in a giant tupperware to keep them in middle school forever. And the second episode was about a secret conspiracy among all the town's dogs to rebel against humanity. Great stuff.

The menacing presence of the father in both this and World's Fair is pretty notable. I didn't have a dad like that, thank god, but I had friends who did — one friend, we weren't allowed to park in his driveway because his dad would have a fit if it got even the tiniest oil stain. The kind of dads where once they got home, it was time for everyone to leave.

It's funny because it feels like a bit of a throwback character in a media landscape full of loving, involved dads, but of course there are still plenty of bad dads out in the real world.

Well TBF it's a throwback movie! But point taken.

I loved how few things were underlined, given exposition. Owen loved his mom for herself and for reasons they don't have to explain, therefore she only deserves a scene or two. No dialogue scene runs longer than necessary.

Indeed. Just enough was said, nothing more needed. His oafish theater/arcade coworkers are given just enough time but aren't active antagonists, they're just part of it all.

The menacing presence of the father in both this and World's Fair is pretty notable. I didn't have a dad like that, thank god, but I had friends who did — one friend, we weren't allowed to park in his driveway because his dad would have a fit if it got even the tiniest oil stain. The kind of dads where once they got home, it was time for everyone to leave.

It's funny because it feels like a bit of a throwback character in a media landscape full of loving, involved dads, but of course there are still plenty of bad dads out in the real world.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra)

i have a lot of friends who have dads like that, unfortunately. and it's not... it's not an either/or. my dad wasn't there. and of course there are people who will say i'm how i am because my parents didn't raise me right, that kind of bullshit, but you know. a lot of transphobia is just people twisting the truth around to suit what they want to believe. all of those implicit assumptions, the idea that shows where girls are the protagonists are "girls' shows". god forbid, you know, that girls could be _heroes_.

maybe i'm reading into things that aren't there, but i see a lot of us who come from really patriarchal backgrounds. a lot of us are ex-catholic or ex-mormon, which are some of the most patriarchal christian religions out there. my own experience is... i think people in general go along to get along. at some point i couldn't go along or get along anymore. i couldn't be the sort of "man" i was supposed to be. to quote a bad movie, the more they tighten their grip...

Well TBF it's a throwback movie! But point taken.

― Ned Raggett

it's a weird thing to me, honestly. a lot of nostalgia i see these days is for stuff _after_ my time. i was watching a video about nostalgia for "old, primitive video games", and they were talking about playstation 1 games. i've aged out of nostalgia media, haha.

I've been looking for a real show with the same energy as The Pink Opaque and so far the best I've found is actually Eerie, Indiana. A preteen boy and his much younger neighbor, both with no other close friends, bonded by the fact that only they can perceive the surreal horrors in their town. And those horrors are weird in the same way The Pink Opaque's were... The first episode was about a new kind of tupperware that can preserve food for eternity, and a mother making her sons sleep in a giant tupperware to keep them in middle school forever. And the second episode was about a secret conspiracy among all the town's dogs to rebel against humanity. Great stuff.

― OneSecondBefore

god, that's it, that's the show, isn't it? i've been thinking about the sort of shows that fits the vibe and "eerie, indiana" is definitely it. i guess every age has its shows like that. in the 2000s it might be, i don't know, the middleman. at some point you get to superhero influences in these kinds of shows. not sure how they'd hold up today. i got a really old tv rip of "the middleman" from demonoid full of those annoying fucking chyrons they used to put everywhere from right after broadcast, the ages before everything was released legit to streaming in amazing quality.

britain had a lot of those kinds of shows. a lot of it influenced the "scarfolk" aesthetic. "sapphire and steel", "children of the stones", "moondial", "into the labyrinth". it went on into the '90s, where you have shows like "dark season" and "the demon headmaster". idk if there are shows like that post-90s, other than, like, the doctor who revival.

"doctor who" was the show i saw growing up. i was (and am) obsessed with it the way owen and maddy were with "the pink opaque". i love those kinds of shows. honestly that was hooked me most about the movie - these sorts of recreations/tributes to shows like that. doctor who's monsters were often as crap as the ice cream monster (in the revival series too, for all the "oooh this has a proper budget" hype... stuff like that just doesn't always age well, is all.) the awful monsters, i'm still scared by some of them despite how crap they are. the doll from "terror of the autons" still scares me. (the plastic chair that eats people doesn't.)

my obsession with the show had nothing to do with gender, really, in my case. not in the way "the pink opaque" did. it was just this mysterious, _alien_ thing (not so much due to it being a show about an alien as due to it being british, haha). so much of it was... inaccessible. i grew up in '80s new jersey, which showed all the existing episodes, but there were 110 or so that were _missing_. a lot of my childhood memories to this day... i repressed a lot. there's stuff i know that i don't know i know. (the fucked up thing is that donald rumsfeld was right about that.)

Me being me, I kept thinking "I wonder if they're even real." After all, who is he talking to throughout? (And does it say something that the ending isn't addressed to the camera?)

― Ned Raggett

i mean that's the thing, i really do read it as a metafiction. the pink opaque is to owen as _i saw the tv glow_ is to us, the viewers. the narrative doesn't terminate _inside_ the movie itself. there's this aspect of t4t fiction, which transphobes frame as "social contagion", but it's more... the truth. everything we were taught about gender was wrong. all of us, including those of us who are trans. it's not a _conspiracy_, it's just, you know... ignorance. we didn't know any better. we're learning. to me it's like... if this is you, if this is your life, things can change. there is still time. the movie ends and that's _not_ what my life is like anymore. i've _changed_, for the better. the people who are watching the film who need to change...

it _doesn't_ need to be a trans thing. everybody changes. sometimes we put off changes we need to and we suffer from it. i still have a _need_ to change, am working to change. so it is a film for everyone, trans or no. it just centers that trans experience.

My wife and I were talking about that afterward, that it's a trans fable but can be read as about any needed/resisted/feared life transformation.

It's pretty much a literal presentation of the Gospel of Thomas quote: If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.

how gnostic!

How I like my gospels.

It's pretty much a literal presentation of the Gospel of Thomas quote: If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra)

it's certainly something i've thought about! there's a lot of crossover between this and the queer thread, to the point where i can't quite remember which one i'm posting to and who my audience is, whether or not there are straights reading this.

when i was young i was really into occult religion, gnostic shit included. the Gospel of Thomas quote but also Matthew 5:29, KJV:

And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

i was really into Dick when i was younger. i still think Dick is one of the best writers on gnosticism, funny enough. the OG gnostics had some kinda nasty tendencies, like, they'd dehumanize and abjectify anybody who wasn't privy to their Inner Truth

i vehemently reject that way of looking at things. like i'm the opposite of it in some ways... the OG gnostics had this idea that the phenomenal world wasn't _real_, that the only truth was inner truth. that kind of thing evokes dissociation to me. my post-transition experience is more that of bringing my mind and body into, i don't know. communion? communication, at least.

it's anti-gnostic in that sense in that i don't feel like i revealed my true inner self. there isn't a core i'm trying to get in touch with. the tv glow within me isn't who i _really am_. i don't live inside the pink opaque.

one of my friends is having an orchi right now, and she's been scared, and all i could say to her is that it's ok to be scared. she's afraid of losing the person she was. and the thing about Matthew 5:29 is that my member which perished, it didn't _offend_ me. that's the thing that's hard to communicate, it _didn't bother me at all_. i didn't lose _anything of value_. that's not what the film is about, bodily change, hormones, any of that stuff. not to me. there's a lot of body horror in dysphoria, but _i saw the tv glow_ doesn't hit me that way. i just... don't take a gnostic interpretation to transness anymore.

Low-key but not bad piece here in that it's only indirectly about the movie, but hinges on Caroline Polachek's song that gets specifically featured in the movie and from there delves into wider thoughts re nostalgia/90s and more.

I come from a time and a place in which pop culture was not widely adopted as a marker of identity

not sure how this is possible

Easy, Soraya's a provincial Canadian. *badumtish*

in the q&a for my screening, the last question from the audience was someone who was like "the pink opaque is just buffy, right????" and it pretty obviously is, though jane also mentioned pete & pete and are you afraid of the dark as shows they were drawing from, which, i thought of the former as soon as the deranged mutant ice cream man appeared, bc pete & pete was one of the first really intentionally weird pieces of media i got into, it was much less frenetic and upsetting than ren & stimpy and had instead this droning rhythm like everyone was trying their hardest to walk through the sludge of the everyday, which is what i felt like all the time when i was growing up, and i also loved that all of the problems in that show were really weird, unimportant things that regardless had insanely intense stakes, and that was also what my childhood and teenhood really felt like, in retrospect

but also the question got me thinking about what my pink opaque was, because even though i'm jane's age, i didn't see buffy until college when i could borrow the dvd sets, and after considering it for a while i decided it was sailor moon. marketed as a show for girls. made even girlier in certain aspects by the north american translation. i looked down on it for a while as i was getting into anime, preferring the unhinged almost-parodic(-if-you-don't-think-about-how-almost-all-the-women-in-the-show-are-scolds) masculinity of dragon ball z. but sometimes i turned the tv on a half an hour before dragon ball z aired, and it was almost always sailor moon in that slot, and i became... entranced by it. it was a much deeper show than i imagined. there was time travel, there was a prophecy about a future tokyo encased in crystal, there were demonic yet humanoid enemies who were merged with objects in often body horror-ish ways, and there were these girls who were best friends, who loved each other so much and longed to preserve that love and make it the very thing that connected all life in the universe and i cried cried cried in a way i had never cried at dragon ball z during the first season finale when all of the senshi die protecting sailor moon, and the only other person i knew who loved that show as much as i did was this boy who was painfully obviously gay, and if we weren't ridiculed by our peers for enjoying the show we were at least looked at a little askance (iirc i often had to be like "the girls are hot, that's why i'm watching" like i was a byproduct of that one line in the barenaked ladies' "one week"). anyway i still love sailor moon

i did avoid anime for a long time. i don't know why, i just did. shoujo anime, though, magical girl anime, that's definitely one of those things where it's "for girls" but it's awesome and one was supposed to, like, avoid that. and it's stupid. still, people watch these mech shows and won't go near magical girl shows. they'll watch "gunbuster" but not the show it's a remake of, "aim for the ace". part of the thing for me, getting into anime late, is that it _doesn't_ have the gendered pop culture detritus so many forms of pop culture do. i grew up listening to music by men, afraid to listen to even great music by women. i once asked my classic rock, prog-head uncle if he liked kate bush and he looked at me and said "no" as if i'd asked him if he was a girl. i understand that and i don't understand it. it's stupid to listen to peter gabriel and not kate bush. you don't have to _like_ kate bush, but there's this idea that if you're a guy you shouldn't even _listen_. "isn't that girl music?" and i didn't, for a long time. i don't judge anybody for not listening, but i still feel like going out there and begging, please, if you'd just _listen_... but they won't listen to me, because i'm a girl.

with anime i don't have that baggage so i can watch "ashita no joe" _and_ "aim for the ace".

by the way ivy not to like... social contagion you but there are some _really fucking good_ magical girl shows. particularly in the sub. they cut out a lot of sailor moon for the us broadcasts, including the lesbian stuff. cardcaptor sakura? great. lyrical nanoha? great. oh god if you haven't seen "revolutionary girl utena", you _have_ to watch that one.

madoka is good too, but it's "dark magical girl". it's good, though. i prefer zombieland saga, which is about an idol group except they're all zombies. it's really good and very trans-affirming.

i started the utena thread on ilx!!! and i am thankfully acquainted with uncut sailor moon, which is the only reason i still have a hulu account, bc i rewatch it almost yearly. sailor moon s is probably my favorite season of television ever. but you did remind me i have to both read and watch cardcaptor sakura, my friend lent me the manga ages ago and i still haven't picked it up

oh sorry you may have been addressing all that to a general audience lol

nah i just have a hard time keeping up lol, you were there before me haha

A24's podcast just put up a new episode featuring Schoenbrun and Brigette Lundy-Paine in conversation (transcript is at the link as well):

https://a24films.com/notes/2024/05/eternal-sense-of-play-with-jane-schoenbrun-brigette-lundy-paine

Liked the first one but this one I really, really liked

This might be the most personally affecting movie I have ever seen. It absolutely gutted me and I cannot stop thinking about it. That monologue. That ending. All of it. MY GOD. What a revelation.

I saw aspects of my own experience as a trans woman (who happened to grow up in the exact era this movie is set in) that I have never seen depicted in a film until now, including things I’ve never told another soul about.

To be seen to that degree by a mere collection of sounds and images seems impossible but here it is, this strange, dark miracle. It feels like sorcery.

Sometimes you watch a movie and it resonates with you on some deep level that you can’t explain. But this movie…it watches back.

https://letterboxd.com/nolovedeeptrans/film/i-saw-the-tv-glow/

I thought this was an interesting review that made some really good criticisms and I kinda wanted to share my perspective.

Considerations: I am a white 48-year-old binary-presenting trans woman. I started transition at age 43 and have exceptional passing privilege.

First, I can't meaningfully speak to how this film represents or misrepresents Black transfem experience. I definitely find Liv's perspective here to be valuable and informative.

I do tend to agree with Liv's perspective in other ways, though. I agree that the film privileges the constructed notion of "transition". My personal story does fit that narrative really well, and yet, to some extent that's a retrospective framing. I didn't set out with the intent of being functionally identical to a middle-aged white woman. I didn't set out with any intent at all, in fact. For me personally, "transition" wasn't a thing I did, but a series of, well, _experiments_, really. I tried doing things that were stigmatized, things I'd been conditioned to _not_ do, things I thought of as "bad", and found that they worked very well for me, honestly. I found that I had what is termed "gender dysphoria" or "gender incongruence", and that doing these things, including changing my presentation, my legal name, my pronouns, taking hormones, and getting surgery, including a form of what is sometimes referred to as "bottom surgery" didn't just relieve that dysphoria, but induced a state of what might be referred to as gender _euphoria_ - a drastically positive change in my baseline level of happiness and sense of self-worth. That change has persisted, but no longer feels "euphoric" to me. It just feels normal.

In fact, that was what I found most valuable about _I Saw the TV Glow_. It's easy for me to overlook or forget just how badly dysphoria _hurt_, how truly awful I felt. I understand Schoenbrun's perspective here. I didn't transition until the age of 43. I didn't have a choice. I don't think of my past self as having been a failure. That past self kept me alive until age 43. Kept me alive and took care of me. Protected me, the best they could. I honor and value them. At the same time, I was a cartoonishly broken person with a receding hairline. And yes, I did have a wife. No kids. I find Liv's suggestion that "you have to be at least somewhat of a person to [have a wife and kids]" to be overly reductive and essentializing. The truth, I've found, is far more complex - but that issue is outside the scope of the film, so I won't address it further.

I did, like Liv, see the film as being essentially polemic and propagandistic. It didn't straightforwardly and unambiguously state its message, but others have: "You should transition." I'm personally uncomfortable with that. One of the narratives I've always tried to avoid is this sort of "scared queer" approach. My life before I transitioned sucked. It was awful and painful and horrible. _I Saw the TV Glow_ describes quite well the horrible and painful things I experienced. I didn't have a _choice_ in those things. I didn't have the ability to transition. This, I think, is where I see _I Saw the TV Glow_ in terms fundamentally different to Liv - I don't see it as passing judgement on its major character. The polemical argument I heard was not "Do this or you will wind up like Owen". The polemical argument I saw was the one scrawled in chalk towards the end of the movie: "THERE IS STILL TIME".

I can't disagree with Schoenbrun on this point. At age 43, I had the opportunity to change. It wasn't even a choice, not really. The second I had the opportunity, I took it. I don't see Schoenbrun suggesting that "it'll be a lot harder to be beautiful now", because, again, that's not my personal experience. I'm beautiful.

I also don't see Schoenbrun as suggesting that "transition" is some kind of a cure-all fix. I don't know how long Schoenbrun has been on HRT and don't care. What gets essentialized as "transition", well, for me, it's just a bunch of hard choices. "Transition" did address one major problem I had - the gender dysphoria. I get what Liv is saying. Two years in, I felt like the dysphoria was my Only Problem, the One Thing at the root of everything else that was wrong in my life. It wasn't. It was one thing. I have lots of problems. "Transition" made some of them worse. More than that, it forced me to change, in ways I wasn't always comfortable with. I don't regret doing what I did. Would I tell anybody else "You should transition"? No. I strongly believe that's an individual choice.

At the same time, I'm not going to say that I don't sometimes feel the urge strongly to say to someone "You should transition". I didn't realize until I transitioned how much the dysphoria was hurting me. What it was doing to me. To me, that's the value of trans representation - making the invisible visible. I don't want to scare people into transition, ever. For me, transition is first and foremost a question of joy. Fear and pain wasn't ever going to be enough for me. At the same time, that fear and pain was _real_, it _hurt_, and even though it is now gone, gone forever, the effects decades of repressing remain. That, to me, is the urgency. The longer one waits, the more it _hurts_. Whether or not one is going to be "pretty" or "pass" (which, honestly, I think is easier in some ways as a middle-aged woman than it would have been as a young woman) are secondary considerations, if that. (Since I personally both pass and am beautiful - and those two things are _entirely separate considerations_ - it's not something I can speak to _too_ much.)

Transition isn't easy. It's difficult enough that, going into _I Saw the TV Glow_, I asked myself sometimes "Why did I do this again?". Watching the film reminded me of parts of my life I try not to think about.

A lot, I think, of the issue I have with _I Saw the TV Glow_ is not in the film itself. It's in people looking at it and trying to see The Trans Story. I don't think it is or that it intends to be. I think it's _a_ story. There are no universals in trans experience. It's a good film, for what it is. Polemical, blunt, powerful. I'm glad it exists. I'm looking forward to seeing what questions people have as a result of watching the film, and how they choose to answer those questions.

I will be interested to see what the letter from Clare Wadd tacked onto Maddy's wall said when this movie streams and I can pause it!

oh i definitely take issue with the film itself

like if we're talking about actual film, in a tangible sense, and an attempt at an engaging narrative

i really can't get on board. i saw it on my birthday with a group of queer folk and as film goers we all felt pretty violated.

A lot, I think, of the issue I have with _I Saw the TV Glow_ is not in the film itself. It's in people looking at it and trying to see The Trans Story. I don't think it is or that it intends to be. I think it's _a_ story. There are no universals in trans experience. It's a good film, for what it is. Polemical, blunt, powerful. I

Actually, it's so powerful and ambiguous because it isn't polemical and blunt.

Swen, can you explain your response?

found that review very reductive from the jump but i generally hate 1/2 star letterboxd bombings

there is so much space in the movie that i don’t think it’s saying most of the things that review thinks it’s saying

(or any actual attention given to the fact that he seemingly gets a wife and kids; I’m sorry but you generally have to be at least somewhat of a person to do that!)

also, this person apparently doesn’t know any husbands

i don’t understand the emphasis on hrt in the review either. “taking hormones” is not something that figures into the movie. i came out as a trans woman *before* i went on hrt, just in case i hated it or couldn’t do it for some reason, so i couldn’t psyche myself out of it for any external reason. i knew. to deny i knew was keeping me trapped somewhere. it’s a closet. this review is saying “a life in the closet can be fulfilling”. sure. i don’t think the movie is saying it’s not its own kind of fulfillment. but walking through life when you are not dealing with something is like walking through molasses. idk if that’s true for everyone but it was so true for me that seeing it on a screen really kicked my ass

the line where Owen says he has a family and he loves them as he's dragging a new TV into an empty house is just about the bleakest line in the entire film

A lot, I think, of the issue I have with _I Saw the TV Glow_ is not in the film itself. It's in people looking at it and trying to see The Trans Story

I went and saw this last night knowing nothing about the director or the movie itself other than "the soundtrack has a new Drab Majesty track, let's check it out" and I'll admit I did not see the Trans Story. It reminded me of Donnie Darko somewhat, or an M83 album, and I spent most of the film (delightedly) trying to figure out what was going on and soaking up the vibe.

walking through life when you are not dealing with something is like walking through molasses

I felt this aspect of the film really strongly

Swen, can you explain your response?

― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, May 30, 2024 9:36 AM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i think it would take me a while to genuinely articulate, but firstly i found the performances incredibly flat. like i had no interest whatsoever in what was going on (or wasn't?) in the characters' faces. i would say that was my primary challenge.

i also represent the dumber audience member in a lot of screenings where i really just need more focus in the narrative unless narrative is fully not the point of the film. i had absolutely no idea what was going on. overall i left the film feeling that the story-making felt myopic, juvenile, and aggressively monotone.

I don't understand your argument about the myopia or juvenility of the argument. Every plot point was well-articulated. The non-realistic moments were part of a cinema tradition?

one of the things i love about this film is the variety of different ways people view it

I saw aspects of my own experience as a trans woman (who happened to grow up in the exact era this movie is set in) that I have never seen depicted in a film until now, including things I’ve never told another soul about.

To be seen to that degree by a mere collection of sounds and images seems impossible but here it is, this strange, dark miracle. It feels like sorcery.

― latebloomer

i have had that experience before with art by trans people

enough that it doesn't feel like sorcery anymore, or maybe that magic is not just real but normal and routine. i can't tell.

part of the Gender Dysphoria Experience for me is not just the extent to which it's unspoken, but the way it's unspeakable. i can't put it into words, but I Know It When I See It. going into the bathroom and vomiting a sea of digital artifacts. your boss starts a _third_ fucking round of "happy birthday" directed at some eight year old augustus gloop-alike and something in the back of your head clicks, you remember being eight and the girl you weren't and you scream like that time you slammed your hand in a car door and everyone else freezes and goes dead, like a switch has been flipped in their backs, they're not real, only the pain is real and you don't really even know why

that's gender dysphoria, wait, _that's_ gender dysphoria? always has been.

and it's weird because to a lot of us, the ones who have felt it in that way, it is so clear and direct. a person i talked to about it said "i think it liked it better before it spent the last half hour screaming "this is a (t-slur)"

for some people i know it felt like a direct assault, ripping apart their deepest pain and showing it on the screen for everyone to see. except even when it's displayed that directly, a lot of people who haven't lived it can't see it. some people who've lived it can see it. lou reed saw it. liv says lou reed was hiding something and, i mean, i listen to what she says but it's more about her than it is about reed or schoenbrun. i listen to what she says because i think it's as valuable as what reed or schoenbrun say.

someone i know said the film "weaponizes" what a lot us of experienced. turned it into a horror film. and i said i thought it was a documentary, and they said "that's the horrible part". and for me it's more of a tragedy. whoever i am now, that _happened_, it was _real_. all of those years were alchemically transmuted, turned into meaningless pain. and that's irrevocable. i was out with a girl last night and she said people think of her as being younger than she is, that she's living the 20s she never had. i don't know how to do that. i hate that my story will always be to some extent a tragic, sad story. i hate that people are out there right now living tragic, sad stories, for no reason, less than no reason.

i'm glad that there are other people who understand things i can't put into words. who see and know. it's not... other people don't _have_ to know. i want them to know. i want everyone to know. even though it's impossible. i'm glad when someone else can say things i believe, things i've felt, in ways that i myself can't express. and if someone doesn't get that it doesn't make them dumb or inferior. there are things i know that... i'm glad other people don't know. because they're awful things. things i don't want anybody to have to know.

I guess I'd say... you know how people talk about "dog whistles"? In some sense this is an "egg whistle". It's a sound only certain people can hear (and to be clear not all trans or gender diverse people can hear it. it's not even necessarily the case that anyone who hears it is trans.) And the sound is intensely painful, it hurts a lot. Maybe for some people it amplifies a voice one already has in one's head, a voice I had in my head for a long time. And that voice said "You are a girl. You should tell people you are a girl." Like it's the only way to make that _sound_, that _horrible sound_, that _screaming_ stop.

I spent so long trying to... you know, stick my fingers in my ears and going "LALALALALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU". That was work. So when something comes through making that voice SCREAM, I mean. That's painful.

Among transfems, there are generations. There's the Homestuck Generation. There's the COVID Generation. I have yet to see if there will be a Pink Opaque generation, but I'm interested to see what comes of this.

I don't understand your argument about the myopia or juvenility of the argument. Every plot point was well-articulated. The non-realistic moments were part of a cinema tradition?

― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, May 30, 2024 5:58 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

i don't think there's much to understand beyond this being an agree to disagree moment, Alfred! i did not feel invited in to understand what was happening at ALL. personally think 'well-articulated' is a stretch from any perspective here, but again, i'm not great at following plot. adhd etc.

re: the juvenile observation - even given my general issues with plot, i can usually take away something from what a director or actor intends in terms of feeling. here i felt the single-note performance deliveries and "up in your feelings" insularity, for lack of a better way of putting it, let me take away nothing.

yeah you have just totally missed it. I can concede that the lead actor performance was...maybe not good (need to see it again) but I found the film pretty powerful in spite of it

The lead actor performed exactly as needed: he projected sustained horror at his situation.

density is at the crux of the issue with the filmmaking. the film was dense. when you are dealing with matter that dense, focus becomes paramount to engagement. and for me, the focus was not there.

that said, the film is all about the pink opaque - and opaqueness is that which is too dense to be seen through. in that sense, i can concede there is an argument to be made for the purposeful challenge of the exercise.

good flick

A24 just sent out a note from Schoenbrun and some of it is definitely relevant to discussion here, skipping a short intro:

Four summers ago I started hormones, changed my name, and wrote the screenplay for I Saw the TV Glow. I was attempting to make sense of the vast and sudden chasm that had opened underneath my feet in the aftermath of my egg crack. The freefall of utter precarity. Of one life that never felt real ending, and a new one struggling to begin.

The next summer I pitched my film, translating the still open wounds of early transition into a sales pitch for the gatekeepers who control Hollywood’s pocketbooks. The experience was dysphoric. That same summer I met Brigette Lundy-Paine and Sam Intili, who would become collaborators on this film, and more importantly, my first real trans community. COVID precautions were just easing up, and that summer we were all still in the raw early stages of gender stuff. Together that summer, as I’ve learned is common for those early in transition, we chased euphoria like Captain Ahab chased Moby Dick. Slowly we each invented the terms of our own individual becoming. We went to raves and Coney Island. Meanwhile, all signs seemed to indicate that we were actually going to be able to make this movie together next summer. It was a time of possibility. Back before my body became my own, I had always hated the summer, the way the heat and humidity could only serve as a constant reminder about the physicality I avoided like a stressful email I didn’t want to read. That summer was the first good summer of my entire life.

The next summer we made the film and for me it was a monastic pursuit. Joyful, yes. Manic, definitely. But more an act of will than an act of living. I receded from the world and from myself like a parent drops off the face of the earth in the early months of childrearing. About a week after the movie wrapped I visited my partner in Vermont and we went to a dance show at a quarry. Sitting in the audience, still exhausted from production, still coming down from the high of it all, I realized it was the first time in months I’d had two hours alone with my brain without anything in particular to think about. I needed rest and healing.

Last summer I had just finally finished the edit, the color correct, the sound design. My movie was done, and I was so proud of it, so terrified to share this vulnerable, writhing thing with the world, and so truly exhausted from the entire pursuit. In therapy I had been trying to teach myself to feel and act, rather than endlessly overthinking every decision to the point of paralysis. On a whim, I moved out of New York City, where I’d lived for almost fifteen years. I disappeared into the Hudson Valley, took a sublet in the cemetery, and slowly met and built a community of trans and queer friends who by the end of that summer I had already started to think of as family. One of them, my friend Angel, describes living up here as “life on easy mode.” For me, that summer felt like finally finding a space where I could be healthy, where I could realistically stay alive, do my work, and love my people for a very long time to come.

Last summer I floated between swimming holes and ice cream trucks, drive-in movie theaters and my friends’ living room couch. I found a roommate and moved into a little two bedroom. This was to be, in many ways, the second summer of my life (since I’d sacrificed the previous one to make the movie), and I realized that I loved this time of year. I loved the summer. The way the heat made you feel a little bit dumber. The way that wandering all day without a destination could feel like the most responsible possible thing to do. Three years earlier the thought of loving summer would have been utterly inconceivable. To paraphrase Sophie, I wasn’t sure whether it was too cold in the water. But now, I was submerged, and my internal temperature was adjusting.

Which brings me to the present moment, another summer now, one that finds me at the end of a five-month press tour in which I talked to hundreds of journalists and audiences about my movie. It’s an honor I don’t take for granted to get to speak with so many people about my art. And yet, to embark on such a public-facing pursuit as a trans person is to almost certainly take a short break from one’s own healing. But I owed this last leg of caretaking to my movie, that little creature who I’d grown through its fragile early years (and through my own), who I’d delivered it into the world as best and as honestly as I could.

Now, today, I watch as my film finds its own home, its own life, separate from my own. And meanwhile, I recede again into the summer heat, still young myself, but a little bit older.

i feel joy for her. and heartbreak, my own. "there is still time", the chalk said.

is there? i don't know. i feel... closer to liv than i do to schoenbrun right now.

five years. no family. no community. if life was ever in "easy mode" for me, that time ended long ago than i can remember.

was i ever young? is there, anywhere, a space where i can be healthy, realistically stay alive, do my work, and love my people? i don't care for how long. i don't... dare ask for that much. a day. i would take a day, an hour. at this point.

i don't know if it's envy. it just.... seems unimaginable to me. impossible that _any_ of us could truly be happy.

Nice roundup on LitHub of relevant companion literature.

https://lithub.com/what-to-read-after-watching-i-saw-the-tv-glow/

i guess one thing that's really good about this movie is that maddy doesn't seem any happier for having figured things out. things are just realer for them

was wondering if a read of the film works where Maddy is a manifestation of Owen's mind and doesn't really exist

I think the movie lends itself to multiple reads of what "really" exists/happens and what doesn't, it doesn't insist or depend on anything except Owen's largely internal experience.

A friend and colleague wrote up this interview with them:

https://reverseshot.org/interviews/entry/3226/schoenbrun_interview

was wondering if a read of the film works where Maddy is a manifestation of Owen's mind and doesn't really exist

― the absence of bikes (f. hazel)

i guess i'd say it depends

there are, in fact, a lot of ways to read it. in a lot of ways a film like this, the viewer _is_ an active participant. the film, like latebloomer says, watches back. so when i talk about this, i'm talking about my perspective, and i'm specifically viewing the subtext as The Subtext, the thing schoenbrun is intentionally setting out to say.

for me, one of the most important thing about my experience is that what i might call my "inner maddy" didn't leave. the person i'd call my "inner maddy" is, well. me. at least, to the extent that i'm a different person from deadname. the way i frame my relationship with deadname, it _is_ kind of a horror movie framing. i can tell you perfectly well that i wouldn't and didn't ever tell deadname that i'd leave and he wouldn't see me anymore. that's kind of the crux of it, i _couldn't leave_. i couldn't get away. couldn't go off to arizona to try and find myself only to find that arizona is just as shitty and oppressive as the small town i came from. didn't really know anything except what i could see through a glass darkly. or through a tv glow.

which means that i couldn't have come back and talked to deadname the way maddy came back and talked to owen. couldn't have come back full of the zeal of a convert and said "deadname you _have_ to do this". maddy knew what she was saying and owen knew what maddy was saying. i didn't. i had no idea what i was doing.

the way it seems to me sometimes is that he sort of bricked me up behind a wall in his own head, like a "cask of amontillado" thing. and just waited for me to die so he could be free of me. waited a very long time. and i didn't die, i wasn't going to die, because he wasn't _real_. he couldn't exist without me. i went mad, bricked up behind that wall, and i screamed a lot, and i drove him mad, probably. definitely. because no matter where i was, where he was, he _needed me_.

so in some ways he was kind of a horrible person and i hate him. except i don't have the luxury of doing that, of feeling that way about him. because we're not separate people. because everything he did, _i'm_ responsible for. because i'm complicit in what he did to me. because i know _why_ he did it. to protect me. he was right to do it. it was the best thing for me, at the time. it's not his _fault_ or my _fault_ or anybody's _fault_ what he did to me, those several decades i spent as a madwoman locked away in someone else's head. the head of someone who told me over and over again that i didn't exist, like if he said it enough he could become real and i could become imaginary. honestly, even though i hated him, i would've gladly died for his sake, would gladly died so that he could live. it wasn't possible. instead, one day, he buried himself and i came out.

once he was the one behind the wall, he died. it's a lot easier to die when you're not real, i think. he's dead and i'm left here with all these memories of what he did to me, all of these feelings about someone who's gone, someone i hated, someone i miss very badly. that whole experience, those memories, have left me hurt, haunted, and very, very sad.

maybe there's a way to talk about it that doesn't sound like a horror story, but i don't know how to do that right now.

if anyone's a manifestation of the other's mind, i'd say owen is a manifestation of maddy's. but they're not one and the same, i don't think. i don't think one is a manifestation of the other. because if maddy was part of owen, she wouldn't be able to leave.

i watched i saw the tv glow last night, haven't been able to get it out of my thoughts since

that last stretch showing owen's rapid descent into middle-age is incredibly powerful and heartbreaking - thanks to ivy, kate and latebloomer for your perspectives on the film, which i really appreciated

very keen to see what schoenbrun does next

am i crazy or in "i saw the tv glow" was there briefly a cover of "tonight, tonight" with female-presenting vocals? it's not on the soundtrack

That would track; Mr Melancholy is clearly modeled on the moonface from Melies' "A Trip to the Moon," which would be best known to this generation from the Smashing Pumpkins' "Tonight, Tonight" video.

Yes, there was.

am i crazy or in "i saw the tv glow" was there briefly a cover of "tonight, tonight" with female-presenting vocals? it's not on the soundtrack

― na (NA), Wednesday, June 26, 2024 1:44 PM (forty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

the cover is by snail mail. it's apparently an exclusive for the vinyl edition

ah thanks.

Fancy A24 Bluray just announced:

https://shop.a24films.com/products/i-saw-the-tv-glow-blu-ray

Extras include a filmmaker commentary with Jane Schoenbrun and Brigette Lundy-Paine, deleted scenes, a new featurette, and six collectible postcards featuring special photography by Josiah Rundles and Spencer Pazer.

I have to admit to leaving the cinema slightly bemused after seeing this, and feeling like I wasn't picking up on the core meaning or missing certain crucial references. BUT a week or two later I had an unsettling and eerie dream where I was existing inside the film, and it was even more Lynchian than ever. Conclusion is that I probably need to see it again.

You're not the first to admit they've dreamed about this thing.

yeah my own “thinking about the movie” to “impression immediately after seeing it” quotient is also unusually high

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pX67mhQM81U

snail mail covering smashing pumpkins might actually be my gender

the kind of axemanship I like

Ok this movie is in my pretty rare had to see it more than once in a theatre club.

I saw I saw the tv glow glow

i have been meaning to start a thread for i saw the tv glow, a movie that made me feel very very very bad (compliment)

― ivy., Friday, May 10, 2024 6:39 PM (four months ago) bookmarkflaglink

the most emotionally true depiction of what life was like for me before i transitioned and what it would've continued to be like had i never come out. devastating to see a trans person express this in images

― ivy., Friday, May 10, 2024 6:42 PM (four months ago) bookmarkflaglink

idk even beyond the trans of it all it was just a very powerful movie about getting spellbound by popular art that seems to tell you something about yourself that the rest of the world is actively trying to suppress, story of my freaking life!!!!!

― ivy., Friday, May 10, 2024 6:45 PM (four months ago) bookmarkflaglink

okay I watched this and it made me absolutely miserable, feel like life is passing me by
and ofc that's not a trans thing necessarily although I googled some variation of "how can I tell if I'm trans" afterwards
not the first time I've done so but y'know

great movie btw

hugs

Back at ya

I watched this at the beginning of a long international flight, which in some senses was a very poor choice, because then I was stuck for another ten hours and couldn't talk about it with anyone or read anyone's thoughts.

I did the same thing last week, so the next day I made my wife watch it again with me. It's a very good, haunting movie.

It's definitely one of the more haunting films I've seen in a long time. Unsettling movies like this are really rare, especially an ostensible horror film that's PG-13 and has no blood and not even much in the way of (traditional) scares. It's just all ... intense dread. Very heavy.

hugs

― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

ditto

okay I watched this and it made me absolutely miserable, feel like life is passing me by
and ofc that's not a trans thing necessarily although I googled some variation of "how can I tell if I'm trans" afterwards
not the first time I've done so but y'know

― Deflatormouse

have i mentioned the gender dysphoria bible before? fuck it, i'll mention it again

https://genderdysphoria.fyi/en/

the thing is, you don't. the thing is, all this time the finger has been on the scales pointing it towards "no". the thing is, the idea of "trans" for a lot of us is this huge, terrifying, overwhelming thing. that's one of the truest things about the film, for me. someone i knew long ago comes back and says it's absolutely important, crucially important, that i bury myself?

but when i think about it, that's not how it was for me. in retrospect, it seems like that's what happened, that my egg cracked and i rushed forward at full blast, that i jumped into that grave immediately and without hesitation. but that's not how it was.

like, this might sound like metaphysical nonsense, but for me, in order to be trans i first had to _not_ be trans. not be anything. that's the thing about the finger being on the scales. i'd never asked myself the question, truly asked myself the question, without feeling like i needed to have an answer. things can change, things can stay the same. (yeah, gentle giant helped me figure out my gender, lol. we make what we can with what we have!)

it's weird - and i'm probably repeating myself, time passes, i forget things - but schoenbrun is younger than me... they talked about making the movie as kind of... since there is no way to tell for sure, one of the things i do is this process called "fact checking". and _i saw the tv glow_ is a horror film, a propaganda film, but i also see it as part of the question-asking process. what if i didn't do this? what would my life look like? and i think schoenbrun was basically right, as someone who did reach owen's age at the end of the movie without transitioning. and i also think it's _not_ a fundamentally... i think it's a hopeful movie. because in my head owen transitions, of course he transitions. because there is still time.

for a while i felt really, really acutely those years i lost, those years i didn't have. i don't so much now. i don't think life passed me by.

i don't think life is passing you by, either. i feel like you're doing what you need to do. it's a very, very difficult thing.

i didn't know i was trans, but i didn't know i _wasn't_ trans, either? i couldn't rule it out. i just kept asking the question. and i'd get scared and not want to listen to the answer and run away, but i kept asking. i'd say... i'd say that when i went through the fact-checking process, that was a data point. it didn't mean i was one way or another way, but it was something i considered, it was part of what i considered.

the other thing that interested me that schoenbrun said... again, maybe repeating myself here... was when they said that the story in which owen transitioned wouldn't be a sequel, it would be a different story. i think it would still be a horror movie. i feel like that's important for me to say. i don't regret transitioning for a second, but i'm not as... _evangelical_ about it as i used to be. my feeling is that when someone is placed in a grossly unfair situation, no decision one makes can truly be the _wrong_ one. the way i see it, at least, owen didn't make any mistakes. he didn't do anything wrong. that's just the reality he's living with. i guess for me it is more of a documentary than a horror movie.

anyway, that's enough of a ramble from me. sometimes i gotta talk about this stuff. deflatormouse, if you ever wanna talk about stuff, my email is my username at gmail. (anybody, really, anybody reading this who wants to talk about this shit, i'm happy to talk.) whether you do not, though, you're doing what you need to do. idk if this means anything to you or not, but for the record, i'm fucking proud of you for what you're doing. because it is super fucking hard.

the thing is, you don't.

don't know. you can't know, not the way we're told we have to "know".

I was stuck for another ten hours and couldn't talk about it with anyone or read anyone's thoughts.

OH EEK

when they said that the story in which owen transitioned wouldn't be a sequel, it would be a different story. i think it would still be a horror movie

hugs

sometimes i gotta talk about this stuff. deflatormouse, if you ever wanna talk about stuff, my email is my username at gmail.

sent you an email basically to say likewise. (my email address is also deflatormouse @ something. me and this dn go way back)

idk if this means anything to you or not, but for the record, i'm fucking proud of you for what you're doing. because it is super fucking hard.

Kate! this made me feel *so guilty* LOL
I was gonna say: Because I feel like I'm not doing anything hard. I'm not doing anything at all!

But I thought about how basically, all the things I've failed at in my life (I'm certainly an illustrious and prolific failure), I was basically just failing at masculinity over and over again. Trying to be male, and failing.

When I was a little kid I knew I was trans! I didn't know it was a thing, but like if someone told me it's a thing I would have said "oh, yeah of course" without batting an eye.

Now I don't know anymore! I know I'm not a man. So that leaves ____? You're talking about fact checking, okay, I've done a bit of that. But I think the main strategy here is process of elimination. heh.
You know where I'm at with this, because you described it to a tee. Fingers on the scale. I don't *think* I want to transition?

How many Pete & Pete references were in this movie?? The Ice cream man (who is a dead ringer for Mister Tastee) was holding a two Blue Tornado bars :D

was i ever young? is there, anywhere, a space where i can be healthy, realistically stay alive, do my work, and love my people? i don't care for how long. i don't... dare ask for that much. a day. i would take a day, an hour. at this point.

i don't know if it's envy. it just.... seems unimaginable to me. impossible that _any_ of us could truly be happy.

I think we just get miraculous little blips. And have to trust that there will be another blip sooner or later, hopefully sooner.
But I'm nuts.

"there is still time"

but I feel it's getting awfully late

I was thinking Owen is perpetually stuck in that isolated phase we all go through for 3 or 4 months in the 8th grade before getting high for the first time or whatever. And that creates a lot of tension and discomfort, makes you feel ashamed.

I enjoyed this piece on trans versus non-trans readings of the film:

https://www.vulture.com/article/the-hidden-hope-in-i-saw-the-tv-glows-ending-explained.html

I enjoyed this piece on trans versus non-trans readings of the film:

https://www.vulture.com/article/the-hidden-hope-in-i-saw-the-tv-glows-ending-explained.html

― Tim F

ahhh shit i'd love to read it - i'm a big fan of st. james's work in general - but paywalled :( anybody got a workaround?

Very good article, I still haven't seen this but it helps explains my friend's confusion/disappointment with the movie. He (straight cis male, who has a trans stepson) was very much looking forward to seeing it, and then was like "there's nothing in it about being trans at all."

ahhh shit i'd love to read it - i'm a big fan of st. james's work in general - but paywalled :( anybody got a workaround?

― Kate (rushomancy)

If you're happy with plaintext:

https://pastebin.com/S4wp01x7

I like the St. James piece but I was a little surprised by the viewers it's responding to because I felt like the trans metaphors were so blatant and obvious. It didn't occur to me to read the film any other way. Granted, I had seen World's Fair and I had read interviews with Schoenbrun, so I definitely didn't go in cold. But I don't feel like it's exactly subtle.

^^^
My wife didn't know anything about the movie and when I asked her at the end she got it right away.

It was obvious to me basically from the first ten minutes of the film, but I don't put much stock in that.

I think there are a lot of people who wouldn't consider themselves to be anti-trans or transphobic but who nevertheless have a pretty simplistic notion of trans identity, partly as a result of not having first or even second-hand exposure to it. A lot of presentations of trans identity in popular culture focus on cases where that identity manifests very early and very unequivocally e.g. in a toddler's obstinate refusal to dress in accordance with parental/societal expectations.

The kind of pre-coming out experience that kate describes so vividly above may not be one that a lot of people would necessarily be quick to recognise as being part of the trans "experience" (putting in scare quotes because the singular tense here is apt to mislead).

Yeah, I can see that. Since I know trans people and have talked to them about their experiences — and because I've learned a lot from Kate and others here — I guess it clicked immediately. But whenever trans issues come up in conversations with e.g. my parents I'm reminded how unknown a territory it still is for a lot of even well-meaning people.

I think one of the strengths of the film is that it works as trans allegory but also as a broader story of suburban alienation, the pressures of conformity, finding your space in (and escape from) a dead-end town, etc. Those are universal themes of adolescence that also allow room for more specific (and yeah, pretty hard to miss) interpretation.

They are not particularly similar films, but I kept thinking of "The Spirit of the Beehive."

Kate! this made me feel *so guilty* LOL

lol, guilt and shame, shame and guilt, real queer feels there

I was gonna say: Because I feel like I'm not doing anything hard. I'm not doing anything at all!

But I thought about how basically, all the things I've failed at in my life (I'm certainly an illustrious and prolific failure), I was basically just failing at masculinity over and over again. Trying to be male, and failing.

god, i thought of myself as such a failure. such an underachiever. all the people around me were doing so great and i couldn't understand why i couldn't do the things they did. i couldn't understand what was wrong with me.

it was because i was trying to do the fucking impossible. it's because i wasn't _like_ them. at some point i realized, jesus, i'm not a failure, i'm a phenomenal fucking success. i survived this thing, this awful fucking thing, this thing that would attack and rip out my soul and leave me sobbing in a pile on the floor not knowing why, that left me feeling dead and purposeless and not even human? this thing that kills so many people? i did everything i did while dealing with _that_?

people who haven't experienced gender dysphoria... it's hard to communicate how fucking bad it is. people say trans people are "brave", it's kind of a running joke among trans people. all of the shit we go through, all of the crap... i mean people are still transitioning _today_! i got friends who are genuinely worried that... like i'm not even gonna say what they're worried about, but i can't tell them it's not gonna happen. i don't think that what they're worried about is gonna happen, but i can't say that it's not. but people are still transitioning, and i mean, some people are detransitioning, for, like, THEIR OWN BASIC PHYSICAL SAFETY, but _way_ way fewer than you'd think. given the circumstances. because gender dysphoria is just _that fucking bad_. that's the only way i can think to put it. my life is so much easier and happier than it used to be, and that's so fucking weird.

When I was a little kid I knew I was trans! I didn't know it was a thing, but like if someone told me it's a thing I would have said "oh, yeah of course" without batting an eye.

Now I don't know anymore! I know I'm not a man. So that leaves ____? You're talking about fact checking, okay, I've done a bit of that. But I think the main strategy here is process of elimination. heh.
You know where I'm at with this, because you described it to a tee. Fingers on the scale. I don't *think* I want to transition?

i mean the secret is that there is no such thing as "transition". gender is an approximation. man, woman, even non-binary, all of these are approximations. the thing we're told not to ask... what do you _want_ to do? but the thing is, the finger is on the scale. so someone can say, like i did, you know, i'll just try it, see what it does. it probably won't do anything. i mean, i'm 43! i can't imagine it doing anything. like, there's not a lot of desistence. not a lot of detransition. and i think, to me, that just shows how much the finger is still on the scale. because there's nothing _wrong_ with desisting. there's this whole spectre of "detransition" and i see the people who have done it and that's kinda normal and fine, and damn near nobody regrets trying it.

so there's this appearance of something called "the pipeline", and it's not real. it's illusory. it's, again, just a function of the finger being on the scale. i didn't go in with the intention of "transitioning" or being a "real woman". i just said hey, i'll try this, and see how i feel, and i did that a bunch of times for a bunch of different things and it turned out that they were all fucking amazing. and that's what gets called "the pipeline", but it's really an illusion, illusion of perspective. because this was all stuff i really wanted to do badly but was terribly afraid to even _admit_ i wanted to try.

was i ever young? is there, anywhere, a space where i can be healthy, realistically stay alive, do my work, and love my people? i don't care for how long. i don't... dare ask for that much. a day. i would take a day, an hour. at this point.

i don't know if it's envy. it just.... seems unimaginable to me. impossible that _any_ of us could truly be happy.

I think we just get miraculous little blips. And have to trust that there will be another blip sooner or later, hopefully sooner.
But I'm nuts.

"there is still time"

but I feel it's getting awfully late

i mean i don't know. i just relate a lot to what you're saying. it seemed that way for me too. i figured, you know. i'll try this, and if it doesn't work out, you know, i'll have learned something, and maybe i'll have learned more about myself, i'll have some idea about where to go next. i genuinely did not ever expect it would work out as well as it has.

I was thinking Owen is perpetually stuck in that isolated phase we all go through for 3 or 4 months in the 8th grade before getting high for the first time or whatever. And that creates a lot of tension and discomfort, makes you feel ashamed.

― Deflatormouse

haha, back to the beginning, shame and guilt, guilt and shame :) there's nothing wrong with you. whoever "you" is, whatever that looks like. clothes or pronouns or hormones or gender or any of that shit. nothing wrong with you.

-

If you're happy with plaintext:

[show hidden text]

― etc

perfect, thanks so much :)

-

I like the St. James piece but I was a little surprised by the viewers it's responding to because I felt like the trans metaphors were so blatant and obvious. It didn't occur to me to read the film any other way. Granted, I had seen World's Fair and I had read interviews with Schoenbrun, so I definitely didn't go in cold. But I don't feel like it's exactly subtle.

― Blitz Primary (tipsy mothra)

i literally never even considered the cis reading st. james talks about until reading her piece. see i think there _are_ plenty of potential cis readings of the film, but making it about "the perils of nostalgia", i'd say that... i mean i'd say there's latitude for interpretation, but i'd also say that the incel reading of the "red pill" in the matrix is wrong.

as far as the trans reading, it's pretty interesting the different ways different audiences read it. it's not just a cis/trans divide. i know trans women who watch it and don't get what the big deal is. i know people, cis and trans, for whom it's about as subtle as a sledgehammer. i saw a tweet which paraphrased the movie as something like "OWEN YOU SHOULD START TAKING ESTROGEN AND TRANSITION BECAUSE YOU ARE A TRANSGENDER WOMAN".

for me, one of the things that's beautiful about the film is the way in which it _isn't_ specific. the word "trans" never comes up. he likes to watch a show for girls. he's haunted and obsessed by the show. he's ashamed of liking the show. the most explicit things get is one brief, out-of-focus shot someone with a body kind of like owen's appearing to wear a gown of some sort. it's not so much about "transness" as about something unspeakable, unthinkable, something which seems worse than death, even though it's not at all.

thinking about it, i'd almost characterize the film as... clocky. it surprises me deeply how much people don't notice. i'm not going to make any specific judgements on specific people - that would be rude - but the less one knows about trans people, the more likely it is that someone will fail to notice somebody's transness, even if the trans person in question isn't trying to "stealth", isn't particularly trying to appear cis.

the film itself never says the word "trans", but outside of the film itself it's very openly trans. it's made by a trans film maker about a certain subset of trans experience, the "egg" experience. maybe it's wearing a necklace shaped like an estrogen molecule around its neck, something like that. cuz it is a T4T film, i'd say, as opposed to something like "will and harper", which i've heard is more of a trans film for cis audiences - it's good to tell trans stories (WELL) for cis audiences, it's important to tell trans stories for cis audiences, but _i saw the tv glow_ isn't a trans story for a cis audience or by a filmmaker who conceives of themselves as cis. in that sense i wouldn't say it's "egg art" the way the matrix was. it's a film by a consciously trans person that's consciously about trans experience. it's aimed _towards_ eggs, in a pretty direct, uncompromising manner.

to me, the week it came out, it seemed immediate, direct, cataclysmic. it isn't that, though, really. it's not a flash of lightning that appears and is gone. it's out there. waiting for the people who need to see it.

i told someone of my acquaintance that they should check out "i saw the tv glow", that it's a really good film and they might find it interesting. they started estrogen this week. when i said i "thought they'd find it interesting", there wasn't an ulterior motive to that. i'd given up, long ago, any real investment in their gender identity. they knew everything they needed to know about transness. they can make their own decisions. it's hard to see someone who's deeply unhappy with themselves, with their life, who struggles with SI, but honestly, i know lots of people like that. surprised the hell out of me when they told me they'd started e. i hadn't thought they'd ever actually do it.

and i guess a lot of that was them seeing the movie. for some people - and i'm kind of one of them, i think - a movie like that is utterly visceral. sometimes trans media almost feels like having my deepest secrets, the things i'm most ashamed of, ripped out of me and projected up on a screen for everyone to watch. i mean not anymore, because it's not a secret, i'm not ashamed of it.

a lot of what drives me is fear, always has been. the thought of transition terrified me, but at some point the thought of _not_ transitioning terrified me more. well. i honestly can't say anything to make transition seem less terrifying. and i guess if anything the film for me represents that terror, that very real terror, that it might go on like this for the rest of my life, even when i know it doesn't _have_ to, that there's no _reason_ for it to, no purpose or meaning in that suffering.

I haven't seen Will and Harper, but my mom heard the two of them interviewed on Fresh Air and was at least interested by it. I have a feeling she's never knowingly talked to a trans person, so hearing somebody on the radio was kind of enlightening.

Which is to say, it may serve its purpose of being a cis-normie envoy.

Which is to say, it may serve its purpose of being a cis-normie envoy.

― Blitz Primary (tipsy mothra)

yeah i do think it's super important. there's so much stuff that trans people deal with that cis people don't have to think about, aren't aware of. i think it's good that they don't have to worry about stuff like that all the time, but it's also good to be aware of the shit trans people go through. just like i try and be aware of the shit that people who have different experiences from me, who are marginalized in ways i'm not, go through.

I knew going into I Saw the TV Glow that it was a trans allegory and was made by a trans filmmaker, but I honestly don't know that I would've clocked it otherwise. The two people I saw the movie with (a straight cis dude and a gay cis dude) did not know until I told them afterward.

So the report from a trans high schooler is that he found the trans themes "very subtle" and is not sure he would have picked up on it if he hadn't heard people talking about it. But he's in the midst of all the adolescent stuff (and has been out since middle school), so has yet another perspective.

yeah i saw this movie with cis people and i think they might’ve been shocked when i said “that movie hurt my feelings. that movie is what would’ve happened to me if i never moved away from my hometown and never transitioned”

but to echo what rusho said upthread, once we’re talking about burying ourselves alive in order to wake up in the real world… it is very undeniably about later-in-life transition. and this is one movie where i really don’t mind that there’s only one reading of it that works (for me) (the idea that the film is critical of nostalgia for a tv show seems popular but is way less apparent to me … owen only thinks the show is childish in retrospect bc he’s become profoundly detached from who he really is)

was sailor moon real? no. was transitioning an awful lot like a transformation sequence in a magical girl anime? yeah kinda

the thing is that even though i can only watch this movie through one specifically-turned lens it is maybe the richest… and only?!? filmic depiction of this phenomenon i’ve ever seen. i think about the movie all the time. i showed it to my roommate last week and i cried and cried and cried from the halfway point on

but I feel it's getting awfully late

if you’re not dead then it’s not too late

two years ago i wrote a song about how i needed to transition very badly but it ended up being a song about the end of the world, i even quoted “closing time” by leonard cohen, a song that is very much about the end of the world. the thing is that i wasn’t really conscious about the “transition” part of the song. i mean i was, but i wasn’t. “semiconscious” is the best way to put it. i was already out as nonbinary… that seemed “good enough” for a while, idk. but i knew i was a woman, and i knew coming out as a woman would absolutely destroy my life. and it did. but i don’t know that what i had before this was a “life.” it was like a universe where every surface is decaying and rusting. a world that had already ended. i had to get the fuck out of there. and i did. and people left me behind because of it. but i also had to leave them behind. they wanted me to be something i wasn’t. they wanted to acknowledge me as nonbinary but mostly treat me in their minds like i was a man. and i couldn’t be that for them anymore. and it hurt so fucking bad to do that. i thought i was going to die. but i was definitely going to die if i stayed where i was… i might as well already have been dead

i was already out as nonbinary… that seemed “good enough” for a while, idk. but i knew i was a woman, and i knew coming out as a woman would absolutely destroy my life. and it did. but i don’t know that what i had before this was a “life.” it was like a universe where every surface is decaying and rusting. a world that had already ended. i had to get the fuck out of there. and i did. and people left me behind because of it. but i also had to leave them behind. they wanted me to be something i wasn’t. they wanted to acknowledge me as nonbinary but mostly treat me in their minds like i was a man.

OH FUCK

This 100% describes something of what i am going through now but i need to process before i can respond coherently.

except to say that i feel extremely lucky to have access to the thoughts of such caring and brilliant people who are going through this and to be able to interact.

and that i have long since got to the point where i revel in semiconscious and burial

all my love

Thank you for sharing that, ivy, very beautiful and very illuminating <3 <3

^^^^^ 100%

the thing is that even though i can only watch this movie through one specifically-turned lens it is maybe the richest… and only?!? filmic depiction of this phenomenon i’ve ever seen. i think about the movie all the time. i showed it to my roommate last week and i cried and cried and cried from the halfway point on

― ivy.

i do not think there has ever been a movie before that tells this particular story, and schoenbrun does it _amazingly_

i am looking forward to watching the 20th anniversary theatrical rerelease of this film with a theater full of other trans women, like i did with _the matrix_ 25th anniversary this year

i'll be 68

hopefully some of the other women in the theater will be even older than me

This 100% describes something of what i am going through now but i need to process before i can respond coherently.

except to say that i feel extremely lucky to have access to the thoughts of such caring and brilliant people who are going through this and to be able to interact.

and that i have long since got to the point where i revel in semiconscious and burial

all my love

― Deflatormouse

dm so much love for you, all the love

whatever happens from here, your life is going to get _so much better_

sometimes all that seems real is the fear and the pain, and that's all that's in _i saw the tv glow_

i don't talk about it much these days because of all the bullshit trans people are going through right now but the heart of it has always been the joy for me

the dysphoria by itself was never going to get me to change

it was only once i knew i didn't _have_ to feel that way all the time

it was like "wait, cis people feel this good, like, normally? god no wonder they're so much more successful!"

joy is a social contagion

was sailor moon real? no. was transitioning an awful lot like a transformation sequence in a magical girl anime? yeah kinda

― ivy.

i deffo have seen transition described as "the world's longest magical girl transformation"

btw ivy, thoughts on the new ranma 1/2? i didn't ever see the old one... i had to really work to keep that repression front going...

I have dysphoria for sure but idk if it's *gender* dysphoria or something else. but also, like a lot of people with Autism, I don't know how to process or even recognize my emotions. that's been a problem my whole life.
when I feel a lot I become overwhelmed and tend to shut down, like a robot- 'this does not compute' kinda
that's what happened when I read Ivy's post yesterday.

I'm very "slow on the uptake" in general

This last year I've been way more into music than at any time in the last decade
I've been deleting anything off my hd that's too "alive" and amplifies my emotions
and actively seeking out the kind of lulling, disembodied stuff that encloses me in a womb ...
I always loved that stuff, it mirrors the way I felt as a kid. but refusing more energetic music is new. I don't trust the effect that it has on me, like it's making me feel things I don't need to feel.
or like I don't have the awareness of what I'm feeling that I need for listening to "normal" music to be healthy

they wanted me to be something i wasn’t. they wanted to acknowledge me as nonbinary but mostly treat me in their minds like i was a man.

I don't know if I'm a woman but I suspect that I might be. I wanted to live as nonbinary at least until I figure that out. but that isn't really possible because most people will do exactly what you're saying: acknowledge me as nonbinary, but treat me in their minds like I'm a man. especially in a case such as my own where my gender is invisible (I probs look more "normal guy" these days than I ever have in my life, save for occasional glitter & eye makeup or magical girl bling).
there are all these expectations i can't live up to, and sometimes this is overt, and sometimes it's more of an ambient thing that I can sense.
that isn't fair, or just, but it is *true*
and basically I feel like this is pushing me to "choose" male or female.
and I need it to be an exploration, a process, not a choice. as I think we all do.

anyway, I haven't read the article yet. I think the movie is relatable to everyone but the idea that anyone would insist on a non-trans interpretation of the movie for that reason seems... strange. and pointless.

it really is a beautiful film, it's so soft but so heavy

at some point i realized, jesus, i'm not a failure, i'm a phenomenal fucking success. i survived this thing, this awful fucking thing, this thing that would attack and rip out my soul and leave me sobbing in a pile on the floor not knowing why, that left me feeling dead and purposeless and not even human? this thing that kills so many people? i did everything i did while dealing with _that_?

you're a ROCK STAR Kate.
You've become a hero just by being who you are openly.

My older brother showed me Ranma 1/2 when I was 14 and I'm pretty sure he was doing so because he knew something about me that I did not know yet. Or maybe he was trying to tip the scales! Either way my teen mind was blown

my experience with ranma is really minimal! always preferred mermaid saga/scar of takahashi’s works bc it involved eating flesh, yum. the only episodes of old school ranma i watched were shown to me by my (very very very homophobic and abusive) first girlfriend. i did feel some type of way about the concept, absolutely

non-sequitur but there are so many people on the internet i know who i want to grab by the shoulders and yell “YOU HAVE TO ABANDON THE CIS HETEROSEXUAL PARADIGM IF YOU EVER WANT TO BE HAPPY”

non-sequitur but there are so many people on the internet i know who i want to grab by the shoulders and yell “YOU HAVE TO ABANDON THE CIS HETEROSEXUAL PARADIGM IF YOU EVER WANT TO BE HAPPY”

― ivy.

i mean you've got me beat, i keep wanting to yell at people "GIRL PENISES ARE AMAZING! STOP BEING SO WEIRD ABOUT THEM! YOU'RE MISSING OUT!"

I have dysphoria for sure but idk if it's *gender* dysphoria or something else. but also, like a lot of people with Autism, I don't know how to process or even recognize my emotions. that's been a problem my whole life.

there are all kinds of dysphoria and see you don't have to have just one

one of the shitty things people do sometimes is they try to do a differential diagnosis, like "oh if you have autism you're not trans", when in fact there's a high correlation (which, obligatory reminder, is not causation) between autism and diverse gender identities

when I feel a lot I become overwhelmed and tend to shut down, like a robot- 'this does not compute' kinda
that's what happened when I read Ivy's post yesterday.

I'm very "slow on the uptake" in general

i get easily overwhelmed as well... i've been described as a "highly sensitive person", which i think basically means that i get overwhelmed a lot easier than a lot of other people. which can be frustrating but i don't really look at it as a bad thing or a good thing (some people who seem to feel similarly call themselves "empathic" and think it's a good thing), it just means that i'm different in some ways from most people! i kinda feel the same way about being trans, it's just this way in which i'm different from a lot of people.

This last year I've been way more into music than at any time in the last decade
I've been deleting anything off my hd that's too "alive" and amplifies my emotions
and actively seeking out the kind of lulling, disembodied stuff that encloses me in a womb ...
I always loved that stuff, it mirrors the way I felt as a kid. but refusing more energetic music is new. I don't trust the effect that it has on me, like it's making me feel things I don't need to feel.
or like I don't have the awareness of what I'm feeling that I need for listening to "normal" music to be healthy

that's interesting! not "good" or "bad", just interesting. i know i really repressed my emotions a lot for a lot of my life. i guess you could say i was very "rational"... i'd say it was more that i had these strong emotions and i came up with rational justifications for them. emotions can feel super strong for me and i often feel urges to act on them in ways that aren't always totally healthy. like, i wanted to kill myself a lot of the time. repressing my emotions was pretty effective at stopping me from killing myself. it also made it really hard for me to do much of anything and i didn't ever really feel happy. that was kind of the tradeoff. also, sometimes i'd get really overwhelmed like owen does in the movie and just... feel really really bad. i think the movie does a better job of describing those feelings than i could.

i guess another downside of repressing my emotions is that not only did i often not consciously know what i was feeling, i didn't know why. so in retrospect a lot of the times i felt really bad, i'd do something like see a girl in a pretty dress, and wish i could be a girl in a pretty dress, and then feel really awful and terrible. i was too ashamed to consciously admit to myself that i wanted to be a girl in a pretty dress, so i didn't know why i felt bad. i just knew i felt bad.

the other thing i found is that the more i got aware of trans people, transness, the worse i felt a lot of the time. i'd really beat myself up when i'd see another trans person. i'd be like "oh my god they're so amazing and awesome, i wish i could do what they did". but i didn't really feel like i could. i can look back now and not judge myself, i can say "hey i was doing what i could do when i could do it", but at the time i judged myself really harshly.

all this is to say that i certainly don't know why you're feeling the way you do, and the most important thing is to keep yourself safe, whatever that looks like for you. to me the easiest way for me to explore my emotions was to try things that i thought might make me feel good. one of the biggest things for me personally was when i tried on leggings, and i just felt really good somehow? and i couldn't come up with any explanation for it other than that i wasn't a cisgender man. i mean a lot of times people say being trans is a "fetish thing" but i wasn't turned on wearing leggings or anything. (by the way even if someone does happen to get turned on by wearing some "women's clothes" it doesn't mean that they just have a "fetish" and they're not trans. it's kinda normal for all kinds of people to be turned on when they wear stuff that makes them feel sexually attractive. feeling turned on can even be part of gender euphoria, though it doesn't _have_ to be. that's one of the big things people sometimes say about trans stuff that's wrong, that it's just a "fetish".)

it was really scary. i don't really like change. the idea that i was gonna need to try all this different stuff and maybe change a lot scared me a lot. but the idea that i could feel as good as that by doing something that simple... i couldn't pretend that everything was just totally fine and i could just keep on going the way i had been.

i'm glad i did that stuff, even though i changed a lot as a result of it. i love myself now, and i didn't really love myself before. i might not even be alive today if i hadn't done what i did. like i say, i wanted to die a lot of the time.

I don't know if I'm a woman but I suspect that I might be. I wanted to live as nonbinary at least until I figure that out. but that isn't really possible because most people will do exactly what you're saying: acknowledge me as nonbinary, but treat me in their minds like I'm a man. especially in a case such as my own where my gender is invisible (I probs look more "normal guy" these days than I ever have in my life, save for occasional glitter & eye makeup or magical girl bling).
there are all these expectations i can't live up to, and sometimes this is overt, and sometimes it's more of an ambient thing that I can sense.
that isn't fair, or just, but it is *true*
and basically I feel like this is pushing me to "choose" male or female.
and I need it to be an exploration, a process, not a choice. as I think we all do.

yeah it really sucks that that's the case. i got a friend who's nonbinary, who isn't really comfortable being perceived as a man _or_ a woman. and people keep wanting to treat them as one or the other. anyway, that's what i found, too... that i'm overall happier being called a woman, being treated as a woman, than i ever was when people treated me like a man. so i feel pretty lucky really. it's tough because how i feel inside is important to how i experience my gender, but so is how other people treat me. that's why people value "passing" so much. a lot of people make it out to be, like, the be-all and end-all of everything, which it's not, but it helps a lot that everybody treats me like a woman, since i feel good when people perceive me as a woman and bad when people perceive me as a man.

you're a ROCK STAR Kate.
You've become a hero just by being who you are openly.

― Deflatormouse

awww thanks. i mean for me the important thing is that i'm happy with who i am. i never really felt that before.

there are all kinds of dysphoria and see you don't have to have just one

greeeeeaat :D

i've been described as a "highly sensitive person", which i think basically means that i get overwhelmed a lot easier than a lot of other people. which can be frustrating but i don't really look at it as a bad thing or a good thing

if you google 'autism and emotions' or something similar, that's my experience basically. especially in my early childhood, dysregulation and alexithymia - kind of the opposite of what you're describing, which is I think that the *intensity* of feeling becomes overwhelming? I know that autistic people can be hyper-empathetic, too. but having no awareness of my feelings, or having strong feelings I can't identify-
it's gotten better, but maybe listening to too much Robert Truman or Robert Ashley is a sign that i need to deal with this more proactively lol

I have this fantasy of eq'ing all the bright frequencies out of my record collection, similar to what Halim El Dabh does in Electronic Fanfare. just had the thought that throwing a blanket over the speakers might be a super easy way to achieve what I want

i know i really repressed my emotions a lot for a lot of my life. i guess you could say i was very "rational"... i'd say it was more that i had these strong emotions and i came up with rational justifications for them. emotions can feel super strong for me and i often feel urges to act on them in ways that aren't always totally healthy. like, i wanted to kill myself a lot of the time. repressing my emotions was pretty effective at stopping me from killing myself. it also made it really hard for me to do much of anything and i didn't ever really feel happy. that was kind of the tradeoff. also, sometimes i'd get really overwhelmed like owen does in the movie and just... feel really really bad. i think the movie does a better job of describing those feelings than i could.

something I noticed, and genderdysphoria.fyi is an okay example of this - is a lot of trans people tend to talk about their experience in figurative language. I grew up speaking Persian and Qatari Arabic, and a lot of abstractions are expressed as similes in those languages, it reminds me of that. The movie is proof of how powerful and effective this can be, but it seems like for a lot of people, this is a hard thing to talk about directly, without drawing comparisons. That's a shame, because figurative language can be confusing as well as effective.

here's a cool exercise: in middle school some friends and I used to talk about doing an "art installation" where we would fill a room with all the stuff that made us happy. so we would go around in a circle, and everyone would say something that made them happy, and someone would write it all down on a master list. if someone said they like gummy peach rings, that would go on the master list and we would have peach rings in the room. I don't remember any of mine, so in my memory this is a room full of the stuff that made my friends happy, which is really nice.

*Turman ofc

(by the way even if someone does happen to get turned on by wearing some "women's clothes" it doesn't mean that they just have a "fetish" and they're not trans. it's kinda normal for all kinds of people to be turned on when they wear stuff that makes them feel sexually attractive. feeling turned on can even be part of gender euphoria, though it doesn't _have_ to be. that's one of the big things people sometimes say about trans stuff that's wrong, that it's just a "fetish".)

this seems significant and my sense is that it can contribute to gender euphoria or be part of it as you say, but is not equivalent to it
in the same way that sexual arousal is pleasant and enjoyable but distinct from happiness.

'try this and see how it feels' is something I kinda struggle with for reasons I've just mentioned...
if something turns me on, that's simple to notice in comparison, but can still be difficult to understand or diagnose.

I was really drawn to images of men with long hair as a kid, Van Halen was my favorite band (and maybe still are) - one of the things that appealed to me about them at first was that EVH and DLR had beautiful hair

even pro wrestling, the ultimate warrior was my earliest personal fashion icon, with the big hair and the really colorful costumes, lol. that was much more appealing to me than the "warrior" part

I started growing my hair long sometime in elementary school, and by the 6th grade I was getting bullied relentlessly for looking too much like a girl.
at some point I decided to shave it all off- I wasn't caving to peer pressure or anything, I was starting to like boys and the thought of doing so turned me on a little
and I hardly ever let it grow out past a buzz cut now, even though on some level I think the source of the excitement is that it feels punitive and severe
so that's surely an indication of something but not a particularly clear one :D

my gf's away on a work trip and "starburned and unkissed" is really made for immersing myself in trans lesbian longing

not surprising that the hallway scene was inspired by donnie darko... as in that movie it seems to encapsulate the mood of the entire film just by observing people walking in between moments

i've watched this movie three times in the past month and i just cry and cry and cry help

I swear I'm not posting this to stir the pot -- hell, my copy of the fancy A24 release arrived the other week -- but the musician Signor Benedick the Moor, who I know casually, has a piece up about their issues with the film, and I thought it worth considering. I'll quote this paragraph in full first:

The film depicts a young lightskin black “boy” in the suburbs, in the 90’s, with one black and one white parent. Wow, ok, me. The kid is awkward, quiet, stoic, and into a “girl show” that he feels guilty or perhaps is made to feel guilty for watching. Ok very relatable. The scene depicting Owen trying on a pink dress at a femme friends house was also very fucking relatable. And he has asthma! I thought maybe the writer had followed me around as a kid or plucked these scenarios straight from my memory bank. And let’s be honest; colorism and misogynoir are prevalent in American stories, but seeing an actual mulatto kid with a white and black parent depicted realistically in film is pretty rare (these are not lightskin tears! It’s just true! This can be true concurrently with the fact that dark skin black people are constantly fucked over in Hollywood and in stories in general). And, as a huge nerd and pseudo latchkey kid, I could also identify with the themes of fandom, and learning about oneself through television and media (though for me it was anime).

And they make clear from the start they really like Justice Smith's work in general, and more besides. Still, they had big issues with the end result. The piece in full:

https://babalegba.substack.com/p/black-faces-white-writers

Now before I jump into it, I don’t want to bash what is essentially a trans coming of age film; I don’t want to add fuel to what is already a very transphobic world.

nevertheless, in this essay I shall…

Despite this, I really didn’t like this film. For a number of reasons. First, it’s just so white. I mean, it’s 2024 and I think there are more important things an upper middle class white Jewish person can be talking about when Black and Brown people are being murdered here in America everyday, especially trans women of color, as well as in Palestine and Congo and now Lebanon. Do you think there are no queer people there?

ok, jesus christ

I’m too lazy to look up the quote but I’m pretty sure Schoenbrun mentioned in an interview that the ending was meant to be “humorous”

finding this hard to believe. but since the writer didn't provide the quote how would i ever know

film ends with owen breaking the fourth wall, donning a keffiyeh, and an launching into a 5 minute monologue that includes the most beautiful land acknowledgment you’ve ever heard

I’m too lazy to look up the quote but I’m pretty sure Schoenbrun mentioned in an interview that the ending was meant to be “humorous”

finding this hard to believe. but since the writer didn't provide the quote how would i ever know

― ivy., Monday, October 21, 2024

This bothered me. Even if we knew Schoenburn's intentions, "humorous" is not how this scene came across to me.

i found this piece hit and miss and a little upsetting on the whole

some of it was very wtf especially the part ivy quoted

but this part was especially on point:

The particular hypermasculinization of black boys, who maybe just want to play with dolls and watch Sailor Moon (or in this case The Pink Opaque) deserves attention.

It made me think of John in Go Tell it on the Mountain where Baldwin lets you know early on that he's gay and then doesn't really deal with that at all or mention it again. It's a pretty significant piece of information about the character, something that puts him at odds with his world. it's not like you forget about this because it's unresolved.

The main character Own, cast as a black person, Justice Smith, has a whole nother level of trauma and alienation that is just ignored, especially considering the character lost their Black mother and was left to live with their abusive white father, amongst white people, in a very white suburb, in a time before the internet was the communication hub that it is today. Racial violence from parents is a particular sin that deserves attention.

It’s also worth noting that while violence is hinted at happening to the young White girl, the only actual violence we see is enacted on Owen, on a Black body. One scene depicts a rather disturbing episode of violence from his White father, and another scene depicts him violently assaulting himself.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Marty liked it

AP: Have you seen anything lately that you’ve liked?

SCORSESE: Some older ones I’ve been watching. There was one film I liked a great deal I saw two weeks ago called “I Saw the TV Glow.” It really was emotionally and psychologically powerful and very moving. It builds on you, in a way. I didn’t know who made it. It’s this Jane Schoenbrun.

https://apnews.com/article/martin-scorsese-saints-fox-df1b10e984c32c96a8eb0d0515b1d7c1

Finally got around to seeing this. I haven’t had a chance to read any interviews from Schoenbrun on this but I’d assume the Mr. Sprinkly is their horrifying homage to Pete and Pete’s Mr. Tastee?

I think a 20 year younger version of me would’ve been really struck by this but I’m a little ambivalent to it at the moment. It might be the main performances. That version of me did get awestruck by Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

went to a theater saturday with my gf to watch this for the fifth time and i cried so fucking much through the whole thing, straight blubbering, can't tell if the crying was made more or less intense by the fact that my gf was holding my hand the entire time, i just feel so lucky, so fortunate, that i figured at least this much out about myself, that if i continued to submit to the gazes of others and try to fulfill their expectations of what kind of person i should be, i would just die, and i did die, i died over and over again until finally i was reborn as a girl

one of the things that really hit for me was the aspect of being a teenager and having something you're consumed with "taken" from you - in this case the cancellation of Pink Opaque probably through the hands of network higher-ups not impressed with the ratings.

had Pink Opaque existed, that season 5 finale would surely go down in a top 10 of most wtf last episodes of a television series.

the mr. melancholy fx in that scene are so disquieting

oh i also wanted to say that "claw machine" is the most heartbreaking song ever written

cried at karaoke for the first time while singing "claw machine"

I watched it, third time on Friday, cried.

!!

Writer-director Jane Schoenbrun (I Saw the TV Glow) has set Hannah Einbinder (Hacks) and Gillian Anderson (Sex Education) to lead Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, their next film for Mubi, which will go into production in British Columbia this summer.

In Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, the infamous Camp Miasma slasher franchise is getting rebooted yet again. But when the latest movie’s director becomes obsessed with the mysterious, reclusive actress who played the “final girl” in the original film, a whole new kind of slasher emerges from the bottom of the lake.

... “I make movies I wish existed when I was a kid,” Schoenbrun said, “and Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is my best attempt at the ‘sleepover classic:’ an insane yet cozy midnight odyssey that beckons to unsuspecting viewers from the horror section at the local video store. I couldn’t be more excited to be heading to sleepaway camp this summer with the mad comic genius Hannah Einbinder, the legendary Gillian Anderson, and the daring folks at MUBI and Plan B, who by greenlighting this movie have summoned a plague-like flood of blood, guts, and various other fluids to rain down on us all.”

https://deadline.com/2025/05/jane-schoenbrun-teenage-sex-and-death-at-camp-miasma-cast-1236390856/

I am all for this.

I’m in

NICE.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/black-hole-series-netflix-i-saw-the-tv-glow-director-1236408323/

The streamer outbid other outlets for a series based on Charles Burns’ Black Hole comics, with I Saw the TV Glow writer-director Jane Schoenbrun set to adapt the story and direct. Neflix has given a straight-to-series order to the project, which will be Schoenbrun’s first TV series.

Ooooooooh!

ahh this could be good

Jack Haven is devilishly malevolent in Louise Weard's 'Castration Movie: Anthology ii - the best of both worlds', and Jane Schoenbrun is in part iii out next year.

A warning: these films are quite extreme. Best not to go in cold.

!!

What a good pairing of director and material.

And we got a release date for Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma: August 7.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-iw33lyFD4

And an Alex G soundtrack with Paul Buchanan? ivy are you the music coordinator.

Is that borrowing the score from John Carpenter's "The Fog"?

jane and i are basically identical, im a little worried about how much this movie will resemble my novel

lets goooooooo

wait I'm still excited about Black Hole, I want it all

Me irl
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/southpark/images/c/c4/S6TerranceTrailer-Thumbnail.png

ILXr's suggest the current stuff for a parent

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MA5NqUMEdbI

Looks incredible. A "new kind of horror remake"? Is that referencing this film or the sort of film within a film nature of the plot (at least as revealed thus far?)? Def. some nods to "Friday the 13th" but also "Videodrome" in there.

omg

This looks bonkers in the best way.

Anyone who plays ttrpgs should check out the game Public Access, which is kind of I Saw the TV Glow the rpg. Nostalgia-drenched horror rpg about young people in 2004 investigating the disappearance of a Public Access TV station in their hometown that no one else remembers.

Insanely great trailer. What a roll she's on.

And just hearing Buchanan's voice over all that...chef's kiss.

it’s a miracle hearing his voice. I really can’t wait

Absolutely psyched for this

per IMDb the cast includes Patrick Fischler, Zach Cherry, Eva Victor, Dylan Baker, Sarah Squirm, and Kevin McDonald (!)

The Skype call scene in WAGttWF is one of the most realistically upsetting horror scenes I’ve ever seen.

And now this!

https://www.fangoria.com/jane-schoenbrun-novel-public-access-afterworld/

Anyway, big ol' interview:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/jane-schoenbrun-teenage-sex-death-at-camp-miasma-exclusive-1236590110/

“Everyone except for Mubi passed on this movie, to be totally blunt,” they say. “Every major studio and distributor passed on the film ...

So no Neon, no A24, no ... anyone else? That's a little surprising, but reading between the lines of the interview a little bit ("bloody, vivid sex scenes," "Blue Velvet," “The movie represents the experience of somebody trying to find creative autonomy and maybe losing their fucking mind a little bit as they bash their head up against the limits of the highest Zoom rooms of capital”) it sounds like this movie is designed to be confrontational.

Works for me!

*jack nicholson nodding head gif* + *sicko at window gif*

Yeah, I'm all in. Her last one has stuck with me more than most movies do.

So no Neon, no A24, no ... anyone else? That's a little surprising, but reading between the lines of the interview a little bit ("bloody, vivid sex scenes," "Blue Velvet," “The movie represents the experience of somebody trying to find creative autonomy and maybe losing their fucking mind a little bit as they bash their head up against the limits of the highest Zoom rooms of capital”) it sounds like this movie is designed to be confrontational.

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, May 12, 2026 7:46 AM (five hours ago)

speaking as someone in a, uh, _certain demographic_ that informs schoenbrun's filmmaking, i find it increasingly difficult to say anything without being "confrontational". that "every major studio and distributor" in 2025 passed on a film by a trans person is, uh, not surprising at all to me.

"i saw the tv glow" will be changing lives for decades to come. i'm glad they're getting a chance to put another one out where people can see it. who knows if they'll get another chance?

I have no idea what impacted her struggle for distribution or financing. But her last one was A24 with help from Emma Stone's production company, this one is Mubi with help from Brad Pitt's production company. Best of all, it got made. Seems like things worked out OK?

"their" is the correct pronoun I believe

I'm still most excited about the Black Hole thing

I'm equally excited, that book/material is a perfect fit.

I have no idea what impacted her struggle for distribution or financing. But her last one was A24 with help from Emma Stone's production company, this one is Mubi with help from Brad Pitt's production company. Best of all, it got made. Seems like things worked out OK?

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, May 12, 2026 1:42 PM (one hour ago)

sorry, i didn't mean to be confrontational

Gillian Anderson and Hannah Einbinder is some A+ casting. Definitely hyped for this.

Early reviews seem positive.

Richard Lawson:
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/teenage-sex-and-death-at-camp-miasma-review-jane-schoenbrun-1236595127/

Rated R for "bloody violence, gore, sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use, and some language" -- which was all rather implied.

sorry about that last post, josh, that wasn't fair to you. i was feeling kinda pissy.

No prob!

Well dang this looks choice:

https://www.frameline.org/films/frameline50/teenage-sex-and-death-at-camp-miasma

Scored a ticket and looking forward to it.

thinking a little bit about schoenbrun as "confrontational" in the context of trans media. one of the things that i think is exceptional about schoenbrun is their ability to convey the trans experience very powerfully while still being _able_ to get an "R" rating from the MPA. a lot of trans media that i've run across has the tendency to be _transgressive_, no pun intended. an AMAB wearing femme-coded clothing in public is apparently a much stronger and more deeply rooted societal taboo than even i imagined, in light of the rather extreme actions taken by certain people in power to try and stamp out this behavior. footage of GRS was included on the "faces of death" video compilations back in the day. it's pretty grisly stuff to be sure, but no more so than, say, cataract surgery, which they used to show on the Discovery Channel back in the '90s.

i'm trying to think of an analogy for the taboo traditionally represented by AMAB femme-presenting behavior and the best analogy i can come up with is urolagnia. i can't say that i see urolagnia being able to be represented in an r-rated film. to be clear i'm not comparing me being a girl to drinking piss. it's more that _other people_ see the two things as comparable - the way people used to compare homosexuality to bestiality (and maybe still do, i don't know, i tend to avoid people who would say things like that).

one of the things i like about the early years of ILX being preserved (and i hope ILX's content is preserved and somehow accessible academically even if ILX itself becomes defunct one day... there's a lot of early 2000s history that has gone down the memory hole) is that a lot of us _did_ come from edgelord backgrounds, myself certainly included, and i feel empowered here to say things that i wouldn't in a lot of other places as a result. the trans cinema i know are things like drew burnett gregory's "chloe and jame", about a t4t relationship between the character of jame gumb from "the silence of the lambs" and anthony perkins' character in "psycho", or zackary drucker's 2008 short film with a long title which i'm going to put behind a spoiler cut because it's, well, transphobic: You Will Never Ever Be a Woman. You Must Live the Rest of Your Days Entirely as a Man, and You Will Only Grow More Masculine with Each Passing Year. There Is No Way Out. there's also louise weard's "castration movie anthology i. traps" from 2024, which both contains unsimulated explicit sex and portrays some of the worst shit that trans people do.

if i had to compare the trans media i know to something white cis audiences might be aware of, it'd probably be something like sayaka murata's _earthlings_. this is an _extremely_ transgressive work... ManCarryingThing put it on his list of "the 10 most disturbing books ever". and yeah i couldn't finish it. a lot of why i couldn't finish it, though, was because of how much it _resonated_ with my experience. sometimes people experience shit that's too difficult to talk about directly, that can only be expressed through taboo fiction. there was a whole _thing_ with girls who are sexually abused by their dads and get very into VC Andrews, because, i mean, one has to deal with that shit _somehow_.

for a lot of trans women... there's this weird sort of quasi-orientalism to a lot of transfem experience that i'm pretty equivocal about. it's "problematic". every fucking one of us is "problematic", in so many ways. i was introduced to sayaka murata by a trans woman who was a friend a couple years ago. she's since vanished, which is something a lot of us do. we're still alive, most of us, we just retreat into, well, the best words for it are japanese - "hikikomori", "NEET". existing in public is fine, really, better than on the internet, and so i don't really understand why it's so much harder for me to get out and be "real" than it is for me to sit in front of a screen all day.

J (i'm not gonna give her full name) was writing a book inspired by Earthlings and by her experience. she was also inspired by something called "denpa" or "dempa". my curiosity led me to some videos by a lady on youtube, amelie doree. she's a trans lady who talks about these visual novels, about the history of "denpa". it's one of the cases where i'm really grateful for youtube's content guidelines. a lot of the YT versions of these videos are basically nothing but meme "censored" images. one of the things that's hit me most is her talking about being exposed to all of this extremely fucked up stuff on the internet as a kid. that was edgelord culture, everybody knew what goatse looked like, tubgirl, lemonparty. i know the origin story of 4chan, why it split off from somethingawful, and it's fucked up, a lot of the stuff that was - i guess is - on 4chan was very very fucked up, and a lot of people on 4chan are, correspondingly, very very fucked up. i never went on 4chan myself. not my generation. and i kind of get it because most of the rest of the internet is a walled garden where you get "demonetized" if you say "fuck" or "hitler" or "fuck hitler".

anyway, that internet trauma, that's on top of a lot of us having fucked up childhoods. to circle back around to "teenage sex and death", the elevator pitch i heard was that it was schoenbrun's take on "sleepaway camp". i think sleepway camp is so resonant a film not _just_ because it's a story about a girl with a penis, but _also_ a story about childhood trauma - something a lot of us have experienced in forms that aren't necessarily related to our gender. there's a not-uncommon redemptive read trans women in particular have on sleepaway camp, one in which angela is unambiguously the hero, a sort of "rape-revenge" story where she enacts violent retribution on assholes who give her shit for having a penis. it doesn't _exactly_ work, but most of her killings _do_ very well fit that formula. of course that's problematic and transgressive, taking a movie about a serial killer and viewing the serial killer as a hero. i do think, though, that there's some sense in which angela's actions can be compared to the brutal, violent killings jennifer hills performs in _i spit on your grave_, though i should note that i haven't seen _i spit on your grave_ and don't want to. one of the key differences is that angela is a _child_. i mean this has always been part of the appeal of slasher films, that it's young people taking off their clothes and getting killed, so angela being a very young person _isn't_ necessarily read as being as transgressive as it would be in most other contexts.

one of the most accurate and most harrowing depictions of being a trans kid i've read is a seinen manga called "bokura no hentai". it's not a hentai, to be clear. it's an old fan-translation that uses the word "trap", which is a slur and _isn't_ an accurate translation. i'm not sure "bokura no hentai" could be published in america, even though it's not at all pornographic. it's just _transgressive_, and the fucked up thing that its transgression comes from its, like, realism. i'm glad i've read it and i also feel kind of sick and awful for having read it, not just because of the fucked up shit that goes on in that manga but because it's the most realistic depiction i've seen of what gender non-conforming AMAB kids actually go through, the shit we actually experience. it's so so so hard to acknowledge and accept that any of this shit is really, that it really happens, much less that it happened to me and a lot of the people i know, when we were kids.

i say all this now because i'm pretty confident that _whatever_ schoenbrun does in _teenage sex and death at camp miasma_, it'll be much different from all this stuff i'm talking about here. they have an exceptional creative vision and an exceptional ability to convey the psychological experience of transness in a way that's intelligible and palatable to a broader audience than trauma cases who grew up reading denpa VNs. i really admire them for that. the truth is that a lot of us _can't_ speak for ourselves, at this point, no matter how much we want to.

Just to be clear, the only reason I used the term "confrontational" was quotes like "I’m really hoping that they are wrestled with culturally in the way that Blue Velvet’s sex scenes were wrestled with culturally, or the most troubling moments in my previous works have been wrestled with."

Just to be clear, the only reason I used the term "confrontational" was quotes like "I’m really hoping that they are wrestled with culturally in the way that Blue Velvet’s sex scenes were wrestled with culturally, or the most troubling moments in my previous works have been wrestled with."

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, May 15, 2026 10:07 AM (two hours ago)

oh yeah to be clear i'm just kinda engaging in self-critique. what you said was totally appropriate. that long post isn't a response to you, it's more a matter of me trying to figure out why i reacted so strongly to you saying a totally normal thing. i thought it was worth sharing and i don't really write anywhere besides ilx - i just figure some people here might possibly appreciate it, me kinda thinking about schoenbrun and their place in the canon of Trans Art.

Gonna get happy and watch this again tonight. First time I got so into the vibe that I couldn’t tell you much about the story.

Bring it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dimCiC_hdoA

The brief clip of the Friday the 13th Nintendo game (or
a similar thing) has sold me.

I liked ISTTVG more on my second watch. There’s a clunkiness to it that I like a lot. The loneliness in it is heartbreaking.

great trailer, I'm hyped

Gillian Anderson did nothing for me back in the day, but she has been kicking ass the past few years. Loved her in Sex Education.

you should see her in the house of mirth

Seconding.

"Sex seems so easy for so many people but I've never been able to get there with someone else unless I'm really far away in my head."

schoenbrun do know how it be

I can relate to that Kate

If any of you haven't seen The Fall, it is an excellent TV show (3 seasons, 2013-2016) about a serial murderer played by Jamie Dornan and an investigator played by Gillian Anderson

In line at the Castro, film un about half an hour.

Completely great! More tomorrow!

So, obviously, since this isn't coming out for another month and then some I'm going to not really delve deep here; also I'll have a separate post on Friday for my Patreon with (relatively) a little more. But suffice to say it was yet another remarkable Schoenbrun film, like I Saw the TV Glow a meditation on how media shapes perception and provides different kinds of lifelines. Which sounds bland put that way, but the movie is absolutely not bland. It occurred to me this morning that maybe an apt kind of comparison is to my beloved Velvet Goldmine, an intentionally varied and explosive vision and reinterpretation of an era and its artifacts. And of course, this all said, my own sense of self means as with Schoenbrun's other work I am on the outside looking on where those closer to the subject and viewpoint may feel even more intensely. But as always, YMMV. I look forward to seeing what others think.

I need to rewatch VG. At the time I was out off because it wasn’t a real biography type thing but I was young and dense.

And my fuller thoughts on the film:

https://www.patreon.com/nedraggett/posts/some-weekly-193-162530121

ned sez:

(it's always important to note that not every trans person chooses to be visibly so, and I'm not joking)

thank you. i'll add that not every trans person has a choice as to whether or not to be visible! and for a lot of us, me included, it is a choice.

looking forward to this one!

As posted by Eazy elsewhere:

https://www.indiewire.com/news/general-news/secretary-script-reading-gillian-anderson-hannah-einbender-1235204299

holy moly

Little update on the next project, via io9 summarizing from Vulture, re the Black Hole adaptation:

A new Vulture interview with Schoenbrun confirms “they are going to write the whole season themselves and have finished two episodes already.” The piece also notes that while it’s seemingly going smoothly so far, “it is new territory and a new way of working” for the filmmaker.

“My biggest fear is that I end up making something that I’m not proud of,” Schoenbrun told Vulture.

damn, for a moment i got my hopes up and thought they were adapting the batshit crazy 1979 disney movie.

Same! Damn.

They should use this as the theme song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6Ak75xR6l4

seeing camp miasma tonight. excited/scared

I think you will enjoy it greatly.

And I mentioned Black Hole being the Burns adaptation a long while back! Kids today with their hula hoops and AI slop and etc. oh wait.

Really want to see ISTTG and the new one but I just wanted to say their/her first film, self induced hallucination, is so good and worth seeking out online if you're into films about online stuff that feel online too.

they are going to write the whole season themselves

can’t believe the Gaiman / Avary script isn’t gonna be used in 2026!!

Black Hole is amazing and got me back into comics as an adult.

i did not like teenage sex and death at camp miasma but i admit i am too close to the material, the material being: 1) slasher movies 2) how to have good sex 3) the album recovering the satellites by counting crows

i'm bummed though, i wanted to love it very badly. kept myself open to it. but idk uhh it's very light and it didn't make me think about anything at all

lol, thanks for the recovering the satellites note, makes me want to see it more!

Haha I was wondering when news of that would start to surface a little more. It's a moment. (And as I didn't recognize the song at all, not knowing much beyond their first couple of singles, I was bemused when the credits rolled.)

next Friday! can't wait.

gonna light the last of my hello dear acquaintance even if this isn't over what else could take shape how will you remember it candle in anticipation

i saw this a second time and i enjoyed it significantly more. it's not the slasher movie tribute i'd make, but that's a good thing. the showstopping scene in the middle (you'll know it when you see it) was weird and offputting to me at first, but the second time through i wept uncontrollably

like yes, that is exactly what it feels like to feel traumatized and alienated from and scared of everyone around you, down to the song choice

Man, I want to see this so bad and it is not going to play anywhere near me. Le sigh.

Glad for your perspectives on both viewings, ivy. I am very conscious of looking at the film from a different personal state od self, but always finding it remarkable.

Saw this this morning, it ROCKED. I don't have any special affinity for horror in general or sleepaway camp slashers in particular, but I really responded to the idea of being shaped by childhood media experiences in these very very specific and personal ways, etc.

sold out tonight! will try again tomorrow

Phenomenal film. Not without its issues but the kind of thing where anything other than being delighted at a base level that someone got a romcom in slasher's clothing where the antagonist is the inability to cum made and into theatres feels pedantic. Brilliant soundtrack and singular performance from Gillian Anderson

i'll be pedantic! the "rom" didn't really work for me bc gillian anderson's character isn't deeper than a sketch, she's just there to be the perfect mommy to guide a girl out of sexual repression. and i guess i really wanted the lesbian aspect of this movie to work for me

I was a little lukewarm on this -- I like a lot of its elements but found it didn't quite hold together for me. Maybe another viewing would help.

I'm not sure the Com bits were entirely successful either. I love JS's uncanny visual imagination (the moon guy in the last one, vent face in this one) but for stretches this felt like a gorgeously lyrical, speculative film essay, talking about love, surrender, lust and horror without necessarily embodying those things.

for stretches this felt like a gorgeously lyrical, speculative film essay, talking about love, surrender, lust and horror without necessarily embodying those things

i really agree. i get if people disagree but i think this puts perfectly my issues with it, at least the ones that aren't entirely personal

(my Uncut mag review fwiw)

Phenomenal film. Not without its issues but the kind of thing where anything other than being delighted at a base level that someone got a romcom in slasher's clothing where the antagonist is the inability to cum made and into theatres feels pedantic. Brilliant soundtrack and singular performance from Gillian Anderson

― Deverly (Bangelo), Saturday, August 15, 2026 11:31 PM (yesterday)

the only complaint i have is that it didn't literally make me cum

well, no, i have a second complaint, it's that it would be socially inappropriate to ask jack haven to come over to my house in his "little death" getup and stab me until i cum

i tried going on grindr but all i found was guys who called me, quote, "stunning"

my dude no i'm stunlocked there's a difference

anyway the thing i like about the movie, just having seen it, is that it shows and tells - kris's journey from wanting to make a narrative deconstruction of the "camp miasma" films to getting drilled by little death is paralleled by the film itself moving from jokily undercutting any possible tension with genre-savvy observations to just being, like, raw blood-soaked sex.

by the way the actual Sleepaway Camp movie, for those who haven't seen it, is way better and more interesting than the "Camp Miasma" film-within-a-film; the Sleepaway Camp film is one of those things that's so completely wrongheaded that it's possible, if you squint enough, to read it as accidental allyship. Then again, I'm used to squinting REAL REAL HARD at trans representation in media...

Schoenbrun has never seemed like someone with interest or ability to be a great narrative filmmaker so id be surprised if this really matches how it's being sold but I can't wait to see it.

Sleepaway Camp is so fun and ....well, camp and OTT.

I saw TSADACM at an outdoor showing last night. A bit uneven to start but it has some magical phases.

Loved the choice of the pitch zoom call guests...paedo guy from Happiness and Louise Weard of Castration Movie among others.

(my Uncut mag review fwiw)

― Maggy Scraggle, Sunday, August 16, 2026 7:40 AM (yesterday)

pretty close to my take with the exception that in the last stretch it's not a _comedy_ for me. kris's whedon-esque patois gives way to lynchian absurdity - this is, after all, the pacific northwest, near the canadian border. there are some funny, albeit niche, bits towards the beginning - i was the only one in the (sold-out) theater who laughed upon seeing the director of the original Camp Miasma film credited as "Ray Blanchard", who is of course renowned for his MIDI recordings of Renaissance music. i wasn't the only one who laughed at Thor, Kris's bisexual meta. Kind of wondering if it's a stab at ThorInHighHeels, but probably just a coincidence. idk, i found it really relatable, like, it's not _awful_ but i struggle to not eyeroll sometimes. honestly some of the bits of absurdity towards the beginning have a hint of the coen brothers, though this film is never as dark as even the lightest coen brothers material.

the main thing is that schoenbrun's work fits in with a certain sort of sapphism. i can't say i'm _entirely_ into being sapphic in that way, but i do find it extremely hot. i'm talking about people who are really into the 'locked tomb' series by tamsyn muir, the people who do Ninth House cosplay. (honestly, some of the comedy is almost evocative of Muir's writing style, now that I think of it). or the ending of "love lies bleeding". it's "goth" elevated (or debased) to grand guignol. it's almost sort of an iterative version of "ero-guro nonsense", the original Japanese boom between 1929 and 1936. the main thing differentiating this wave is that it is explicitly sapphic. of course the human body doesn't have _that_ much blood in it. it's not any more "funny" than it is "horrific". for the protags - and for me - it's _hot_.

i do think it's more of a narrative film than schoenbrun's previous films (though i haven't seen their work for the web series _the eyeslicer_ unfortunately; if anyone has copies of that stuff please do hmu). that said, the narrative is _extremely simple_. there are no real surprises here, no real twists and turns. if it's like those movies in any way, it's that it's about waiting for the inevitable to happen. for me, that was the image on the poster - it's not a spoiler if it's the literal poster, is it? i was waiting for that to show up, particularly when i realized that it wasn't just me, that that poster was intended to be deeply, deeply horny.

maybe part of the disappointment people are having is that it's not, in any meaningful sense, a "trans film"? it's not hard to see why schoenbrun is thought of as a "trans filmmaker". trans people aren't _just_ trans, though. it's reflective of something i find in myself - honestly, there's not _that_ much to say about being trans. the only things i can think to say about being trans at this point in my life are "wow, being a persecuted minority sure does suck" and "wow, bigotry really is extremely stupid". neither of those things have anything to do with being trans. it's something a tremendous number of people have been dealing with in a lot of different ways for a very long time, and they have been saying those two things for a very long time. if people didn't take them seriously when they said it, why should it be any different for us? i would like to move on to being gay and horny now, thank you very much.

Sleepaway Camp is so fun and ....well, camp and OTT.

― lilcraigyboi (Craigo Boingo), Monday, August 17, 2026 4:27 AM (forty-eight minutes ago)

i mean it is literally right there in the title.

see, honestly, i recognize the campness, but the trans-positive reading of it is also something along the lines of "i spit on your grave". angela is trying to live her life but people keep being weird to her when they find out she has a penis, so she brutally murders them. i'm not about to brutally murder anybody but girl, i get it. these people respond really excessively when they find out she has a penis, so she's excessive in response. in real life, of course, it doesn't work like that. they get to be really awful and excessive and we're supposed to just stand around and be "model minorities" i guess. sometimes a girl just wants to wake up covered in blood with the taste of copper lingering in her mouth, you know? some people at the convenience store might think it's weird, but in fact the convenience store clerk thinks it's really cool. so fuck off if you don't like it.

oh idk i think it's a pretty trans film. in the sense that no trans experiences are completely walled off from cis experience, nor that any two trans experiences are entirely alike, i do think that finding a way to relax in our bodies enough to experience true intimacy is something many of us go through

Spoiler-ish, but: The very last shot (not counting the end-credits bit) felt like the end of Happiness for me, as far as seeing an origin moment of someone's imagination as far as sexuality and desire. (And this was before I remembered that Dylan Baker was in Happiness -- been a long time.) Which led me to think: did the original Camp Miasma give Kris a necessary fantasy to dissociate with, or was watching it a primary experience she still needs to use to dissociate with in order to orgasm? If it's the latter, then we're seeing a new kid drawn into that same experience through Kris's film -- if I'm reading that last shot right and that it's of a present-day kid seeing Kris's later-completed film and/or is a kid seeing the film we've just seen in a way that will shape their imagination and desire going forward.

oh idk i think it's a pretty trans film. in the sense that no trans experiences are completely walled off from cis experience, nor that any two trans experiences are entirely alike, i do think that finding a way to relax in our bodies enough to experience true intimacy is something many of us go through

― ivy., Monday, August 17, 2026 6:39 AM (fifty-nine minutes ago)

oh i don't think it's a trans-_exclusionary_ film by any stretch. i'm more thinking of it in contrast to _i saw the tv glow_, which, ok, i understand that different people may have different interpretations, etc. that said it's a film about gender dysphoria, about the visceral experience of gender dysphoria, one that, by design, hits at the core anguish experienced by a lot of trans people, _particularly_ people who aren't aware of what gender dysphoria _feels_ like. _i saw the tv glow_ was made to crack eggs and it does it superlatively well and it will be doing it, i'd wager, as long as there are eggs to crack.

i can see a possible reality in which "teenage sex and death" started out as the "camp miasma" film-within-a-film - a "trans remake" of sleepaway camp. i would argue that the "camp miasma" film just... doesn't _work_. "sleepaway camp" works in part because the killer _is_ the final girl. that's the whole basis of the redemptive reading of "sleepaway camp". camp miasma changes that factually, but the idea remains, and in fact broadens to encompass more than just "trans" horror movies.

the meta-struggle here is, i think, the _ease_ of abstracting and intellectualizing what's going on in "sleepaway camp". schoenbrun is trying to reconcile their desires as a filmmaker and as a viewer. "don't dream it, be it," as dr. furter so memorably sang, but _how_? when one's relationship with sexuality is related to the Gaze, to Seeing and Being Seen.

yeah i have a ton of ADHD and even if my body is my body, the weight of constantly being seen or not seen and judged by Others... i feel that as a trans woman and also just as a _woman_, this is something... well honestly i mean i think we can admit at this point that guys go through this as well, even if probably the majority of guys at this point aren't ready to admit that. how are we to be horny within the Panopticon, within an environment where we know every one of us is being constantly watched and judged?

i think this goes to your point, eazy... i've seen younger people talk about the effects of growing up on the internet, of having that sexual awakening at an early age in ways that might be suboptimal. it's hard to talk about because of how absolutely fucked up our culture is right now. schoenbrun kind of dances around it, i think. a 29-year-old woman fantasizing about being a teenager and lusting after someone who's, i don't know, 25 or 30 years older than her and having this shared bond over the fucked up ways in which they first experienced sexuality. like it _has_ to be portrayed comedically because if you didn't put those disclaimers in there people would think we were fucked up and sick. which we aren't. _they_ are. we're not. but they're the ones with the power, right?

i don't like writing fiction but there are some things that are impossible for me to express as "nonfiction". my memory is so confused and messed up that i don't know what is real anymore. part of the complexity of the film is, like, needing to feel like one withdraws from reality to get off. it's not just getting away from that Gaze, but of seeing a different Gaze, one in which one _can_ feel desirable and desired and desire. they say the shit they say about medusa but in reality it's always been the male gaze that turns me to stone.

that moment seems so evanescent and fleeting and it's fine unless i'm trying to hold on to it long enough to fucking _cum_. can't talk about _that_ either, how hard it is for so many of us to just cum already. and no, it's not the estrogen, not for me. it's something that long precedes that. seeing and being seen. we can call it "pornography" but what is pornography? is the 60s batman tv series pornography? i remember watching reruns of that and recognizing that what was going on was in some sense deeply horny and being into it and knowing that i "shouldn't" be into it because they were guys. nowadays it doesn't matter to me that they were guys, what matters to me is _it_. and that's supposed to be sick as well, you're not supposed to be into _situations_, you're supposed to be into, i don't know, _genders_.

i'm not. i'm into this space, this... there's all this liminal horror and all of this and what doesn't get expressed is that this stuff is also, on some level, _very fucking horny_ for a lot of us. it's the only place where i feel like i can actually get off. i wish i could share that space with other people, but it's too raw and deep and intense for me to have ever been able to do that. because people will think it's silly, or that it's sick, or whatever, because only certain people are invested with the power of The Gaze, and only ever, _ever_, allowed to use that power on _others_.

---

the other thing i come back to a lot, Eazy, is that movie we saw last year, Knife + Heart. it has the same sense of... evoking a time and a place, of film within film. like, to me, the tableau at the climax of the "teenage sex and death" is very similar to the tableau at the beginning of knife + heart, particularly in that they were both _very fucking hot_, hot enough that in the first case i didn't even care that the victim was a guy. i got preferences, but my fantasies are sometimes like a film and i do have final cut.

knife + heart's analogue to "camp miasma" is called, uh, "anal fury v". i do think it's a really interesting film, i think anne is a very interesting character! but ultimately she's a _villain_ and isn't seen sympathetically, she's condemned for her attempt to eroticize horror and place herself in the role of a man. that i think the thing i don't _like_ about knife + heart. that it's unsympathetic to women. that it presents a milieu filled with femmes while centered around people who insist that in their world, "even the women are men". the "twist" of knife + heart is, to me, _very_ much a mirror of "sleepaway camp", and not in a good way. both "sleepaway camp" and "knife + heart" present queer eroticism as a source of horror. "teenage sex and death" _celebrates_ horror as the wellspring of queer desire. we're not fucked up, but we want to feel things that, in this world, are associated with some fucked up shit. and the only way, really, for me to get there is to lean into that fucked up shit.

A review: https://www.culturedmag.com/article/2026/08/12/film-camp-miasma-jane-schoenbrun-review/

This one and Knife + Heart would make a great double feature!

and perhaps for better or worse Her Private Hell.

The reasons for using A Long December that way kind of take the 'wtf' mystery out of it.

i hate to say this because "a long december" was clearly the bolder choice, but "nightswimming" would've worked way better

I know I am being too literal-minded about a movie that's more about vibes and metaphors, but I kept wondering why a 1996 song was playing in a 1980 movie. But of course that 1980 movie also featured Sally Shapiro's "Anorak Christmas" (2006) as a diegetic needle drop, so I get it: I am not supposed to think about it too much.

In my head, the song worked as nostalgia for an audience who wasn't around in 1980 but would connect it with childhood/adolescence (which the Schoenbrun interview above validates, though far more literally than I would have expected). It also feels a bit like a film-school trope to do it audaciously, like Marie Antoinette and "Cat People (Putting Out Fire)" in Inglorious Basterds. Might even say Brechtian?

I think maybe it confused me because Schoenbrun is otherwise lovingly recreating various aesthetic details of a 1980s slasher film as an object within the film. If it's not supposed to be actually part of the soundtrack of the 1980 film but something mixed in with Kris's emotional memories, then it bothers me less.

folks, in the 80's slasher movie someone is holding a digicam sometimes it's just vibes

It also feels a bit like a film-school trope to do it audaciously, like Marie Antoinette and "Cat People (Putting Out Fire)" in Inglorious Basterds. Might even say Brechtian?

― coffee-themed romance ads (Eazy), Tuesday, August 18, 2026 10:23 AM (twenty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

there's a really bold dance sequence with anachronistic music in bertrand bonello's house of tolerance which i thought about when "anorak christmas" appeared. still i found the decision to put a sally shapiro song in that scene kinda distracting even if i'm sure the intent is "remembered '80s instead of the actual thing"

I don't think "Cat People" is diegetic? Haven't seen Marie Antoinette but unless it features a time traveller returning with a record player I'd guess also not diegetic...

Oh yeah, those two aren't in the scene themselves, nor is "A Long December" (but get where you thought I meant that).

Jimmy otm, the digicam was a major tell that this was about memories, not the exact actual film itself. Schoenbrun was like 9 years old when Long December ruled the airwaves (and Einbinder an infant) - feels like another pop-cultural Thing that could have made a powerful impression at the same age as the vintage 80s slasher movies did.

in the meantime i'd never actually heard "a long december". idk it's weird watching the movie as someone who's a lot closer in age to the gillian anderson character. cuz it seems like damn near everybody is younger than me and damn near everybody wants a "mommy". i'm not gillian anderson obviously (i might be norma desmond) but i have a _vibe_ going for me. unfortunately people tend to think i'm a lot more frigid than i actually am when the reality is that i'm relentlessly horny and frustrated in a _very specific way_. so yeah if i was billy and i read kris's email i would also be asking her to come visit and not really care about the "movie" she was planning so much as wanting to get to know her better! but i'd also feel really guilty about that, reading what this lady 20 years younger than me says and feeling something _click_ with me.

"doesn't it get lonely?" one the one hand, my god girl, you have no idea, and on the other, i mean... i don't know how to be poly without people like fucking Thor taking up a disproportionate amount of space in my life.

in the meantime i'd never actually heard "a long december".

Same here, honestly -- I only realized it was that when I was watching the end credits!

I think the age gap is actually more like 40 years? Kris says she's 29. Billy says she was 24 when she filmed Camp Miasma, which was released in 1980. Assuming TSADACM takes place in the present day, that would make her at least 70. (Sarah Squirm calls her a "60-year-old lady," but I don't treat this as accurate. OTOH, Gillian Anderson is 58 IRL.)

Einbinder is 31. Really we're talking about more of a 30 year age gap. The math is fuzzy - I think at some point Kris talks about Billy being "Gen X" - culturally, not literally, but it does fit. If Billy was 24 when she was in the first "Camp Miasma" film, she'd have been born around 1956 - very much boomer. I kind of figure that the movie works on comic book time - see also the digital cameras in the "Camp Miasma" film. I could come up with some elaborate alternate universe theory to try and make sense of the contradicting information, but why bother? It's easier to just figure that Billy is somewhere between 20 and 30 (closer to 30) years older than Kris, just like Anderson is somewhere between 20 and 30 (closer to 30) years older than Einbinder.

Anderson said on the Conan O'Brien podcast this week that she was 24 when she got X-Files but told them she was 27. So figure that into your calculations.

now i'm imagining a 1970s version of "sex and death at camp miasma" where col. harland sanders insisted on appearing in the film _personally delivering_ his delicious fried chicken to the camp

the man was in the 1970 al adamson film "hell's bloody devils"

he _paid_ adamson to appear in the film

in fried chicken

This is almost a great film, a hair less than TV Glow, my favorite film of 2024. Schoenbrun's making some of the most visceral depictions of how art shapes us and, to their credit, of how art can misshape us too. These human-scaled Cronenbergian exercises get at real horror more than I would've thought.

Einbinder's sexual/existential unease struck me as a adult reiteration of Owen and Maddie's in the previous film; her intimate scenes with Gillian Anderson shook me. If Anderson's performance and Schoenbrun's script have flaws, it's in Billy's own monologue in the last third: she can't find the cadences and the writing is too explicit, too on-the-nose. I got what Billy and Schoenbrun suggested without the explanations.

Jimmy otm, the digicam was a major tell that this was about memories, not the exact actual film itself. Schoenbrun was like 9 years old when Long December ruled the airwaves (and Einbinder an infant) - feels like another pop-cultural Thing that could have made a powerful impression at the same age as the vintage 80s slasher movies did.

― Basic Instructions Before Darning Dream (Doctor Casino), Tuesday, August 18, 2026 12:21 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

see also have Pete and Pete appearing in IStTG - they're hitting all the right 90s nostalgia sweet spots for me.

maybe it lessens it as art, idk... for me schoenbrun's work always has this _practical_ aspect to it. i do view their films as propagandistic in the best possible way. with _tv glow_ it's about experiencing something and not being able to put it into words... with _miasma_ it's about being able to find the way to express things _directly_ rather than talking around things the way kris' character tends to (the way i tend to).

there's just a lot of shame involved in having that experience. yeah it's very hard for me to not judge myself for knowing that in some sense, i want to be fucking killed, that i find that experience hot. because people are going to say that it's sick and fucked up.

i agree that it's not the best film of '26 - of the stuff that's out already i think i love boosters is a better film, and i haven't seen _that_ many films! i don't know whether it's "better" than disclosure day. it feels like those two films aren't even on the same playing field.

They definitely aren't.

kinda thinking of this song as well, i don't wholly understand the lyrics but from what i know of them it seems to fit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sGedD97nEo

bones instead of fluid, but the general principle seems congruent

i think i love boosters is a better film, and i haven't seen _that_ many films! i don't know whether it's "better" than disclosure day.

ha I would reverse the order.

disclosure day > camp miasma > i love boosters imo

saw this last week, really loved it. the pair of end credits songs is so perfect.

Oh, and gotta say, the opening credits are perfect.

Kate, please check out the Tonetta thread

I really liked Camp Miasma. Tempted to call it her best, but it's at a minimum a stylistic leap. Part of that is having a bigger budget I assume — it's visually arresting and inventive in ways that the practical effects of TV Glow couldn't reach. It reminded me at times of Guy Maddin, the combination of melodrama and artifice. Maybe I wouldn't go all the way to calling it a comedy, but it's very funny. And I thought both Einbinder and Anderson were great. Anderson's dripping Southern belle accent is ridiculous and perfect for the part. (I'm not sure that she's supposed to be "Southern" even in the universe of the film, it's more like an affect of the character.) Also, just a tremendous amount of warmth all the way through. After the anxieties and traumas of Schoenbrun's first two films it's nice to have a sense of joy as well. I think probably it's the first hero's quest film where the quest is for an orgasm.

idk Anderson was to me uneven. She's a difficult actor to cast -- she overacts or underacts. She didn't sell her monologue and some of her dialogue.

(oop, forgot Schoenbrun uses they/them — tempted to call it their best)

The monologue didn't really sell me, I agree, although also I was already well sold by that point. The film has a layer of on-the-noseness that I'm not sure how to read — whether it's a function of Schoenbrun trying to make it more accessible at some level, or maybe a result of notes from meetings like the Zoom call in the film, or also if it's a sort of mark of pride in its own sincerity. Like Einbinder says, "It's not meta! It's real!"

It's also Schoenbrun's fault for spelling things out in that monloguge.

SEEING IT TOMORROW!!!

I don’t remember the last time I was this excited about a movie? I should temper my expectations but slashers were a huge part of my childhood. I was 11 when I saw Sleepaway Camp and I didn’t fully understand it but that ending… it was truly shocking.

Sounds like you may be exactly the right audience for this.

I was also a Bruce Springsteen nerd, reading Backstreets magazine. I was probably the only kid who was totally stoked to see Pamela Springsteen play Angela in the sequel. It was some sort of a crossover event for me.

I've held back on participating in any convo on this new movie because I felt very out-of-step from the world at large in despising "TV Glow" and the stinky endless monologue that took up some twenty minutes of the third act, but I am optimistic and I will be seeing this tonight

Definitely interested in hearing your thoughts on it.

Saw it this afternoon, lots of fun and easily better than Disclosure Day

I really enjoyed this mostly, but it became a bit disappointing after the first 45 mins or so (?) when you saw lil death killing his victims to a soundtrack that robbed it of any impact (just a poor choice of song) and then it dropped the films initial focus, the ideas around truth and fiction, whether films create real world myths or vice versa, about fear and sex, or death and sex, and shame, for a much less layered, more direct, straightforward exploration of the two women's relationship, and Kris' fears/struggles with intimacy etc.

Tbh my memory is a bit inconsistent now but it just became a bit less interesting, as suddenly the idea of little death as being about orgasms became blatantly obvious. The second half of the film is an indie movie, the first is a clever riff on Hollywood, a summary of woke-washing, another piece of media basically drawing a line between the culture of the last 5/10 years and today (that whole sequence of the two women meeting is truly great), neatly summarising why remakes like candyman were dull, the diff between films that explore desire and films that are academic. In the end this film becomes the latter, prob intentionally, but less interestingly, and a bit too self satisfied. Loved the totally unhealthy food choices throughout the film. Had just watched mo Gilligan's doc on fried chicken so was great to see Gillian Anderson serving up two whole buckets. I reality loved the little death character, the shooting fountains of blood after each kill, and truly wish the camp miasma scenes were from a real film.

Apart from seeing two horror movies with my father-in-law, I haven’t been to the theater in 6 or 7 years with my husband. We were driving past what looked like an historic movie theater and after looking it up and realizing it IS (my favorite kind) AND has fancy recliner seats AND the tickets are less than $13, I bought tickets for Camp Miasma for tonight.

That was absolutely the strangest experience I have ever had in a theater. I was thrown a little when it started with the movie within a movie flashback and then coming back to the "present day" of the movie. There were so many blatant lifts from Lynch, especially Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway. The guy's voice on the mysterious phone call sounds just like Robert Blake, it's a bit much, but maybe that's the point? I'm assuming that the little girl is going to be Einbinder but when it cuts to the present day it's a Naomi Watts clone. The title of the movie within a movie flashes on the screen: Insidious - Out Of The Further, which sounds like a cheesy movie, but I was thinking it would start off with a camp thing? Maybe this is going to lead to it? What's with the goofy creepy old people?

So, when I bought my ticket I presented it to the ticket-taker who directs people to their assigned theater. This person had a disability that affected their ability to speak, but through hand gestures I knew which direction to go, and I knew that it was the last theater on the left. While walking down the hall I look at my stub and the number isn't legible and the signs over the doors do not say what the movies are. There is no signage indicating what is playing where, apart from a number. I went into what seemed like the last theater on the left, but apparently there was one more further down. It's little numbered sign was missing and I accidentally went into the next-to-last theater on the left which was playing Insidious which I had never heard of. The subtitle, Out Of The Further, sounded so stupid that I thought it was all part of the Camp Miasma bit. Twenty minutes in I realize something's wrong and I leave the theater and walk into multiple other theaters until I find the right one. After everything, I would have missed the first 40 minutes of Miasma. I took my popcorn and raisinets home, I'll try again tomorrow.

lol oh man sorry.

It really was a perfect storm of my density and minor mishaps. I wasn’t upset about it because it was so laughably stupid.

Jane Schoenbrun will appreciate you buying the extra ticket.

“Wow, there are more people here than I expected!”

“When is that box-headed person going to show up?”

“Gosh, this has a lot of backstory.”

Also, Insidious: Out Of The Further started 15 minutes later than Miasma so I’m in there watching extra local commercials thinking WTF how long does it take for a movie to start nowadays?!?

Amazing

So I was waiting for the commercials and the movie intro to pass before I dug into my snacks and my weiner was cold and gross by the time I was ready to eat it. Chewing on a stale hot dog, not knowing I’m watching Insidious: Out Of The Further even though the damn title of the move flashed on the screen, three stories tall. “Hmmm, I guess that’s the fake movie.” *chewchewchew*

Off to write a New York Times article about how the queers are making movies inaccessible to normal americans

“Yeah, I tried to watch Camp Miasma but I had a hard time getting into it.”

lol, it sounds like you got to live in a Schoenbrun movie for half an hour.

Trapped in a theater that didn’t project what was relevant to me and my life in this cage of flesh. I yearned to be free, unbound, in a new theater where I could experience life on my own terms, away from the suffocating oppression of Insidious: Out Of The Further.

As I sad Charlie Brown walked through the parking lot, it occurred to me that I could go back and continue watching Insidious: Into The Further but I went home and did chores instead.

Ok guys, what's the very first thing that comes up on the screen when Camp Miasma starts? I need to know so I'll be sure I'm in the right theater so this doesn't happen again. If I watch the first twenty minutes of Spa Weekend I'm going to be pissed.

I just remember Tom Holland's Spiderman giving a big thumbs up to the camera (indicating that we are, indeed, at the right movie.)

iirc the first thing you see is Travis Scott thumping a stick on the floor.

[Seth Rogen and Olivia Wilde navigate hors d'oeuvres]

"Jane's edging us with this lack of jump-scares."

Don’t get me started on Tom Holland. I went to see the new Spiderman and walked out. Who needs all that ancient Greece shit?

Odysseus: No Way Home

Middle-Age Sex and Death at Camp Ithaca

Insidious: Rout of the Suitors

Ugh this was so fucking fun! I loved everything about it. If I was smarter and more articulate I would write something here about how the movie, for me, kinda touched on how common it is for women to be preoccupied, even obsessed, with real life horror RE true-crime obsession, and how a lot of us will try and make it some kind of academic or empathetic thing but really it’s that we’re morbidly obsessed and fascinated by things that we’re also horrifically afraid of happening to us (not the same demographic that is obsessed with actual murderers and romanticizes them - that’s a subset of this). Or something. Sorry that’s the best I can do, I’m still thinking about it.

Perfect movie, the last time a work of art kept giving me nonstop dopamine hits was Twin Peaks The Return. It was miles better than I was hoping for.

I have thoughts but I’m mulling them over and it’s late. Hot damn, I want to see it again!

"and how a lot of us will try and make it some kind of academic or empathetic thing"

i took this to be a ref to how a lot of film discourse has become very academic, how people leaning to the left talk in academic speak about lots of things (not just films). the film was sort of poking fun at that. well until, it becomes very transparent about what its doing in the second half, and then its like its presenting its own thesis. might as well have started with a title screen saying 'in this film i will...' lol

i am assaulted on all sides by bad or at least shallow essays these days

Academia and journalism sharply contracted just as a generation of scholars graduated. All those trained minds had to do something with that education, and thus flowered a strain of media designed for audiences who look for meta and easter eggs.

I personally did not enjoy Camp Miasma as much as IStTG, but but it's pretty sweet that movies like this get at least brief runs in multiplexes.

It's not as great as IStTG, but after a week of living with it in my head, faults noted, I can't wait to watch it again and it's one of 2026's best.

I want to see it again. First half is like scream for the 2010s, second half is sorrrrrrt of like the watermelon woman but instead of investigating black representation, it's investigating your sexual identity outside of all the media you consumed

That Zoom conversation is the most accurate I've seen on screen.

Great comparison w WW xp

Okay, so this movie overlapped with my life way too much and pushed all of my buttons so I can't be objective about it, I loved it, loved it, loved it.

The first time I saw ISTTG, it didn't do much for me. There's a dinky, dingy quality to it and there were parts of it that seemed clunky. After rewatching, it clicked and those elements that bothered me before now added to the experience instead of pulling me out of it. Lynch is all over their work, baked into Schoenbrun's approach to narrative and plot vs. visceral experience. Like Twin Peaks: The Return, while watching Camp Miasma it felt like anything could happen at any moment. Whatever did happen made sense, even if it didn't really make sense, and it thrilled me. Schoenbrun is willing to bend and fold their films any which way to convey a feeling or an experience so well that it feels tangible.

I can't speak to the trans dialogue in these films, I wouldn't have spotted it if others didn't tell me about it. What ISTTG left me with was an intense feeling of isolation and how even our memories can't be trusted. Miasma was a coming together, seeing a pair coil around each other in bliss, giving each other what they've been lacking.

I was eight when I started watching Friday the 13th, which would have been The Final Chapter on VHS, watching it alone in the living room. By nine or ten I would have seen Part 2 and I vividly remember the scene that is referenced repeatedly in Miasma. I was just like Kris, watching that scene at that age. Seeing all of those films that young did a number on me. Not sexually, thankfully. I would have been eleven when I saw Sleepaway camp and the ending shocked me. These scenes are burned into my brain! Spotting the slasher easter eggs everwhere... it's as though this movie was fan service personally tailored to me.

Loved the acting. Anderson's Dolly Parton voice was great and she was beautiful. I agree that her character was a little thin but it didn't bother me. Everyone in this movie is occupying a role, which is made explicit when Kris breaks the wall and tells everyone that they are in a movie. The only part of the movie that feels REAL is the climax. Everything else is a mechanism moving her to that moment, it's all a movie so that she can get what she needs so we can see it and get what we need. Her face at that moment is so much. At that point we're four layers deep: there's the Friday the 13th Part Two scene that is being referenced, there is the remake of that in Camp Miasma, there is the recreation of that scene in Teenage Sex and Death At Camp Miasma for the characters within the film, and there is our experience as an audience watching all of this as young Kris did. Einbinder is so, so good. The way her face lights up when there's a sense of danger or she hears about something gristly is incredibly charming. All of these references being filtered through a feminine lens shows us the familiar slasher scenes from new angles. Of course the young woman who shows up at the camp is going to get naked and maker herself available, but here it turns into something completely different and tender.

This was the most fun I've had watching something since The Return. I hope Schoenbrun gets bigger budgets and the freedom to do whatever they want for as long as possible. In terms of artistic progression, this movie feels like a flowering. I can't wait to see what they do next.

It was a lot better than Insidious: Into The Further.

It needs a sequel, further into the miasma, where Kris discovers she can now only cum after eating exactly four buckets of KFC, and is surrounded by half a dozen little deaths, all with spears in hand pointed at her head.

I keep seeing more parallels with my life. My first time was out in the woods with a significantly older woman.

And get this: when Kris was dumping Raisenettes in her popcorn, I had just done the same thing! The mind boggles.

That Zoom conversation is the most accurate I've seen on screen.

Loved watching Dylan Baker's reaction throughout that scene.

For something like the first 30 mins of the film I kept thinking “wtf it’s pronounced mee-asma???” but then a bunch of other characters pronounced it “my-asma”.

Apparently the British pronunciation is “mee-asma” while the other way is American. I’ve always thought it was “my-asma”.

i’ve always called it me-asma and since the movie came out i’ve had a hard time

the fried chicken scene disgusted me a vegetarian but what can you do

i also hate candy. i’m the wrong girl for this film. felt horrible to know that lmao

the people i went to this movie with were shocked i didn't like it and i was like "did you expect me to like a movie where the two main characters eat fried chicken like they're in the snl totino's skit?" i must be giving off the wrong vibe

But…. dipping sauce.

I'm american and I've never heard it pronounced “my-asma”, I don't think. maybe regional.

My doctor said My-asma

Take a Knee, My-asma (I Won't Take a Knee)

verbally stunted american here, me and mine say my-asma.

I hate candy too

The candy and KFC banquet was either paid product placement, a parody of American junk and fast food habits, both, or just something schoenbrun really liked and thinks is funny (also totally out of step with modern ideas about good eating which might be ironised hilarity)

The candy and chicken do reflect the Camp Miasma franchise's status among its hardcore fans--problematic AF but so so tasty.

Billy questioning Kris about whether or not she eats chicken encapsulates modern sensitivity towards other people's principles--assume they are vegan/gluten-free/otherwise touchy on hot point issues until proven otherwise. And it does foreshadow Kris' block about saying what she likes in bed (she's so conditioned to accommodate her partner's issues that she can't speak up and say X is a problem).

as a vegetarian no one has assumed that i was a vegetarian or vegan ever ever ever and there’s no sensitivity about it whatsoever bc people do not care. i guess maybe people are more aware/sensitive to food allergies but i dont sense that’s what the movie is commenting on

so i guess releasing yourself from the cerebral is likened to shamelessly sinking your teeth into some sauce-dipped fried chicken??? idk. i hate it, personally

It’s all about flesh and fluids.

Is it clear at the end whether they're finishing a fling together or starting a new life? The candy and fried chicken and disconnecting from friends and burning work bridges all sound like a fun bender someone should get a few times in their life, but if they've gone off to live like that going forward, that's a different thing. I know this isn't a movie to take literally, but for me it affected what kind of an ending we were left with.

They lived happily ever after.

I hope they're flossing!

The candy and chicken do reflect the Camp Miasma franchise's status among its hardcore fans--problematic AF but so so tasty.

Billy questioning Kris about whether or not she eats chicken encapsulates modern sensitivity towards other people's principles--assume they are vegan/gluten-free/otherwise touchy on hot point issues until proven otherwise. And it does foreshadow Kris' block about saying what she likes in bed (she's so conditioned to accommodate her partner's issues that she can't speak up and say X is a problem).

this was my feeling too! great articulation of this

as a vegetarian no one has assumed that i was a vegetarian or vegan ever ever ever and there’s no sensitivity about it whatsoever bc people do not care. i guess maybe people are more aware/sensitive to food allergies but i dont sense that’s what the movie is commenting on

― ivy., Tuesday, August 25, 2026 3:21 PM (yesterday)

lol, meanwhile in portland i just assume everybody is a gluten-free vegan

It needs a sequel, further into the miasma, where Kris discovers she can now only cum after eating exactly four buckets of KFC, and is surrounded by half a dozen little deaths, all with spears in hand pointed at her head.

― midnightmarauder, Tuesday, August 25, 2026 9:02 AM (yesterday)

ahhh, c'mon, i don't think that's fair

my fetish isn't that esoteric. is the thing, people talk about all of these very niche fetishes like a woman putting her foot on the accelerator pedal while wearing a particular kind of sandals with a particular shade of toenail polish, and half of what embarrasses me is that my fetish isn't even that _interesting_.

i was talking to a (cis gay male) friend about seeing it as a very horny movie and his response was "yeah, i saw it that way myself, but only because little death is wearing a rubber boiler suit." which is totally valid! idk. since i was 20 and started on the prozac i've had a hard time climaxing. it feels like.. it feels like playing one of those old tin toys where you had to tilt the whole thing to get the silver balls to go into the holes. maybe some people are good at those games and i'm not. it's incredibly infuriating and frustrating. it's so much work to get myself there - talking about climaxing again - let alone getting there with other people, and, i mean... at least it's worth it. i'll say that. at least it's worth it. i do have a lot of shame because the idea, i guess, is that i should be able to do it with just, i don't know, manual stimulation or at least a wand.

people have always had weird fetishes for sure. i don't know how much of it is because of imprinting or whatever on something i saw on TV when i was a kid. and what are you going to do? tell people they can't watch tv? i see younger people who are into, like, people wearing fast food uniforms. like you put someone in any kind of a uniform and people will turn that into a fetish. it doesn't matter if it's the least sexy thing on earth. wanting to fuck someone who's wearing a best buy uniform isn't, really, any sillier than whatever kinks i have. i mean i don't know if i could just _not_ have these weird kinks, if we could somehow create a world where everybody was perfectly happy with vanilla sex and that was enough to get us all off, i'd be fine with that. i'm not like that. i can't just touch myself and get there. it's scary to _ask_ for what i want, though, because it seems as ridiculous as, you know, eating exactly four buckets of KFC and being surrounded by six little deaths pointing spears at my head. because it's not like it makes any rational sense, you know? arousal is weird and silly and scary and kinda dumb if i think about it too much, and i want to make excuses for it like the excuses kris makes to billy. it's hard not to.

Not without its issues but the kind of thing where anything other than being delighted at a base level that someone got a romcom in slasher's clothing where the antagonist is the inability to cum made and into theatres feels pedantic.

this is sort of how i felt too. ultimately i think this was too awesome to deny, there was just too much that was so awesome that i can't dislike it, but i couldn't unreservedly like it as i had hoped.

i didn't like counting crows, sarah sherman (the character was good, really would have preferred somebody else to play it, she is like the millennial will ferrell or something), and a handful of too-on-the-nose things were annoying to me (the breathless repetition of "Psycho from the perspective of the shower curtain!"--yes, we've been watching the movie this whole time and enjoying it, please have a modicum of faith in us as viewers), but most of all, although i feel like i understood what JS was attempting with the movie-in-movie, it felt like there was a huge lost opportunity not to somehow create a greater distance between the '80s film and the film itself by not making the '80s film much, much stranger or otherwise in starker contrast

i loved the Videodrome reference, and i thought the central conceit of Little Death as the monstrous Id that we have to negotiate with in order to experience certain kinds of pleasure was great. it's not like this territory of slasher films and sex, of pleasure and fear, hasn't ever been explored, but i thought as a visual meditation (and what amazing visuals), this was a fantastic addition to the, uh, literature

also i was relieved that JS got all or most of the fake Camp Miasma paraphernalia out of the way in a single dump during the opening credits (i'm sure it was immensely fun to conceive and execute but i don't think the winking hyper-detail was the right visual language to ground this sort of film -- perhaps it would have been cute as e.g. a tie-in website along the lines of "The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer"). between that, the fonts, and the phone conversation between Kris and her gf back home, for the first few minutes i was almost worried that this was going to be some kind of unholy mix of mumblecore and Wes Anderson. thankfully things got very strange and awesome not soon after.

I assume that the Counting Crows song means something particular to Schoenbrun, tho I haven't read anything about it. That's how I read it anyway, most of this is Schoenbrun filtering their own fascinations and obsessions through established tropes, and Counting Crows felt like a 4th wall moment, like that's the horror film Schoenbrun would make.

As someone who often needs references and subtext explained to me, I appreciated how on-the-nose a lot of stuff was 😂 but it seems deliberate, like that’s part of the campiness and nostalgia, right?

Also, I would’ve forgotten to look this up afterwards otherwise but my French-speaking husband explained the meaning of the shower curtain film title to me (on the nose and pretending not to be).

on the nose and pretending not to be is a hair too reflexive for me, part of why i feel like this movie is too self-conscious to achieve camp

which is the point of the movie, of course, i guess i just don’t think it ever escapes this self-consciousness despite the themes and events of the plot

its just way too knowing. if it continued in the same vein as the first half before the counting crowes-soundtracked killing spree scene (which just didnt work for me with that song) then it might have been more of an irreverent blast. but as it is, it ends up becoming an intellectual exercise (though also somewhat moving in part too)

Wasn't REM's version of Nightswimming supposed to play instead of the Counting Crows song?

REM was another big deal for me and that's one of my favorite songs. If they had actually used that my head probably would have exploded from too many layers of goodness.

I saw the candy as escape, going to the movies and absorbing trash that gives pleasure.

KFC was flesh and fluids.

I assume that the Counting Crows song means something particular to Schoenbrun, tho I haven't read anything about it. That's how I read it anyway, most of this is Schoenbrun filtering their own fascinations and obsessions through established tropes, and Counting Crows felt like a 4th wall moment, like that's the horror film Schoenbrun would make.

― paper plans (tipsy mothra), Wednesday, August 26, 2026 9:18 PM (yesterday)

i think there was something linked upthread addressing it, or maybe not... well, ok, i looked it up:

https://www.indiewire.com/features/craft/jane-schoenbrun-teenage-sex-and-death-at-camp-miasma-1235210237/

basically yeah that song is really personal to schoenbrun, they describe counting crows as a "gateway band" they loved when they were 12... they were up in the air between that and "nightswimming" and came down on the side of the counting crows song.

re: the obviousness of it... one of the things about schoenbrun is this sense i have that they really do make movies for themselves. "i saw the tv glow" was them trying to imagine what it would be like if they hadn't transitioned, and "teenage sex and death" is, well. schoenbrun doesn't exactly shy away from the reading that kris is a self-insert. one of the reasons i found the film so liberating is because i do have similar issues to the issues schoenbrun depicts, and part of it is that i do have this narrative of shame around my sexuality. i'm fighting decades of internalized "this is fucked up, i'm fucked up" feelings, and countering that does require that i affirm myself over and over and over again. that i keep reminding myself that this is ok, it's ok. so even though artistically, a more subtle approach might have worked better for an audience, it's possible that schoenbrun thought this was how they needed to tell the story for themselves!

like, if you can't cum from someone going down on you or fingering you or fucking you, it's ok. is the message i get here. and i've definitely cum before, hell, i've even cum with a partner before, but when i did i didn't feel like i was cumming _with_ them, it felt like i was, you know, somewhere far away, not really _myself_ with them (and my partner at the time DEFINITELY FELT THE SAME WAY, and it caused some really serious problems with our relationship, that i wasn't really _there_ for sex.) i was kind of hoping that GRS would make it easier for me to cum with a partner, and long story short well it didn't. i'm really glad i got GRS for a lot of different reasons but no, GRS didn't really change my ability to cum either way.

i think all that stuff is interesting and great, and more films about that would be a good thing, i just think the film starts off as one thing, then becomes something quite different. i didnt mind that, but i can imagine someone being let down if you were there for a scream-style meta slasher, then suddenly found yourself in a film about thwarted lesbian desire. its like a two films for the price of one deal.

also the stuff about sexual discovery, understanding, barriers, etc, all seemed quite predetermined.

Is it clear at the end [show hidden text]

― coffee-themed romance ads (Eazy), Tuesday, August 25, 2026 7:06 PM (two days ago)

i don't think it's clear at all, i think that's kind of left up to the viewer for interpretation! Maybe they U-haul, maybe it's just a one-off thing, maybe they get together a year or so and make a sequel. Whether or not sequels are as good as the originals, I mean, it seems like it was a good enough film that it was at least worth trying. Kris bitches about poly and bitches about Thor and maybe she goes back to her nested partner because even if she's an acclaimed filmmaker, apartments where she lives aren't cheap and this new movie she was going to make doesn't look like it's going to actually happen based on that zoom call lol. I don't know, is her partner one of the people who gets killed in the slasher sequence? I know Thor definitely is lol. Maybe Kris does move to an abandoned summer camp with no wi-fi to live with a woman who's twice her age and eat KFC and Jolly Rancher gummies and smoke weed. I mean I definitely know women who have done that kind of thing. Living in "normal society" as a queer woman isn't exactly easy. One of the really funny bits about the film is how bad Kris is at smoking weed. Maybe she usually vapes or maybe it's a sign of, you know, she's not necessarily totally worldly wise.

i think all that stuff is interesting and great, and more films about that would be a good thing, i just think the film starts off as one thing, then becomes something quite different. i didnt mind that, but i can imagine someone being let down if you were there for a scream-style meta slasher, then suddenly found yourself in a film about thwarted lesbian desire. its like a two films for the price of one deal.

― midnightmarauder, Thursday, August 27, 2026 4:04 AM (two minutes ago)

yeah i do think the film started as one thing and became something quite different! i may have said it upthread but my feeling is that schoenbrun did start trying to make a "trans twist on sleepaway camp" and realized halfway through writing it that it didn't work (which IMO it doesn't) and pivoted to making the movie they actually made. i was kind of surprised that so much of the "camp miasma" film showed up in the final film! it doesn't really fit thematically with the rest of the film at all IMO, particularly the trans stuff, which in a movie about a sapphic relationship between two cis women feels kind of irrelevant!

also the stuff about sexual discovery, understanding, barriers, etc, all seemed quite predetermined.

― midnightmarauder, Thursday, August 27, 2026 4:06 AM (thirty-one seconds ago)

sure. if you're trying to counter decades of shame, this internalized narrative, you do have to say things over and over and over again. i'm reminded of how edgard varese objected to his works being described as "experimental" - he said he did the "experiments" before he wrote the piece! even if "New Hollywood" wasn't long-gone, schoenbrun doesn't have the luxury of throwing out the script and making an entirely different movie mid-shoot :). i do see how the repetitive, obvious nature of the film could cause it to be artistically weaker for most viewers! it just wasn't that way for _me_.

i think i need to see it again as i was all geared up for the meta slasher, and was fully on board for that, and had to readjust for what the film ended up becoming. but yes, the stuff about 'trans representation' in camp miasma etc didnt really gel with the fact the film doesnt seem to be about anything trans at all.

i used to date a woman (straight though, not lesbian, but maybe she was bi too, idk) who had a lot of issues like kris in the film actually, i wonder if shes seen it.

i still (stubbornly, perhaps erroneously) maintain JS's best film is her first documentary on slenderman (might be alone in this lol) and while id be interested to see what kind of filmmaker she becomes, she seems quite an academic director, so i wouldnt mind if she kind of goes more into that area, more full on. maybe just have characters spitting paragraphs of theses at one another like in the last isaac medina film i saw lol.

Well, now I like a Counting Crows song. Thanks a lot, Schoenbrun.

I didn't see it as two movies, or any kind of a fake-out? It starts off tight and structured, like we're in Kris's brain. As it goes on everything starts to loosen up and it gradually moves into fantasy where we don't know what is real, which is where Anderson's character is.

I love how Anderson jokes about being a Scary Crazy Lady but she really is a Scary Crazy Lady and that's exactly what Kris needs. Anderson guides her to her death and the death of all of her friends. She takes on the part of Mrs. Voorhees, goading the killer along.

I don't take in Schoenbrun's work as academic. It's aware of the world where it is situated, but it seems much more about getting at something intangible and evoking feeling. Again, I think she's much closer to Lynch.

I was never hoping for a Scream meta-slasher, that would have been awful.

i can imagine someone being let down if you were there for a scream-style meta slasher, then suddenly found yourself in a film about thwarted lesbian desire. its like a two films for the price of one deal.

I would doubt that, say, a 20-year-old would walk cold into this film expecting Final Destination. Most people, especially the young, read a bunch of back story and biography before stepping foot in the theater.

Also: they'd be into the queer sex.

I love how Anderson jokes about being a Scary Crazy Lady but she really is a Scary Crazy Lady and that's exactly what Kris needs. Anderson guides her to her death and the death of all of her friends. She takes on the part of Mrs. Voorhees, goading the killer along.

― Cow_Art, Thursday, August 27, 2026 4:33 AM (eighteen minutes ago)

maybe! if billy is a scary crazy lady i can only hope to be the same sort of scary crazy lady. i don't particularly think of myself as "crazy". i guess "scary" is in the eye of the beholder.

and yeah alfred is right, younger folks look at films differently from folks our age, and imo are often the better for it!

https://www.salon.com/2026/08/26/teenage-sex-and-death-at-camp-miasma-withers-in-metaphor-hell/

Thought this was a good review.

I didn't expect a full on meta slasher as I had read bits on the film before seeing it and I doubted JS could really do a genre movie, even a meta genre movie, but the film does set itself up that way so I was thinking AHH maybe it is that, but then ofc it wasn't. There are ppl online complaining it isn't scary enough though.

Early on while watching, I thought "This is sophisti-Scream," but that didn't end up in my lil Letterboxd review.

I had never heard the Counting Crows song, and assumed it was an original or very-cheap-to-license deliberately sub-sub-Killers knockoff by an unknown band, in homage to Southland Tales

I had never heard it either. I saw "Music by Alex G" in the opening credits and assumed it was him ̄\_(ツ)_/ ̄

I'm really surprised how many people never heard this song which was a humongous massive AAA radio hit in the 90's. But maybe that was just in the US.

I mean I was here in the US then and I very much did not recognize it! At that point I was completely willingly disconnected from both mainstream radio and MTV, and the AAA format was a bete noire.

On the UK Singles Chart, "A Long December" charted twice, peaking at number 62 during its original run in December 1996 and re-entering the listing at number 68 one year later. The single also charted in the Netherlands, reaching number 68, and in Australia, peaking at number 86.

honestly if you played it for me and told me it was the new MJ Lenderman single i would've 100% believed you

I have a distinct memory of hearing "A Long December" on the local alt-rock radio station's top 5 at 5 in December 1996, along with the Cardigans' "Lovefool," Bloodhound Gang's "Fire Water Burn," and Soul Coughing's "Super Bon Bon." (Can't remember the fifth song.)

prob something else on this modern rock chart

https://books.google.com/books/content?id=sQkEAAAAMBAJ&pg=RA1-PA71&img=1&zoom=3&hl=en&sig=ACfU3U1xQHuso89vkAmaDfwGMQ5Sa875MQ&w=1280

I think of "A Long December" as ubiquitously out in the world, on the radio, at CVS, all that. And it was a the height of Gap-vs.-Reznor versions of the 90s, and the song was very much on the Gap/"Friends"/Windows95 side, so it makes sense Schoenbrun heard and loved it at 12, when someone in film school at the time would likely wince at it (though it's good!).

it's fine? "Mr. Jones" is just about the worst piece of shit i've ever heard so it's discouraged me from ever really exploring their catalogue

definitely not the kind of song i expected to hear for that scene.

lol December 96 is clearly right at the peak of me getting home from school and listening to alt-rock radio for like four hours a night while editing Duke Nukem levels and hanging out on MOOs - i can basically sing every line of that entire Modern Rock top 40 except for "Stinkfist" which was a little too intense for me, and "Stuck on You," which I somehow missed entirely.

i think "Long December" is a really nice ballad! i know some people just can't get on board with Duritz's voice or his whole steez. there's some nicely evocative lyrics, the chorus is solid, and the na-na part works as it should. i didn't *love* that part of the movie, it didn't feel like the exact right fit and i thought the kills were happening a little too fast and cartoony, but i still liked the audacious confident weirdness of it.

I hated Counting Crows because of Mr. Jones, but Miasma has me thinking that maybe they don't totally suck just because one song of theirs irritated me over thirty years ago.

I saw this last Monday and I expected to be the only person in there, but there were a good number of people? Maybe 25. Only one time offered a day for showings. I thought for sure it would only play a week because it's a weird movie and not a big town, but it's going another week with an added showing. Going to see it again this weekend.

it makes sense Schoenbrun heard and loved it at 12, when someone in film school at the time would likely wince at it

something something no guilty pleasures amirite?

One may cringe at perceived past lapses in taste, but to do so is to deny the part of oneself that once upon a time enjoyed something. But then this is a forum where we regularly defend the indefensible.

Now a guitar ballad as a soundtrack for cartoonish slaughter is a dissonance, but dissonance is an artistic device dating back to at least Dr. Strangelove.

I knew "A Long December" as the song about which friends would say, "Counting Crows have one good song."

should’ve been set to third eye blind “how’s it gonna be”

yeah but then I would've cried

tbh counting crows planted something in my head as an adolescent by writing a song called “i wish i was a girl” which would’ve also worked here for me

i didn't *love* that part of the movie, it didn't feel like the exact right fit and i thought the kills were happening a little too fast and cartoony, but i still liked the audacious confident weirdness of it.

I think this is sort of how I feel about the whole movie: a lot of the individual choices felt clunky or otherwise didn't quite work for me, but I still admire Schoenbrun's overall artistic vision.

for all the things i’m losing
i might as well resign myself
and try to make a change

i’m going down to hollywood
they’re gonna make a movie
from the things that they find crawling ‘round my brain

The only thing that pulled me out of the movie a little was the CGI blood and gore. I get that they didn’t want it realistic because then it stops being funny and becomes something else, but Evil Dead 2 was pretty fucking funny. Maybe it was also a budget decision?

The song as a kind of "wistful having 'made it' in the entertainment business and recording in Laurel Canyon but still feeling down" worked well with Kris's whole situation, where another 90s pop song wouldn't have that.

I liked the artifice of the splatter, as someone who tends to turn away from realistic splatter in movies.

how much money does a geyser of fake blood cost? $10, $20????

i remain confident the original intended song “nightswimming” would’ve worked so well and not taken me out of the film

Definitely. It still would have brought the laughs because of the contrast but it would have had a wistful element. The Counting Crows song doesn’t bother me but it’s corny which does the comedy well but there’s no subtext. Not for me anyway. Maybe the song itself isn’t corny, but the Counting Crows are definitely corny.

i LOVE “a long december,” i mentioned that, it has a very personal meaning to me, and i did cry through that whole scene the second time i saw it, though i’m realizing that personal meaning isn’t really aligned with how jane intended for that scene to hit

i guess normally i don’t hold it against a movie how an audience reacts to it, but i do think the placement of that song is weird and hard to read, and not necessarily in an interesting way but in more of a “was this an accident” way, and people laughed at it at my first screening, and i felt like i understood why they would laugh

I wasn't sure how to read the sequence at first. I was 12 in '96 and remember "Long December". I associate Counting Crows with corny CVS music so I also chuckled upon recognizing the song, as my initial thought was that this un-hip song was being used ironically, given what was happening on screen. Whereas my girlfriend had never heard it and thought the sequence sad from the get-go, as certain types of '90s music automatically make her nostalgically sad, regardless of whether the songs themselves are sad. (She always has to skip or leave the room for the theme to The Adventures of Pete & Pete, for reasons she can't articulate.)

Air vents seem to be having a moment, between this and Spiderman.

I went googling to figure out why Little Death has an air vent head and found this theory which is pretty great.

https://screenanarchy.com/amp/2026/08/teenage-sex-and-death-at-camp-miasma-digging-into-the-symbolism-of-little-death.html

"i guess normally i don’t hold it against a movie how an audience reacts to it, but i do think the placement of that song is weird and hard to read, and not necessarily in an interesting way but in more of a “was this an accident” way, and people laughed at it at my first screening, and i felt like i understood why they would laugh'

I don't know how that scene is meant to land with that song playing behind it. It totally nullified it for me.

Really? The tension between the song's woolliness and what we see made me laugh aloud a couple times.

https://letterboxd.com/journal/jane-schoenbrun-interview-teenage-sex-and-death-at-camp-miasma/

Sorry if this has been posted, I avoided this thread for a while before the movie. Good Schoenbrun interview.

Xpost yeah I just thought what is wrong with this film using such a middle of the road song for this kind of scene *shrug*

one of the things i try to remind myself is that there are a lot of people who like this corny shit. i'm sure there are people out there not named jane schoenbrun who will watch the movie and find the choice of the counting crows song deeply and profoundly meaningful. when i was younger, i used to be, like, "i'm not gonna date anybody who has shitty taste in music", and that just got too limiting for me. turns out a lot of great people have what, if i was being totally honest, i'd call "shitty taste in music". i'm not gonna judge someone for being into that any more than i'd judge someone for being into feet!

https://letterboxd.com/journal/jane-schoenbrun-interview-teenage-sex-and-death-at-camp-miasma/

Sorry if this has been posted, I avoided this thread for a while before the movie. Good Schoenbrun interview.

― Cow_Art, Friday, August 28, 2026 12:36 PM (one hour ago)

pull quote already gets me:

Our relationship to sex as a culture is so unhealthy. So, of course we try to compartmentalize it or keep it on our browser window and never share it with another human being. I don’t think that is serving us as a people. I think that repression is the enemy, and especially the enemy of the artist, and this is a movie against repression. —⁠Jane Schoenbrun

oh hey look it's me being married to someone for ten years and it not working out because i was too fucking scared to tell them at the beginning of the relationship what i was _actually_ into

xpost
I mean, if someone thought "What's the opposite of Psycho strings, John Carpenter synths, or Friday The 13th heavy breathing?", Duritz & Co. fits, without the already-done easy-irony sunny choices of American Psycho or Joker.

it's fine? "Mr. Jones" is just about the worst piece of shit i've ever heard

you are right about that. There are a handful of good CC songs; Round Here, Long December, Perfect Blue Buildings, a Murder of One. I would not listen to anything past the second album. I probably had more CC exposure than most since I was in Berkeley at the time and they kind of blew up out of nowhere (they were distinctly a band that no-one I knew was aware of before they were signed; though I'm actually now friends with one of the founding members who co-wrote Round Here and who was kicked out before the first album)

Angels of the Silences and especially Einstein on the Beach are also keepers. I also like Hanginaround but can't really defend it. The Big Yellow Taxi cover is a travesty, like the fake song a wayward band would be forced to do by their cynical producer in a movie.

I just saw it again and it might be the best movie ever.

Going back tomorrow!

Rewatched Friday the 13th part 2, which has loads of scenes that Miasma references.

After that I watched Sleepaway Camp again. The kills and effects in Sleepaway Camp are better but the pacing is wack and drags in places. Friday the 13th moves at a good clip and holds up better, but Angela’s intense stare and the daffy aunt are impressive.

the wack pacing is part of what i love about sleepaway camp. it’s a hangout movie where people die every so often

Guess what I just did?

I installed a new air vent in our bathroom!

AIR VENT SUMMER

They should have licensed air duct/vent Miasma products.

the wack pacing is part of what i love about sleepaway camp. it’s a hangout movie where people die every so often

― ivy., Saturday, August 29, 2026 1:09 AM (eleven hours ago)

ooof, my first response was to say "oh yeah like my life"

lmao

btw this movie caused my best friend to have her long-awaited (by me) lesbian awakening, so my issues with it are officially moot

How was the chicken?

Kentucky fried.

Saw it again tonight. We had fried chicken with dipping sauce for dinner.