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

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.