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

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