Fading in the Glow: A Haunting Journey Through Spectrum Horror, Identity, and Dread in ‘I Saw the TV Glow’!
A buddy of mine had a funny take on I Saw the TV Glow that I’ll steal: ‘I don’t need to watch a movie about wasting my time watching a TV show?’ While I don’t agree with this take, as it pertains to this film, it was funny and may be the exact take many who watch this film have.
After watching this movie, I thought to myself, is this a new genre? Spectrum Horror, it might be called. The realization of a wasted life that is too narrowly focused on one thing. The horror of wasting time. Like Adam Sandler’s Click, only without the channel changer. Or perhaps it’s like when Tinkerbell asks you to think of one happy thought to make you fly, but then you’re stuck on that one thought… forever!
When it comes to autistic reality, I don’t know to what degree the self consciousness plays into their awareness that there is a wider world, and they are trapped behind a wall in their mind and wish they could break free and experience it? To be fair that seems more like the gay experience than the autistic experience but this movie is where those two experiences attempt to overlap with some horrific consequences. Or maybe being autistic is like you are trapped and have no idea or interest in the outer world beyond your narrow interests and are self satisfied within that narrow existence? It’s a spectrum, so it’s reasonable to assume that both sides of that horror are represented, something I Saw the TV Glow handles subtly and deftly. Either way it is horrifying. Whether it’s the horror of being an outside observer of this affect of being autistic as an existential limitation to one’s humanity, from a sympathetic or empathetic place or, conversely, being within the autistic person’s perspective, not knowing there is a whole world beyond you that you will never fully grasp.
The other side of this is what does it say about a person who is already trapped by one layer of reality, by being autistic, only for their remaining, glimmer of personal choice to be buried alive by a borrowed soul/replacement soul, of a TV show. Denial of life by art. False memories? Trapped by artifice, overpowering their meager realities. Drowned in relatable yet false consciousness. It’s in fact a double soul replacement. First God makes the lead character unable to relate to himself and others. And then to totally bury him, mass media provides another layer of removal from one’s authentic experience. Two layers thick of soulless inauthenticity and zombiedom. And they are both real! It’s the same frightening way an autistic child or normal children can relate to the TV more than mom & dad! And is it any less frightening if it is just neurotypical people wasting their lives?
Owen, played by Justice Smith (The Voyeurs), does a phenomenal job walking that line of awkward, anxiety ridden teenager while also stringing you along in his performance long enough until you slowly realize he is on the spectrum. Although in the mid-90’s it wouldn’t have been so easily identified, if at all. He is higher functioning than some, but he confesses “there is a part missing inside me” to his friend Maddy, played by Brigette Lundy-Paine who also brings the goods as one of those distant friends from high school, who were cool, but you regret splitting the friendship and always idealized your time with them. Only to later realize they had more serious problems than you realized. In this case though she confesses early on she doesn’t like boys and is lesbian. But Owen just wants to watch the show “The Pink Opaque” and it’s on past his bedtime. She convinces him to fake a sleepover, and he can come over to watch at her house with her friend and her.
Owen gets obsessed by this show and his relationship with Maddy as they fan-boy and girl out over The Pink Opaque, which some have identified as being maybe a Buffy the Vampire Slayer stand in? But I just take it as an unconscious amalgam of the essence of twenty different shows from the mid-90’s, woven together in a dream state. The enemy is a nefarious concept, Mr. Melancholy. A frightening sequence which definitely speaks to me as a consumer of WAY more media than I’d care to admit. I do feel the time theft from art is very high, like a spell has been cast on me to divert my attention away from controlling reality in lieu of a false reality.
Well, merrily skipping along, past that horrible time-sink of reality; of it all being a massive magic trick being played on all of humanity to deny the reality of death (which is mostly what culture is). I for one would also like to THANK those who bother to give us this magic diversion, as denial of reality in place of a better version overtop of our terrible lives, as I tend to see it as a gift, not a poison pill. But for those who might have had a glass as half full existence otherwise, without this lost time, for you it might be a realer nightmare.
Anyway, years go by and still in high school, Maddy makes tapes of The Pink Opaque for Owen and leaves notes for him about the show. He is obsessed throughout the years.
In one episode there is an ice cream truck pluming purple smoke out the top of it like the Crystal Ship in Breaking Bad. Then a scary looking ice cream melted face monster appears. It’s a pretty effective look. I’m not saying it’s A.I. but it’s close in some way or just REALLY good graphics and design?
In between viewing The Pink Opaque, Owen watches a natural fire. The proto version of TV, back when people would tell stories around the fire together. He hungers for that communion.
2 years later, previously in grade 7, now he’s in grade 9, right where Maddy used to be. Presumably she’s in grade 11 now. However, Owen hasn’t really changed and is still just being starred at by his despondent mother. He is still lamenting he can’t stay up past his curfew to watch The Pink Opaque. Then the driver of the car is revealed? Mother’s boyfriend? And it is none other than the SCOURGE OF AUTISTIC PEOPLE EVERYWHERE, Fred Durst (The Fanatic, Woodstock 1999) who made the less than flattering portrayal of an accidental autistic killer in The Fanatic. The guy is sure making a rep for himself as the ballbreaker of that community. Around every corner is Fred Durst ready to punk you off for your autism. But I digress. I’m sure he does it because he cares and it’s his passive aggressive way of relating to them or something? In any event, Fred Durst replies to all of Owen’s whining about having a curfew and wanting to watch The Pink Opaque, “Isn’t that a Girl’s show?”
The creepy dancing moon face, puddy twins effectively freaked me out late at night when I wasn’t expecting it. And the two friends are lovely together and one can see how a budding young lesbian would relate to their relationship on this fake meta parody show The Pink Opaque.
After two years of just sharing tapes with Owen, he finally asks her if he can watch the show at her place again. She reminds him she is a lesbian and Owen seriously just wants to watch the show with her, as friends.
They watch it again, and they are so into it that Maddy begins to cry restrainedly to the point that I get choked up a tad. Why? It’s like in My Dinner with Andre where it’s mentioned that the director fell to tears when he realized he can never live in his real life, only in his art. How much sadder when you cannot live in your own life and can only live through someone else’s art (i.e. via a TV show or movie?) Put another way, Maddy can never have the fulfilling relationship that the two girls in The Pink Opaque are having in their fictional world. Her girlfriend left her somewhere in the first season. The ideal beauty crushes her reality completely.
This is where the horror hits you or doesn’t as an audience member. It’s like being an addict. How many years would you sacrifice for the right TV show? How many years HAVE you sacrificed to the alter of TV and movies?
Maddy and Owen share a touching moment of ecstasy where an angel spirit of TV hovers over them over their true connection and bond over this show. And Maddy draws a pink tattoo like those the two girls in the show make on the backs of each other’s necks. The next day, out of shame, Owen scrubs his off.
Now EIGHT-YEARS-LATER. I guess he’s approximately twenty-two now. Owen drives thru the drive thru of the same Chuckee Cheese he works at called prosaically “Fun Centre.” He enters the manager’s office where a black girl is giving the white manager a blowjob to which the manager laughs maniacally “What the hell? AHAHAHA.” It’s something unsettling, especially for a child who might accidentally find themselves in this situation – an experience that reflects how Owen is portrayed as still being mentally.
“Sorry. Sorry,” Owen replies, in the same high pitched, echolalic style, both times.
At an empty grocery store with no one there, Owen again finds Maddy only this time she looks lobotomized. Owen hugs her, missing her greatly. She doesn’t react at all, like a ghost or pod person.
They go to a ghostly performance by a band called “Double Lunch.” The band gives a haunting performance, while Owen tries to convince Maddy to go the police as everyone thought she was dead before she disappeared 8-years-ago. She refuses. But she wants to ask Owen if he remembers The Pink Opaque. That’s a stupid question. It’s his favorite show of all time and always will be. Of course he remembers.
She prods further, “No, when you remember watching The Pink Opaque, how do you remember it being? Do you remember it as just a TV show?”
“Yeah, I remember it as just a TV show.” Owen replies.
We get a flashback of Maddy dressing Owen up in women’s clothing, or just Owen volunteering to fulfill Maddy’s desire regarding The Pink Opaque that her girlfriend never did.
“Do you ever get confused. Like the memory isn’t quite right? Like your waking life is just an episode of television?” The look of absolute horror on Owen’s face is exquisite. “Do you ever get the feeling the memories of the show and the memories of real life are jumbled, shook up in your head like a snow globe?”
Owen is scarred “Will you just tell me where you’ve been all these years?”
“That’s what I am trying to tell you. All these years I’ve been inside The Pink Opaque.”
The intensity of Maddy’s stare is horror on its own. And Owen’s haunted face is perfect.
A very intense gothic, lesbian singer vents frighteningly on stage in a great, scarry performance — well-placed and well-done.
Onto a flashback, the Final Tape, Owen remembered that Maddy shared before she disappeared for 8 years. The episode is the final confrontation with Mr. Melancholy, who is waiting for them in the place the two young girl friends in the show first met 5 seasons earlier. That nefarious bastard!
Owen recounts the episode. The two creepy dancing moon faces from earlier trick and capture the two hero girlfriends. Feeding them luna juice. Right then, when the captured friends awake, there stands Mr. Melancholy. A full moon version of Mac Tonight, only instead of glasses and a lounge lizard cadence saying “Dinah!” he looks more like The Mysterious Stranger from the 1985 Claymation film The Adventures of Mark Twain. If you haven’t seen that sequence and maybe half of you haven’t, I recommend watching it. It’s gloriously creepy! And so is this cameo from Mr. Melancholy.
“It’s such a wonderful, wonderful prison. Shh! Soon you won’t remember anything. Your real name. Your superpowers. Your heart. You won’t even remember that you’re dying!”
With that Mr. Melancholy smiles grotesquely and fades out.
And one of the two girl friends is choking on luna juice, pouring out of her mouth as someone is burying her alive and the show just ends. No happy ending.
Fred Durst breaks into the basement where Owen is lost in a strobe-lit haze from the TV. Like a badass, he steps in for an intervention, literally yanking Owen’s head out of the TV in an anti-Freddy Krueger moment. “You’re NOT ready for prime-time, bitch!” if you will, pulling his head out of a sparking TV set and shoving it into the shower until he vomits TV graffiti jam.
Where was Maddy? She paid someone to bury her alive, like the girl in The Pink Opaque. But after the show was over, she was severed from the psychic connection and just wanted to die herself. She knew she was buried just like Mr. Melancholy has buried us all under our favorite shows all these years then leaving us to die when they end.
The hopeful message, “there is still time” is written on the ground sometime later.
Then Owen watches the show again years later and the memories that enhanced the show beyond all reason are gone and it’s now just a stupid TV show. Its power is gone, as was the A.I. graphics and creepy cinematic edge that was definitely there earlier. Effective contrast between intentionally scary and meaningful versus the later cheap effects and childish nonsense versions of The Pink Opaque.
TWENTY-YEARS-LATER and Owen is still singing Happy Birthday to kids at the “Fun Centre.” It’s really sad that he’s still there all those years later. It’s desperately tragic. When after the second round of an overly wrought rendition of Happy Birthday, Owen absolutely freaks out and screams like he is trapped in hell, that Mr. Melancholy set for him. “I am dying right now!” Owen screams.
Everyone is frozen in time around him. No one is communicating with him. It’s like he’s trapped inside himself and cannot connect to anyone meaningfully.
It’s a moment of horrifying lucidity amongst a life passing him bye. He goes to the washroom, cuts open his chest, and inside is the glow of the TV inside of him, where his soul used to be. But strangely it comforts him and prevents him from dying, protecting him from the painful reality instead. Which is terrifying indeed.
He dresses back up in his Chucky Cheese outfit and again says in the same echolalic style despite no one caring what he is saying. As they all play videogames, he volunteers “I am sorry about before. Sorry about before. Sorry about before. I’m sorry.”
I am in tears for this lonely, lost, confused, autistic, crossdressing boy who never grew up and lost his friends and his soul to the TV shows inside. This is some kind of masterpiece.
I Saw the TV Glow Uppers:
The performances in I Saw the TV Glow are griping. The horror themes are quintessentially existential, and it may be a new genre, in what I dubbed “Spectrum Horror.” It’s not to be confused with movies like Come Play (with a touching portrayal of an autistic boy bullied and confronted with supernatural horror within his cell phone). This is a deeper film, with less cliches. I appreciated the personal and monomaniacal nature of the focus on the meta tv show The Pink Opaque. I enjoyed the direction, even if a bit ambivalent about the fluorescent colour motifs.
I Saw the TV Glow touched me personally in a way I didn’t think it would. It hit a nerve with my long-standing recognition that I watch too much TV and movies, and this film made me remember the opportunity cost by showing the horror of wasting time.
But also, the portrayal of the sympathetic autistic boy, who spends years chasing a phantom show and the friendships it once sparked for decades, reflects how those years eventually slip away. In the end, the boy dies, leaving Owen — and all of us — alone, like a cancelled show eventually fading into obscurity.
I also liked the A.I. monsters and especially Mr. Melancholy. I have that half moon mask sitting on a pile of hoarder’s clothes pile back at the old homestead somewhere. It’s eating time and space in my mind, as we speak.
I Saw the TV Glow Downers:
The lack of sexual connection between Owen as a younger black boy and Maddy being a slightly older, lesbian girl was not a downer. In fact, it was refreshing to have a platonic relationship built on a common longing for female companionship of their own design. But was it necessary to tell the story through this contrived lens? It makes me sad that simple friendship must jump through so many hoops and check so many boxes just to tell this kind of a story about innocent childhood friendships that can be built on liking the same shows.
Can friendship just exist? But that said, it was a very interesting dance they did around each other as friends. Was the crossdressing essential? Even they kind of implied it and didn’t over emphasize it but kept it more as a thing they did together to get more deeply involved in the show, being each other’s Pink Opaque. Maddy perhaps taking advantage of Owen’s autism and getting him to dress up, pushing his gender fluidity in a certain direction.
Overall, I Saw the TV Glow is some kind of masterpiece which I recommend watching. It moved me to tears unexpectedly. I cared about this innocent friendship which encapsulated all their unexpressed emotions in life inside this TV show. That is how life can be — trapped by Mr. Melancholy, inside a show, better than your life, in this microcosmic prison, where each episode slowly replaces your soul.
Directed by: Jane Schoenbrun
Written by: Jane Schoenbrun
Produced by: Ali Herting, Luca Intili, Dave McCary, Emma Stone, Sarah Winshall
Cinematography by: Eric Yue
Edited by: Sofi Marshall
Music by: Alex G
Special Effects by: Spectral Motion, The-Artery
Cast: Justice Smith, Brigette Lundy-Paine, Ian Foreman, Helena Howard, Lindsey Jordan, Danielle Deadwyler, Fred Durst
Year: 2024
Country: USA, UK
Language: English
Colour: Colour
Runtime: 1h 40min
Studio: A24, Fruit Tree, Smudge Films, Hypnic Jerk Productions, Access Entertainment
Distribution: A24, VVS Films
