A24 has outdone itself again with their 2024 film I Saw The TV Glow. If you haven't seen it already, exit out of this page, go to your nearest movie theater-- or questionably legal website-- of choice, and pay attention. If it can't reach you thematically, it is still a beautiful movie.

The film is a claustrophobic exploration of repression, specifically an almost masochistic kind of self-repression. The main character, Owen, is in 7th grade when he meets Maddy, a girl two years older than him. Together, they bond over a teenage-girl-fantasy-drama TV show called The Pink Opaque. Both of their lives are depicted as dull and agonizingly meaningless, with the exception of the time they spend together or watching the television series.

Maddy, too young to understand what she wants but old enough to understand it isn't where she is, wants to run away and asks Owen to come with her--- who agrees, but chickens out at the last second. With this, the film constructs the foundation of the matrix that serves as Owen and Maddy's prison. With Maddy's return, Owen reaffirms his refusal to cast aside his life of self-perceived mediocrity for a chance to realize something closer to his own internal identity. He is either scared of the transition or of what he must shed to claim a new identity, and the rest of the film is his slow-motion free fall into meaninglessness and regret.

Except, I don't agree with that analysis. Well, I do after watching the movie. Online analysis and interviews with the director, Jane Schoenbrun, only reinforced this conclusion, as well as showing how it speaks specifically to the trans experience. This is evident after watching the movie, and observing the meta-references to other examples of queer fiction through The Pink Opaque, the color pink itself, cross-dressing, and sexuality.

This level of detail does a disservice to what the film actually accomplishes while you are watching it. Aesthetically, the film is a work of art, but this level of detail and beauty is reflected thematically as well. The forgone conclusions I have presented here are far from forgone during the film's runtime. When Owen is asked to run away the first time, I remember thinking how Maddy's proposal made little sense, especially given how little had been revealed about the supernatural nature of the film. When she returns a decade later and proposes to bury themselves alive, her request still sounds preposterous but is now at least plausible. All the same, while there were certainly signs pointing towards the film taking place in the Midnight Realm, nothing was certain.

Certainty came, much like it does in life, only when it was too late. Maddy's prophecy that Owen will slowly suffocate comes true both figuratively and literally, as his asthma makes horrifying noises in the last few scenes. Owen is so unsure of who he is by the end that he has to open himself up, in a shocking display of pseudo self-harm, to confirm that The Pink Opaque has been inside of him all along.

It is easy to cast judgement on Owen after having watched the film, but I cannot imagine doing so before the dust had settled. This highlights the impressive feat that Ms. Schoenbrun has accomplished: despite all of the signs being there, her movie avoids the pitfall of making something painfully obvious to the viewer while having the protagonist struggle with it. I squirmed with Owen every time he ignored his internal compass, but by the time I felt I could justifiably fault him for it, he had already realized and faulted himself in the only way he knew how too.

Even if we ignore this film's connection to the trans community, which myself and the vast majority of its viewers are not a part of, this type of internal struggle is common to all unrealized potentials. The type of future the individual dreams of can only be seen by themselves. In real life, there are almost never blatant signs that someone is wasting their potential precisely because "a wasted potential" is so ill defined. Billy Beane in Moneyball, for example, clearly views his major league career as a waste of his collegiate potential, at least at the beginning of the book. A different movie, more in line with I Saw the TV Glow, would view a refusal to take the risk on the major leagues in lieu of a safer college career as tragic and life-wasting. The potential is defined by the individual; it is impossible, not just hard, to define their potential from an outside perspective.

However, while one's options are more visible internally, they are no less opaque. Indeed, The Pink Opaque is the queerness or potential that lies inside Owen the entire time, but it is never transparent to him. He receives hints, but like all heroes during their struggles, the answer is not clear. Emotions run high, and the clarity that comes with time cannot materialize when one weighs their own potential.

All the movie does is elevate this from an internal experience to its rough analogue from outside of Owen's head, allowing us to experience the events of the film at roughly the same pace as him. The chaotic bundle of emotions, representing by glowing chalk, televisions, visions, and pinkness, is emitted interspersed with real moments and artificial narration by the two main characters in order to both obscure what is real and to speed up the viewer's synchronization of Owen's mental state. For instance, the cross-dressing scenes do not appear in the early narrative because Owen likely does not experience them that way until much later--- they are simply bread crumbs left by his former existence in the real world outside of the Midnight Realm. I don't have access to the movie, but there are many other examples of this type of "out-of-order" or morphed repetitive experience throughout the film.

This type of narrative allows us to experience an arc of ignorance, disbelief, belief, and despair that would be impossible if the existence of The Pink Opaque and the main characters' struggled were obvious all along. All of Owen's hesitation would seem stilted, artificial, and counterproductive. By banging against the walls of the cage with him, the bars of that cage seem to actually hold power instead of being artificially placed obstacles. We are able to go from the level of not understanding what is happening, to not knowing what is real, to finally believing it and realizing it is far too late. These are all of the emotions that Owen, or a real individual for whom he serves as a simulacra, would go through on their journey of self-acceptance or self-denial. By experiencing them so close together, it morphs itself into a profound work of horror. The experiencer, desensitized by the passing of years, feels only a numb sense of sadness or dread. Instead, the movie's ending screams: WAKE UP!!!

Movies are most potent when a viewer can merge their own consciousness with a character and their struggle. It is impossible to not identify with the core warning of what happens when you do not strive for self-authenticity. I can say that for 100 minutes--- the exact runtime of the movie--- I Saw the TV Glow.