The ending of this movie really struck a chord with me. I'm not trans, but it really nails the whole concept of identity horror. That awful feeling of looking back on a wasted life and knowing there's nothing you can do to take back all the opportunities you turned down and all time you threw away.
Oh yeah, same here. The complete horror of someone who takes no agency in their life and continues to refuse to accept themselves is so bleak. I can only hope that as long as he's still alive, there's still time
I have to chime in on my own experience with this movie. I am not trans, but am queer, and am at that I believe is the upper age range of experience with this kind of young adult television experience. There are so many layers to this movie and one that I feel really started to break for me was the end of act I cameo by Amber Benson. Then I started rethinking everything in the entire movie, the absent families, the school bulletin boards with nothing but weird slogans like To Thine Own Self Be True, all of it started feeling more and more like stagecraft. So when Maddie returns and they have their heart to heart at the club from the show, I immediately started getting a feeling of disorientation, questioning the reality or artifice of everything. By the finale, seeing yet another set of cameos by the guys from Pete and Pete and seeing Fred Durst in the credits I felt like I was spinning in grief. I wondered if that's what dysphoria felt like, and if that was what the director was trying to get the audience to feel. And as for the ending. It's abrupt and unsatisfying, just like the ending of the pink opaque, and it's traumatizing. It's probably not what anyone wanted, but it's what they got and have to live with. And my God that hurts.
The thing that really got as someone who has never experienced dysphoria is this question of how do you process memory when you self image is in conflict with what you are? How does that affect your sense of your past when it feels mixed up like a 'snowglobe', when the person in your memory isn't you? It's a frightening idea to me and makes me really feel for those who go through it.
The thing about the scene where Owen had a breakdown at the party isn't that people don't care, it's that by and large people refuse to acknowledge queer pain. Most people can recognize that somebody is autistic when they meet them and get to know them a little. They may not be able to put a word to it but people are very consistently able to identify people who are autistic even if their brain isn't going "that person is autistic." The same thing happens with queerness. People can recognize it in others. Sometimes they understand what it is and refuse to say it, other times they can't put a word to it. But people *do* recognize it. Maddie recognized that Owen was a girl back when they were teenagers. Go back to the scene where Maddie takes off Owen's shirt. It's filmed like a love scene. A lesbian is not touching a guy that way. Maddie understandsthat Owen is a girl even if she can't consciously recognize it. Like her most people recognize queerness but unlike Maddie most refuse to acknowledge it, let alone legitimize it. There's a reason why everyone has their head facing the ground, unresponsive. They all can see the pain. They just refuse to acknowledge it, to legitimize it. So they pretend that they don't see it instead. You know how Owen says that they have a family and love them? It's priming. The film is priming you. Owen is having a later-in-life coming out. Do you know how society treats adults with families who come out? Society treats them with scorn and tries to shove them back into the closet. Even today most heterosexual, cisgender people will tell a queer person with a family to stay in the closet. Especially trans people. Even though, as one of you accurately stated, you can't love your family to the fullest until you come out. Especially if you're trans. One of the most common experiences trans people experience when transitioning is truly fearing death for the first time in our lives. And yet despite that truth our pain is still delegitimized if not outright unacknowledged. People know it's there. The just pretend it isn't.
Im queer and there’s no reason to have “queer” pains these days. Not in western countries at least where this stinker of movies was released. Let’s stop wallowing and dwelling in the dread! Let’s be strong.
The gym canopy scene represents childhood and its innocence and the imagination. The TV show even felt much scarier, which represents growing up and how frightening the world can be. The canopy deflating around Owen represents the end of his childhood. Owen is now a teenager who is completely sucked into the world of the pink opaque while everyone around him continues on with their lives. Maddy was older than Owen, so she already knew more about the show and herself but still struggled with her own identity as a lesbian in their not so progressive town. They both come from different backgrounds and upbringings which will put them on different trajectories even though they share similarities. Maddie essentially has to save herself after Owen sabotages the idea of running away together in search of self discovery. So she decides to cut off all ties with anybody who won't respect the journey, which is something many of us had to do. I believe Owen was also on the spectrum which made self identification and connecting with people outside of the T.V show even harder. I noticed at times that Owen would miss a lot of what Maddy was going through emotionally in her personal life and people with autism do have difficulties reading the emotions others. He even continues to call her Maddie after she repeatedly tells him not to. He completely rejects her story of self discovery and how she broke free of her depression upon their reunion. We find out that Maddie tried to help Owen see himself differently once before which felt good for a moment but he completely rejects even remembering this moment and Maddie's retelling of the show.... that they are indeed the pink opaque. Maddie fails to save Owen but how can you save someone who isn't ready to be saved? Maddie tells Owen that she paid a man 50 dollars to bury her alive which means she finally got therapy. She explains this experience as feeling like a death but being reborn. She was able to break free after totally surrendering herself to the truth and allowing a part of herself to die. Reaching inside of yourself like this isn't easy and many people don't make it out on the other side, which is Owen. Owen tells us that he never sees Maddie again after she fails to "find" him but I don't blame Maddie for this as she must practice self perseveration or risk falling back into the same nightmare. Its many years later and Owen is working a menial job and physically unwell having died a spiritual and mental death, which is something Maddie had been desperately trying to save him from. Mr. Melancholy has taken full control over Owen and he doesn't even realize how long he's been buried. I believe the luna juice represents substance abuse which many people use to help suppress the difficulties of life, when in actuality it keeps us trapped and controlled. The ending was so sad as Owen is completely in the throws of his own mental illness and nobody is responsive when he snaps. You're left wondering if Owen ever finds himself after he finally opens up his chest to reveal that he is indeed the pink opaque.
My favorite blind watch in years. I only saw the poster and knew that Justice Smith was in it. EDIT: it seems like no one pointed out or noticed that Amber Benson aka Tara from Buffy had a cameo as well. The Buffy Connection is REALLY strong.
I didn't take the father "saving" Owen from the TV, but more as an overt representation of his father abusing him when he finds out Owen is watching the show. The giveaway for me is the scalding hot shower he forces Owen through as if trying to wash off her femininity/transness.
Yes, to me it very much gave the father trying to keep Owen from her truth, the life she's supposed to be living. Owen found herself in that show and was only trying to live her truth, meanwhile her father is ripping her away from that "lifestyle"
i also feel like it alluded to suicide/ suicidal ideation between two young kids who feel trapped but one escapes (initially I thought it was Owen who escaped and maddy who ended their life thinking it was better on the other side(of the tv)/heaven) just to realize in the end that Owen kind of did end their life figuratively and maddy may have literally and was trying to get Owen to do so too.
The asphalt road opens up with electricity and magazines advertising the 6th season of the TV show at the same time Maddie shows back up. I think this is concrete enough that the proper interpretation is the pink opaque being the real world.
The machine where the kid is standing in with money blowing around says "you are dying" at the top. Almost missed it but it made me wonder what other little things i missed
No offense to Jeff... we just seem to have polar opposite taste in films, so when he had a ambivalent reaction it carried as much weight as any positive review could and now I'm really looking forward to seeing this film.
With the comment of the abrupt ending, honestly from a film perspective obviously it left a resolution to be desired but for trans viewers I think it’s powerful enough that it may even be what gets some trans viewers to finally take steps in transitioning having the glum reality that they can potentially become no different withering into old age being a pandering boot licker to a cis society that would take their phone out and record you having a stroke out of the years of built in stress.
What a great conversation. Thanks RUclips algorithm (when's the last time you heard THAT?) I recently saw this - as part of a double0feature with Sleepaway Camp(!) And went into it completely oblivious. I had heard nothing about it, but was curious considering the large crowd that arrived for this second feature and some overheard snippets of conversations. The film still haunts me many days later. I certainly get all the trans-coding in the film (well, I get some of it and am sure other bits sailed right past me. Still, it continues to stick in my mind. Curious, when Owen declares "I love my family" might the lack of emotion be because Owen knows that even if the family loves Owen back, all they are reacting to is the FACADE of Owen - the image projected to the world, and not the REAL Owen - who is even hidden from(sublimated?) from Owen themselves? How can you reciprocate love when that love is only for a false projection of you? I also loved the way the film ended. Abrubptly and unresolved. Just like the show within the show. It's incumbent upon the audience to write their own ending (imo). As for how this film plays with non-trans/non-queer audiences, I'm reminded of something I read years ago... about how producers were stupified when Fiddler on the Roof became a sensation in Japan. They had no idea how a tale about 19th century Ukranian Jews could resonate in Japanese culture. Until they were informed that - aside from the specifics, the larger tale was so simply ...human... and poignant that it resonated with audiences who could rewlate to the personalities and situations on a more meta level. I thi TV Glow can work that way to. Even though they may not be the intended audience, I feel many different folks can find SOME resonance with the characters and situations in this film. Thanks for this great conversation. It really scratched an itch, since I saw this film alone and have no one irl to discuss it with. Even being a fly on the wall to your discussion scratched that itch somewhat.
A lot of the movies A24 makes feel like they would work better as shorts. Instead, they stretch them onto long features. The end result is they feel like stories where nothing happens. Dream Scenario and Zone of Interest had the same problem.
Tbh I did have to 1.25-1.50x the film to speed up the pace and some lines were just delivered being borderline cringy BUT as far as the trans experience goes, it does capture intentionally or not the very slow, mundane and even dreadful passage of time. Everyday feels like it never ends a large part of the experience prior to my egg cracking was staring at a ceiling not knowing why i had no interest in all the many hobbies I once had. ANOTHER thing that is unmentioned that non trans viewers just won’t get is that with the slower pacing one is able to reflect their own transgender experience as the character is doing so in the screen, like the yelling scene at the party while the character scram, as the scene played I began to unearth moments where I shared that similar breaking point in my own life so I was not just watching the screen but memories of my own journey were flashing in my minds eye as well. To a cis viewer obviously no connection would be drawn so they would just see the movie scene by scene at a time
A24 doesn't do a lot of "good" movies in the conventional sense of well written, interesting stories and multidimensional characters. They do a lot of mono focused theme/concept based films that explore a singular idea.
Just caught up with The Apes episode and find it hard to believe that Dave would work out very quickly that he was on earth if in Charton Heston’s shoes when he watched 2 hours of The Book of Eli and didn’t realise that Denzel was blind😜
If we are to take from the movie that Owen is a (reincarnated) trans-woman, then you constantly keep misgendering her as "he", which is probably not cool.
I am beginning to worry about The Filmcast. They seem to give a thumbs up to a lot of movies that got panned on IMDB and thumbs down on movies that got a lot of praise. I know reviews are purely subjective but given Pauline Kael got it more wrong than right (according to history) reviewers can be proven to be wrong. The good thing is that the show has 3 reviewers so a balanced opinion is possible, but after listening to this show for longer than I can remember (started when Jeff was a guest), of late, I am ending disagreeing with the 3, than agreeing with them. I will continue to listen but I am taking their opinion as part of collective.
You might just have a problem with differing opinions lol, I don’t think there’s anything to worry about. I’m not too familiar with this channel, but from what I’ve seen and from some video titles it doesn’t seem like they just go with the opposite of what IMDB thinks. You acknowledge that reviews are subjective, and their opinions feel real and subjective. They literally give differing opinions between each other in this exact video lol. Just cause you end up disagreeing with them doesn’t mean they’re being fake/contrasting, you just have different takes.
Absolute worst film of the year . Style over substance and so much pretentious wallowing!! I’m queer and I’m soooo tired of seeing queeeeer people depicted as whiny dwelling in dread. Stop! Be strong. Head up. Stop the eternal wallowing. This film was embarrassing bad. And that looooong long long Monologue from the female Character at the end. What a drag seriously.
This isnt about wallowing and being queer sucking. this is about your teens being a drag, you not knowing why, but that once you do know it doesn’t have to be like that forever: there’s always time to change and be yourself. So you didn’t get it and that’s fine, that just means you never had to feel that way. Good for you. But at least understand that you have the message screwed.
The ending of this movie really struck a chord with me. I'm not trans, but it really nails the whole concept of identity horror. That awful feeling of looking back on a wasted life and knowing there's nothing you can do to take back all the opportunities you turned down and all time you threw away.
Oh yeah, same here. The complete horror of someone who takes no agency in their life and continues to refuse to accept themselves is so bleak. I can only hope that as long as he's still alive, there's still time
I have to chime in on my own experience with this movie. I am not trans, but am queer, and am at that I believe is the upper age range of experience with this kind of young adult television experience. There are so many layers to this movie and one that I feel really started to break for me was the end of act I cameo by Amber Benson. Then I started rethinking everything in the entire movie, the absent families, the school bulletin boards with nothing but weird slogans like To Thine Own Self Be True, all of it started feeling more and more like stagecraft. So when Maddie returns and they have their heart to heart at the club from the show, I immediately started getting a feeling of disorientation, questioning the reality or artifice of everything. By the finale, seeing yet another set of cameos by the guys from Pete and Pete and seeing Fred Durst in the credits I felt like I was spinning in grief. I wondered if that's what dysphoria felt like, and if that was what the director was trying to get the audience to feel. And as for the ending. It's abrupt and unsatisfying, just like the ending of the pink opaque, and it's traumatizing. It's probably not what anyone wanted, but it's what they got and have to live with. And my God that hurts.
The thing that really got as someone who has never experienced dysphoria is this question of how do you process memory when you self image is in conflict with what you are? How does that affect your sense of your past when it feels mixed up like a 'snowglobe', when the person in your memory isn't you? It's a frightening idea to me and makes me really feel for those who go through it.
The thing about the scene where Owen had a breakdown at the party isn't that people don't care, it's that by and large people refuse to acknowledge queer pain.
Most people can recognize that somebody is autistic when they meet them and get to know them a little. They may not be able to put a word to it but people are very consistently able to identify people who are autistic even if their brain isn't going "that person is autistic." The same thing happens with queerness. People can recognize it in others. Sometimes they understand what it is and refuse to say it, other times they can't put a word to it. But people *do* recognize it. Maddie recognized that Owen was a girl back when they were teenagers. Go back to the scene where Maddie takes off Owen's shirt. It's filmed like a love scene. A lesbian is not touching a guy that way. Maddie understandsthat Owen is a girl even if she can't consciously recognize it. Like her most people recognize queerness but unlike Maddie most refuse to acknowledge it, let alone legitimize it. There's a reason why everyone has their head facing the ground, unresponsive. They all can see the pain. They just refuse to acknowledge it, to legitimize it. So they pretend that they don't see it instead.
You know how Owen says that they have a family and love them? It's priming. The film is priming you. Owen is having a later-in-life coming out. Do you know how society treats adults with families who come out? Society treats them with scorn and tries to shove them back into the closet. Even today most heterosexual, cisgender people will tell a queer person with a family to stay in the closet. Especially trans people. Even though, as one of you accurately stated, you can't love your family to the fullest until you come out. Especially if you're trans. One of the most common experiences trans people experience when transitioning is truly fearing death for the first time in our lives. And yet despite that truth our pain is still delegitimized if not outright unacknowledged. People know it's there. The just pretend it isn't.
It's more that they just pretend it's not there. They actively SCORN our pain.
Im queer and there’s no reason to have “queer” pains these days. Not in western countries at least where this stinker of movies was released. Let’s stop wallowing and dwelling in the dread! Let’s be strong.
@@manuelveidst4869 Lewis' Law in action, folks.
@@QwertyCaesarmore like Murphy’s Law tbh. Lewis Law is about feminism. 💋💋
@@manuelveidst4869this is ignorant as hell. people still are murdered or assaulted every day for being queer and trans even in western countries.
The gym canopy scene represents childhood and its innocence and the imagination. The TV show even felt much scarier, which represents growing up and how frightening the world can be. The canopy deflating around Owen represents the end of his childhood. Owen is now a teenager who is completely sucked into the world of the pink opaque while everyone around him continues on with their lives.
Maddy was older than Owen, so she already knew more about the show and herself but still struggled with her own identity as a lesbian in their not so progressive town. They both come from different backgrounds and upbringings which will put them on different trajectories even though they share similarities. Maddie essentially has to save herself after Owen sabotages the idea of running away together in search of self discovery. So she decides to cut off all ties with anybody who won't respect the journey, which is something many of us had to do.
I believe Owen was also on the spectrum which made self identification and connecting with people outside of the T.V show even harder. I noticed at times that Owen would miss a lot of what Maddy was going through emotionally in her personal life and people with autism do have difficulties reading the emotions others.
He even continues to call her Maddie after she repeatedly tells him not to. He completely rejects her story of self discovery and how she broke free of her depression upon their reunion. We find out that Maddie tried to help Owen see himself differently once before which felt good for a moment but he completely rejects even remembering this moment and Maddie's retelling of the show.... that they are indeed the pink opaque.
Maddie fails to save Owen but how can you save someone who isn't ready to be saved? Maddie tells Owen that she paid a man 50 dollars to bury her alive which means she finally got therapy. She explains this experience as feeling like a death but being reborn. She was able to break free after totally surrendering herself to the truth and allowing a part of herself to die. Reaching inside of yourself like this isn't easy and many people don't make it out on the other side, which is Owen. Owen tells us that he never sees Maddie again after she fails to "find" him but I don't blame Maddie for this as she must practice self perseveration or risk falling back into the same nightmare.
Its many years later and Owen is working a menial job and physically unwell having died a spiritual and mental death, which is something Maddie had been desperately trying to save him from. Mr. Melancholy has taken full control over Owen and he doesn't even realize how long he's been buried. I believe the luna juice represents substance abuse which many people use to help suppress the difficulties of life, when in actuality it keeps us trapped and controlled. The ending was so sad as Owen is completely in the throws of his own mental illness and nobody is responsive when he snaps. You're left wondering if Owen ever finds himself after he finally opens up his chest to reveal that he is indeed the pink opaque.
Um. No. They're actually the characters from the show and they're in the Midnight Realm. There's way too much evidence in the movie to support this.
My favorite blind watch in years. I only saw the poster and knew that Justice Smith was in it. EDIT: it seems like no one pointed out or noticed that Amber Benson aka Tara from Buffy had a cameo as well. The Buffy Connection is REALLY strong.
Oh I thought I imagined that lol
I didn't take the father "saving" Owen from the TV, but more as an overt representation of his father abusing him when he finds out Owen is watching the show. The giveaway for me is the scalding hot shower he forces Owen through as if trying to wash off her femininity/transness.
Yes, to me it very much gave the father trying to keep Owen from her truth, the life she's supposed to be living. Owen found herself in that show and was only trying to live her truth, meanwhile her father is ripping her away from that "lifestyle"
i also feel like it alluded to suicide/ suicidal ideation between two young kids who feel trapped but one escapes (initially I thought it was Owen who escaped and maddy who ended their life thinking it was better on the other side(of the tv)/heaven) just to realize in the end that Owen kind of did end their life figuratively and maddy may have literally and was trying to get Owen to do so too.
The asphalt road opens up with electricity and magazines advertising the 6th season of the TV show at the same time Maddie shows back up. I think this is concrete enough that the proper interpretation is the pink opaque being the real world.
The machine where the kid is standing in with money blowing around says "you are dying" at the top. Almost missed it but it made me wonder what other little things i missed
I think somebody should make "the Pink Opaque" as they saw it as teens, into a movie onto itself.
No offense to Jeff... we just seem to have polar opposite taste in films, so when he had a ambivalent reaction it carried as much weight as any positive review could and now I'm really looking forward to seeing this film.
With the comment of the abrupt ending, honestly from a film perspective obviously it left a resolution to be desired but for trans viewers I think it’s powerful enough that it may even be what gets some trans viewers to finally take steps in transitioning having the glum reality that they can potentially become no different withering into old age being a pandering boot licker to a cis society that would take their phone out and record you having a stroke out of the years of built in stress.
What a great conversation. Thanks RUclips algorithm (when's the last time you heard THAT?)
I recently saw this - as part of a double0feature with Sleepaway Camp(!) And went into it completely oblivious. I had heard nothing about it, but was curious considering the large crowd that arrived for this second feature and some overheard snippets of conversations.
The film still haunts me many days later. I certainly get all the trans-coding in the film (well, I get some of it and am sure other bits sailed right past me. Still, it continues to stick in my mind. Curious, when Owen declares "I love my family" might the lack of emotion be because Owen knows that even if the family loves Owen back, all they are reacting to is the FACADE of Owen - the image projected to the world, and not the REAL Owen - who is even hidden from(sublimated?) from Owen themselves? How can you reciprocate love when that love is only for a false projection of you?
I also loved the way the film ended. Abrubptly and unresolved. Just like the show within the show. It's incumbent upon the audience to write their own ending (imo).
As for how this film plays with non-trans/non-queer audiences, I'm reminded of something I read years ago... about how producers were stupified when Fiddler on the Roof became a sensation in Japan. They had no idea how a tale about 19th century Ukranian Jews could resonate in Japanese culture. Until they were informed that - aside from the specifics, the larger tale was so simply ...human... and poignant that it resonated with audiences who could rewlate to the personalities and situations on a more meta level. I thi TV Glow can work that way to. Even though they may not be the intended audience, I feel many different folks can find SOME resonance with the characters and situations in this film.
Thanks for this great conversation. It really scratched an itch, since I saw this film alone and have no one irl to discuss it with. Even being a fly on the wall to your discussion scratched that itch somewhat.
12:00 same criticism Jeff had for The Green Knight, which I can’t really disagree with.
A lot of the movies A24 makes feel like they would work better as shorts. Instead, they stretch them onto long features. The end result is they feel like stories where nothing happens. Dream Scenario and Zone of Interest had the same problem.
Tbh I did have to 1.25-1.50x the film to speed up the pace and some lines were just delivered being borderline cringy BUT as far as the trans experience goes, it does capture intentionally or not the very slow, mundane and even dreadful passage of time. Everyday feels like it never ends a large part of the experience prior to my egg cracking was staring at a ceiling not knowing why i had no interest in all the many hobbies I once had.
ANOTHER thing that is unmentioned that non trans viewers just won’t get is that with the slower pacing one is able to reflect their own transgender experience as the character is doing so in the screen, like the yelling scene at the party while the character scram, as the scene played I began to unearth moments where I shared that similar breaking point in my own life so I was not just watching the screen but memories of my own journey were flashing in my minds eye as well. To a cis viewer obviously no connection would be drawn so they would just see the movie scene by scene at a time
A24 doesn't do a lot of "good" movies in the conventional sense of well written, interesting stories and multidimensional characters. They do a lot of mono focused theme/concept based films that explore a singular idea.
Just caught up with The Apes episode and find it hard to believe that Dave would work out very quickly that he was on earth if in Charton Heston’s shoes when he watched 2 hours of The Book of Eli and didn’t realise that Denzel was blind😜
If we are to take from the movie that Owen is a (reincarnated) trans-woman, then you constantly keep misgendering her as "he", which is probably not cool.
Food for thought, both the actor and director refer to Owen as “he”
No no it isnt lmao
I am beginning to worry about The Filmcast. They seem to give a thumbs up to a lot of movies that got panned on IMDB and thumbs down on movies that got a lot of praise. I know reviews are purely subjective but given Pauline Kael got it more wrong than right (according to history) reviewers can be proven to be wrong.
The good thing is that the show has 3 reviewers so a balanced opinion is possible, but after listening to this show for longer than I can remember (started when Jeff was a guest), of late, I am ending disagreeing with the 3, than agreeing with them.
I will continue to listen but I am taking their opinion as part of collective.
You might just have a problem with differing opinions lol, I don’t think there’s anything to worry about. I’m not too familiar with this channel, but from what I’ve seen and from some video titles it doesn’t seem like they just go with the opposite of what IMDB thinks. You acknowledge that reviews are subjective, and their opinions feel real and subjective. They literally give differing opinions between each other in this exact video lol. Just cause you end up disagreeing with them doesn’t mean they’re being fake/contrasting, you just have different takes.
@@owenlemon8660 ok
@@owenlemon8660 what? I am taking you advice, hence the OK
@@AchtungEnglander my bad I misinterpreted what you meant, glad to here it and have a good day brother🙏
Absolute worst film of the year . Style over substance and so much pretentious wallowing!! I’m queer and I’m soooo tired of seeing queeeeer people depicted as whiny dwelling in dread. Stop! Be strong. Head up. Stop the eternal wallowing. This film was embarrassing bad. And that looooong long long
Monologue from the female
Character at the end. What a drag seriously.
This isnt about wallowing and being queer sucking. this is about your teens being a drag, you not knowing why, but that once you do know it doesn’t have to be like that forever: there’s always time to change and be yourself. So you didn’t get it and that’s fine, that just means you never had to feel that way. Good for you. But at least understand that you have the message screwed.
More important than entertaining.... I'd rather just watch a documentary in that case