As much as I know the pink opaque wasn’t actually a real alternate world and the show wasn’t some cosmic horror, I still love the idea that Tara and Isabelle ARE actually Owen and Maddie. It’s such a fascinating and original idea. Would’ve loved to see some a different ending where Owen actually becomes Isabella again.
@@bruh7837 way I see it is a symbolic but harsh "beating the gay away" by the dad. I don't think he's got any other line than "Isn't that a show for girls?" in the entire film, and you can definitely tell Owen is terrified of him, even addressing him. That specific scene seems to cater to the father's POV, in that he catches his son watching girly stuff AGAIN, getting perverted by the TV AGAIN, getting those weird ideas in his head AGAIN, and not-so-subtly beats it out of him. Now Owen vomiting Mr Melancholy's poison Luna juice is trickier. Does this mean that, in reality, Mr Melancholy is actually HELPING Owen and Maddie with the juice? Or is it, via the father's POV, a sort of "drinking the cool-aid" analogy, and he's "saving" his son from it? I think it's a bit of both. The Moon is also a very feminine figure, opposite the Sun in most mythologies, so... make of this what you will! :D
Just a thought, in the first act, Owen tells Maddie on the bench that hes afraid of opening his insides and pulling them out with a shovel only to find nothing. But the very ending of the film, is him opening his insides and getting that beautiful vision and self-actualization feeling. I think a lot of people relate to that; feeling like whatever you want to do with your life is "nothing", and being afraid that youre truly hollow and all along you were delusional about your aspirations which is why you should never commit. I hope this makes a little bit of sense lol
This is actually a misread on the scene. Owen doesn’t say they’re afraid of opening their insides. Owen says when he thinks about his sexuality he feels like someone has emptied his insides with a shovel and he says “I know there’s nothing there”. You are correct though that there is something there and we see it later in the movie. Owen had just “buried” his true self/feelings that that is what makes him feel empty. The suppression. It also ties into the talk about the show characters being burried and living in the midnight realm and so on. The problem, as Owen fully says in that scene, is that he’s afraid and nervous about actually checking inside to see if it’s true or not. He’s scared and nervous, not about being empty but that he may not be empty and those suppressed feelings are still there. When he opens himself later and sees there is something in there, he’s happy but he goes back to hiding and apologizing for bothering the people around him with his feelings and needs. He knows his fear and choices are killing him but he’s too scared to do what is needed to live.
I don't think that Maddie is dead, though she may certainly have attempted. I think Maddie underwent a symbolic death to transition. Her entire appearance is different, more butch than her high school persona. Language around death in regards to transitioning is pretty common, particularly when referring to previously gendered names as "dead names." But I think the thing that was the most haunting to me was the casting and the sets. Owen's unseen best friend's mother is Amber Benson, who played Tara on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. His father is a 90's nu-metal singer. His coworkers are Pete and Pete. Within the context of the movie, Owen is literally living in the husk of a 90's television show. All of the actors are there, and we, as knowing audience members, clock those actors and the realization of who they are is screaming at us that everything Maddie is telling Owen is true. Owen walks the halls of a basically empty school, where the bulleting boards are messages yelling To Thine Own Self Be True. He turns and talks directly to camera like Claire Danes in My So Called Life. They go to the Double Lunch and there's a musical interlude, just like in the Pink Opaque, and just like they used to do on Buffy when acts would perform at The Bronze. He says he has a happy family, but we never see them. When he has his moment of cracking at the fun center no one reacts. They're all just extras. He's apologizing to everyone and no one says anything. They don't even realize he's there. Owen IS in the trap, and we can all see it. And eventually he does too, but man I found that tragic. A lot of people complain about the ending being abrupt, but that's also what happens in the Pink Opaque. It's deeply disturbing, happens too fast, and there's no resolution and it HURTS. God I loved this movie.
I get that reading and I know a lot of people connect with it. For me; while I see value in it I don't like the interpretation that what Maddy does is a healthy approach to self acceptance because I feel the alternative speaks more to what media is and how many people myself included experience it. I hear the pink opaque compared frequently to buffy the vampire slayer and like the pink opaque its a show that means a lot to people because it expresses to them a world where feminity isn't just left unpunished but is celebrated. but while that can be true the show doesn't always live up to those principles and its also a show lead by a abusive man who bullied the young women on the show throughout the production. So which is the real buffy the vampire slayer? The one that expressed a world the audience wanted to escape to or the one which still reflects many 90s retrograde gender norms and was made by people who were very much not part of the world the show described when it was at its best? A show can mean a lot to someone but when they put it on a pedestal, see it as realer than reality, live through the show and fixate on it to the exclusion of everything else which is true of many peoples relationship to pieces of media including buffy that can be really unhealthy especially given that every show, film, piece of music, book or video game was made by someone painfully human. Maddy ultimately disappears from the world to live in the artificial world of the pink opaque in a form of media hyper fixation akin to suicide as they cease to exist in anything but the pink opaque while Owen goes to the other extreme and rejects the idea that the show ever had any value and was ultimately just a dumb show undeserving of attention or internal reflection of why they gravitated to the show in the first place. Neither perspective is healthy and a more balanced approach to media like the pink opaque or buffy would be to treat those shows as valuable yet flawed and human works of art that reflected something about themselves and learn from that. But that doesn't happen for either character and both are left unmoored and lost because of it in completely opposite ways. Maddy has abandoned real life and Owen has surrendered themselves to it at the cost of their sense of self. The healthy thing for both of them would be to support eachother in a world that feels hostile and uncaring but instead they only connect with eachother on the basis of the pink opaque and then Maddy abandons life and Owen abandons themself. For me as someone who tends to hyper fixate on media the way these characters do for reasons similar to them the idea that sealing ones self in a coffin, getting buried alive and being reward by living forever in a well remembered nostalgic tv show is subtextually the same as self acceptance isn't what I personally need from the movie even though I understand the value of the reading of the pink opaque being real and the "real" world being artificial.
@@Countgreenhorn i don't personally know which interpretation is correct but "what you need from the movie" has no bearing on what it actually means lol
That’s a really great interpretation of the movie! I was so confused by a lot of it until I read some of these comments. The only thing I gathered from the movie was that it didn’t have a happy ending. The villain in the pink opaque was Mr. Melancholy, and that was the exact vibe of him apologizing to those people on his way out of the arcade. So obviously our hero didn’t win. Edit: worded that wrong. Owen was not the Hero, Maddy tried to be, but failed.
Even though the main characters were suppose to be queer, I still relate as an inner city straight black man. I think a lot of us escape through nostalgia to cope with a world that does not fully allow us to express ourselves freely. Thank you for your break down. This was a good movie
@@kuyevon yeah I didn't know the movie was supposed to be (in a way) for them, and then I found out about the director too, but that message applies greatly to everybody, and its a brilliant movie.
I’m a trans woman and my daughter is a cis woman and we watched this together and were both equally moved and mortified and it sparked the most profound conversation I’ve ever had with her. The movie was no less relatable to her than it was to me. It’s a masterpiece.
I think she says something like, "Don't apologize" and that stuck with me regarding the ending. He keeps saying sorry over and over to people who don't see him or ignore him, which to me read that while he did have a moment of clarity, he did what he had always done: If you don't think about, it isn't real. So he took a figurative step back and apologized, despite having nothing to apologize for, and that was so sad to me...
I don't think Maddie committed suicide. I think she came back to get Isabel so she could live her life as who she knows she really is. But he didn't want to do that, so Maddie had no choice but to move forward with her life. She knew Isabel would never fully accept who she really was, and that if she stayed with Isabel, she would die inside like Isabel
This!! While she was talking about being burried alive all I could think of was that cheesy (but still, true) quote about how your new life will cost you your old one. Mostly because of the whole “that’s not my name” part, I believe she grew into her identity and her storyline (unlike Isabel’s, sadly) is a more hopeful one idk
The movie ends signifying that he's running out of air. He even says I'm dying. Just a metaphor of what happens when you suppress who you are for so long.
He doesn’t develop asthma until the end when Maddie is telling him he’s actually Isabelle and is buried alive. His inability to admit to who he actually is is killing him.
@@Honeydoyou Owen's mom asks if he remembered his inhaler the first time he went to sleep over with Maddy as a seventh grader. Although I'd agree that Owen seems to outwardly experience the symptoms of his asthma during moments of suppression and it ties to the idea that his decision to ignore his real identity is killing him
I think the running out of air is to make real how she is suffocating being buried alive in the Pink Opaque world. But I agree about it also being a metaphor for feeling trapped in your own skin.
@@evelynfarrell7355 i think the “hearts” symbolize their true identity and after being “buried alive” and coming to accept who they are, maddy finds her heart. isabel’s/owen’s heart was also there beating meaning that there is still time for isabel to accept themself.
is it that maddy ended up finding herself and living the life that resembles tara/the pink opaque? while watching i thought she was being delusional about literally being "in the show" but was the reality that she was just living like the characters and being openly "different" ? and maybe to owen it sounded like she was trying to live in the show so thats why she said it like that?
Yeah, that's what I thought as well. Especially because Maddi took Owen to what I assumed to be a queer bar. They had the conversation about the Pink Opaque while Phoebe Bridgers was performing in the background. I really did not see her ending as her ending her life but rather leaving the town and/or becoming her true self.
Bitter sweet? I think Owen's ending is sad af like he literally lived the rest of his "life" being scared to find out who he really was knowing that it doesn't feel right.
@@JetsuLIVEI actually thought he was going to be himself for the rest of his life. I interpreted the way he smiled when he saw inside himself as him finally waking up to the truth. I also thought the way he walks towards the screen was very reminiscent (posture wise) of how maddy walked towards him after coming back from the pink opaque in the grocery store. When he’s walking towards the screen as though he’s walking away from the midnight realm instead of burrowing back into it, was to me at least, showing that he wasn’t going to keep living that lie. Maybe I’m just an optimist though
One really nice bit of detail I saw in the movie was the use of colors to communicate how Owen feels. There’s lots of Blue on the screen when he’s at the fair with his mom, on the walls at his work, and he’s wearing lots of blue after he rejects Maddie’s offer. Even the liquid Mr. Melancholy makes Isabel and Tara drink is blue. There’s pink on screen when Owen is objectively happy, like when the show is on or Isabel’s dress color, or the name of the show. And I feel like there was a lot of red on screen when Owen and Maddie first go to the bar where Maddie tells Owen what’s been going on. It just feels so purposeful with just about everything it does, I hope people continue talking about this movie for years to come.
This color choice is toaso represent not only being happy but being happy as a girl as Isabel. She's not happy as a boy surrounded by blue. She spits into the cotton candy. The ghost is pink which she tries to wipe off but can't because she can't stop herself from being trans.
I was picking up on the contrast of pink and its complementary color: green. Having rewatched it twice, almost all the green in the movie is electric (the fishtank in the basement, the games) or cool (the school halls, the produce section of the grocery store, the football field at night, the lawns of suburbia.) The only exception to this rule, and the only time we feel natural sunlight, is in the sunlight filtering through leaves behind Isabel at the summer camp, which DOESN'T get the same low-fi filtering as other footage from The Pink Opaque. Isabel in nature ends up looking and feeling more real than Owen at almost any point in his life.
It's main color scheme is pinks, blues and whites, literally the trans flag colors lol, and considering what the colors pink and blue are meant to represent and how they're used in the movie... yeah, not all that subtle.
I also took the 'opaque' part of Pink Opaque to be an extension of that metaphor of pink = euphoria; representing the desired state where everything is solid pink - not just subtle accents of pink
I'm not queer but this movie was incredibly touching and relatable to me. I'm neurodivergent, introverted and overall socially awkward and I've always felt like I didn't belong in this world. I often have to be someone completely different in order to fit in and it can be very exausting. The final scene where Owen cuts his chest open to reveal that beautiful glowing interior made me cry... No one should hide themselves like that and to see that what you've been hiding is actually the most beautiful thing is life changing. Unfortunately I haven't experienced that breakthrough yet, but maybe someday..
Hello?! Every single person is acting. Be it telling your friends you caught a bigger fish in order to appear manly to fit in, or walking with your chest out, or not telling anyone about your more gentle hobbies. EVERYONE does this, you aren't some anxiety riddled teen who needs some awakening. You just need to grow a spine, stop being weak, and go out and act like the rest of us. I conduct million dollar projects flying out to facilities managing strangers but am painfully shy... You get on with it and you act. That's what the world is. You're waiting for a change that won't happen.
@@philmcclenaghan7056please stfu, you don't understand the neurodivergent brain and how alien you feel, and you never grow out of it. I'll never feel like I'm a part of this world but knowing I'm autistic makes me feel I'm ok, there are others like me. It's lonely irl but I can relate to many people on youtube and now I accept my weirdness.
I feel like a lot of people are overlooking the fact that after opening his chest up, Owen finds static and sees excerpts from black and white films there. Throughout the movie both Owen and Maddy mention multiple times that the Pink Opaque runs every Friday on the young adults channel from 10:30 to 11 p.m before reruns of old black and white movies. In a way, when Owen finally decides to actually do something and face his existential dread, exposing this static both validates what Maddy / Tara had been trying to make him understand, while also signifying that it's just… too late. He missed the show, the Pink Opaque is not on air anymore and he's left with only the reruns that are scheduled after. At first I didn't understand why he looked so elated at the sight of his open chest, to then just come back out and apologise to the fake reality he now knows he's in, but I think this says it all : it's too late for him, he knows he's living a life of deceit, but he can't change it now. To me this ending scene perfectly showed what many queer people of a certain age relate to : you can come up to your own self realisation at any age, but if you don't embrace it early enough, you might just live right past it.
I don't agree. It's never too late. There are plenty of people who have transitioned later in life, or came out of the closet late. Cate Jenner being the most famous example.
I think there is something to be said about Owen repeatedly breaking the fourth wall and talking to the audience, like he doesn't believe the TV show was anything more than a TV show... and yet he knows he's in a movie?
No like it’s legit like a TV show. The whole movie Owen is just in complete denial that he’s living a lie despite it being in his face the entire time.
I think the Pink Opaque is real. Maddy and Owen watching it as kids is them finding comfort in each other as two queer kids. Maddy saying the Pink Opaque is real and that she is Tara after coming back is basically her leaving their town and coming out as a butch lesbian. The last episode where Tara gets buried alive would just be Maddy leaving. Her coming back and trying to get Owen to become Isabel is her trying to help Owen to come out as a trans woman but it doesn't work. Mr. Melancholy (a stand in for society) poisoned (the Lunar juice) Owen/Isabel into repressing their feelings about being trans. The reason why Maddy doesn't come back isn't because she killed herself. It's because she can't make Owen come out. There is nothing more she can do so she leaves Owen alone but sends him one more reminder that there is still time. The rest of the movie is about Owen living his life how society wants him too. Like you said, his freak out is him realizing he wasted his life. To me, Owen cutting himself open to see the Pink Opaque is him finally saying fuck it and opening himself up to show the real herself: Isabel. And I think the reason why the Pink Opaque looks different when Owen watches it as an adult is because sometimes when looking back at yourself when you were a young queer kid you feel stupid you ever seen yourself that way. Especially if you've been repressing those feelings for years.
Not for nothing but true sign of the nineties was seeing a commercial for a show you couldn’t watch and being completely captivated by it. That happened to me so much as a young person
anyone have thoughts on the mental breakdown scene after he watches the last episode? him screaming something along the lines of “this isn’t my life” and “you’re not my dad.” and also vomiting up tv static.
I suppose the only thought I have feels obvious to me, but it’s just in my eyes an example of pressure killing Owen for a minute. When he’s faced directly with the idea of something he was always aware of and trying to avoid, that he isn’t living the life he’s meant to, and he’s been performing and holding it in for so long seeing it verbatim with his own eyes is too much. He panicks and has violent response.
It reminded me heavily of an attempt to take my own life before my transition. Because I’d rather be me than who I was being forced to be. That scene shattered me. It was eerily similar to
It's a good representation of Owen about to commit to transitioning, his head was in the TV, the safe haven, but his dad pulls him out. In the dad's point of view he's saving him, but in truth he's making Owen suppress himself even more. Vomiting blue boy colour static in the bathtub I think supports that. It's a tragic tale. It especially hurr how when he researched the show on his new LG "lifes good" TV, he's lying exactly like his dad did on the same couch.
to me the scene subtextually reads as someone developing a alcohol or drug dependency as a way of coping from the existential pain from being queer, mixed race black with a white father and autistic. Owen's fixation with the pink opaque is something that soothes and relaxes them when the rest of the world is hostile but because it's the only thing that gives them a sense of peace they just return to it over and over again. Then they have to be lead to the shower by their dad where they vomit up static and that sequence to me reads as being coded as a scene about a young person drinking heavily or doing drugs as a coping mechanism and then violently throwing up in the shower with someone having to be there to assist them and all the while they're more willing to say the things that are causing them pain than what they would be willing to express when they're sober.
@@werr3222werrr ok take your own life because you were not allowed to wear a dress? Sounds like issues in general to me that won't go away. I wouldn't kill myself if I was forced to wear Jordan Airs every day.
I feel like Maddy also represents the part of Jane that made the transition, because when he calls her Maddy, she says that not her name anymore, she corrects him twice. So I feel that she is the one that embraced what she saw on TV, the glow, and now became what they been looking for. I also loved the color palette and how Jane plays with it in many formats and platforms throughout the movie.
Tara (Maddie) just had to give up on Isabel who chose to stay in the delusion. Early in the movie, when she's first telling Owen about the show having just watched it together, she describes Isabel as bit cowardly. At the end, when he tackles her and runs away, you see the disappointment on her face that she can't save Isabel. Obviously, she can't stay in the midnight realm for long because in reality Mr. Melancholy and his minions are around and she's lying there helpless. Plus, it's implied that once she was back in the midnight realm she had to travel back accross the States back to their town (Void?) so she can meet up with Isabel/Owen again, so yet more time has passed. I would like to imagine that once she's out again she's desperately looking for where Isabel is buried. Since the movie is from Isabel's/Owen's perspective, we never get a clear view of the real world, so as far as Isabel/Owen/viewers are concerned, Maddie is just gone and that's all we know. I got zero indication that Tara's final disappearance meant she gave up. Of course she had to leave the midnight realm, so the real her could get her heart back and get to safety. Tara, being the driving badass, would fight on without Isabel if she had to. ((Orrrrrrr she put both hearts in her own chest, strengthened the psychic bond and found Isabel just in time to get her out of the ground, and stole some luna juice so she can save Isabel's mind from the midnight realm later.)) I think the pictures appearing over the constalations just symbolised the revelation of forgotten context and depth; meaning returning to what is otherwise just a soulless map. At the end, when he screams at that kid's party and everyone just freezes, I think that's just the midnight realm waiting for his little moment of clarity to pass, not validating it by acknowledging it. That's how my mind resolves it, but really I'm sure it's just cool cinematography to emphasise how lost and suppressed he is and how meaningless the illusion is. The title, "The Pink Opaque", to me, means the glaringly obvious femininity that is being self-denied (especially since it's written in lipstick), but what do I know? Just my take. And "there is still time" just means "you still have enough oxygen in your system to wake up and crawl out of the dirt so you CAN still get out, but hurry ". This is an interesting video and you mentioned things I never thought of, but I don't think you really got all the symbolism... Like the weird demon dances, the fact the baddy is a moon, Owen pouring the water on the fire (of hope - and possibly his last remnant of psychic beacon) at the end and the earlier glimpses of him at the fire, the drain lords and the idea of them being helpless if you don't think about them, the early mention of the magical dress, the suggestion that the memories of their lives up until being captured and drugged were being rationalised as just a TV show they watched, the movie being largely set at night, night-time itself being closely linked to the baddies and their ways (moons, midnight realm = dreams, drowsiness, scariness?), the colour-coding of themes, Mr. Melancholy having a weird open-mouth expression at Isabel's last real-world glance at him (injecting the fake memories?), why he licked her face, why he's played by a woman, why Owen drooled on the blue cotton candy instead of eating it, MM's evil plan requiring 100 hearts from 100 awkward kids.. I think there's always more to dig up. >=D Thanks for the video though. Glad I'm not the only one this movie affected. By the way, isn't it interesting how much this has in common with the Matrix which was made by people who turned out to be transgender women?
@@khush1894 Nah, I mean that there is a fake reality that is taken as the truth by the people stuck in it. The Midnight Realm and the Matrix are very similar concepts.
mr melancholy has their hearts (their identities) and he can kill them at any time because they don’t have them. but once owen realizes who he is (sees the tv glow inside him) he’s free (maybe??)
@@poppyseed5056 No, Still trapped there, he has yet to find his heart, which to put it simply, he was living a lonely life and wanted to feel something real rather the assumed life that he was instilled in it. This is classic psychology 101.
What about when Owen wasn't breathing well and had dry lips? I thought this was him actually being in the coffin and about to die and go to the pink opaque.
The way I interpreted it was if he were to die as Owen, he would never make it to the Pink Opaque; that dying as Owen would mean success for Mr. Melancholy, that Isabel died under the ground without ever realizing her true self again. The chapped lips and severe asthma are the physical effects of what Isabel is experiencing after being buried alive in the Pink Opaque while Owen cannot bring himself to save her, to save himself, to save herself. Maddy went back to the Pink Opaque, to their true reality, and clawed her way to the surface as Tara. At the time the movie ends Owen has yet to do the same, but as long as he is still alive, "there is still time."
It could either be Owen is actually Isabelle and is slowing thing from being buried alive, or a metaphor for how would crushing it is to hide who you are
The visuals and soundtrack are just as important as the characters. Life is full of emotional ups and downs. The world keeps on turning even if your filled with doubt.
I do think that Maddy was right -- the Pink Opaque is the real world and the world they live in is a jail that Mr. Melancholy has trapped them in. Haven't seen your first video so I don't know if it was discussed but one of the bigger clues is Owen's voice. We know Justice Smith doesn't sound like that, and from the get go it felt strangely like a woman's voice being manipulated and pitched down. Another clue was how the show seemed to have been edited upon Owen's rewatch years later, with kids readily submitting to the Ice Cream man. Isabel and Tara aren't even in the revised ep. In that sense it's close to Mulholland Drive, in that it's not just symbols but the actual internal logic of the film's universe. Great video! Lots of food for thought. Wasn't expecting anything and just fell in love with this movie. Here's hoping more and more people discover I Saw The TV Glow and your channel through it :)
Looking at Maddie's burial as a suicide is a bit of a cisgender and too literal view of her transition. Often for people who transition or come out as queer they are required to bury, or kill, their past life/past self in order to make space for the new life. Maddie was telling Owen he had to murder and burry his current life to be born again, as most transgender people do. But instead Owen chooses the evil he knows, rather than the unguarenteed happiness of being made into something new (his authentic self)
Thanks for explaining the meaning of the ice-cream truck, since that was the one thing I didn’t understand on first watch. I know some found the ending abrupt, but I think Schoenbrun chose to end the film with Owen resuming his job after the bathroom scene for it to be deliberately unsatisfying for the audience, as we know he still makes the wrong choice of resuming his miserable life (even if there is still time). I also feel that Maddie also doesn’t really get her happy ending either. She/Tara can't truly return to a new life/season of The Pink Opaque unless Owen/Isabel joins her. She may have accepted who she is, but she is still alone without Owen/Isabel who knows what she's going through.
The man in the moon(mister melancholy) is extremely reminiscent of a really old silent film called " voyage to the moon" or something to that effect. It was super creepy and yet beautiful at the same time. Just like this film is....
Thank you for this video. I got very frustrated watching other videos about this movie and they just… don’t get it. The movie felt like it was meant for me. This is a trans movie, a queer movie, a neurodivergent movie. Seeing other reviewers bash it for the very things that speak to the people it’s meant for, and all the surface level readings with no look into the subtext, it made me so mad. So thank you for taking the time to understand.
Im not entirely sure on this detail but the bleakness on his face when he describes having a family and being happy is something I noticed my first time watching it but hearing an explanation on what the film means gives alot more meaning and sadness to that scene.
Glad to see a video like this. I was really fascinated by this movie and just couldn’t find many videos REALLY talking about it aside from reviews. Definitely gained yourself a fan.
So so thrilled to hear it was a worthy video for you cuz it was a longer one on my channel, and I'm so glad you wanna see more, plenty to come! Thank you so much for watching!!
I just saw this movie. I felt like I didn't fully understand it, so I looked for a video to help me direct my thoughts. I saw your video and ended up crying. Thank you for the intonation and explanation you made of the film, a hug.
I wrote a whole novel as a comment, deleted it, tried to make it shorter but wrote another novel. I hope the 3rd time is the charm. Less detail, more to the point. I liked this movie and even though it was meant to represent the LQBT+ community I think most people can relate to a lot of the feelings the characters go though. Discovering who you truly are is universal. However, I think some people who watch this film won't get it. They will think it was horrible because they are use to movies spelling everything out and ending with a happily ever after ending. I just hope there isn't so many of those people that they tank the ratings and people who could really benefit from watching this don't end up seeing it. (Yes, this is my short version).
This is my first video of yours, and I just wanted to thank you for not glossing over the inherent transness of the film in favor of ignoring it or saying the movie is representing something else. ❤
i feel like something that also made this movie stand out was that it obviously had analog horror aspects and is also extremely reminiscent to an old creepypasta, candle cove
@4:54 kind of felt like the kid saying he “never want the ice cream man to go away” then we see an ice cream cone melting and bothering the kid. is like holding on to things for too long it can become distorted, lackluster and repulsive maybe even haunting . As if we have to experience things for a short time due to entropy
There are movies and tv shows from when i was a kid in the nineties that i refuse to watch out of fear of them falling flat to the nostalgia of it all in my memories.
I think that they really are trapped and dying and the “real world” is the mirage. The scenes from the “real world” don’t feel real. They do feel like dreams. I think Maddie escaped and has to fight an actual magic demon. It’s the inhaler and the wheezing that really sells it for me.
My head-cannon is that Tara saved Isabelle and now they live happily in their world together. The whole “being turned into a tv show” is 100% real and what happened. No one attempted, no one is hurt. It’s a happy ending where no one is sad…. Right…
That was immediately my first thought too after watching this film. It would've been a more satisfying ending imo. They leave the real world to be in the show after all 🩷
For me personally the biggest thing in contention is if the pink opaque world is real or not. Which makes sense as it’s the central theme of the plot. Yet I have decided to theorize on both. If the pink opaque world isn’t real, then narratively your reading makes sense. It’s sad and heart breaking. Yet it also makes sense Yet if the pink opaque world is real then I have my own theory on what it could mean narratively. The real world symbolizing the closet and the pink opaque world symbolizes queer expression. It would also make the ending sad as Owen’s inability to take the leap and leave the closet and become Isabel. Which would also narratively line up with what the director wanted.
Just watched the film. Funny, in my mind when watching the trailer I imagined it to be wildly different as it is labeled a horror. I was expecting the elements of a horror until I realized that I was noting the nostalgic and memory feeling I was having. Then all of a sudden it clicked on the bench: this is an existential horror. It made so much sense to frame the horror around identity. The little point about his asthma really hits home. He’s suffocates if he doesn’t medicate. When he’s rewatching the pink opaque (since I watch movies with the subtitles) the subtitles reads for the girl in the show as ‘the fake’. The end felt so painful. Cause he’s apologizing for his existence while everyone around him doesn’t even react. Doesn’t care. That’s … life.
I don’t why but the show gave a bit of Buffy the vampire vibes and when I said that boom. Amber Benson pop up as the mom of the the friend Owen said he was staying at. The message of this movie was so raw I was crying for hours the sound track was amazing.
The moon instantly reminded me of the nineties because of the Smashing Pumpkins video and then there’s the smashing pumpkins cover. Thought that was cool
me and my boyfriend (both trans) cried and squeezed each other's hand at several points during this movie; at the end we were pinned to our seats for a few minutes, unable to process everything
something i haven't seen a whole lot of speculation about is a recurring line about the Pink Opaque's airtime, it's the last show on before the tv switches to black and white reruns. If we're looking at symbolism of black and white, we know these are representative of binary (0/1), so going forward with the idea of the Pink Opaque symbolizing the truthful self, it's.. also the last piece of color before the world turns black and white. If you miss the Pink Opaque, everything after that is monotonous reruns of a black and white show, and tying in with the incremental loss of color as Owen gets older and further away from his true self, represented as the Pink Opaque, it's almost like his life became those old black and white reruns, stuck along the binary path with the color just outside his reach.
I feel like your analysis is way too light on the trans symbolism in this film. I see it as Owen and Maddy actually ARE Isabelle and Tara. After the end of the final episode in which we can see Isabelle being fed the poison and being trapped in what looks like our world, it goes back to the first scene of the film with Owen inside the tent and the tent literally has stripes of the trans colors. I think this is pretty loud symbolism of Isabelle being trapped inside a boy's body. And the main theme of this movie is Yeule's 'Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl', which only plays in scenes featuring Owen because they ARE Isabelle. And yeah, Maddy and Owen may be just crazy and socially inept. You can see it as Maddy just using suicide as a way to escape. But I think these doubts we and Owen see only push the trans symbolism further. When I was pre-transition, I had many moments where I asked myself "is this real?" There were many moments of doubt. The possibility that Maddy's story might be fake only reinforces the trans experience of repression and doubt. Despite knowing this truth exists inside of you, you're still overwhelmed with these doubts. But despite this, Owen IS Isabelle and must push forward into living authentically. You also mentioned toward the end that the pink opaque as a concept refers to the inside of the self that is unseen. If Owen is doubting the reality of the Pink Opaque, isn't that symbolically doubting the truth of their own identity, meaning that they really are Isabelle from that TV show? If the Pink Opaque really is just a TV show, it implies that Owen's destiny is to lose both his parents at a young age and become extremely decrepit in middle age for barely any reason. Isn't that too nihilistic and cruel? I think it would be worth it to speak to a trans friend who's seen this movie or even better collaborate with a trans film youtuber that you know to properly analyze the trans symbolisms that you've barely scratched here.
The end scene puts a different emphasis on the movie title. It is titled "I saw the TV glow", and from a never-watched perspective, emphasis is on "TV glow". It can mean anything from "I watched TV last night", to "I walked by your room and saw the TV glow under the door", etc. We know now that the TV represents Owen' and Maddie's escapism, reflection, and true selves. For me, in the end scene, when Owen cuts himself open and smiles at what he sees in the mirror, a new hope is formed, and the emphasized word in the movie title changes: "I SAW the tv glow." This time, however, there's an implied addition: "I SAW the tv glow inside me." Not a mere means of escaping anymore - a realization, an acceptance. I feel like Owen walking briskly through the crowd apologizing is both him apologizing (duh), but him being revitalized. He's moving faster than we've seen him in his adult "form" before... Anyway... This was an amazing movie experience. Went to watch it with my 14 y.o. teen in a retro theatre - the Mayfair, in Ottawa (Canada) - built in 1932. Everything SCREAMED nostalgia. And the discussions after the movie, between her and I (both LGBTQ2SIA+), were fascinating.
Thank you, I didn't understand why I just didn't get this movie, until I realized I've always been really good with who I am... I've never had these issues... but I get it since so many of my friends go through it... thank you, I'm going to re-watch this...
Just wanted to say thank you for doing a full breakdown of this film. I think upon my first watch I didn't fully understand some of the more intricate complexities film was trying to showcase especially the ending. with that said you definitely changed my whole perspective on this film and I'm very thankful for it! will probably give it another rewatch soon :)
As a straight man of colour who has been on his own for the longest time and somehow lost myself and still finding my true self, this movie moved something phenomenal within me. I am very introverted and have no friends, I cried immensely after watching this movie in an empty theatre. This movie moved me to a point where I went for a re-watch. I am so happy that this film was released. I also bought this movie on Apple TV. Idk, how to even explain, how melancholic and deeply horrifying and beautiful this movie was. Much like Isabel I’ve been on a journey where there’s so much that I’ve gone through since I left home for good, moved to multiple different states and cities, brutally got destroyed by the real world but kept going.. but also much like Owen, I’ve had to confirm to some aspects of the modern world. The element of hard hitting loneliness hit me like a truck. This movie felt like a horror dream or a wake up call. It scared me, it made me feel like I was running out of time, it made me existentially anxious and also awakened. This is true cinema.
I didnt inturpret the Maddie leaving as her dieing, I thought she transitioned, she (he? not sure how to do pronouns here) keeps saying Maddies not her name.
This movie made me cry so hard. As a trans person it spoke to me in ways most media doesn’t. I haven’t felt this scene and understood in a film since The Matrix and its rich transgender allegories.
I think this movie is beautiful, it really did capture that feeling of trying hard to forget who you really are, no matter how hard it hurts and till you eventually run out of time. It’s insane how well they carried out the vibe through out the entire thing. For my fellow trans folk; we all have our own person behind that screen, so take their hand
This was such a pleasure to watch. None of my friends have seen it, so I am down the rabbit hole of analyses. This is one of the best I've encountered.
I loved this movie so much. The visuals were so nostalgic and they reminded me of everything from my 8th grade smashing pumpkins poster to my small tv with a knob and antennas. I think your breakdown made me love it that much more after seeing it through your words. The choice of having a biracial protagonist made the movie so much more relatable. Thank you so much❤
I think the whole “pink opaque is real” also connects to the seemingly impossible task of transitioning. Nowadays it’s more normalized and while people still feel what he’s feeling it’s not as far as an impossibility as it used to be. To Maddie she (imo) made it through and whatever transformation they needed happened. But to Owen its unfathomable even if he himself is hallucinating/finding glimpses of the show being reality
I just rewatched it on Max. And I agree that Maddie went through spiritual death, as Owen continues to suffocate hiding himself. Even with the wheezing at the end, like he’s struggling to breathe. The sad part though, is that after he sees his insides he apologizes for it. Just like Maddie told him not to do from Act 1
Did anyone else notice how soul crushing and hollow Owen looked when he said he had a family of his own? He looked so uncomfortable in that scene. I also noticed the asthma got worse as the movie went on, symbolizing his true self suffocating in the Pink Opaque and time running out.
I enjoyed your analysis, but I think your reading of Maddie and Owen's ending pretty definitively misses the allegory of the film as one about the trans experience. Maddie, in the sense of the literal plot as we see it, does undergo a "death" in her being buried alive - but I believe this to be a reflection of the death of one's former identity when they undergo a transition. Sure, "Maddie" does die, but only in that they have become Tara, their true self. This metaphorical death of the self scares Owen, and he rejects Maddie's attempts to save him. Owen goes on to live an unfulfilling life. The Pink Opaque, to Owen as far as I believe, is representative of escapism through media whereby queer people live vicariously. Owen is not prepared to transition, so he watches The Pink Opaque as a means to escape into what he believes to just be a fantasy; To Owen, his being Isabel is not attainable. Later, though, Owen attempts to rewatch the show and once more live vicariously through it, but escapism can only fulfill him for so long, and the show feels childish and shallow in his older years. When Owen cuts his chest open in the bathroom, he receives concrete proof that Maddie was right - that this life he has is not a representation of who he truly is (Isabel). Even with this, Owen is not prepared to take the leap and transition. His journey is one of repression; repression of who we truly are. I believe that Maddie's ending is a happy one, but she does not return because other's can only get us so far. At the end of the day, we ourselves must take the leap and become who we are meant to be. Maddie cannot save Owen if he is not ready to save himself.
I think you did a fantastic job breaking this down. I just finished this film a few minutes before watching your video. This movie hit me very hard because there was so much success in capturing the 90’s. I felt like I was vicariously walking back through my childhood. This was unsettling to me because I reflect on that time and feel that sort of longing to return and dread that I can’t quite explain. I think…things mean so much more as a child than as an adult. Is it due to not being exposed as much to insecurities or disappointment? Or is it more that insignificant things matter more and as an adult more significant things hold that importance? I don’t know. But I’m happy, as an adult, to go back to that mindset.
So happy to read I am not the only person that goes to a "explained' video after a watch. At first, I didn't really catch the overtones... I just thought it was a really well done film. Sure there were some parts that screamed "woke sh*t", But after reading some comments here and there, now I'm seeing the deeper meaning. The nostalgia was definitely on point.
I REALLY want a sequel where it's just the Pink Opaque girls having a more traditional Monster of the Week Adventure. I know that would kind of defeat the purpose of the movie, but... it would feel good. 😅
the lightning struck tree with the pink opaque papers all over right before maddy’s “return” and the shot of the empty grave behind the football field rly make me think that her return is his projection of her and he’s just thinking abt that time of his life now because he learns of her death. idk i took a lot of the story less literally i think he’s still at a point of imagining either doing what maddy did, or conforming and never being true to his inner self.
I picked up some new things from the video, such a great breakdown. This is the first video of yours that I watched and I thoroughly enjoyed it, subbed!
Great breakdown this movie triggered me on so many level. I thought that maybe Maddie was his alter ego but wouldn’t have explained the tapes. The thought of suicide being an escape was very heart breaking sadly I think Owen just continues to repress his true self. Maybe both were examples of what not to do while the writer offers a glow of hope in saying it’s never too late there’s still time to live our truth.💖
Love your analysis! But I do disagree on the interpretation of the film's conclusion/what is the actually Truth (i.e. i disagree that maddie's arc is representative of suicide, I believe she is the only one able who is fully able to self-actualize through grueling self-sacrifice and crawling out of the cocoon of her former self) All I have to say is pay attention to the name of the bar Maddie takes own to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I saw the trailer and promotional and thougnt the film was gonna be way diffent, mostly just like what the show Pink Opauqe was about but more coming of age I was expecting people fighting weird monsters coming from their tv into their subrubs And instead I get a gem that made me bawl my eyes out
Great analysis, Lucas, I found your take on the film very original. You're the first person I've heard attempt to explain the title of The Pink Opaque. I never made the connection between "a pink thing you can't see through" and flesh, but that seems so clear now that you say it.
Wow. I haven’t thought about that case in forever, but there are some other bizarre parallels that struck me immediately when I read your comment. It was revealed in the documents uploaded by Randy Stair before the murder/suicide that they experienced gender dysphoria. They came to believe that they were not in fact Randy Stair, but rather a ghost girl named Andrew Blaze who had an entire life of her own in another dimension, that being the “dimension” that was portrayed in the show Danny Phantom. They thought they would return to their “real life” there after they died.
I found it hard to piece this film together while watching and was unsure on how to take it once it finished but I'm still thinking about it 4 days later and how important its message is, plus the soundtrack is fire 🔥
Beautiful video. Well done. Especially the very end. This movie has earned a place in the LGBT film cannon. It was a bit slow for me, but overall very beautiful and meaningful. I'm an out and proud transgender person and I felt so bad for Owen, knowing the light and power they are missing within themselves and the world.
@12:45 when the show looked completely different. I felt like it couldn’t have just been “rose tinted lenses” effect cuz even the plot seemed altered, went from teen wolf to goosebumps . But it could have been we only seen glimpses of that episode through Maddy and Owen but as an adult it showed what really happened being Maddy and Owen’s present Trauma maybe rewrote the experience. But Tara looked completely different
this is a very thought provoking explanation of these scenes and i would love for you to make more videos about this movie if that is something you’re interested in! Cant believe there’s only 67 comments because this is the most interesting and shocking movie i have ever seen. Including the trans allegory aspect is very important and i’m glad you included that too while other reviews haven’t unless it was done by a trans person.
Maddie's character was already questioning herself from the beggining. Owen saw her as weird and mysterious like himself and clicked with him. Maddie has a best friend that watches the show with them. Maddie migh have had to open up to her but she did not reciprocate so Owen filled that space. The show maybe has played a part in helping her open but it ended on a terrible cliffhanger. Something that Maddie does not take kindly because it clicked with them. Maddie experiences their identity maybe Owen might have also been interested or open to try and explore when they show the scenes of dress up. Maddie dissapears and Owen falls in a depression. Maddie comes back and tries their new identity with Owen but he thinks shes crazy and they have a falling out. Owen tries to lead a normal life putting all that in the past but hes not only ignoring it, hes also liying to himself. In the end, he beggins to accept once hes older I want to bring up the fact that Owen could have either been Autistic or Schizophrenic but its never said. Thats why he ended up clinging to such activities and suppresing some memories up with memories of the show. His best friend leaving, his mom dying of cancer and his dad having a heartattack was also adding to suppressed trauma. Also the whole "dumb cheesy show we overhyped when we were young" plays a big part with stuck adults. It reminded me of Ghost Rider, Alex Mack, Are you Afraid of the Dark and how we remember happiness. Rewatching it becomes therapy by nostalgia like a time machine, trying to ease us up by remembering when life didnt feel that complicated
who is this DIVA 💜 okay, jk but i just rewatched this movie with my friend who’s never seen it before and NEEDED a video analysis immediately. this one is so great!! love it!! 💕
At the end he sounds like he's having an asthma attack. Earlier in the film, his mother reminds him about his asthma inhaler. I thought the ending was more about a reflection of his relationship with his parents.
To me personally. I get being yourself and you should be yourself. no matter what people think . I understand that aspect. I also think that there's nothing wrong with not given into things that you feel like you want or need. I mean that young boy could've been pushed into something or at that time felt a certain way but as his life went on he realized that that wasn't who he was. Not every thought that we have not every impulse or desire is good for us.
I didnt see it as sybolic but literal. The characters from the show are the real versions of characters from the movie. They were both trapped in a mind proson but the girl broke out and tried to save her friend. He was to used to the world hes trapped in to want to escape. The part he screams and everyone stops was a little glitch in the mind trap from him knowing it deep down. Im sure its symbolic but i think when it comes to the story its what i said it is.
I think Maddie's death and rebirth are meant to describe the sacrifice required to be your true self within a family/town/culture that will not accept you (not actual suicide). After we grow up, some of us are forced to choose between our lives and our selves - not necessarily our literal lives, but the price is steep enough that it may as well be. Owen and Maddie's circumstances both required heavy sacrifices. Maddie decided to go through with it, it was as painful and miserable as being buried alive, but it was ultimately worth it. Owen decided to choose his life instead of his self, and time did not go easy on him. But then I like the "there is still time" too, because there always is, even if you wish you had done something sooner
Couldn’t help but do the full breakdown and would love to discuss your thoughts as well, let me know below!
what was going on after he’s finished watching the last episode in the scene with his dad
As much as I know the pink opaque wasn’t actually a real alternate world and the show wasn’t some cosmic horror, I still love the idea that Tara and Isabelle ARE actually Owen and Maddie. It’s such a fascinating and original idea. Would’ve loved to see some a different ending where Owen actually becomes Isabella again.
@@bruh7837 way I see it is a symbolic but harsh "beating the gay away" by the dad. I don't think he's got any other line than "Isn't that a show for girls?" in the entire film, and you can definitely tell Owen is terrified of him, even addressing him. That specific scene seems to cater to the father's POV, in that he catches his son watching girly stuff AGAIN, getting perverted by the TV AGAIN, getting those weird ideas in his head AGAIN, and not-so-subtly beats it out of him.
Now Owen vomiting Mr Melancholy's poison Luna juice is trickier. Does this mean that, in reality, Mr Melancholy is actually HELPING Owen and Maddie with the juice? Or is it, via the father's POV, a sort of "drinking the cool-aid" analogy, and he's "saving" his son from it? I think it's a bit of both. The Moon is also a very feminine figure, opposite the Sun in most mythologies, so... make of this what you will! :D
Just a thought, in the first act, Owen tells Maddie on the bench that hes afraid of opening his insides and pulling them out with a shovel only to find nothing. But the very ending of the film, is him opening his insides and getting that beautiful vision and self-actualization feeling. I think a lot of people relate to that; feeling like whatever you want to do with your life is "nothing", and being afraid that youre truly hollow and all along you were delusional about your aspirations which is why you should never commit. I hope this makes a little bit of sense lol
oh my god this is profound wtf
well said!
I thought he was talking about being asexual on that scene but this makes more sense
Reminds me of ego death.
This is actually a misread on the scene. Owen doesn’t say they’re afraid of opening their insides. Owen says when he thinks about his sexuality he feels like someone has emptied his insides with a shovel and he says “I know there’s nothing there”. You are correct though that there is something there and we see it later in the movie. Owen had just “buried” his true self/feelings that that is what makes him feel empty. The suppression. It also ties into the talk about the show characters being burried and living in the midnight realm and so on. The problem, as Owen fully says in that scene, is that he’s afraid and nervous about actually checking inside to see if it’s true or not. He’s scared and nervous, not about being empty but that he may not be empty and those suppressed feelings are still there. When he opens himself later and sees there is something in there, he’s happy but he goes back to hiding and apologizing for bothering the people around him with his feelings and needs. He knows his fear and choices are killing him but he’s too scared to do what is needed to live.
I don't think that Maddie is dead, though she may certainly have attempted. I think Maddie underwent a symbolic death to transition. Her entire appearance is different, more butch than her high school persona. Language around death in regards to transitioning is pretty common, particularly when referring to previously gendered names as "dead names." But I think the thing that was the most haunting to me was the casting and the sets. Owen's unseen best friend's mother is Amber Benson, who played Tara on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. His father is a 90's nu-metal singer. His coworkers are Pete and Pete. Within the context of the movie, Owen is literally living in the husk of a 90's television show. All of the actors are there, and we, as knowing audience members, clock those actors and the realization of who they are is screaming at us that everything Maddie is telling Owen is true. Owen walks the halls of a basically empty school, where the bulleting boards are messages yelling To Thine Own Self Be True. He turns and talks directly to camera like Claire Danes in My So Called Life. They go to the Double Lunch and there's a musical interlude, just like in the Pink Opaque, and just like they used to do on Buffy when acts would perform at The Bronze. He says he has a happy family, but we never see them. When he has his moment of cracking at the fun center no one reacts. They're all just extras. He's apologizing to everyone and no one says anything. They don't even realize he's there. Owen IS in the trap, and we can all see it. And eventually he does too, but man I found that tragic. A lot of people complain about the ending being abrupt, but that's also what happens in the Pink Opaque. It's deeply disturbing, happens too fast, and there's no resolution and it HURTS. God I loved this movie.
I get that reading and I know a lot of people connect with it. For me; while I see value in it I don't like the interpretation that what Maddy does is a healthy approach to self acceptance because I feel the alternative speaks more to what media is and how many people myself included experience it. I hear the pink opaque compared frequently to buffy the vampire slayer and like the pink opaque its a show that means a lot to people because it expresses to them a world where feminity isn't just left unpunished but is celebrated. but while that can be true the show doesn't always live up to those principles and its also a show lead by a abusive man who bullied the young women on the show throughout the production. So which is the real buffy the vampire slayer? The one that expressed a world the audience wanted to escape to or the one which still reflects many 90s retrograde gender norms and was made by people who were very much not part of the world the show described when it was at its best? A show can mean a lot to someone but when they put it on a pedestal, see it as realer than reality, live through the show and fixate on it to the exclusion of everything else which is true of many peoples relationship to pieces of media including buffy that can be really unhealthy especially given that every show, film, piece of music, book or video game was made by someone painfully human. Maddy ultimately disappears from the world to live in the artificial world of the pink opaque in a form of media hyper fixation akin to suicide as they cease to exist in anything but the pink opaque while Owen goes to the other extreme and rejects the idea that the show ever had any value and was ultimately just a dumb show undeserving of attention or internal reflection of why they gravitated to the show in the first place. Neither perspective is healthy and a more balanced approach to media like the pink opaque or buffy would be to treat those shows as valuable yet flawed and human works of art that reflected something about themselves and learn from that. But that doesn't happen for either character and both are left unmoored and lost because of it in completely opposite ways. Maddy has abandoned real life and Owen has surrendered themselves to it at the cost of their sense of self. The healthy thing for both of them would be to support eachother in a world that feels hostile and uncaring but instead they only connect with eachother on the basis of the pink opaque and then Maddy abandons life and Owen abandons themself. For me as someone who tends to hyper fixate on media the way these characters do for reasons similar to them the idea that sealing ones self in a coffin, getting buried alive and being reward by living forever in a well remembered nostalgic tv show is subtextually the same as self acceptance isn't what I personally need from the movie even though I understand the value of the reading of the pink opaque being real and the "real" world being artificial.
@@Countgreenhorn i don't personally know which interpretation is correct but "what you need from the movie" has no bearing on what it actually means lol
i didnt clock any of these actors probably because im too young and not a movie buff but this makes so much sense
That’s a really great interpretation of the movie! I was so confused by a lot of it until I read some of these comments. The only thing I gathered from the movie was that it didn’t have a happy ending. The villain in the pink opaque was Mr. Melancholy, and that was the exact vibe of him apologizing to those people on his way out of the arcade. So obviously our hero didn’t win.
Edit: worded that wrong. Owen was not the Hero, Maddy tried to be, but failed.
So being a butch lesbian means you're actually deep down trans? Homophobic.
Even though the main characters were suppose to be queer, I still relate as an inner city straight black man. I think a lot of us escape through nostalgia to cope with a world that does not fully allow us to express ourselves freely. Thank you for your break down. This was a good movie
yeah, the movie is a trans allegory, for people like us, but i always glad to see a cis person connecting with it, we are now so different, after all
@@kuyevon yeah I didn't know the movie was supposed to be (in a way) for them, and then I found out about the director too, but that message applies greatly to everybody, and its a brilliant movie.
I’m a trans woman and my daughter is a cis woman and we watched this together and were both equally moved and mortified and it sparked the most profound conversation I’ve ever had with her. The movie was no less relatable to her than it was to me. It’s a masterpiece.
I think she says something like, "Don't apologize" and that stuck with me regarding the ending. He keeps saying sorry over and over to people who don't see him or ignore him, which to me read that while he did have a moment of clarity, he did what he had always done: If you don't think about, it isn't real. So he took a figurative step back and apologized, despite having nothing to apologize for, and that was so sad to me...
I understood that scene like that as well... as someone who often has to apologize for being themselves, that really broke my heart.
I don't think Maddie committed suicide. I think she came back to get Isabel so she could live her life as who she knows she really is. But he didn't want to do that, so Maddie had no choice but to move forward with her life. She knew Isabel would never fully accept who she really was, and that if she stayed with Isabel, she would die inside like Isabel
Exactly this. Nobody can crack someone’s egg for them. It’s a personal journey on your own time, if you ever even break free.
This!! While she was talking about being burried alive all I could think of was that cheesy (but still, true) quote about how your new life will cost you your old one. Mostly because of the whole “that’s not my name” part, I believe she grew into her identity and her storyline (unlike Isabel’s, sadly) is a more hopeful one idk
The movie ends signifying that he's running out of air. He even says I'm dying. Just a metaphor of what happens when you suppress who you are for so long.
He doesn’t develop asthma until the end when Maddie is telling him he’s actually Isabelle and is buried alive. His inability to admit to who he actually is is killing him.
@@Honeydoyou Owen's mom asks if he remembered his inhaler the first time he went to sleep over with Maddy as a seventh grader. Although I'd agree that Owen seems to outwardly experience the symptoms of his asthma during moments of suppression and it ties to the idea that his decision to ignore his real identity is killing him
I think the running out of air is to make real how she is suffocating being buried alive in the Pink Opaque world. But I agree about it also being a metaphor for feeling trapped in your own skin.
This movie is a violent wake up call to be yourself
I love this sm
I agree, regardless of who you are, be the real you, live your best life
"I found my heart, oh my God, Isabel, I found yours too. It was still beating. Stored in an industrial freezer." GOOSEBUMPS GOOSEBUMPS GOOSEBUMPS!
Are they the industrial freezer?
Can you explain that?
@@evelynfarrell7355 i think the “hearts” symbolize their true identity and after being “buried alive” and coming to accept who they are, maddy finds her heart. isabel’s/owen’s heart was also there beating meaning that there is still time for isabel to accept themself.
The industrial freezer is the society@@jordankmart4411
@@razzlemekazzle ohhhh I see. Wow that’s powerful. Thank you!
I think Maddi made it back to the Pink Opaque, symbolically meaning she found herself. I think Owen's ending is bitter sweet.
is it that maddy ended up finding herself and living the life that resembles tara/the pink opaque? while watching i thought she was being delusional about literally being "in the show" but was the reality that she was just living like the characters and being openly "different" ? and maybe to owen it sounded like she was trying to live in the show so thats why she said it like that?
Yeah, that's what I thought as well. Especially because Maddi took Owen to what I assumed to be a queer bar. They had the conversation about the Pink Opaque while Phoebe Bridgers was performing in the background. I really did not see her ending as her ending her life but rather leaving the town and/or becoming her true self.
@@mabemorayeah that was more so my interpretation as well
Bitter sweet? I think Owen's ending is sad af like he literally lived the rest of his "life" being scared to find out who he really was knowing that it doesn't feel right.
@@JetsuLIVEI actually thought he was going to be himself for the rest of his life. I interpreted the way he smiled when he saw inside himself as him finally waking up to the truth. I also thought the way he walks towards the screen was very reminiscent (posture wise) of how maddy walked towards him after coming back from the pink opaque in the grocery store. When he’s walking towards the screen as though he’s walking away from the midnight realm instead of burrowing back into it, was to me at least, showing that he wasn’t going to keep living that lie. Maybe I’m just an optimist though
One really nice bit of detail I saw in the movie was the use of colors to communicate how Owen feels. There’s lots of Blue on the screen when he’s at the fair with his mom, on the walls at his work, and he’s wearing lots of blue after he rejects Maddie’s offer. Even the liquid Mr. Melancholy makes Isabel and Tara drink is blue. There’s pink on screen when Owen is objectively happy, like when the show is on or Isabel’s dress color, or the name of the show. And I feel like there was a lot of red on screen when Owen and Maddie first go to the bar where Maddie tells Owen what’s been going on. It just feels so purposeful with just about everything it does, I hope people continue talking about this movie for years to come.
This color choice is toaso represent not only being happy but being happy as a girl as Isabel. She's not happy as a boy surrounded by blue. She spits into the cotton candy. The ghost is pink which she tries to wipe off but can't because she can't stop herself from being trans.
I was picking up on the contrast of pink and its complementary color: green.
Having rewatched it twice, almost all the green in the movie is electric (the fishtank in the basement, the games) or cool (the school halls, the produce section of the grocery store, the football field at night, the lawns of suburbia.) The only exception to this rule, and the only time we feel natural sunlight, is in the sunlight filtering through leaves behind Isabel at the summer camp, which DOESN'T get the same low-fi filtering as other footage from The Pink Opaque.
Isabel in nature ends up looking and feeling more real than Owen at almost any point in his life.
It's main color scheme is pinks, blues and whites, literally the trans flag colors lol, and considering what the colors pink and blue are meant to represent and how they're used in the movie... yeah, not all that subtle.
I also took the 'opaque' part of Pink Opaque to be an extension of that metaphor of pink = euphoria; representing the desired state where everything is solid pink - not just subtle accents of pink
Also that blue balloon!!!
I'm not queer but this movie was incredibly touching and relatable to me. I'm neurodivergent, introverted and overall socially awkward and I've always felt like I didn't belong in this world. I often have to be someone completely different in order to fit in and it can be very exausting. The final scene where Owen cuts his chest open to reveal that beautiful glowing interior made me cry... No one should hide themselves like that and to see that what you've been hiding is actually the most beautiful thing is life changing. Unfortunately I haven't experienced that breakthrough yet, but maybe someday..
Hello?! Every single person is acting. Be it telling your friends you caught a bigger fish in order to appear manly to fit in, or walking with your chest out, or not telling anyone about your more gentle hobbies. EVERYONE does this, you aren't some anxiety riddled teen who needs some awakening. You just need to grow a spine, stop being weak, and go out and act like the rest of us. I conduct million dollar projects flying out to facilities managing strangers but am painfully shy... You get on with it and you act. That's what the world is. You're waiting for a change that won't happen.
@@philmcclenaghan7056 You don’t know me and have no idea what i’ve been through and why i’m this way. Sincerely, fuck off.
@@philmcclenaghan7056 You're an asshole Phil.
You got this! Be yourself and express your interests whatever they may be and people will be drawn to you
@@philmcclenaghan7056please stfu, you don't understand the neurodivergent brain and how alien you feel, and you never grow out of it. I'll never feel like I'm a part of this world but knowing I'm autistic makes me feel I'm ok, there are others like me. It's lonely irl but I can relate to many people on youtube and now I accept my weirdness.
I feel like a lot of people are overlooking the fact that after opening his chest up, Owen finds static and sees excerpts from black and white films there. Throughout the movie both Owen and Maddy mention multiple times that the Pink Opaque runs every Friday on the young adults channel from 10:30 to 11 p.m before reruns of old black and white movies. In a way, when Owen finally decides to actually do something and face his existential dread, exposing this static both validates what Maddy / Tara had been trying to make him understand, while also signifying that it's just… too late. He missed the show, the Pink Opaque is not on air anymore and he's left with only the reruns that are scheduled after. At first I didn't understand why he looked so elated at the sight of his open chest, to then just come back out and apologise to the fake reality he now knows he's in, but I think this says it all : it's too late for him, he knows he's living a life of deceit, but he can't change it now. To me this ending scene perfectly showed what many queer people of a certain age relate to : you can come up to your own self realisation at any age, but if you don't embrace it early enough, you might just live right past it.
I don't agree. It's never too late. There are plenty of people who have transitioned later in life, or came out of the closet late. Cate Jenner being the most famous example.
@@heysatan8 oh im not saying I agree, im just stating what I understood the message of the movie was
@@theor.1990 gotcha
I think there is something to be said about Owen repeatedly breaking the fourth wall and talking to the audience, like he doesn't believe the TV show was anything more than a TV show... and yet he knows he's in a movie?
I saw that more like Owen looking back on those experiences, like writing on a journal.
No like it’s legit like a TV show. The whole movie Owen is just in complete denial that he’s living a lie despite it being in his face the entire time.
I think the Pink Opaque is real. Maddy and Owen watching it as kids is them finding comfort in each other as two queer kids. Maddy saying the Pink Opaque is real and that she is Tara after coming back is basically her leaving their town and coming out as a butch lesbian. The last episode where Tara gets buried alive would just be Maddy leaving. Her coming back and trying to get Owen to become Isabel is her trying to help Owen to come out as a trans woman but it doesn't work. Mr. Melancholy (a stand in for society) poisoned (the Lunar juice) Owen/Isabel into repressing their feelings about being trans. The reason why Maddy doesn't come back isn't because she killed herself. It's because she can't make Owen come out. There is nothing more she can do so she leaves Owen alone but sends him one more reminder that there is still time.
The rest of the movie is about Owen living his life how society wants him too. Like you said, his freak out is him realizing he wasted his life. To me, Owen cutting himself open to see the Pink Opaque is him finally saying fuck it and opening himself up to show the real herself: Isabel.
And I think the reason why the Pink Opaque looks different when Owen watches it as an adult is because sometimes when looking back at yourself when you were a young queer kid you feel stupid you ever seen yourself that way. Especially if you've been repressing those feelings for years.
I think this movie has a deeper meaning than just lgbt issues.
@@Znetscq it's the main meaning but the theme is repression in general
Not for nothing but true sign of the nineties was seeing a commercial for a show you couldn’t watch and being completely captivated by it. That happened to me so much as a young person
anyone have thoughts on the mental breakdown scene after he watches the last episode? him screaming something along the lines of “this isn’t my life” and “you’re not my dad.” and also vomiting up tv static.
I suppose the only thought I have feels obvious to me, but it’s just in my eyes an example of pressure killing Owen for a minute. When he’s faced directly with the idea of something he was always aware of and trying to avoid, that he isn’t living the life he’s meant to, and he’s been performing and holding it in for so long seeing it verbatim with his own eyes is too much. He panicks and has violent response.
It reminded me heavily of an attempt to take my own life before my transition. Because I’d rather be me than who I was being forced to be. That scene shattered me. It was eerily similar to
It's a good representation of Owen about to commit to transitioning, his head was in the TV, the safe haven, but his dad pulls him out. In the dad's point of view he's saving him, but in truth he's making Owen suppress himself even more. Vomiting blue boy colour static in the bathtub I think supports that. It's a tragic tale. It especially hurr how when he researched the show on his new LG "lifes good" TV, he's lying exactly like his dad did on the same couch.
to me the scene subtextually reads as someone developing a alcohol or drug dependency as a way of coping from the existential pain from being queer, mixed race black with a white father and autistic. Owen's fixation with the pink opaque is something that soothes and relaxes them when the rest of the world is hostile but because it's the only thing that gives them a sense of peace they just return to it over and over again. Then they have to be lead to the shower by their dad where they vomit up static and that sequence to me reads as being coded as a scene about a young person drinking heavily or doing drugs as a coping mechanism and then violently throwing up in the shower with someone having to be there to assist them and all the while they're more willing to say the things that are causing them pain than what they would be willing to express when they're sober.
@@werr3222werrr ok take your own life because you were not allowed to wear a dress? Sounds like issues in general to me that won't go away. I wouldn't kill myself if I was forced to wear Jordan Airs every day.
Went into this movie blind and I'm still thinking about it weeks later. Thanks for making this video.
Same!! I think not knowing anything about it helped me love it more
I feel like Maddy also represents the part of Jane that made the transition, because when he calls her Maddy, she says that not her name anymore, she corrects him twice. So I feel that she is the one that embraced what she saw on TV, the glow, and now became what they been looking for. I also loved the color palette and how Jane plays with it in many formats and platforms throughout the movie.
Tara (Maddie) just had to give up on Isabel who chose to stay in the delusion. Early in the movie, when she's first telling Owen about the show having just watched it together, she describes Isabel as bit cowardly. At the end, when he tackles her and runs away, you see the disappointment on her face that she can't save Isabel. Obviously, she can't stay in the midnight realm for long because in reality Mr. Melancholy and his minions are around and she's lying there helpless. Plus, it's implied that once she was back in the midnight realm she had to travel back accross the States back to their town (Void?) so she can meet up with Isabel/Owen again, so yet more time has passed. I would like to imagine that once she's out again she's desperately looking for where Isabel is buried. Since the movie is from Isabel's/Owen's perspective, we never get a clear view of the real world, so as far as Isabel/Owen/viewers are concerned, Maddie is just gone and that's all we know. I got zero indication that Tara's final disappearance meant she gave up. Of course she had to leave the midnight realm, so the real her could get her heart back and get to safety. Tara, being the driving badass, would fight on without Isabel if she had to. ((Orrrrrrr she put both hearts in her own chest, strengthened the psychic bond and found Isabel just in time to get her out of the ground, and stole some luna juice so she can save Isabel's mind from the midnight realm later.))
I think the pictures appearing over the constalations just symbolised the revelation of forgotten context and depth; meaning returning to what is otherwise just a soulless map. At the end, when he screams at that kid's party and everyone just freezes, I think that's just the midnight realm waiting for his little moment of clarity to pass, not validating it by acknowledging it. That's how my mind resolves it, but really I'm sure it's just cool cinematography to emphasise how lost and suppressed he is and how meaningless the illusion is. The title, "The Pink Opaque", to me, means the glaringly obvious femininity that is being self-denied (especially since it's written in lipstick), but what do I know? Just my take. And "there is still time" just means "you still have enough oxygen in your system to wake up and crawl out of the dirt so you CAN still get out, but hurry ". This is an interesting video and you mentioned things I never thought of, but I don't think you really got all the symbolism... Like the weird demon dances, the fact the baddy is a moon, Owen pouring the water on the fire (of hope - and possibly his last remnant of psychic beacon) at the end and the earlier glimpses of him at the fire, the drain lords and the idea of them being helpless if you don't think about them, the early mention of the magical dress, the suggestion that the memories of their lives up until being captured and drugged were being rationalised as just a TV show they watched, the movie being largely set at night, night-time itself being closely linked to the baddies and their ways (moons, midnight realm = dreams, drowsiness, scariness?), the colour-coding of themes, Mr. Melancholy having a weird open-mouth expression at Isabel's last real-world glance at him (injecting the fake memories?), why he licked her face, why he's played by a woman, why Owen drooled on the blue cotton candy instead of eating it, MM's evil plan requiring 100 hearts from 100 awkward kids.. I think there's always more to dig up. >=D Thanks for the video though. Glad I'm not the only one this movie affected. By the way, isn't it interesting how much this has in common with the Matrix which was made by people who turned out to be transgender women?
I even wonder if the "I got a job filling the ball pit with balls" has significance..
When you mentioned Matrix, did u mean the emphasis on symbolism?
@@khush1894 Nah, I mean that there is a fake reality that is taken as the truth by the people stuck in it. The Midnight Realm and the Matrix are very similar concepts.
Love your breakdown , I agree
@@evonny256 Cheers =D
Owen's whole life on screen happens in the moments he's buried alive, which is why he has a hard time breathing.
mr melancholy has their hearts (their identities) and he can kill them at any time because they don’t have them. but once owen realizes who he is (sees the tv glow inside him) he’s free (maybe??)
@@poppyseed5056 No, Still trapped there, he has yet to find his heart, which to put it simply, he was living a lonely life and wanted to feel something real rather the assumed life that he was instilled in it. This is classic psychology 101.
What about when Owen wasn't breathing well and had dry lips? I thought this was him actually being in the coffin and about to die and go to the pink opaque.
I think it’s because Isabelle was suffocating in the coffin, so Owen was feeling the effects. Since they are the same person.
The way I interpreted it was if he were to die as Owen, he would never make it to the Pink Opaque; that dying as Owen would mean success for Mr. Melancholy, that Isabel died under the ground without ever realizing her true self again. The chapped lips and severe asthma are the physical effects of what Isabel is experiencing after being buried alive in the Pink Opaque while Owen cannot bring himself to save her, to save himself, to save herself. Maddy went back to the Pink Opaque, to their true reality, and clawed her way to the surface as Tara. At the time the movie ends Owen has yet to do the same, but as long as he is still alive, "there is still time."
It could either be Owen is actually Isabelle and is slowing thing from being buried alive, or a metaphor for how would crushing it is to hide who you are
The visuals and soundtrack are just as important as the characters. Life is full of emotional ups and downs. The world keeps on turning even if your filled with doubt.
I do think that Maddy was right -- the Pink Opaque is the real world and the world they live in is a jail that Mr. Melancholy has trapped them in. Haven't seen your first video so I don't know if it was discussed but one of the bigger clues is Owen's voice. We know Justice Smith doesn't sound like that, and from the get go it felt strangely like a woman's voice being manipulated and pitched down. Another clue was how the show seemed to have been edited upon Owen's rewatch years later, with kids readily submitting to the Ice Cream man. Isabel and Tara aren't even in the revised ep. In that sense it's close to Mulholland Drive, in that it's not just symbols but the actual internal logic of the film's universe.
Great video! Lots of food for thought. Wasn't expecting anything and just fell in love with this movie. Here's hoping more and more people discover I Saw The TV Glow and your channel through it :)
Looking at Maddie's burial as a suicide is a bit of a cisgender and too literal view of her transition. Often for people who transition or come out as queer they are required to bury, or kill, their past life/past self in order to make space for the new life. Maddie was telling Owen he had to murder and burry his current life to be born again, as most transgender people do. But instead Owen chooses the evil he knows, rather than the unguarenteed happiness of being made into something new (his authentic self)
Thanks for explaining the meaning of the ice-cream truck, since that was the one thing I didn’t understand on first watch. I know some found the ending abrupt, but I think Schoenbrun chose to end the film with Owen resuming his job after the bathroom scene for it to be deliberately unsatisfying for the audience, as we know he still makes the wrong choice of resuming his miserable life (even if there is still time). I also feel that Maddie also doesn’t really get her happy ending either. She/Tara can't truly return to a new life/season of The Pink Opaque unless Owen/Isabel joins her. She may have accepted who she is, but she is still alone without Owen/Isabel who knows what she's going through.
The man in the moon(mister melancholy) is extremely reminiscent of a really old silent film called " voyage to the moon" or something to that effect. It was super creepy and yet beautiful at the same time. Just like this film is....
Thank you for this video. I got very frustrated watching other videos about this movie and they just… don’t get it. The movie felt like it was meant for me. This is a trans movie, a queer movie, a neurodivergent movie. Seeing other reviewers bash it for the very things that speak to the people it’s meant for, and all the surface level readings with no look into the subtext, it made me so mad. So thank you for taking the time to understand.
It was garbage for garbage people
Im not entirely sure on this detail but the bleakness on his face when he describes having a family and being happy is something I noticed my first time watching it but hearing an explanation on what the film means gives alot more meaning and sadness to that scene.
I audibly gasped when he said that, then cried again (I also had a family, came out as trans, now don't)
And we don’t see a family, just a new tv
Glad to see a video like this. I was really fascinated by this movie and just couldn’t find many videos REALLY talking about it aside from reviews. Definitely gained yourself a fan.
So so thrilled to hear it was a worthy video for you cuz it was a longer one on my channel, and I'm so glad you wanna see more, plenty to come! Thank you so much for watching!!
I just saw this movie. I felt like I didn't fully understand it, so I looked for a video to help me direct my thoughts. I saw your video and ended up crying. Thank you for the intonation and explanation you made of the film, a hug.
Glad you found a good video to explain
I wrote a whole novel as a comment, deleted it, tried to make it shorter but wrote another novel. I hope the 3rd time is the charm. Less detail, more to the point.
I liked this movie and even though it was meant to represent the LQBT+ community I think most people can relate to a lot of the feelings the characters go though. Discovering who you truly are is universal. However, I think some people who watch this film won't get it. They will think it was horrible because they are use to movies spelling everything out and ending with a happily ever after ending. I just hope there isn't so many of those people that they tank the ratings and people who could really benefit from watching this don't end up seeing it. (Yes, this is my short version).
This is my first video of yours, and I just wanted to thank you for not glossing over the inherent transness of the film in favor of ignoring it or saying the movie is representing something else. ❤
i feel like something that also made this movie stand out was that it obviously had analog horror aspects and is also extremely reminiscent to an old creepypasta, candle cove
Candle Cove came to mind so quickly! Thank you for mentioning it!!
@4:54 kind of felt like the kid saying he “never want the ice cream man to go away” then we see an ice cream cone melting and bothering the kid. is like holding on to things for too long it can become distorted, lackluster and repulsive maybe even haunting . As if we have to experience things for a short time due to entropy
There are movies and tv shows from when i was a kid in the nineties that i refuse to watch out of fear of them falling flat to the nostalgia of it all in my memories.
I think that they really are trapped and dying and the “real world” is the mirage. The scenes from the “real world” don’t feel real. They do feel like dreams. I think Maddie escaped and has to fight an actual magic demon. It’s the inhaler and the wheezing that really sells it for me.
My head-cannon is that Tara saved Isabelle and now they live happily in their world together. The whole “being turned into a tv show” is 100% real and what happened. No one attempted, no one is hurt. It’s a happy ending where no one is sad…. Right…
That was immediately my first thought too after watching this film. It would've been a more satisfying ending imo. They leave the real world to be in the show after all 🩷
as an asexual, some parts really resonated with me in that movie
“I like tv shows”
Me too
This movie hit me like a truck and I can’t even tell you why that is
🙄
Ok lol 😂 We're glad you're vibing to this film.
@@werr3222werrr Exactly what I was thinking . . That felt like an ace coming out lol
For me personally the biggest thing in contention is if the pink opaque world is real or not. Which makes sense as it’s the central theme of the plot. Yet I have decided to theorize on both.
If the pink opaque world isn’t real, then narratively your reading makes sense. It’s sad and heart breaking. Yet it also makes sense
Yet if the pink opaque world is real then I have my own theory on what it could mean narratively. The real world symbolizing the closet and the pink opaque world symbolizes queer expression. It would also make the ending sad as Owen’s inability to take the leap and leave the closet and become Isabel. Which would also narratively line up with what the director wanted.
Just watched the film. Funny, in my mind when watching the trailer I imagined it to be wildly different as it is labeled a horror.
I was expecting the elements of a horror until I realized that I was noting the nostalgic and memory feeling I was having. Then all of a sudden it clicked on the bench: this is an existential horror. It made so much sense to frame the horror around identity.
The little point about his asthma really hits home. He’s suffocates if he doesn’t medicate. When he’s rewatching the pink opaque (since I watch movies with the subtitles) the subtitles reads for the girl in the show as ‘the fake’.
The end felt so painful. Cause he’s apologizing for his existence while everyone around him doesn’t even react. Doesn’t care. That’s … life.
I don’t why but the show gave a bit of Buffy the vampire vibes and when I said that boom. Amber Benson pop up as the mom of the the friend Owen said he was staying at. The message of this movie was so raw I was crying for hours the sound track was amazing.
The moon instantly reminded me of the nineties because of the Smashing Pumpkins video and then there’s the smashing pumpkins cover. Thought that was cool
I'm convinced it was directly inspired by that, given the 90s setting.
me and my boyfriend (both trans) cried and squeezed each other's hand at several points during this movie; at the end we were pinned to our seats for a few minutes, unable to process everything
something i haven't seen a whole lot of speculation about is a recurring line about the Pink Opaque's airtime, it's the last show on before the tv switches to black and white reruns. If we're looking at symbolism of black and white, we know these are representative of binary (0/1), so going forward with the idea of the Pink Opaque symbolizing the truthful self, it's.. also the last piece of color before the world turns black and white.
If you miss the Pink Opaque, everything after that is monotonous reruns of a black and white show, and tying in with the incremental loss of color as Owen gets older and further away from his true self, represented as the Pink Opaque, it's almost like his life became those old black and white reruns, stuck along the binary path with the color just outside his reach.
I feel like your analysis is way too light on the trans symbolism in this film.
I see it as Owen and Maddy actually ARE Isabelle and Tara. After the end of the final episode in which we can see Isabelle being fed the poison and being trapped in what looks like our world, it goes back to the first scene of the film with Owen inside the tent and the tent literally has stripes of the trans colors. I think this is pretty loud symbolism of Isabelle being trapped inside a boy's body. And the main theme of this movie is Yeule's 'Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl', which only plays in scenes featuring Owen because they ARE Isabelle.
And yeah, Maddy and Owen may be just crazy and socially inept. You can see it as Maddy just using suicide as a way to escape. But I think these doubts we and Owen see only push the trans symbolism further. When I was pre-transition, I had many moments where I asked myself "is this real?" There were many moments of doubt. The possibility that Maddy's story might be fake only reinforces the trans experience of repression and doubt. Despite knowing this truth exists inside of you, you're still overwhelmed with these doubts. But despite this, Owen IS Isabelle and must push forward into living authentically.
You also mentioned toward the end that the pink opaque as a concept refers to the inside of the self that is unseen. If Owen is doubting the reality of the Pink Opaque, isn't that symbolically doubting the truth of their own identity, meaning that they really are Isabelle from that TV show? If the Pink Opaque really is just a TV show, it implies that Owen's destiny is to lose both his parents at a young age and become extremely decrepit in middle age for barely any reason. Isn't that too nihilistic and cruel?
I think it would be worth it to speak to a trans friend who's seen this movie or even better collaborate with a trans film youtuber that you know to properly analyze the trans symbolisms that you've barely scratched here.
The end scene puts a different emphasis on the movie title. It is titled "I saw the TV glow", and from a never-watched perspective, emphasis is on "TV glow". It can mean anything from "I watched TV last night", to "I walked by your room and saw the TV glow under the door", etc. We know now that the TV represents Owen' and Maddie's escapism, reflection, and true selves. For me, in the end scene, when Owen cuts himself open and smiles at what he sees in the mirror, a new hope is formed, and the emphasized word in the movie title changes: "I SAW the tv glow." This time, however, there's an implied addition: "I SAW the tv glow inside me."
Not a mere means of escaping anymore - a realization, an acceptance. I feel like Owen walking briskly through the crowd apologizing is both him apologizing (duh), but him being revitalized. He's moving faster than we've seen him in his adult "form" before...
Anyway... This was an amazing movie experience. Went to watch it with my 14 y.o. teen in a retro theatre - the Mayfair, in Ottawa (Canada) - built in 1932. Everything SCREAMED nostalgia. And the discussions after the movie, between her and I (both LGBTQ2SIA+), were fascinating.
This is the best breakdown of the movie anyone will ever see.
Another little bit is that the way the movie ends very abruptly and without a real ending is just how the Pink Opaque ended for Owen.
Thank you, I didn't understand why I just didn't get this movie, until I realized I've always been really good with who I am... I've never had these issues... but I get it since so many of my friends go through it... thank you, I'm going to re-watch this...
Just wanted to say thank you for doing a full breakdown of this film. I think upon my first watch I didn't fully understand some of the more intricate complexities film was trying to showcase especially the ending. with that said you definitely changed my whole perspective on this film and I'm very thankful for it! will probably give it another rewatch soon :)
As a straight man of colour who has been on his own for the longest time and somehow lost myself and still finding my true self, this movie moved something phenomenal within me.
I am very introverted and have no friends, I cried immensely after watching this movie in an empty theatre. This movie moved me to a point where I went for a re-watch. I am so happy that this film was released. I also bought this movie on Apple TV. Idk, how to even explain, how melancholic and deeply horrifying and beautiful this movie was. Much like Isabel I’ve been on a journey where there’s so much that I’ve gone through since I left home for good, moved to multiple different states and cities, brutally got destroyed by the real world but kept going.. but also much like Owen, I’ve had to confirm to some aspects of the modern world. The element of hard hitting loneliness hit me like a truck. This movie felt like a horror dream or a wake up call. It scared me, it made me feel like I was running out of time, it made me existentially anxious and also awakened. This is true cinema.
I didnt inturpret the Maddie leaving as her dieing, I thought she transitioned, she (he? not sure how to do pronouns here) keeps saying Maddies not her name.
This movie made me cry so hard. As a trans person it spoke to me in ways most media doesn’t. I haven’t felt this scene and understood in a film since The Matrix and its rich transgender allegories.
I think this movie is beautiful, it really did capture that feeling of trying hard to forget who you really are, no matter how hard it hurts and till you eventually run out of time. It’s insane how well they carried out the vibe through out the entire thing. For my fellow trans folk; we all have our own person behind that screen, so take their hand
This was such a pleasure to watch. None of my friends have seen it, so I am down the rabbit hole of analyses. This is one of the best I've encountered.
I loved this movie so much. The visuals were so nostalgic and they reminded me of everything from my 8th grade smashing pumpkins poster to my small tv with a knob and antennas. I think your breakdown made me love it that much more after seeing it through your words. The choice of having a biracial protagonist made the movie so much more relatable. Thank you so much❤
I think the whole “pink opaque is real” also connects to the seemingly impossible task of transitioning. Nowadays it’s more normalized and while people still feel what he’s feeling it’s not as far as an impossibility as it used to be. To Maddie she (imo) made it through and whatever transformation they needed happened. But to Owen its unfathomable even if he himself is hallucinating/finding glimpses of the show being reality
I just rewatched it on Max. And I agree that Maddie went through spiritual death, as Owen continues to suffocate hiding himself. Even with the wheezing at the end, like he’s struggling to breathe. The sad part though, is that after he sees his insides he apologizes for it. Just like Maddie told him not to do from Act 1
This movie left me with such a profound, and beautiful sadness.
Did anyone else notice how soul crushing and hollow Owen looked when he said he had a family of his own? He looked so uncomfortable in that scene. I also noticed the asthma got worse as the movie went on, symbolizing his true self suffocating in the Pink Opaque and time running out.
The line about the pink opaque feeling more real than real life really hit.
I enjoyed your analysis, but I think your reading of Maddie and Owen's ending pretty definitively misses the allegory of the film as one about the trans experience.
Maddie, in the sense of the literal plot as we see it, does undergo a "death" in her being buried alive - but I believe this to be a reflection of the death of one's former identity when they undergo a transition. Sure, "Maddie" does die, but only in that they have become Tara, their true self.
This metaphorical death of the self scares Owen, and he rejects Maddie's attempts to save him. Owen goes on to live an unfulfilling life.
The Pink Opaque, to Owen as far as I believe, is representative of escapism through media whereby queer people live vicariously. Owen is not prepared to transition, so he watches The Pink Opaque as a means to escape into what he believes to just be a fantasy; To Owen, his being Isabel is not attainable.
Later, though, Owen attempts to rewatch the show and once more live vicariously through it, but escapism can only fulfill him for so long, and the show feels childish and shallow in his older years.
When Owen cuts his chest open in the bathroom, he receives concrete proof that Maddie was right - that this life he has is not a representation of who he truly is (Isabel). Even with this, Owen is not prepared to take the leap and transition.
His journey is one of repression; repression of who we truly are. I believe that Maddie's ending is a happy one, but she does not return because other's can only get us so far. At the end of the day, we ourselves must take the leap and become who we are meant to be. Maddie cannot save Owen if he is not ready to save himself.
I think you did a fantastic job breaking this down.
I just finished this film a few minutes before watching your video. This movie hit me very hard because there was so much success in capturing the 90’s. I felt like I was vicariously walking back through my childhood. This was unsettling to me because I reflect on that time and feel that sort of longing to return and dread that I can’t quite explain. I think…things mean so much more as a child than as an adult. Is it due to not being exposed as much to insecurities or disappointment? Or is it more that insignificant things matter more and as an adult more significant things hold that importance? I don’t know. But I’m happy, as an adult, to go back to that mindset.
So happy to read I am not the only person that goes to a "explained' video after a watch. At first, I didn't really catch the overtones... I just thought it was a really well done film. Sure there were some parts that screamed "woke sh*t", But after reading some comments here and there, now I'm seeing the deeper meaning. The nostalgia was definitely on point.
The inspiring messages in the school were an interesting touch.
You're a brilliant reviewer!
there is ironically an ice cream truck blaring out its music outside my window as I watch this
I REALLY want a sequel where it's just the Pink Opaque girls having a more traditional Monster of the Week Adventure. I know that would kind of defeat the purpose of the movie, but... it would feel good.
😅
the lightning struck tree with the pink opaque papers all over right before maddy’s “return” and the shot of the empty grave behind the football field rly make me think that her return is his projection of her and he’s just thinking abt that time of his life now because he learns of her death.
idk i took a lot of the story less literally i think he’s still at a point of imagining either doing what maddy did, or conforming and never being true to his inner self.
I picked up some new things from the video, such a great breakdown.
This is the first video of yours that I watched and I thoroughly enjoyed it, subbed!
Anyone else get "Life of Roy" vibes at the end? lol
Great breakdown this movie triggered me on so many level. I thought that maybe Maddie was his alter ego but wouldn’t have explained the tapes. The thought of suicide being an escape was very heart breaking sadly I think Owen just continues to repress his true self. Maybe both were examples of what not to do while the writer offers a glow of hope in saying it’s never too late there’s still time to live our truth.💖
Incredible video! Such a thorough breakdown that made me love the film so much more, huge thank you my man!
Thank you so much my friend, it means so much to hear it improved the movie, means so much to me!
Quite clear and insightful. Well done, you just earned a subscriber 😮
Love your analysis! But I do disagree on the interpretation of the film's conclusion/what is the actually Truth (i.e. i disagree that maddie's arc is representative of suicide, I believe she is the only one able who is fully able to self-actualize through grueling self-sacrifice and crawling out of the cocoon of her former self) All I have to say is pay attention to the name of the bar Maddie takes own to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
What was the name of the bar?
It's not showing at my theatre and only watched it twice. What's the bar name?
Double Lunch? Idk, what does it mean?
I saw the trailer and promotional and thougnt the film was gonna be way diffent, mostly just like what the show Pink Opauqe was about but more coming of age
I was expecting people fighting weird monsters coming from their tv into their subrubs
And instead I get a gem that made me bawl my eyes out
Great analysis, Lucas, I found your take on the film very original. You're the first person I've heard attempt to explain the title of The Pink Opaque. I never made the connection between "a pink thing you can't see through" and flesh, but that seems so clear now that you say it.
Kinda reminds me of "Randy Stair" who wanted to live in a different world. Thanks for explaining the movie it was confusing :) now i get it
Wow. I haven’t thought about that case in forever, but there are some other bizarre parallels that struck me immediately when I read your comment. It was revealed in the documents uploaded by Randy Stair before the murder/suicide that they experienced gender dysphoria. They came to believe that they were not in fact Randy Stair, but rather a ghost girl named Andrew Blaze who had an entire life of her own in another dimension, that being the “dimension” that was portrayed in the show Danny Phantom. They thought they would return to their “real life” there after they died.
Thank you for your explanation! I just watched this movie and it’s really interesting-lots to process
what a beautiful movie jane really upgraded from their previous film
I found it hard to piece this film together while watching and was unsure on how to take it once it finished but I'm still thinking about it 4 days later and how important its message is, plus the soundtrack is fire 🔥
a24 is bolwingup my mind in each of his movies
Beautiful video. Well done. Especially the very end. This movie has earned a place in the LGBT film cannon. It was a bit slow for me, but overall very beautiful and meaningful. I'm an out and proud transgender person and I felt so bad for Owen, knowing the light and power they are missing within themselves and the world.
Great analysis!
Absolutely amazing analysis of this incredible film. Thank you.
@12:45 when the show looked completely different. I felt like it couldn’t have just been “rose tinted lenses” effect cuz even the plot seemed altered, went from teen wolf to goosebumps . But it could have been we only seen glimpses of that episode through Maddy and Owen but as an adult it showed what really happened being Maddy and Owen’s present Trauma maybe rewrote the experience. But Tara looked completely different
this is a very thought provoking explanation of these scenes and i would love for you to make more videos about this movie if that is something you’re interested in! Cant believe there’s only 67 comments because this is the most interesting and shocking movie i have ever seen. Including the trans allegory aspect is very important and i’m glad you included that too while other reviews haven’t unless it was done by a trans person.
i relate to maddy so so much in this movie
Maddie's character was already questioning herself from the beggining. Owen saw her as weird and mysterious like himself and clicked with him. Maddie has a best friend that watches the show with them. Maddie migh have had to open up to her but she did not reciprocate so Owen filled that space. The show maybe has played a part in helping her open but it ended on a terrible cliffhanger. Something that Maddie does not take kindly because it clicked with them. Maddie experiences their identity maybe Owen might have also been interested or open to try and explore when they show the scenes of dress up. Maddie dissapears and Owen falls in a depression. Maddie comes back and tries their new identity with Owen but he thinks shes crazy and they have a falling out. Owen tries to lead a normal life putting all that in the past but hes not only ignoring it, hes also liying to himself. In the end, he beggins to accept once hes older
I want to bring up the fact that Owen could have either been Autistic or Schizophrenic but its never said. Thats why he ended up clinging to such activities and suppresing some memories up with memories of the show.
His best friend leaving, his mom dying of cancer and his dad having a heartattack was also adding to suppressed trauma.
Also the whole "dumb cheesy show we overhyped when we were young" plays a big part with stuck adults. It reminded me of Ghost Rider, Alex Mack, Are you Afraid of the Dark and how we remember happiness. Rewatching it becomes therapy by nostalgia like a time machine, trying to ease us up by remembering when life didnt feel that complicated
ngl I saw the tv glow scared the shit out of me
SAME!!!!😬
Well it’s never too late to live your life how you want
It's a horror of a different kind, there's no jump scores or gore, it's the horror of dysphoria.
who is this DIVA 💜
okay, jk but i just rewatched this movie with my friend who’s never seen it before and NEEDED a video analysis immediately. this one is so great!! love it!! 💕
Such an incredible and thoughtful breakdown of the movie! I’m glad I stumbled across your video after watching the movie!!!
At the end he sounds like he's having an asthma attack. Earlier in the film, his mother reminds him about his asthma inhaler. I thought the ending was more about a reflection of his relationship with his parents.
Nice analysis. I did not pick up all those symbolisms throughout the film, was expecting a straight-up horror/thriller.
To me personally. I get being yourself and you should be yourself. no matter what people think . I understand that aspect.
I also think that there's nothing wrong with not given into things that you feel like you want or need.
I mean that young boy could've been pushed into something or at that time felt a certain way but as his life went on he realized that that wasn't who he was.
Not every thought that we have not every impulse or desire is good for us.
Superb breakdown of the film.
Rly good breakdown of a really good and important film. Thanks for this. Just subscribed. Cheers 💛
The scariest part of this movie is if you are actually repressing something in real life and not even knowing it or what it is
Oh lol that’s why I feel hollow inside now hahaha
I didnt see it as sybolic but literal. The characters from the show are the real versions of characters from the movie. They were both trapped in a mind proson but the girl broke out and tried to save her friend. He was to used to the world hes trapped in to want to escape. The part he screams and everyone stops was a little glitch in the mind trap from him knowing it deep down.
Im sure its symbolic but i think when it comes to the story its what i said it is.
Classic Plato's Cave story
this movie got me crying violently i love it so much
I think Maddie's death and rebirth are meant to describe the sacrifice required to be your true self within a family/town/culture that will not accept you (not actual suicide). After we grow up, some of us are forced to choose between our lives and our selves - not necessarily our literal lives, but the price is steep enough that it may as well be. Owen and Maddie's circumstances both required heavy sacrifices. Maddie decided to go through with it, it was as painful and miserable as being buried alive, but it was ultimately worth it. Owen decided to choose his life instead of his self, and time did not go easy on him. But then I like the "there is still time" too, because there always is, even if you wish you had done something sooner