Owen is dead because he didn't get in the grave. The death of who you were (or who you were pretending to be) is necessary before you can be reborn as who you really are. Owen was already underground. They needed to accept that (by burying themselves in the Midnight Realm) in order to dig themselves out again. Instead, Owen stayed there.
@@stephaniel7002in my opinion owen has escape the realm bc after the credit you will hear the sound of rain plus king woman who perfom at the double lunch return with a song call bury
Always reminds me of the classic saying "sure the best time to start was 10 years ago, but the next best time is right now." never give up people, you deserve so much more than you think you do
Hoo boy. This movie properly broke me. Like I mean sobbing uncontrollably for hours trying desperately to curl into a ball so tight I'd cease to exist. I have a ridiculously positive support circle who I know accept me for who I am no matter what. And yet. And yet coming out, actually transitioning socially and medically, is the single most terrifying thing I've faced in my life. I know it's right. I know when I see a woman in the mirror it makes me so happy I couldn't possibly express it fully even if given a thousand lifetimes, but it takes so much force of will to take even a small step that it's physically draining me. I know how Owen feels. Every day I live as a man I can feel my body decay and rot. I'm dying, I'm suffocating, I'm in the midnight realm. Every little step I take towards becoming my real self drains me completely. But I'm noticing more and more that the life force that's drained when I buy a bra or ask my doctor about HRT recovers a little quicker and drains a little less each time. I'm getting there. Handful by handful, I am burying myself. And it feels fucking fantastic. My name is Aoife and I am a woman. If I can do it, you can too. There is still time.
@@notdancooper923 I’ll be real, I’m nonbinary so I’ve been considering keeping a semi fem appearance but straight up just calling myself Joshua. Jacob, maybe, something with a j and an I in it. We’ll see
i’m trans, and halfway through this movie i started bawling and didn’t stop. it’s so, so scary being queer. phenomenal film. i just finished it ten minutes ago and i’m still crying. what a trip. it’s not too late. you still have time.
the final scenes are so haunting, too. i’ve felt EXACTLY like that-screaming at everyone around me that i’m dying, i need help, i want to be saved, and getting nothing in response. stumbling around apologizing for being in pain. god i love this movie. i’m crying again
@@kirbirbstomp I remember sobbing so hard after finishing the movie too, I ended up semi-coming out on letterboxd in a weird "review" i did. Im really happy i did that though
The one bit of hope injected into the movie that I appreciate is the subliminal messaging that "there is still time" even after Owen waited 20 something years to confront what was inside of him. The idea that living your true life, even for just a little bit, makes it better. No matter how late in life. Of course I'm still in my 20s but it still stings to look back on my teenage years and how much time was wasted just by waiting for everything to get better by itself, not really knowing what was going on.
i'm a cis woman but this movie hit so hard that i felt whiplash. i very recently just came out as a lesbian and i still have crazy bad internalized homophobia likely because of the very conservative christian area i grew up in. The part of the movie that hit me so hard was when maddie was talking about running away to phoenix, and yet still feeling stuck despite getting out their hometown. this is the exact situation that i've been through, fulling expecting to feel like myself after moving across the country and yet those feelings of being empty and lost still stuck, and even got worse over time. "there is still time"
I like how the vagueness of the film encourages you to make your own reads and connections. For instance you can choose to either take Maddy's words as the truth of the film's narrative, and assume that being buried alive will truly save and awaken their true selves, or you can see her as falling into a suicidal doom spiral, latching on to and building an afterlife mythology from her favorite media as a form of hopeful justification.
@@mimimalloc for sure. I was on a podcast-thingy about the movie once (didn’t get published online womp womp), and I talked a bunch about how I think it’s kinda cool how this movie can be interpreted in a bunch of ways. Like the most literal obvious one is that Maddy is right, but I also kinda really like interpretations where Maddy is wrong, and The Pink Opaque is a much more symbolic thing
@@urlocalghostI literally was so fixated on it being that second one that it took my boyfriend explaining it to me to realize it's most likely the first and I'm not sure why I was so sure it was gonna be about her using the show to escape from reality or something idek
@@KaebrenEXACTLY I was so shitass tired and miserable I saw maddie as being completely dead. Her mannerisms when she “comes back” for Owen were so uncomfortable for me to watch I immediately assumed she was insane.
"Owen waits for Maddy to return and force him underground, but really nobody can choose for you." you have worded this so extremely perfect. this quote you said specifically has truly rewired my brain and has made me love this film even more. thank you so much.
hey listen. listen to me. there is ALWAYS time. as long as you are still breathing, as long as your heart beats, every second you spend not buried in the ground, you have time
You don't need to do anything except what is good. If the movie will help you flourish, watch it. But the good isn't in the movie, it's in your ability to get something out of it. There is always time, there is only time. Best of luck.
I feel the exact same, i've only been able to watch this movie once, but just the one time made me sob so hard. And yet, I still can't stop thinking about it
I’m (mostly) cis but I Saw the TV Glow really resonated with me from a perspective of escapism, and I think that’s why the ending didn’t really work for me. It was a trans allegory. My experience of wanting the world to be different is different from wanting the world to see you as different. Or maybe I did understand it. Maybe I’m just too afraid of it.
godddd the monologue with mr. melancholy gave me goosebumps. it reminds me of something you’d see in a bad dream as a kid and it’d freak you out for weeks after. like you think a creepy moon dude is hiding in your closet telling you won’t remember anything when you die lol and I mean i guess my transness was in the closet instead lmao
This movie was really interesting to me, as straight man. Going into it, I already knew about the transgender allegory, and picked up on the what and why of it pretty quickly. It's not a subtle film. But there were aspects of it that triggered something in me that feot more universal. 1. Regret. The feeling that your life isn't what it was supposed to be. That somewhere along the way, you've made mistakes that can't be undone. 2. Attachements through media. There's an interesting feeling that I've never heard a name for. In my life, certain media is inextricably linked to people and places. Watching Star Wars every Christmas morning with my cousin. Sneaking out of my foster home and riding my bike across town to watch wrestling with my dad. Staying up all night and playing Sonic The Hedgehog with my best friend as a kid. This movie touches on that feeling in a way nothing else does. I guess you could call it nostalgia, but that feels too broad.
every time i think of this movie i become even more strong in my sense of self. i don't want to be 30 screaming at myself for still asking "am i really trans though" every day for my whole life
My friends made me watch the movie because I’ve been semi-repressing. I feel like I’m kind of at an inbetween stage between full on living a lie and wholly embracing being trans. It’s just hard to accept when you really don’t want it to be the case.
@@yohaAltsame, idk (I’m about to make a niche reference but it stood out to me) but in the movie Wonka, when he gives the orphan a piece of chocolate the girl gets sad and explains “I wish you hadn’t done that because now everyday I don’t have it I’ll be sad” and that’s kinda how I feel about being trans...
For what it's worth, I've been in your situation. Like I even have a ton of queer/trans friends, but I just didn't want that to be a struggle that I had to deal with... But now that I've embraced it and been on hrt for over a year (even without fully presenting femme all the time) I've literally never been happier. I've had the opportunity to learn what it's like to be happy again, to feel sad again, to feel love for others and myself again. I kinda even revel in being trans because I've learned to see just how beautiful it can be.
I was in a similar state before watching this movie. I was newly accepting towards my identity when I saw this movie for the first time. It hit me like a train. I had already accepted myself and it still hit me at a thousand miles per hour. Within the first few seconds of the movie I was a weeping mess, I think my body knew what was coming. Accepting our trans identities is hard - there's a lot of fear associated with it. I was scared for a long time to let myself be myself because of all the social and political ramifications. This movie being a horror movie is so ridiculously accurate to the trans experience
Genuinely couldn’t move when the credits came on. I couldn’t let myself believe that was the ending. I was looking around the room, trying to see if anyone else was as distraught as I was, but everyone seemed fine. Literally couldn’t form a coherent sentence to explain to my cis bsf why it hit me so hard for a good 10 minutes afterwards. One of the best movies I’ve ever seen, hands down.
i may just be a lesbian but this resonated SOOO much with me. just the idea that there's something wrong with me, and there's a supernatural reason for why im different was enough to make me shake and cry in fear. and yet, sometimes it feels like the reality. this was suchhh a good way to symbolize just how different and out of place being gay makes people(at least me) feel.
I’m not trans, I’m pretty confident in saying that, but this movie was showing in my university theater and, having heard of it and its themes, I decided to go see it and yeah this movie’s fucked up. There were some people who laughed a few times near the end and I’ve never related less to my fellow human beings than I did in that moment. My mom happened to be in town and came to see it with me, and after we left the theater she said that she was so relieved when Owen pushed Maddy over in the football field and ran away, and that she’d never felt more like yelling at someone on the screen than she did leading up to that moment. I didn’t actually discuss her interpretation of the movie with her, mostly just because I didn’t think starting a conversation with, “you know, I think maybe he should have tried killing himself, just to find out,” would be a good idea, but it’s interesting to me that, even with how effectively the movie made horror out of everyday life, she still was so confident in its reality while I felt a lot more conflicted. Now, due to some life events, suicide was probably a pretty raw subject for my mom at the time, so that probably had an effect too, but while I’ve never struggled with my gender identity, I have had other identity issues, and I’ve certainly dealt with isolation, so I do wonder how that may have colored my perception of the film compared to someone who liked their childhood.
This movie means so much to me. I saw it in theaters with my friend. We are both trans men who have connected with eachother through media. At the end of the movie everyone else shuffled out of theater chuckling and commenting on how weird the movie was. But we stayed in our seats. Silenty watching the credits until the lights came on.
maybe im just projecting my own experience, but i totally read this film as being about a trans girl who knows shes trans but feels like she can never act on that feeling. putting off any form of romantic feelings (i thought i was an aro/ace guy for a long time before becoming a big gay lesbian) because you cant live to see yourself as a man in a relationship. wanting desperately to engage with forms of femininity but being unable to get past the shame that you cant explain, which we see in owen desperately scrubbing off the symbol of the pink opaque. trying to hold on to and follow the (transmasculine) friends you see finally living their lives authentically and still being unable to push yourself off that cliff because you just cant imagine whats at the bottom. more than anything else ive ever seen this film felt like it reflected my pre-transition mentality and dysphoria. really great video, and i love that every trans person can find something that speaks to them in this movie. there is ALWAYS still time 🏳️⚧️
this movie helped me realize i was nonbinary and as terrifying as that was to grasp, it also helped me accept and know myself better. I already had come to terms with my bisexuality before this, but my gender had been something I had struggled to deal with for so long. I'm so happy to be in this community, this queer family is one of the best things i could've asked for. One day I will work up the courage to come out, I know there's still time.
Hey man, just read your comment and felt so much relief wash over me. I'm glad that you've developed that patience with yourself through this film, I think that's pretty inspiring. I've been out as non-binary for several years, and there's been nothing more freeing, and I have never felt more beautiful. There is always still time.
my boyfriend asks me time to time whether i would like to transition, i always say i don't know. i let my hair grow longer when all i want is to keep it shorter, i wear dresses and hear people compliment me and wonder if people still would think of me the same if i transitioned. i force myself into this box and keep telling myself i'm not 'really' trans if i feel fine wearing skirts, i'm not trans because i get by fine. but there's always something missing about me and i doubt there's still time for me. this movie makes me feel seen when i didn't really wanted to be seen, and i love it for that.
My best friend had to tell me I was trans, I was basically sleepwalking through life and she gently brought up the possibility based off some things i had said in the past, i brushed it off and tried to move on with my life but that conversation kept popping up in my mind. eventually i considered the possibility and booked an appointment at a gender care place just for some information. Turns out I double booked it and had to cancel the appointment and I broke down sobbing. its been almost a year now, my family doesn't accept me but my friends do and thats all I need, I have a long way to go in terms of self acceptance but i cant imagine my future as anyone else
Yk i dont look at that ending as "its too late for owen. He'll never become the person he wants to be" i saw the chalk writing on the street saying "its not too late" and that gave me the idea that owen didnt continue living his miserable life. When he cut himself open he finally took that step to see who he was and he was glad that he was right, as shown on his face. It makes me wonder what he'll do now that he knows with 100% certainty that Maddy was right and that the feeling of the show being more real than real life was validated. Maybe he buries himself like how maddy did, finally going into season 6. Finally becoming the pink opaque
Im one of the few that really like the ending, bc i really resonated with it. I use to live in a country where being queer and trans was illegal, and for most of my life, i thought i would never get to live as myself. I really like the scene where owen opens his chest to the mirror to see their "true self." Eventho the character is transfem, it instantly reminded me of the feeling i had when i removed my surgery chest binder and saw my chest for the first time. My partner had to hold me while i sobbed in the theatre, i didnt think it was going to hit me so hard, i thought it was gonna fully lean into just transfem euphoria. But thats not the tv glow, its trans euphoria period, and thats why its so amazing! Its for everyone, bc everyone deserves to live their life as their authetic self! Theres still time!
This film meant so much to me. I’ve identified with being trans since I was 12-13, and I’ve gone through a laundry list of labels since then. I’m 19 now, supporting myself, and I’ve been lucky enough to be able to afford low dose T. I have never felt so euphoric, so proud, yet so scared within a single month. My body is changing, I have not felt this “fear” and curiosity since I was a child. When I first started identifying with transness, it was a completely new world to me, I felt so many things. I never quite “felt like a man,” but I knew for certain I wasn’t okay with being seen as a woman. I identified heavily with gender fluidity and the NB label, but I was repeatedly told that it wasn’t real. That I had to be a certain way to REALLY be trans. As I got older those sentiments stuck with me in ways I’ve only recently been able to genuinely unpack. The end of this video was greatly validating. I hate boxes. I love that I’m not alone, I love this community. I’m hoping that my journey with medically transitioning helps me feel more at ease and at home with my very “out of the box” identity. I hope to truly see my genderless yet very boy yet very girl self in the mirror someday. I Saw The Tv Glow put an ache in my bones very similar to this feeling… such a beautiful film. .°(ಗдಗ。)°.
i was just gonna watch this video without any context because i do that, but for some reason i paused it when "full spoilers ahead" popped up and waited to watch the movie myself first. thank you for making this video so i'd end up doing that!!! i just finished it and i'm not sure what emotions i'm feeling but i'm very glad i watched it, and i'm excited to see what you've got to say now.
One of my favorite parts of this movie is the lighting. It's incredibly dramatically colorful and I loved how Owen felt more himself when he was in "the pink" and not himself in "the blue". A great example was when he was in the highschool hallway to pick up the pilot tape. When he's walking in the blue, he walks slowly and without purpose. When he enters pink briefly, he walks faster and as if he feels like it's who he's meant to be.
When I watched this movie, I had to just stare at the wall for a little before getting ready. I felt so numb and I finally started crying when I was done. Transitioning seems out of reach for me as a person who currently lives in a third world country- especially as one with a unsupportive family. I'm currently working towards getting my college degree and I think if I had to pick between having a good job and transitioning, I'd pick the former which makes me so so depressed. I Saw the TV Glow made me feel seen as a person who loves watching TV shows and movies and who also struggles with internalized hatred of my queer aspects. Good movie and I loved your review, 10/10
i finished watching this movie at 1am. it didn't fully hit me until 20 minutes later until i started SOBBING in my kitchen. I don't think i could ever explain just how this movie makes me feel, no matter how many times ive tried. You can TELL it was made by someone that just GETS being queer, especially trans (shoutout jane schoenbrun). It makes me both terrified and hopeful for my future somehow. it's beautiful like nothing else. its scarier than nothing ive ever seen. it just IS. That's why ive kept the "There Is Still Time" shot as my laptop background for months now. Because there's still time. also the edits on tiktok have and continue to break me.
Thanks so much for sharing 💖. I’m in my late 20s, started on HRT last year and it’s A LOT. I’m terrified but excited to see where it all takes me. I so relate to your description of feeling suffocated by any boxes people put you in. I’m definitely going to have to check this film out. The concept of not transitioning and living with the “what ifs” as a life long funeral for a life you could have had is… powerful as fuck.
6:29 this made me think wayy back to what my first encounter of gender euphoria may have been and it was probably in 2010 with this character in the anime ‘Shugo Chara’. In the second season, this character that was characterized as the pinnacle of femininity was revealed to be a boy, and went on to present as a boy, even his magical transformation went from a kimono to something street style. I was sooo obsessed with this change and the idea of this character. I drew him all the time and loved the fact that he still could still have his kimono magical transformation sometimes and STILL be a boy. I haven’t thought of that in a long time 🥲🥲
The end of this movie broke me. I’ve lived in the closet for so long thinking that I don’t want to lose people who won’t accept me. You do wait for someone to drag you out. You wait for someone to tell you whether it’s REAL and going to be OK. even when they do it’s so hard to take the step. So you just keep living and hiding. The end of the movie made me feel sick to my stomach of living like that any more. The horror of being stuck in a life that isn’t fully yours. This movie genuinely helped me decide that it was a lot scarier to live the way I was than to lose ppl who didn’t care about me to begin with. Also smth smth the way media (queer-coded, camp media) is the awaken ffelt incredibly realistic. Especially growing up in a small town with no exposure to queerness. The escapism is real. Such a great video you covered everything really well! Even brought up some stuff I hadn’t thought of, thanks!
omg i loved that movie too and i love your analysis (the part where tara/maddy explains the terms of the show to owen/isabel as a standin for queer terms is so good) personally, i also have another analysis, which is about tara/maddy, being a "monster" which triggers owen/isabel's fear of change/the unknown in fiction, even though a monster is often a grotesque figure that's antagonistic to the protagonists, like the monsters of the Pink Opaque and Mr Melancholy, a Monster can also be a symbolic representation of a fear of the Unknown, of facing off against something that you don't fully understand In that sense, Tara/Maddy is a big agent of change compared Owen/Isabel - she has taken control of her identity and was able to leave this city, which are massive steps that are sources of fear and anxiety for Owen/Isabel, so Tara's actions terrify her For me, it's also the reason why , despite Tara/Maddy never being a pushing or forcing force for Owen/Isabel (Tara/Maddy might be intense, however never forces or pursues Isabel/Owen like a classical Horror monster), Owen/Isabel is terrified of her ideas because they represent such an unknown to consider, and this can be represented in the film by some tense moments from Owen/Isabel perspective (not running away, the bar scene, the planetarium scene) which represents her inner self-loathing, low self-esteem and internalized queerphobia...
Hi, just wanted to let you know that I'm doing a year-long essay for my class on I Saw the TV Glow and you will be one of my 5 sources. This interpretation was everything I had in my mind put into words, thank you so much. I've never come out to anybody in my life, and this essay is one of the scariest things I'll ever do. Hearing your story filled me with so much hope, there is still time for me :)
i watched this movie home alone while my whole family was away. when the credits played i sat through all of them, desperately hoping for some kind of after-credits scene. obviously there wasn't any. i cried for fifteen minutes straight after i realized it was over. i have grown up in a very conservative christian home. i only interacted with people from my church or my christian homeschool group, and i didn't learn what gay people even were until i was around 13. over covid i got a phone and therefore internet- it didn't take me long to figure out that the something different about me that i had felt for so long was queerness, although it took me another year and a half to say the word trans. i cut my hair, telling my parents that i just wanted a different look and that i was just tired of having long hair. a few months later, they went through everything on my phone. standing my ground and opposing them felt impossible, so i locked that part of myself further down, acted out a full repentance, and tried to live as though everything were the same as normal. even though i now had a flip phone, i found a way to access the internet, and would spend hours on my laptop on discord or youtube, trying to escape through it. i gave up being trans- maybe because i didn't identify that way anymore or maybe because it felt a bit silly or far away or something. my grades started slipping, and my parents again found out that i was "still" queer. i just did the same thing as before. this cycle has happened twice since then. over that time, my older sister (who once identified as queer) has adopted the views of our parents. so did my younger sister, who was once the only person i knew in real life who supported me. it's started to feel as though they're right- maybe my queerness is in fact causing all of this evil and deception and ruining my life. as of now i think of myself as a lesbian, but my gender feels too heavy to think about at the moment. i've graduated high school and am at a conservative christian college. i have friends now, which i never had in high school, and life feels different. somehow though, i still feel fucking suffocated. i thought that maybe once i got here life would be different, but a lot of things are the same. i know that if nothing changes then i will die. or at the very least, fail my classes or shrivel up inside. i feel like owen. i have the choice between giving up my queerness, killing that part of myself forever, or coming out and destroying my entire life. it feels like suicide, like burying myself alive and praying for a miracle. but if i don't, maybe i'll never get another chance. maybe my queerness is causing all of that deception and pain, but if i can never be honest about it, than how will i know? if i shove it down then it will just keep growing back and i've seen from every angle that trying to hide it makes things worse. on top of that, there is a good chance some of my younger siblings are queer, and if i can maybe show them that it's okay, that would be everything. but is the cost that coming out would take- ruining my relationships with my family, putting my relationships with my friends at risk, maybe even putting my financial stability at risk- worth it? i know there's still time. but it feels like time is running out before i implode. or maybe suffocate.
I wanna watch this movie now. I'm trans, socially transitioned for a few years, and recently began my first school fully out as a guy (well, almost fully), and realized a few weeks ago that while I enjoy feeling masculne and being seen as a dude, it also feels like I'm still being beaten into a box, only this time it's with something I enjoyed and I thought maybe I wasn't trans and should detransition, but I still felt no regrets over my transition, and didn't want to go back to being a girl, knowing deep down it'd be uncomfortable and giving up. I recently have been thinking I'm Non-binary because while I want to be seen as a guy, I don't fully feel there, and with some level of fluidity, it's really awkward, but I'm growing more comfortable. It feels freeing but also scary. I'm gonna bring it up with my therapist today. It's scary but also exciting. I consider myself a dude but I know that fully, I'm something more, not fully confined. Great video!
It was so good at expressing anxieties I didn't have words for, like how empty and liminaI I felt before starting HRT a year and ago. By the end it nearly gave me a panic attack with how close to home it felt.
I couldn’t help but squirm at 5:53. I still remember being a teen transfixed to Ranma 1/2, wishing that happened to me. It was odd, wanting to trade w/ him so badly. You’re 100% right, I now get the same feel embracing my gender that I did watching the show.
Thank you. I was feeling so hopeless and just wanted a video to distract myself but this gave me hope. I relate to your experience so much its insane, just the other way I'm trans masc. I think you've saved my life, thank you.
the way people discourage or invalidate "phases" is very harmful. Regardless of the timeline, identity is important. And phases sometimes bloom into long-term realities or they bloom into new realities. Neither is bad. Love the video
great video !! im working on an isttg video right now and i love how you blended your personal experience with what happens to owen during the film. i think the biggest takeaway from the film is what you brought up during the scene where they talked with maddy, the act of repression and not having the words to describe how you feel. societal pressures make being trans a pretty scary thing and you may feel like you're "not right" or "weird" for a feeling that is totally okay to have, but because of that fear you might not want to look deeper. taking that first step is terrifying, but finally feeling one step closer to understanding yourself is a truly amazing feeling.
@@goIdy ty ty!!! And yeah I agree. The first step is arguably the most scary (it was for me lol), but after that, the rest feels more “natural”. I spent so much time coming up with justifications to not go further than the first step, but eventually, it kinda just all fell into place bc it’s who I am
This is my favorite take on this movie. I have been looking around profusely since it came out to see if anyone had a similar experience with this film that I did (I'm a trans man) and its so comforting to see others react to it similarly. It is unsettling but at the same time so beautiful. I Saw the TV Glow has definitely become my favorite movie and I really love the way you talked about it and how your experiences tie into why you saw it the way you did.
This movie was absolutely wild, my buddy said it was middling for A24 but this shit rocked me. I would like to also say my ears instantly perked up the second I noticed Celeste ost being used for bgm
I love horror, but so much media misses in so many ways and it honestly discouraged me for a while. So, I looked into indie stuff and I found a lot of promise, and I was disappointed that mainstream media hadn't caught up yet. But then I watched this movie, and it is the thing I have been hoping for. It is terrifying and uncomfortable and it doesnt shy away from the true horror its addressing. It made me feel hopeful again, because now I know without a doubt that its possible. I saw the tv glow is amazing, and while I wouldn't say it's perfect, it's pretty close.
this movie fucked me up hard and it makes me cry just thinking about it which while i cry a lot is still powerful because like only my really big hyperfixations can do that so easily. like im not ready for this video and im scared
I relate a lot to your experience of transitioning from one side of the binary to the other and it still not quite feeling entirely right. I'm not like fully genderfluid, cuz I really don't identify at all with being masculine outside of like dressing up like a drag king sometimes like it's a costume. But I am some typa genderflux cuz I rarely ever feel 100% like a 'woman'. Usually I'm somewhere between being a woman and being agender, but because I don't wanna be seen as masculine at all, I feel myself over performing as a woman, and I've gotten quite good at that cuz I almost never get referred to as masculine labels anymore, but it does end up feeling suffocating sometimes cuz often I just wanna act however feels natural to me in the moment without it being read as either masc or fem. Is what it is ig, I can't abolish the gender binary by myself lol
I was watching something on RUclips when your video popped up on my recommended,,, I hadn't heard of the film before so I looked it up and immediately watched it, and now I'm watching your video, so thanks kimbee for helping me find this movie
i started sobbing at the birthday scene im not out to my family and my mom came in my room and stood there and tried to comfort me but i couldn't tell her what was wrong
This movie really helped me solidify a lot of my feelings i just hope I can act on them instead of just passively watching my life go by as I know how that turns out.
awesome video & great analysis! I've seen this movie exactly once and have wanted to rewatch it so many times since but it is so incredibly haunting- absolute 10/10 film; i'm never not thinking about it. The shot of Owen screaming "IM DYING" while no one else around him can hear him replays in my mind daily. I cannot wait for the day where i'm ready to re-watch
I freaking sobbed my way through this film. It’s suffocating, and the end isn’t even the escape of it, because I’m still thinking about it. I feel incredibly hopeful about the impact this film will have. Maybe it would’ve reached me when I needed it most.
I am cis, but I still heavily related to it as a queer person and how scary it can be to come to terms with who you are with how it could change how others see you, or even just when I interpret it as escapism and how trapped and stuck you might feel in life and what if this is all there is because you played it safe instead of taking the opportunity that could've made you happier, so you bury yourself in your favorite shows and media to avoid that reality despite having to face it at some point, so the ending made me feel kind of empty, but it also kind of had that bittersweetness of "there is still time" even years down the line
Can we appreciate how well this is edited? I thought for sure that this was an established +100'000 subs channel until I tried to check out your other stuff! Love how well the aestetic goes with the movie, and I'm really thinking of watching it (if I can find it). It is so seldom that you find good queer media :[ Edit: i just watched it. JESUS CHRIST, it was AMAZING. Thank you so much. :D
Owens character feels like such a huge callout that I have a hard time facing it. I've had anxiety my entire life, it gets so bad sometimes that I'll become completely nonverbal and it used to make the adults around me so livid they'd punish me. I've known I was trans nearly my whole life too, around the time I actually became aware of myself. I remember being so distraught and confused when I wasn't aloud to run around shirtless like my male cousins (I was 5 at the time and obviously didn't have a chest), or why I couldn't sleep over with my best friend (he was male), why my name made me sick to my stomach. It all got louder the older I got. When I was nine, myself, my mother, and my two siblings were laying on the floor of our new house after we'd escaped her abusive ex. we had no furniture or anything, just blankets. I remember laying next to my mom, and she asked me what my name would be if I was a boy, and I told her AJ. After that she cut my hair and bought me new clothes, got me a therapist, anti depressants, and you'd think it was a happy story until it wasn't. I started at a new school in a small town in Oklahoma and was immediately alienated by all the kids, and at the same time my mom found a new man and started to regret the decision to let me 'pretend to be a boy'. For three years I was tormented, teased, and hurt in ways I cant talk about on RUclips. I was only nine to eleven years old. Think about that. I was a fucking child, a terrified baby. It started to get so bad that my mental health started to rapidly decline, so they upped my dose of anti depressants, but I started to have hallucinations and got sick. I stopped talking to any of the therapists I got, and my mom decided I was just better off without any of it. Next she switched the school I went to, and she said I was never aloud to tell anyone I was a boy, and I didn't. I let myself start to die because I just didn't know what to do. I eventually met my best friend, who introduced me to the lgbtq+ community, taught me what transgender meant, and I instantly understood that I was a guy. I know I was in the midnight realm, but to this day I haven't done much to escape. I keep my hair short, I dress masculine, I know I am a man, but I've made no real effort to show it to the world. I don't introduce myself by my chosen name, I don't correct anyone when they misgender me, I havent tried to get on T or anything. I know it would help me so much to finally be myself, but the fear and anxiety keeps from doing it. My anxiety mixed with my fear of being myself makes it so hard. I know im dying and im doing nothing about it, and even now, after being called out so blatantly, I don't know if I will. My names Adrian, and im too afraid to escape the midnight realm.
this video honestly hit me so deep, probably because i have a similar experience of thinking i was just a trans girl after thinking i was gender fluid only know to come back to gender fluid. but even then i don't know
I'm autistic and trans and I saw both Maddy/Tara and Owen/Isabelle as autistic coded. There's a statistic that says that autistic people are 10 times more likely to identify as trans or gender nonconforming than non-autistic people! That's a huge statistic. Of course you don't *have* to be autistic to be trans/gnc, however many of us are. And I feel that the movie sets that up beautifully.
Just watched the movie tonight, this is a great video essay. I was feeling really sad about the ending but you pointing out that Owen does experiment a little by changing shirts made me feel better.
Good analysis with some good self reflection. This one felt more intimate than ur previous vids, and I liked that. My favorite aspect of this movie was the aesthetic. Tons of great shots and colorful lighting. It feels very of our time but I hope it will age well.
Ty ty. I’m glad you enjoyed the movie last night when we watched it (✝️). The way this movie is shot really is beautiful. I know we talked about in DMs and shit but MAAAAN the wide shots on this movie
13:02 I experienced this, Ibwas really unsure abt my gender, and used a bunch of different labels, but eventually my own dysphoria and worry about not being seen as masculine as I was, and fear of getting bullied kicked in, I decided to just make myself a he/him and tried to be as masculine as possible to the outside world.
Thank you for this whole thing. I watched that show and it was disconcerting to me. Am bigender with did and felt like a lot of the show was analogous to dissociative stuff as much as trans stuff - and this helped me process it better from the trans perspective and also just liked hearing about your own gender experience too
Lmao this movie had me crying in the theater 😭 it was the part where they were in the star thing. Though for me it was more of questioning my reality, what I really want and who I really am. There was a lot of things I was suppressing at the time, mostly due to lack of self respect. I Saw The TV Glow is definitely top 3 of my all time favorite movies
the movie reflects my own experiences with denying/repressing these feelings. I've known since sophomore year of high school. Since then, the feelings have been on/off but they havent cut as deeply as this year. i feel like I've lost all control of my life & I'm only waiting for "the right moment". I can't experiment, come out, or transition now. It isn't safe enough. though i still catch glimpses of the woman I could be.
when i first watched I Saw The TV Glow, i didn't quite understand it. like i knew all of the backing themes, i knew it was about being trans (and ive been trans for 4 years atp), but watching it didnt hit me at all like it was for people. i dont think i truly understood what the movie was saying until i watched this video. watching this made me cry like all the other people who was the movie. you did such a good job of explaining everything. thank you so much
The thing that bothered me the most about this movie is that I'm someone who didn't figure out or "come out" about my gender stuff until my late 30s, I also lived in a "man costume" for my entire life until one day it ripped and those closest to me told me that what I was dealing with sounded really non-binary. Owen would be pretty close in age to me so the time periods really resonated but the story seemed darker than mine. Sure I wish I could have been living as my full self the whole time, but also it physically wasn't safe to when I was a teenager/young adult and I didn't even have any role models. I kinda felt like this movie was telling me that I'd done my entire life wrong until now but I look back and I see so many good times along the way. But also this is probably less a critique of a movie and more of an explanation to why I kinda bounced off something that I thought was going to be for me.
i had been putting off watching this movie until today because i'm not trans and was scared of what i might have to confront if i watched it but i'm so glad i did. it really helped put my life into a different perspective
I really liked the movie, I think most people did, some people really didn’t like it though, which is fine, but man this is one of those movies that I made me really passionate about defending it. I just wish everyone really understood what it means to the people it aims for. Great movie
this movie changed me. i knew i was trans. i detransitioned when my dad found out and i tried to hide it even from myself. im surrounding myself with unsupporting people. people who if they found out would leave me alone. this movie showed me what i will be if i continue the path i am on.
This movie has genuinely hit me so hard. I feel like I needed too watch it. I’m trans but deep deep in the closet for years, always pushing it away. Ahhh and then years kept going by for Owen. I just saw so much similar between me and the character. I think it’s a horrific wake up call for me
Thanks for making this. I felt so seen by your gender story, I also identify as gender fluid and it's such a weird space to hold in our binary society. Thank you for sharing and being visible.
i couldnt even watch this video TT genuinely every time I even think aboutt his movie it just, hits so hard. i think that's a testament to its quality though, how strongly it makes me feel.
I liked this movie but didn't fully get it. I think that as a cishet dude, I'm not the one this was made to speak to. Hearing you break it down and compare it to your experiences definitely shined some light on it's themes though.
As a cis man, this movie helped me understand and relate to the trans experience a lot. The denial, the desperation, and the regret of betraying one’s true self. I didn’t realize what the movie was actually talking about, and what I really wanted was Owen to wake up as Isabelle, who he was supposed to be. At its core, whether you take the movie at face value, or as a metaphor, it’s about being who you are supposed to be. I’m glad I didn’t know about the trans metaphor going into it, it allowed me to see everything with a completely open mind and then recontextualize it afterwards
my best friend and i are both trans, but we’re also both neurodivergent. we connected a lot more with maddy’s perception of the show and maddy and owen’s connection over it. it is so difficult to bond over things when the only thing that feels real and the only thing that matters is something you don’t share with someone else. my friend and i share our hyperfixations with each other but if we didn’t we would struggle to connect
Gender dysphoria as a psychological thriller is such a creative idea I love this movie so much
Fr. It’s in like my top 3 movies ever. I’ve seen it over 10 times now lol
The end part, made me feel uncomfortable because even though he didn't get in the grave, i felt like i was still looking at a dead person
Owen is dead because he didn't get in the grave. The death of who you were (or who you were pretending to be) is necessary before you can be reborn as who you really are. Owen was already underground. They needed to accept that (by burying themselves in the Midnight Realm) in order to dig themselves out again. Instead, Owen stayed there.
@@stephaniel7002in my opinion owen has escape the realm bc after the credit you will hear the sound of rain plus king woman who perfom at the double lunch return with a song call bury
She pinked my opaque until I saw my TV glow.
so true queen.
she glowed on my tv until i saw it
my aunt just came out as trans at almost 40 years old. It’s never too late to be who you are and to be happy.
Always reminds me of the classic saying "sure the best time to start was 10 years ago, but the next best time is right now." never give up people, you deserve so much more than you think you do
I hope your uncle stays away from the women's bathrooms
To quote Maddy's chalk writing:
*"THERE IS STILL TIME"*
Hoo boy.
This movie properly broke me. Like I mean sobbing uncontrollably for hours trying desperately to curl into a ball so tight I'd cease to exist.
I have a ridiculously positive support circle who I know accept me for who I am no matter what.
And yet.
And yet coming out, actually transitioning socially and medically, is the single most terrifying thing I've faced in my life.
I know it's right. I know when I see a woman in the mirror it makes me so happy I couldn't possibly express it fully even if given a thousand lifetimes, but it takes so much force of will to take even a small step that it's physically draining me.
I know how Owen feels. Every day I live as a man I can feel my body decay and rot. I'm dying, I'm suffocating, I'm in the midnight realm.
Every little step I take towards becoming my real self drains me completely. But I'm noticing more and more that the life force that's drained when I buy a bra or ask my doctor about HRT recovers a little quicker and drains a little less each time.
I'm getting there.
Handful by handful, I am burying myself. And it feels fucking fantastic.
My name is Aoife and I am a woman.
If I can do it, you can too.
There is still time.
Transitioning really is worth it, regardless of how painful the process is.
That is such an awesome name. No idea what my name is, not yet, but I’ll get there.
@@distantmaniacallaughter8690 Thank you! (ღ˘⌣˘ღ) I'm rooting for you, I'm sure whatever name you choose will be beautiful
@@notdancooper923 I’ll be real, I’m nonbinary so I’ve been considering keeping a semi fem appearance but straight up just calling myself Joshua. Jacob, maybe, something with a j and an I in it. We’ll see
@@distantmaniacallaughter8690 That's a fantastic vibe, I'm sure it suits you perfectly
i like tv shows and trans people
Sometimes, Freddy Got Fingered feels more real than real life
@@kimbeeely you're right
i’m trans, and halfway through this movie i started bawling and didn’t stop. it’s so, so scary being queer. phenomenal film. i just finished it ten minutes ago and i’m still crying. what a trip. it’s not too late. you still have time.
the final scenes are so haunting, too. i’ve felt EXACTLY like that-screaming at everyone around me that i’m dying, i need help, i want to be saved, and getting nothing in response. stumbling around apologizing for being in pain. god i love this movie. i’m crying again
@@kirbirbstomp I remember sobbing so hard after finishing the movie too, I ended up semi-coming out on letterboxd in a weird "review" i did. Im really happy i did that though
The one bit of hope injected into the movie that I appreciate is the subliminal messaging that "there is still time" even after Owen waited 20 something years to confront what was inside of him. The idea that living your true life, even for just a little bit, makes it better. No matter how late in life. Of course I'm still in my 20s but it still stings to look back on my teenage years and how much time was wasted just by waiting for everything to get better by itself, not really knowing what was going on.
i'm a cis woman but this movie hit so hard that i felt whiplash. i very recently just came out as a lesbian and i still have crazy bad internalized homophobia likely because of the very conservative christian area i grew up in.
The part of the movie that hit me so hard was when maddie was talking about running away to phoenix, and yet still feeling stuck despite getting out their hometown. this is the exact situation that i've been through, fulling expecting to feel like myself after moving across the country and yet those feelings of being empty and lost still stuck, and even got worse over time.
"there is still time"
I like how the vagueness of the film encourages you to make your own reads and connections. For instance you can choose to either take Maddy's words as the truth of the film's narrative, and assume that being buried alive will truly save and awaken their true selves, or you can see her as falling into a suicidal doom spiral, latching on to and building an afterlife mythology from her favorite media as a form of hopeful justification.
@@mimimalloc for sure. I was on a podcast-thingy about the movie once (didn’t get published online womp womp), and I talked a bunch about how I think it’s kinda cool how this movie can be interpreted in a bunch of ways. Like the most literal obvious one is that Maddy is right, but I also kinda really like interpretations where Maddy is wrong, and The Pink Opaque is a much more symbolic thing
I saw that second interpretation at first, but I’m definitely seeing that first one more now
@@urlocalghostI literally was so fixated on it being that second one that it took my boyfriend explaining it to me to realize it's most likely the first and I'm not sure why I was so sure it was gonna be about her using the show to escape from reality or something idek
hmmm, i'm gonna have to say: Not really.
@@KaebrenEXACTLY I was so shitass tired and miserable I saw maddie as being completely dead. Her mannerisms when she “comes back” for Owen were so uncomfortable for me to watch I immediately assumed she was insane.
"Owen waits for Maddy to return and force him underground, but really nobody can choose for you."
you have worded this so extremely perfect. this quote you said specifically has truly rewired my brain and has made me love this film even more. thank you so much.
I need to rewatch this movie but I'm scared to. "There is still time" always gives me chills. I hope there is.
hey listen. listen to me. there is ALWAYS time. as long as you are still breathing, as long as your heart beats, every second you spend not buried in the ground, you have time
You don't need to do anything except what is good. If the movie will help you flourish, watch it. But the good isn't in the movie, it's in your ability to get something out of it. There is always time, there is only time. Best of luck.
I feel the exact same, i've only been able to watch this movie once, but just the one time made me sob so hard. And yet, I still can't stop thinking about it
I’m (mostly) cis but I Saw the TV Glow really resonated with me from a perspective of escapism, and I think that’s why the ending didn’t really work for me. It was a trans allegory. My experience of wanting the world to be different is different from wanting the world to see you as different.
Or maybe I did understand it. Maybe I’m just too afraid of it.
"Or maybe I did understand it. Maybe I’m just too afraid of it."
There is still time, and Tara is waiting for you whenever you are ready :)
you’ve put into words how ive felt for a long time and i dont know what to do now
godddd the monologue with mr. melancholy gave me goosebumps. it reminds me of something you’d see in a bad dream as a kid and it’d freak you out for weeks after. like you think a creepy moon dude is hiding in your closet telling you won’t remember anything when you die lol
and I mean i guess my transness was in the closet instead lmao
this is the prettiest film that ever punched me in the face for 100 minutes straight.
This movie was really interesting to me, as straight man. Going into it, I already knew about the transgender allegory, and picked up on the what and why of it pretty quickly. It's not a subtle film.
But there were aspects of it that triggered something in me that feot more universal.
1. Regret. The feeling that your life isn't what it was supposed to be. That somewhere along the way, you've made mistakes that can't be undone.
2. Attachements through media. There's an interesting feeling that I've never heard a name for. In my life, certain media is inextricably linked to people and places. Watching Star Wars every Christmas morning with my cousin. Sneaking out of my foster home and riding my bike across town to watch wrestling with my dad. Staying up all night and playing Sonic The Hedgehog with my best friend as a kid. This movie touches on that feeling in a way nothing else does. I guess you could call it nostalgia, but that feels too broad.
how quietly a lot of us live
every time i think of this movie i become even more strong in my sense of self. i don't want to be 30 screaming at myself for still asking "am i really trans though" every day for my whole life
Same
My friends made me watch the movie because I’ve been semi-repressing. I feel like I’m kind of at an inbetween stage between full on living a lie and wholly embracing being trans. It’s just hard to accept when you really don’t want it to be the case.
For me what’s hard to accept is that there will be people who accept ME as trans.
@@yohaAltsame, idk (I’m about to make a niche reference but it stood out to me) but in the movie Wonka, when he gives the orphan a piece of chocolate the girl gets sad and explains “I wish you hadn’t done that because now everyday I don’t have it I’ll be sad” and that’s kinda how I feel about being trans...
For what it's worth, I've been in your situation. Like I even have a ton of queer/trans friends, but I just didn't want that to be a struggle that I had to deal with...
But now that I've embraced it and been on hrt for over a year (even without fully presenting femme all the time) I've literally never been happier. I've had the opportunity to learn what it's like to be happy again, to feel sad again, to feel love for others and myself again. I kinda even revel in being trans because I've learned to see just how beautiful it can be.
Thats pretty much how I felt when I watched it
I was in a similar state before watching this movie. I was newly accepting towards my identity when I saw this movie for the first time. It hit me like a train. I had already accepted myself and it still hit me at a thousand miles per hour. Within the first few seconds of the movie I was a weeping mess, I think my body knew what was coming. Accepting our trans identities is hard - there's a lot of fear associated with it. I was scared for a long time to let myself be myself because of all the social and political ramifications. This movie being a horror movie is so ridiculously accurate to the trans experience
Genuinely couldn’t move when the credits came on. I couldn’t let myself believe that was the ending. I was looking around the room, trying to see if anyone else was as distraught as I was, but everyone seemed fine. Literally couldn’t form a coherent sentence to explain to my cis bsf why it hit me so hard for a good 10 minutes afterwards. One of the best movies I’ve ever seen, hands down.
i went to see this movie with 5 other trans people and we were SCARED SHITLESS. best movie going experience i’ve ever had
i may just be a lesbian but this resonated SOOO much with me. just the idea that there's something wrong with me, and there's a supernatural reason for why im different was enough to make me shake and cry in fear. and yet, sometimes it feels like the reality. this was suchhh a good way to symbolize just how different and out of place being gay makes people(at least me) feel.
I’m not trans, I’m pretty confident in saying that, but this movie was showing in my university theater and, having heard of it and its themes, I decided to go see it and yeah this movie’s fucked up. There were some people who laughed a few times near the end and I’ve never related less to my fellow human beings than I did in that moment. My mom happened to be in town and came to see it with me, and after we left the theater she said that she was so relieved when Owen pushed Maddy over in the football field and ran away, and that she’d never felt more like yelling at someone on the screen than she did leading up to that moment. I didn’t actually discuss her interpretation of the movie with her, mostly just because I didn’t think starting a conversation with, “you know, I think maybe he should have tried killing himself, just to find out,” would be a good idea, but it’s interesting to me that, even with how effectively the movie made horror out of everyday life, she still was so confident in its reality while I felt a lot more conflicted.
Now, due to some life events, suicide was probably a pretty raw subject for my mom at the time, so that probably had an effect too, but while I’ve never struggled with my gender identity, I have had other identity issues, and I’ve certainly dealt with isolation, so I do wonder how that may have colored my perception of the film compared to someone who liked their childhood.
This movie means so much to me. I saw it in theaters with my friend. We are both trans men who have connected with eachother through media. At the end of the movie everyone else shuffled out of theater chuckling and commenting on how weird the movie was. But we stayed in our seats. Silenty watching the credits until the lights came on.
maybe im just projecting my own experience, but i totally read this film as being about a trans girl who knows shes trans but feels like she can never act on that feeling.
putting off any form of romantic feelings (i thought i was an aro/ace guy for a long time before becoming a big gay lesbian) because you cant live to see yourself as a man in a relationship. wanting desperately to engage with forms of femininity but being unable to get past the shame that you cant explain, which we see in owen desperately scrubbing off the symbol of the pink opaque. trying to hold on to and follow the (transmasculine) friends you see finally living their lives authentically and still being unable to push yourself off that cliff because you just cant imagine whats at the bottom. more than anything else ive ever seen this film felt like it reflected my pre-transition mentality and dysphoria.
really great video, and i love that every trans person can find something that speaks to them in this movie. there is ALWAYS still time 🏳️⚧️
this movie helped me realize i was nonbinary and as terrifying as that was to grasp, it also helped me accept and know myself better. I already had come to terms with my bisexuality before this, but my gender had been something I had struggled to deal with for so long. I'm so happy to be in this community, this queer family is one of the best things i could've asked for.
One day I will work up the courage to come out, I know there's still time.
Hey man, just read your comment and felt so much relief wash over me. I'm glad that you've developed that patience with yourself through this film, I think that's pretty inspiring. I've been out as non-binary for several years, and there's been nothing more freeing, and I have never felt more beautiful. There is always still time.
You are either a girl or boy still no matter what
my boyfriend asks me time to time whether i would like to transition, i always say i don't know. i let my hair grow longer when all i want is to keep it shorter, i wear dresses and hear people compliment me and wonder if people still would think of me the same if i transitioned. i force myself into this box and keep telling myself i'm not 'really' trans if i feel fine wearing skirts, i'm not trans because i get by fine. but there's always something missing about me and i doubt there's still time for me. this movie makes me feel seen when i didn't really wanted to be seen, and i love it for that.
THERE IS STILL TIME
there is still time
My best friend had to tell me I was trans, I was basically sleepwalking through life and she gently brought up the possibility based off some things i had said in the past, i brushed it off and tried to move on with my life but that conversation kept popping up in my mind. eventually i considered the possibility and booked an appointment at a gender care place just for some information. Turns out I double booked it and had to cancel the appointment and I broke down sobbing. its been almost a year now, my family doesn't accept me but my friends do and thats all I need, I have a long way to go in terms of self acceptance but i cant imagine my future as anyone else
Yk i dont look at that ending as "its too late for owen. He'll never become the person he wants to be" i saw the chalk writing on the street saying "its not too late" and that gave me the idea that owen didnt continue living his miserable life. When he cut himself open he finally took that step to see who he was and he was glad that he was right, as shown on his face. It makes me wonder what he'll do now that he knows with 100% certainty that Maddy was right and that the feeling of the show being more real than real life was validated. Maybe he buries himself like how maddy did, finally going into season 6. Finally becoming the pink opaque
Im one of the few that really like the ending, bc i really resonated with it. I use to live in a country where being queer and trans was illegal, and for most of my life, i thought i would never get to live as myself. I really like the scene where owen opens his chest to the mirror to see their "true self." Eventho the character is transfem, it instantly reminded me of the feeling i had when i removed my surgery chest binder and saw my chest for the first time. My partner had to hold me while i sobbed in the theatre, i didnt think it was going to hit me so hard, i thought it was gonna fully lean into just transfem euphoria. But thats not the tv glow, its trans euphoria period, and thats why its so amazing! Its for everyone, bc everyone deserves to live their life as their authetic self! Theres still time!
I saw the TV glow?? I sure hope so!! That what it SUPPOSED to do!! 😂😂
Liberals think that they’re transgender bc their tv is glowing. So they don’t even notice their microchip 🤣🤣🤣
If this movie was set in the 2020s, it'd be called I Saw the iPAD Glow!!!! 😂😂😂😂
This film meant so much to me. I’ve identified with being trans since I was 12-13, and I’ve gone through a laundry list of labels since then. I’m 19 now, supporting myself, and I’ve been lucky enough to be able to afford low dose T. I have never felt so euphoric, so proud, yet so scared within a single month. My body is changing, I have not felt this “fear” and curiosity since I was a child.
When I first started identifying with transness, it was a completely new world to me, I felt so many things. I never quite “felt like a man,” but I knew for certain I wasn’t okay with being seen as a woman. I identified heavily with gender fluidity and the NB label, but I was repeatedly told that it wasn’t real. That I had to be a certain way to REALLY be trans. As I got older those sentiments stuck with me in ways I’ve only recently been able to genuinely unpack. The end of this video was greatly validating. I hate boxes. I love that I’m not alone, I love this community. I’m hoping that my journey with medically transitioning helps me feel more at ease and at home with my very “out of the box” identity. I hope to truly see my genderless yet very boy yet very girl self in the mirror someday. I Saw The Tv Glow put an ache in my bones very similar to this feeling… such a beautiful film. .°(ಗдಗ。)°.
i was just gonna watch this video without any context because i do that, but for some reason i paused it when "full spoilers ahead" popped up and waited to watch the movie myself first. thank you for making this video so i'd end up doing that!!! i just finished it and i'm not sure what emotions i'm feeling but i'm very glad i watched it, and i'm excited to see what you've got to say now.
One of my favorite parts of this movie is the lighting. It's incredibly dramatically colorful and I loved how Owen felt more himself when he was in "the pink" and not himself in "the blue". A great example was when he was in the highschool hallway to pick up the pilot tape. When he's walking in the blue, he walks slowly and without purpose. When he enters pink briefly, he walks faster and as if he feels like it's who he's meant to be.
This movie had me looking up the price of testosterone and sobbing when i saw how high it was lol
When I watched this movie, I had to just stare at the wall for a little before getting ready. I felt so numb and I finally started crying when I was done. Transitioning seems out of reach for me as a person who currently lives in a third world country- especially as one with a unsupportive family. I'm currently working towards getting my college degree and I think if I had to pick between having a good job and transitioning, I'd pick the former which makes me so so depressed. I Saw the TV Glow made me feel seen as a person who loves watching TV shows and movies and who also struggles with internalized hatred of my queer aspects. Good movie and I loved your review, 10/10
i finished watching this movie at 1am. it didn't fully hit me until 20 minutes later until i started SOBBING in my kitchen. I don't think i could ever explain just how this movie makes me feel, no matter how many times ive tried. You can TELL it was made by someone that just GETS being queer, especially trans (shoutout jane schoenbrun). It makes me both terrified and hopeful for my future somehow.
it's beautiful like nothing else. its scarier than nothing ive ever seen. it just IS.
That's why ive kept the "There Is Still Time" shot as my laptop background for months now. Because there's still time.
also the edits on tiktok have and continue to break me.
Thanks so much for sharing 💖. I’m in my late 20s, started on HRT last year and it’s A LOT. I’m terrified but excited to see where it all takes me. I so relate to your description of feeling suffocated by any boxes people put you in.
I’m definitely going to have to check this film out. The concept of not transitioning and living with the “what ifs” as a life long funeral for a life you could have had is… powerful as fuck.
6:29 this made me think wayy back to what my first encounter of gender euphoria may have been and it was probably in 2010 with this character in the anime ‘Shugo Chara’. In the second season, this character that was characterized as the pinnacle of femininity was revealed to be a boy, and went on to present as a boy, even his magical transformation went from a kimono to something street style. I was sooo obsessed with this change and the idea of this character. I drew him all the time and loved the fact that he still could still have his kimono magical transformation sometimes and STILL be a boy. I haven’t thought of that in a long time 🥲🥲
The end of this movie broke me. I’ve lived in the closet for so long thinking that I don’t want to lose people who won’t accept me. You do wait for someone to drag you out. You wait for someone to tell you whether it’s REAL and going to be OK. even when they do it’s so hard to take the step. So you just keep living and hiding. The end of the movie made me feel sick to my stomach of living like that any more. The horror of being stuck in a life that isn’t fully yours.
This movie genuinely helped me decide that it was a lot scarier to live the way I was than to lose ppl who didn’t care about me to begin with.
Also smth smth the way media (queer-coded, camp media) is the awaken ffelt incredibly realistic. Especially growing up in a small town with no exposure to queerness. The escapism is real.
Such a great video you covered everything really well! Even brought up some stuff I hadn’t thought of, thanks!
omg i loved that movie too and i love your analysis (the part where tara/maddy explains the terms of the show to owen/isabel as a standin for queer terms is so good)
personally, i also have another analysis, which is about tara/maddy, being a "monster" which triggers owen/isabel's fear of change/the unknown
in fiction, even though a monster is often a grotesque figure that's antagonistic to the protagonists, like the monsters of the Pink Opaque and Mr Melancholy, a Monster can also be a symbolic representation of a fear of the Unknown, of facing off against something that you don't fully understand
In that sense, Tara/Maddy is a big agent of change compared Owen/Isabel - she has taken control of her identity and was able to leave this city, which are massive steps that are sources of fear and anxiety for Owen/Isabel, so Tara's actions terrify her
For me, it's also the reason why , despite Tara/Maddy never being a pushing or forcing force for Owen/Isabel (Tara/Maddy might be intense, however never forces or pursues Isabel/Owen like a classical Horror monster), Owen/Isabel is terrified of her ideas because they represent such an unknown to consider, and this can be represented in the film by some tense moments from Owen/Isabel perspective (not running away, the bar scene, the planetarium scene) which represents her inner self-loathing, low self-esteem and internalized queerphobia...
Hi, just wanted to let you know that I'm doing a year-long essay for my class on I Saw the TV Glow and you will be one of my 5 sources. This interpretation was everything I had in my mind put into words, thank you so much.
I've never come out to anybody in my life, and this essay is one of the scariest things I'll ever do.
Hearing your story filled me with so much hope, there is still time for me :)
i watched this movie home alone while my whole family was away. when the credits played i sat through all of them, desperately hoping for some kind of after-credits scene. obviously there wasn't any. i cried for fifteen minutes straight after i realized it was over.
i have grown up in a very conservative christian home. i only interacted with people from my church or my christian homeschool group, and i didn't learn what gay people even were until i was around 13. over covid i got a phone and therefore internet- it didn't take me long to figure out that the something different about me that i had felt for so long was queerness, although it took me another year and a half to say the word trans. i cut my hair, telling my parents that i just wanted a different look and that i was just tired of having long hair. a few months later, they went through everything on my phone. standing my ground and opposing them felt impossible, so i locked that part of myself further down, acted out a full repentance, and tried to live as though everything were the same as normal. even though i now had a flip phone, i found a way to access the internet, and would spend hours on my laptop on discord or youtube, trying to escape through it. i gave up being trans- maybe because i didn't identify that way anymore or maybe because it felt a bit silly or far away or something. my grades started slipping, and my parents again found out that i was "still" queer. i just did the same thing as before. this cycle has happened twice since then. over that time, my older sister (who once identified as queer) has adopted the views of our parents. so did my younger sister, who was once the only person i knew in real life who supported me. it's started to feel as though they're right- maybe my queerness is in fact causing all of this evil and deception and ruining my life.
as of now i think of myself as a lesbian, but my gender feels too heavy to think about at the moment. i've graduated high school and am at a conservative christian college. i have friends now, which i never had in high school, and life feels different. somehow though, i still feel fucking suffocated. i thought that maybe once i got here life would be different, but a lot of things are the same. i know that if nothing changes then i will die. or at the very least, fail my classes or shrivel up inside.
i feel like owen. i have the choice between giving up my queerness, killing that part of myself forever, or coming out and destroying my entire life. it feels like suicide, like burying myself alive and praying for a miracle. but if i don't, maybe i'll never get another chance. maybe my queerness is causing all of that deception and pain, but if i can never be honest about it, than how will i know? if i shove it down then it will just keep growing back and i've seen from every angle that trying to hide it makes things worse. on top of that, there is a good chance some of my younger siblings are queer, and if i can maybe show them that it's okay, that would be everything. but is the cost that coming out would take- ruining my relationships with my family, putting my relationships with my friends at risk, maybe even putting my financial stability at risk- worth it?
i know there's still time. but it feels like time is running out before i implode. or maybe suffocate.
I wanna watch this movie now. I'm trans, socially transitioned for a few years, and recently began my first school fully out as a guy (well, almost fully), and realized a few weeks ago that while I enjoy feeling masculne and being seen as a dude, it also feels like I'm still being beaten into a box, only this time it's with something I enjoyed and I thought maybe I wasn't trans and should detransition, but I still felt no regrets over my transition, and didn't want to go back to being a girl, knowing deep down it'd be uncomfortable and giving up.
I recently have been thinking I'm Non-binary because while I want to be seen as a guy, I don't fully feel there, and with some level of fluidity, it's really awkward, but I'm growing more comfortable. It feels freeing but also scary. I'm gonna bring it up with my therapist today. It's scary but also exciting. I consider myself a dude but I know that fully, I'm something more, not fully confined.
Great video!
It was so good at expressing anxieties I didn't have words for, like how empty and liminaI I felt before starting HRT a year and ago.
By the end it nearly gave me a panic attack with how close to home it felt.
I couldn’t help but squirm at 5:53. I still remember being a teen transfixed to Ranma 1/2, wishing that happened to me. It was odd, wanting to trade w/ him so badly. You’re 100% right, I now get the same feel embracing my gender that I did watching the show.
Thank you. I was feeling so hopeless and just wanted a video to distract myself but this gave me hope. I relate to your experience so much its insane, just the other way I'm trans masc. I think you've saved my life, thank you.
the way people discourage or invalidate "phases" is very harmful. Regardless of the timeline, identity is important. And phases sometimes bloom into long-term realities or they bloom into new realities. Neither is bad. Love the video
Im a straight cis male & i have nothing but love for the LGBTQ+ community those conservites that hate u so much are deplorable people stay fabulous
Thank you for supporting us
great video !! im working on an isttg video right now and i love how you blended your personal experience with what happens to owen during the film. i think the biggest takeaway from the film is what you brought up during the scene where they talked with maddy, the act of repression and not having the words to describe how you feel. societal pressures make being trans a pretty scary thing and you may feel like you're "not right" or "weird" for a feeling that is totally okay to have, but because of that fear you might not want to look deeper. taking that first step is terrifying, but finally feeling one step closer to understanding yourself is a truly amazing feeling.
@@goIdy ty ty!!! And yeah I agree. The first step is arguably the most scary (it was for me lol), but after that, the rest feels more “natural”. I spent so much time coming up with justifications to not go further than the first step, but eventually, it kinda just all fell into place bc it’s who I am
Also good luck making your own video!!!
This is my favorite take on this movie. I have been looking around profusely since it came out to see if anyone had a similar experience with this film that I did (I'm a trans man) and its so comforting to see others react to it similarly. It is unsettling but at the same time so beautiful. I Saw the TV Glow has definitely become my favorite movie and I really love the way you talked about it and how your experiences tie into why you saw it the way you did.
This movie was absolutely wild, my buddy said it was middling for A24 but this shit rocked me. I would like to also say my ears instantly perked up the second I noticed Celeste ost being used for bgm
Forever haunted by this movie. Good video!
Ty!
I love horror, but so much media misses in so many ways and it honestly discouraged me for a while. So, I looked into indie stuff and I found a lot of promise, and I was disappointed that mainstream media hadn't caught up yet. But then I watched this movie, and it is the thing I have been hoping for. It is terrifying and uncomfortable and it doesnt shy away from the true horror its addressing. It made me feel hopeful again, because now I know without a doubt that its possible. I saw the tv glow is amazing, and while I wouldn't say it's perfect, it's pretty close.
Still haven't seen the movie yet so I'm leaving a comment here and will return whenever I finish it!!!
Thank you king ✝️👑
this movie fucked me up hard and it makes me cry just thinking about it which while i cry a lot is still powerful because like only my really big hyperfixations can do that so easily. like im not ready for this video and im scared
I watched it with my parents, they had no clue what it was about but I understood it perfectly
I relate a lot to your experience of transitioning from one side of the binary to the other and it still not quite feeling entirely right. I'm not like fully genderfluid, cuz I really don't identify at all with being masculine outside of like dressing up like a drag king sometimes like it's a costume. But I am some typa genderflux cuz I rarely ever feel 100% like a 'woman'. Usually I'm somewhere between being a woman and being agender, but because I don't wanna be seen as masculine at all, I feel myself over performing as a woman, and I've gotten quite good at that cuz I almost never get referred to as masculine labels anymore, but it does end up feeling suffocating sometimes cuz often I just wanna act however feels natural to me in the moment without it being read as either masc or fem. Is what it is ig, I can't abolish the gender binary by myself lol
I was watching something on RUclips when your video popped up on my recommended,,, I hadn't heard of the film before so I looked it up and immediately watched it, and now I'm watching your video, so thanks kimbee for helping me find this movie
i started sobbing at the birthday scene im not out to my family and my mom came in my room and stood there and tried to comfort me but i couldn't tell her what was wrong
This movie really helped me solidify a lot of my feelings i just hope I can act on them instead of just passively watching my life go by as I know how that turns out.
awesome video & great analysis! I've seen this movie exactly once and have wanted to rewatch it so many times since but it is so incredibly haunting- absolute 10/10 film; i'm never not thinking about it. The shot of Owen screaming "IM DYING" while no one else around him can hear him replays in my mind daily. I cannot wait for the day where i'm ready to re-watch
I freaking sobbed my way through this film. It’s suffocating, and the end isn’t even the escape of it, because I’m still thinking about it. I feel incredibly hopeful about the impact this film will have. Maybe it would’ve reached me when I needed it most.
I am cis, but I still heavily related to it as a queer person and how scary it can be to come to terms with who you are with how it could change how others see you, or even just when I interpret it as escapism and how trapped and stuck you might feel in life and what if this is all there is because you played it safe instead of taking the opportunity that could've made you happier, so you bury yourself in your favorite shows and media to avoid that reality despite having to face it at some point, so the ending made me feel kind of empty, but it also kind of had that bittersweetness of "there is still time" even years down the line
Can we appreciate how well this is edited? I thought for sure that this was an established +100'000 subs channel until I tried to check out your other stuff! Love how well the aestetic goes with the movie, and I'm really thinking of watching it (if I can find it). It is so seldom that you find good queer media :[
Edit: i just watched it. JESUS CHRIST, it was AMAZING. Thank you so much. :D
Owens character feels like such a huge callout that I have a hard time facing it. I've had anxiety my entire life, it gets so bad sometimes that I'll become completely nonverbal and it used to make the adults around me so livid they'd punish me. I've known I was trans nearly my whole life too, around the time I actually became aware of myself. I remember being so distraught and confused when I wasn't aloud to run around shirtless like my male cousins (I was 5 at the time and obviously didn't have a chest), or why I couldn't sleep over with my best friend (he was male), why my name made me sick to my stomach. It all got louder the older I got.
When I was nine, myself, my mother, and my two siblings were laying on the floor of our new house after we'd escaped her abusive ex. we had no furniture or anything, just blankets. I remember laying next to my mom, and she asked me what my name would be if I was a boy, and I told her AJ. After that she cut my hair and bought me new clothes, got me a therapist, anti depressants, and you'd think it was a happy story until it wasn't. I started at a new school in a small town in Oklahoma and was immediately alienated by all the kids, and at the same time my mom found a new man and started to regret the decision to let me 'pretend to be a boy'. For three years I was tormented, teased, and hurt in ways I cant talk about on RUclips. I was only nine to eleven years old. Think about that. I was a fucking child, a terrified baby.
It started to get so bad that my mental health started to rapidly decline, so they upped my dose of anti depressants, but I started to have hallucinations and got sick. I stopped talking to any of the therapists I got, and my mom decided I was just better off without any of it. Next she switched the school I went to, and she said I was never aloud to tell anyone I was a boy, and I didn't. I let myself start to die because I just didn't know what to do. I eventually met my best friend, who introduced me to the lgbtq+ community, taught me what transgender meant, and I instantly understood that I was a guy. I know I was in the midnight realm, but to this day I haven't done much to escape. I keep my hair short, I dress masculine, I know I am a man, but I've made no real effort to show it to the world. I don't introduce myself by my chosen name, I don't correct anyone when they misgender me, I havent tried to get on T or anything. I know it would help me so much to finally be myself, but the fear and anxiety keeps from doing it. My anxiety mixed with my fear of being myself makes it so hard. I know im dying and im doing nothing about it, and even now, after being called out so blatantly, I don't know if I will.
My names Adrian, and im too afraid to escape the midnight realm.
This movie catches perfectly that feeling of your life being freezed till you transition
this video honestly hit me so deep, probably because i have a similar experience of thinking i was just a trans girl after thinking i was gender fluid only know to come back to gender fluid. but even then i don't know
I'm autistic and trans and I saw both Maddy/Tara and Owen/Isabelle as autistic coded. There's a statistic that says that autistic people are 10 times more likely to identify as trans or gender nonconforming than non-autistic people! That's a huge statistic. Of course you don't *have* to be autistic to be trans/gnc, however many of us are. And I feel that the movie sets that up beautifully.
Just watched the movie tonight, this is a great video essay. I was feeling really sad about the ending but you pointing out that Owen does experiment a little by changing shirts made me feel better.
Good analysis with some good self reflection. This one felt more intimate than ur previous vids, and I liked that. My favorite aspect of this movie was the aesthetic. Tons of great shots and colorful lighting. It feels very of our time but I hope it will age well.
Ty ty. I’m glad you enjoyed the movie last night when we watched it (✝️). The way this movie is shot really is beautiful. I know we talked about in DMs and shit but MAAAAN the wide shots on this movie
The way you break down this movie is so accurate to how I experienced it but I was struggling to put it into words myself. Thank you for posting!
right after i watched this movie i cried to my mom about my gender dysphoria. she still doesnt know im trans though lol
I’m a cis white man and I really enjoyed this introspective on the movie. Also the hyper light drifter east temple music 🔥
13:02
I experienced this, Ibwas really unsure abt my gender, and used a bunch of different labels, but eventually my own dysphoria and worry about not being seen as masculine as I was, and fear of getting bullied kicked in, I decided to just make myself a he/him and tried to be as masculine as possible to the outside world.
Thank you for this whole thing. I watched that show and it was disconcerting to me. Am bigender with did and felt like a lot of the show was analogous to dissociative stuff as much as trans stuff - and this helped me process it better from the trans perspective and also just liked hearing about your own gender experience too
Lmao this movie had me crying in the theater 😭 it was the part where they were in the star thing. Though for me it was more of questioning my reality, what I really want and who I really am. There was a lot of things I was suppressing at the time, mostly due to lack of self respect. I Saw The TV Glow is definitely top 3 of my all time favorite movies
the movie reflects my own experiences with denying/repressing these feelings. I've known since sophomore year of high school. Since then, the feelings have been on/off but they havent cut as deeply as this year. i feel like I've lost all control of my life & I'm only waiting for "the right moment". I can't experiment, come out, or transition now. It isn't safe enough. though i still catch glimpses of the woman I could be.
when i first watched I Saw The TV Glow, i didn't quite understand it. like i knew all of the backing themes, i knew it was about being trans (and ive been trans for 4 years atp), but watching it didnt hit me at all like it was for people. i dont think i truly understood what the movie was saying until i watched this video. watching this made me cry like all the other people who was the movie. you did such a good job of explaining everything. thank you so much
The thing that bothered me the most about this movie is that I'm someone who didn't figure out or "come out" about my gender stuff until my late 30s, I also lived in a "man costume" for my entire life until one day it ripped and those closest to me told me that what I was dealing with sounded really non-binary. Owen would be pretty close in age to me so the time periods really resonated but the story seemed darker than mine. Sure I wish I could have been living as my full self the whole time, but also it physically wasn't safe to when I was a teenager/young adult and I didn't even have any role models. I kinda felt like this movie was telling me that I'd done my entire life wrong until now but I look back and I see so many good times along the way. But also this is probably less a critique of a movie and more of an explanation to why I kinda bounced off something that I thought was going to be for me.
i had been putting off watching this movie until today because i'm not trans and was scared of what i might have to confront if i watched it but i'm so glad i did. it really helped put my life into a different perspective
I really liked the movie, I think most people did, some people really didn’t like it though, which is fine, but man this is one of those movies that I made me really passionate about defending it. I just wish everyone really understood what it means to the people it aims for. Great movie
this movie changed me. i knew i was trans. i detransitioned when my dad found out and i tried to hide it even from myself. im surrounding myself with unsupporting people. people who if they found out would leave me alone. this movie showed me what i will be if i continue the path i am on.
Also the color symbolism in this movie the phenomenal. Once you start looking for it, it's almost in every single shot. God bless Jane Shoenburg
It's so funny because I resonate with the film so much more rewatching it after coming out as transfem
I really wish I could transition, and that I could come out. This film is awesome in so many ways, and really means a lot to me.
The Kimbeest video that’s ever Kimbee’d, cinema in its truest form
the most kimbee of all time until i drop my mr birchum review
This movie has genuinely hit me so hard. I feel like I needed too watch it. I’m trans but deep deep in the closet for years, always pushing it away. Ahhh and then years kept going by for Owen. I just saw so much similar between me and the character. I think it’s a horrific wake up call for me
But I also still feel I can’t escape. But I’m being buried deeper and deeper
Thanks for making this. I felt so seen by your gender story, I also identify as gender fluid and it's such a weird space to hold in our binary society. Thank you for sharing and being visible.
loved this ❤ this deepened my understanding of some of the metaphors in the pink opaque! Thanks for this!
This movie was disgustingly heart wrenching, but I’ve never felt so seen. Beautiful commentary
i couldnt even watch this video TT genuinely every time I even think aboutt his movie it just, hits so hard. i think that's a testament to its quality though, how strongly it makes me feel.
I liked this movie but didn't fully get it. I think that as a cishet dude, I'm not the one this was made to speak to. Hearing you break it down and compare it to your experiences definitely shined some light on it's themes though.
This is such a beautiful analysis. Thank you for making and sharing this!
I love this movie, it’s like the matrix bit purple
the matrix is also a trans movie lol
@@trustedroot yeah ik, pretty great
I haven’t watched this quite yet, but im so glad this came up on my home page, this is made for me :)
Thanks for the recommendation. Also, wonderful analysis
As a cis man, this movie helped me understand and relate to the trans experience a lot. The denial, the desperation, and the regret of betraying one’s true self. I didn’t realize what the movie was actually talking about, and what I really wanted was Owen to wake up as Isabelle, who he was supposed to be. At its core, whether you take the movie at face value, or as a metaphor, it’s about being who you are supposed to be. I’m glad I didn’t know about the trans metaphor going into it, it allowed me to see everything with a completely open mind and then recontextualize it afterwards
Always love hearing other queer peoples thoughts on the movie. Amazing video
my best friend and i are both trans, but we’re also both neurodivergent. we connected a lot more with maddy’s perception of the show and maddy and owen’s connection over it. it is so difficult to bond over things when the only thing that feels real and the only thing that matters is something you don’t share with someone else. my friend and i share our hyperfixations with each other but if we didn’t we would struggle to connect