Isttvg - Tumblr Posts

there is still time. btw.

this movie wrecked me honestly

can't stop thinking about this movie tbh..

I watched "I saw the TV glow". It's not good but I needed to scribble something out before I actually exploded.

That movie made me feel so seen that after I finished watching it I say in the dark for 20 minutes just processing it. It felt like my heart was ripped out of my chest and I was being buried alive

i saw the tv glow would have been an incredible movie if it was just about being a closeted trans woman working a shit job with conner omalley as her coworker and didnt have all the uh, how do you say, retarded shit about buffy the vampire slayer

Canceled episode of The Pink Opaque where Mr. Melancholy tries to recreate the “Tgirl Swag” that lets Tara and Isabel defeat his minions so easily

t-shirt that says i watched i saw the tv glow and all i got was this ache in my chest from an emotion i cant put the name to

There is still time.

can't stop thinking about this movie tbh..

this picture is so funny to me divorced from context. i think more amusement centers should just remind you of your mortality

my dealer: got some straight gas 🔥😋 this strain is called "i saw the tv glow" itll have you zoinked out of your gourd 💯

me: yeah whatever. i dont feel shit

5 hours later: dude i swear my living body is somewhere under the ground buried alive and i'm here to get my beating heart back

my best friend maddytara pacing around the room: this isn’t normal. this isn’t normal. this isn’t how life is supposed to be.

Custom MTG token art time - Spirit based off I Saw The TV Glow

God this movie was a lot and I loved it a lot too. Drew this for a friend can’t wait to watch this movie again.

Did I miss the isttvg analysis or is that just still in the oven?

My ISTTG analysis:

I Saw The TV Glow is clearly meant to be seen through the lens of a transgender allegory, however, what makes an allegory an allegory is that it is a story within a story. The Crucible is a story about The Red Scare, but it’s a story about the Salem Witch Trials. Animal Farm is about Communism and the “inherant dangers” of it, but it’s a story about animals taking control and ending up just like their oppressors. I Saw The TV Glow is an allegory for repressing your trans identity and having it kill you, but it’s also a story of someone who grew up with someone, and that person goes missing, and when that person comes back they start saying VERY strange and unusual things. The things that Maddie say sounding “so scary” are meant to represent how terrifying it can be for someone to accept coming out as trans to themselves: it can metaphorically feel like someone asking you to kill yourself and be reborn. But I’m a very literal sense this takes place in a world where although there are supernatural elements involved, it’s very much the real world. We, the audience, are supposed to understand that Maddie talking about how Owen needs to “die and be reborn” is a metaphor for coming out. However we are privy to this information. Owen is not. If we look at the story through Owen’s eyes, I think we can take another perspective on it: what if it is not only a metaphor for being trans and coming out but also a story of mental health. Watching the movie while I understood this was an allegory for being trans, putting myself in Owen’s shoes, as someone with the background I have, I interpreted a lot of Maddie’s behaviors and the things she was saying as psychotic. Maddie is at the typical age when she comes back into Owen’s life when people who are schizophrenic start showing symptoms. I think that there’s a much more surface story or analysis that can be told about Maddie, Owen, and the effects of someone you’re close to going through psychosis and trying to deal with it. Of course Owen entertains the idea of what Maddie is saying to some degree: Owen has seen things that would make one a bit more receptive to thinking maybe there is something supernatural out there. But I think it’s an interesting perspective to talk about how literal it is that Maddie wanted to bury Owen alive so that Owen “died”. Just because that was a metaphor doesn’t mean it was not real in the context of the story. She wanted to kill her friend so that they could “come back”.

TL;DR obviously the trans allegory is the overarching theme, but it’s interesting to look at the story with the perspective that Maddie has schizophrenia and how someone you grew up with can develop psychosis and how that can effect your relationship with them.

I Saw the TV Glow is such a uniquely, devastatingly queer story. Two queer kids trapped in suburbia. Both of them sensing something isn’t quite right with their lives. Both of them knowing that wrongness could kill them. One of them getting out, trying on new names, new places, new ways of being. Trying to claw her way to fully understanding herself, trying to grasp the true reality of her existence. Succeeding. Going back to help the other, to try so desperately to rescue an old friend, to show the path forward. Being called crazy. Because, to someone who hasn’t gotten out, even trying seems crazy. Feels crazy. Looks, on the surface, like dying.

And to have that other queer kid be so terrified of the internal revolution that is accepting himself that he inadvertently stays buried. Stays in a situation that will suffocate him. Choke the life out of him. Choke the joy out of him. Have him so terrified of possibly being crazy that he, instead, lives with a repression so extreme, it quite literally is killing him. And still, still, he apologizes for it. Apologizes over and over and over, to people who don’t see him. Who never have. Who never will. Because it’s better than being crazy. Because it’s safer than digging his way out. Killing the image everyone sees to rise again as something free and true and authentic. My god. My god, this movie. It shattered me.

The visual language of I Saw the TV Glow being liminal spaces with disconcerting lighting and a lot of impersonal wide shots is such a brilliant choice. The pre-transition self as a liminal space. Depersonalization and derealization conveyed through cinematography and set design. The way the color grading changes between the first and second halves. This film is fucking amazing

haven't even gotten like 30 minutes into I Saw The TV Glow.... my heart HURTS

can't stop thinking about this movie tbh..

David Cronenberg's Videodrome (1983) vs. Jane Schoenbrun's I Saw the TV Glow (2024)

@pommie-pup

watched I saw the tv glow again and then put on this album. what the fuck man