Jane Schoenbrun’s second narrative feature is an insatiable quest for inclusion in the in between vacant spaces of the analog pixels. They infuse strange images into fragmented memories which they seem to provoke in a scene earlier in the film that attempts to show the divine ability of the box to illuminate even the most disturbed audiences. Young Owen (Ian Foreman) asks for permission from his mother Brenda (Danielle Deadwyler) in order to set up what looks like a sleepover at a friend’s house. Instead, he creeps over manicured lawns in suburban neighborhoods to meet up with Maddy (Brigette Lundy Paine) an exciting new older girl whom he just met at school, and her friend who are both engrossed in the Young Adult Network’s show The Pink Opaque. Painters twist a strand of Owen’s curly hair and give him an irresistible smile that perfectly accompanies his longing for companionship. Yet for us who are embedded in surreal disjointed images fashioned by the graphic elements of the show its monsters its complex web of mythologies, we may be scared of being taken. We are spellbound This feeling of recognition and the ensuing rush of dopamine continues to disappoint Owen. It’s one of those moments that stand as character building for the show and the many aspects of it that allowed me to return time after time.
An attempt to develop the narrative further is achievable as well through the accentuation of temporal spatial dislocations in graphic narrative absent in the oceanic flavors of I Saw the TV Glow, as this image as well as the substance contained introduces within it a prolonged slowness universal.
With stark adjustment in demeanor, Justice Smith makes Owen feel like an entirely new character with a deep seated wound and a sense of sensibility. Maddy comes into the picture parallel to Owen’s childhood who struggles with reoccurring family losses and in and out of a bi-continental friendship with her that is lit ever so brightly by a mutual liking to an underrated show that eerily resembles Buffy the Vampire Slayer, called The Pink Opaque. The show lends a voice to the unable Owen’s deep seated horrid anger while his monologues act as annoying asides disrupting his repetitive self-destruction. The never ending tension flatters a viewer into a soft slumber and then proceeds to violently wake them up at a very high pace.
But whether he likes it or not when Owen first sees Maddy looking at a guide to one of the episodes of The Pink Opaque he is engaged in a search for himself. It is apparent that even though the first time Owen comes by Maddy’s house to meet her is pretty late at night she is not his first priority and two years later he still has a strong appreciation for the series.
Instead of going to Maddy’s place, she slips tapes to Owen of the episodes, titled ‘Homecoming To Get You’ or ‘The Trouble With Tara Part 1’ written on the tapes in pink ink which she hides in the darkroom of the school for Owen to discover. These are the installments that Owen watches horizontally and in such an intense fashion that he almost never exerts himself too much and even goes deeper within himself and the imaginable world of the series.
“The Pink Opaque” is a story within a story, which is, too, pretty much indestructible It’s about two girls (Helena Howard and Lindsey Jordan) linked telepathically who have to defeat bad guys including a beastly moon shaped creature named Mr. Melancholy every week. Cole Schoenbrun does this with a fun loving touch that plays with the idea of genre until Owen and Maddy’s personalities are punctuated by something more abstract. In the show, Owen and Maddy’s mundane suburb is one that Owen and Maddy would dislike because it forces a mundane diagrama and dream like conformist meta on gender to the viewer which is suffocative. What about you, do you fancy the girls? Maddy asks Owen about school bleachers. I don’t know, I don’t think Owen, shyer, quickly responds. “Boys?” Why not? pushes Maddy.
“I think I like TV shows” Smith replies honestly. When I start to contemplate that stuff, there’s this strange inside my stomach possibly a feeling of having bone and someone took a shovel and scooped every single inside inside of me. I know there is none. But I feel too scared to even open up and see.
The upsetting aspects of Owen’s character may be attributed to issues of gender dysphoria when I Saw the TV Glow however I couldn’t help but draw parallels to Jordan Peele’s Us. This film takes the 1980s and its simplistic reactionary politics as a starting point, to graphically explicate the destructive economic legacy of American Reaganism through the lens of a Black nuclear family’s misplaced aspiration for upward mobility through consumerism. Television features prominently in the narrative of this film as well, a Hand Across America commercial motivates a young Addy to emote a plan for an uprising when she understands that there is a systemic absence of balance because so many are living a nightmare so that a few might enjoy a dream. Just like Addy, the television displaced Owen in the rose tinted image of a little town. He was invigorated by the self evident lies of Clinton’s America when a forced homogeneity through legislation such as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” created the illusion of progressivism and diversity amidst the consumerist fantasies.
Interestingly enough, Owen appears to be one of the very few Black citizens who have settled in this town. He rather quickly establishes a constant bond with Maddy, another black character who dislikes the lie that is perpetuated in America, and being close to television has only enhanced such feelings. Addy’s desire transforms into a crystal clear vision of rebellion using the television as a guide. The idea of television something that disturbs, reinterprets, and shapes Black existence is frightening to Owen that he prefers to live in a quiet yet choking concealment of being undefined!
The moment filmmakers go up the ladder, they become overly cautious and consider their careers instead they definitely seem to be tackling this film because there are narrowly focused on a certain budget level ‘ISaw the TV Glow.’ The creative director’s work follows up their excellent yet resourceful, ‘We’re All Going to the World’s Fair’ in which Schoenbrun directs the film without fear of what they left behind or what did not happen. Great tell-tale music, fun practical props, beautiful photography, interesting editing combining real to imaginary worlds that’s a hard blow to the rich filmmaker who plans to be adventurous.
Each of these inspiring qualities of bravery resonates in all the scenes in the film and the ideal making displays all the arresting performances of creativity.
Lundy Paine is persistent, confidently presenting Maddy as a person with a hard exterior that conceals the discomfort hidden in their turned head and downcast eyes. As Owen, Smith, at the beginning, impersonates Lundy Paine’s pose. Very soon, however, through the arc of the characters, their common body language changes Lundy Paine takes a wide and self assured stance while Smith practically concaves his chest. Smith is especially fantastic, changing naturally without any artificiality. As his body somehow appears and does not appear confident his voice eventually comes out sounding like a man who died centuries ago. His eyes become lifeless spheres, which now seem to be occupied by hopelessness. His late scream with ideal catharsis, opening to a beatific face, sounds just as intense as Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow It gets reverberated in the same way in a loop so that no matter how much one watches it, it always seems brand new.
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