i felt about fifteen seconds of betrayal after the credits dropped — it's so painful to end a movie (this movie!) at the end of what would traditionally be the "second act." but almost immediately it clicked into place. this is a primal scream, a violent — loving — shaking of the shoulders of everyone waiting to become themselves. you want a happy ending? a self-actualization? a change... a transition? fucking do it. people — and stories — can show you (part of) a way, but you have to be the one to do it. you're dying; there's still time left.

there's so much i loved about this. one thing that's forward in my mind right now is the way it cannily reworks a prevalent trope in 80s and early 90s horror. a teen — wayward, withdrawn, innocent, or otherwise — is ensorceled by a technological demon (or a demonic technology), their curiosity or incipient desires the crack through which forces that can undermine the entirety of reaganite society can creep in. we are invited to consider owen through adults' eyes a few times: asking to stay up just beyond his 10:15 bedtime and being shut down; frantically begging his friend's mom (amber benson!!) to save him from himself, his desires, maddy; and most of all, his dad wrenching him out of the tv set in the most explicit riff on the theme. meanwhile, maddy's invitations to owen — to lie to his parents about where he'll be on a saturday night, to run away with her as a ninth grader, to come bury himself alive with her — all seem obviously designed to trigger "danger" alarms in the audience. these are the things that happen in movies that come before bad things happen. before the whole social order could come crashing down. that's how the demons get in. but in I Saw the TV Glow we see, and more importantly feel, every brutal wrenching destructive murderous cost those warnings and restrictions exact from someone like owen. and it may be 30 years later, but that societal preoccupation with stymieing the self-exploration and -actualization of children and young people is as strong as ever.

lightning round:

- as obvious as the transness is for me now i legitimately think i could have watched this at 15 and not gotten it then

- speaking of watching this earlier, if i had watched this oh... five months ago, immediately pre-transition, i would have had quite a time

- i don't like using he/him pronouns for owen (or the name owen) but the whole thing with ending the movie where it ends is that we don't get to know what his transition would look like or who he'd be

- the scene where maddy draws the pink opaque symbol on the back of owen's neck.......

- owen's job after the movie theater closes being just... balls lol

- the moment where owen ejects the pink opaque tape when someone comes home because the idea of being seen staring at tv static is somehow better than being seen engaging with an aspect of his true self...

- i love the ambivalence about media as a route for self-discovery. it's so real and so beautiful and to thwart it is violent and wrong. and yet it only works insofar as it galvanizes. at some point if you cut your chest open you need to find your heart in there and not just stories and images.

- the pink opaque credits font being the buffy font is so funny to me. (also, again, amber benson!! tara. the creator being named "josh" something lol)

- shout out to my mom for hearing about this movie on npr and wanting to come see it and being probably the only cis person in the audience tonight <3