For generations, the suburbs were hotbeds of repressed weirdness where outsiders and non-conformists all shared a single keyhole into a larger world: television. At least, that was how it felt before the advent of the World Wide Web, when that keyhole expanded into the size of the world itself. But pre-internet, the ’90s were the last days of genuine suburban isolation when one could simultaneously sequester oneself from society while also partaking of choice fragments of the monoculture reachable via the TV dial. In Jane Schoenbrun’s captivating I Saw the TV Glow, the characters find refuge in a late-night program which stimulates them in ways that nothing else in their anodyne lives can touch. It’s a story about the power of belonging and community, but also about the ravages of nostalgia and its capacity to delude and obfuscate. The distance between these themes proves to be ripe terrain for a particular kind of psychological horror.
Schoenbrun’s decades-spanning script starts off with young Owen (Ian Foreman) as a seventh grader connecting with an older classmate, Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine), over a shared interest in a (fictitious) television program called The Pink Opaque. The show is presented in such vivid detail ‒with video clips, theme music and even a paperback companion ‒ that some viewers may believe it was a real thing, or even fool themselves into remembering it. This is a testament to the care Schoenbrun has taken in worldbuilding, as well as a reflection of the film’s deeper theme about the persistence of memory. It’s easy to believe that Maddy would take Owen under her wing and let him sneak over to her house to watch an episode, even when they appear to have nothing else in common. Their fascination with The Pink Opaque makes them members of a tribe, and nothing else matters.
A time jump gives us a slightly older Owen, embodied now by Justice Smith, who credibly plays the character from adolescence into middle age. The film’s visual style presents dreamlike landscapes and interiors, as if Owen’s obsession with The Pink Opaque colors his experience of the physical world. Few other humans occupy the screen beyond his interactions with Maddy, with the exception of his distant and distracted father, played by ’90s icon Fred Durst. An inkling sets in that Maddy might belong more to Owen’s imagination than to reality, given the fact that they rarely interact with anyone beyond themselves. Did she, at some point, become just as removed from physical reality as the show that once forged their bond?
But reality is not where this story lives. Rather, it’s about the temptation of escape and how seductive it can be to dwell in imaginary worlds. It scarcely matters which world it might be, only that it’s far away from the soul-sapping banality of suburbia. In young Owen’s eyes, The Pink Opaque was an edgy and dangerous realm, populated by terrifying visions of ice cream monsters and the sinister Mr. Melancholy with a face like a blasted moonscape. These characters are shown in nightmarish glimpses using practical effects that ooze and jiggle like images from a fever dream. Much later, when he revisits old recordings of the show, Owen discovers that the sharpness of his memory doesn’t match what was really on the screen. He saw what he wanted (or needed) to see, because the show was only ever a means to an end, with one purpose: escape.
The cultural landscape has drastically shifted since the days when shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer captivated legions of fans whose identities attached themselves like barnacles to the show’s fictional world. Yet the premise of I Saw the TV Glow should prove relevant to audiences who never knew the frustration of feeling unseen and unaffiliated against the backdrop of a homogenized monoculture where a single piece of media ‒ a TV show, a band, a fashion choice ‒ could function as an escape hatch. The horror at the heart of this film is not found within the fictitious show, creepy as it is. Rather, the horror is within the idea that when we flee from banality, we escape from everything else that might make life rich and complex. Once you realize everything you’ve missed, it’s already long gone. And yet the suburbs go on, like a monster that just won’t die.
Photo courtesy of A24
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