Noni Ford reviews the iconoclastic coming-of-age film and its exploration of gender identity, loneliness, and the attachments we form with media like television.

It’s insanely hard to write a review of I Saw the TV Glow that has no spoilers. Then again, maybe it isn’t since there are so many varied theories on what the film is about. Given the director Jane Schoenbrun’s previous work and notes on the film, it is a story dealing with aspects of body dysphoria, but also so much more, like the way kids who don’t fit in to their surroundings attach themselves to media they feel speaks to them, how media can facilitate a friendship between two people, and how terrible the home lives are of people who may be viewed as the “weird” kid in school.  

What I immediately picked up on in the film’s first act was how television had so much power in the lives of our characters. At first it is a commodity for our lead character, Owen, who has his use of it restricted by his very overbearing parents. Later it is used as a tool to distract Owen’s stepfather and later himself from the monotony of their lives. Television is Owen and his friend Maddy’s escape from their reality because it gives them The Pink Opaque, a fantasy show they consume obsessively every week. Even as Owen works at a movie theater, we never see other patrons in the place, we only see people watching television in their homes. There’s something to be said here about having such exclusive access to a device in your residence that can eliminate some amount of discomfort that comes from everyday life. Yet we never see what the stepfather is watching, and the TV does nothing to ease tension in the households we see; it’s simply a portal of escapism. This comes out even in the title of the film — I Saw the TV Glow — indicating the feature that pulls most people’s attention to the device.