Gender As Death in “I Saw The TV Glow”

There is still time.

Some precursory advice for anyone who needs it. With gender, following your gut is the only place to start. If you feel uncomfortable with the phrases and shorthand used to describe you, you should follow that feeling of discomfort. You will be shocked by the peace it may bring you.

In “I Saw The TV Glow“, Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) tells Owen (Justice Smith) that she likes girls, and asks whether he likes girls or guys. His response is “When I think about that stuff, it feels like someone took a shovel and dug out all my insides, and I know there’s nothing in there, but, I still am too nervous to open myself up and check.”

The agent binding Owen and Maddy together is the Pink Opaque, a weekly show in the vein of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The Pink Opaque follows two girls, Isabel, the femme axe-wielding badass, and Tara, the butch demonologist in a leather jacket. These two girls are bonded on the psychic plane, and have only met each other once at a sleep-away camp. In a “monster of the week” format, Isabel and Tara help each other across counties with their psychic powers, and defeat the minions of Mr. Melancholy.

Tara (Left) and Isabel (Right) using their psychic powers

Owen was never able to watch the show on his own, something his father has ensured, saying only “Isn’t that show for girls?” So, Maddy leaves Owen tapes of the Pink Opaque. Each of these tapes is adorned with notes written in pink chalk, silent lines of communication between Maddy and Owen. Owen, after two years of this silent bond, asks to watch the Pink Opaque with her at her house as it airs . Maddy obliges.

After Owen and Maddy watch a very unremarkable episode, Maddy confides in Owen. Saying she plans on leaving their town before it kills her, and that Owen should join her. Owen, after some cajoling, accepts. However, on his way home, his guilt grows insurmountable, and he confesses his plan to his father. He is grounded, but Maddy has already left without a trace, only leaving behind the smoking remains of her TV set.

Later that month, Owen receives a tape of the series finale of the Pink Opaque in the mail. In the series finale, Tara and Isabel are tricked by Mr. Melancholy. Mr. Melancholy cuts out their hearts, has them drink his nefarious “Luna Juice”, and buries the girls alive. As the girls suffocate, their psychic powers are muted by the Luna Juice, which entraps them both in snow-globes of Mr. Melancholy’s making. Isabel’s snow-globe shows a young Owen, staring at a TV.

Ten years pass before Owen sees Maddy again. In the neon skeleton of a grocery store, she appears, with a shorn head and a leather jacket. Owen is shocked, and asks her one question repeatedly, “Where have you been for the past ten years?” Maddy refuses to tell him unless he meets her in their high school gym. Owen obliges.

In the high school gym, Maddy has erected a snow-globe shaped planetarium to tell Owen what she has discovered in the past ten years. The Pink Opaque is realer than the world her and Owen occupy, which she believes is Mr. Melancholy’s “midnight realm”. Maddy says that she is not Maddy, but Tara, and that Owen is not Owen, but Isabel. Maddy says that for the past ten years, she has been searching for a way out, and has found it. All Owen and her need to do is bury themselves alive, and she’s prepared their graves beside the football field.

Maddy, inside of the inflatable planetarium

When Maddy shares her theory with Owen, Owen is bombarded with visions of himself in the costuming of Isabel. He wears a small slip of a dress, and drags a battle axe behind him. Owen recalls the finale, and recalls what happened after he watched it. Distressed by the implication of Isabel’s fate, he screamed and slammed his head against the TV screen. Afterwards, his father pulled him out, and forced him to calm down. Now, Owen begins to follow Maddy to his grave.

Owen, while following Maddy (now referring to herself as Tara) finds himself walking in the footsteps of his visions. His movements are intercut with the movements of a dress-wearing Isabel, carrying a hatchet. But as he crosses the fifty yard line, he pulls away from Maddy, and takes off running.

When I first came out to my mother about my gender identity, it was shocking, but she’s always been a very open appearing person. The patter afterward was very much what you want to hear, “I’m so glad you told me” and “I love you so much” being the central takeaways. However, it quickly became clear how much that language meant to her.

My mom could not use my correct pronouns (for reference, They/Them). This wasn’t a first week issue, it was something she inflicted upon me for the next year. In every conceivable conversation, I was put in this holier-than-thou position of constantly correcting and policing my mother’s language.

Each time I would issue a correction or retraction on behalf of my mother, she would always make a quick, gasping attempt to claw back some standing. Always an “Oh! I am so sorry!’ Or an “I cannot believe I just did that, I am so sorry!” The point of the final word was to draw out forgiveness, an “It’s fine,” or a “Don’t worry about it.”

Eventually, after about two months of this, I asked my mom why it was so difficult for her. My friends, sister, and even father had at this point, caught on. Why couldn’t she? She paused, then said “You have to understand, I still need time to mourn the child I lost.”

I think, no matter how psychically painful that comment may have been, my mom is correct about something. Transitioning involves the death of someone. However, what my mother missed was the truth of the matter. Transitioning involves the death of someone fake. A lifelong falsehood, a lifelong discomfort, which the prisoner endures out of fear.

Maddy and Owen

When Maddy communes with Owen in her constructed planetarium, she does not lie to him about the suffering caused by her self-inflicted burial. She tells him, in plain language, that she could not imagine something more painful. But she also tells Owen that the alternative is worse. A slow death, caused by constant concessions to a world which was designed to entrap him.

I have often found myself avoiding issuing corrections since my mother’s earnest admission of grief. The reason I put a one-year time limit on my mother’s struggle with my gender-identity isn’t because that’s when she “got better”, it’s because that’s when I stopped issuing corrections.

There is an eerie comfort in doing this.

I don’t have to struggle very often, I am never asked to explain myself, I never have to listen to the fumbled reach for the correct pronoun (His pronouns are They/Them!), and I never have to remove myself from potentially interesting conversations or interviews with people diametrically opposed to my existence.

There is a certain kind of power in this lie, as it gives the believer the illusion of awareness. “Well, the answer is always available to those who ask.” And why would they ask? The answer which the liar understands more than anyone else is simple: they would never ask.

Owen says he expected Maddy to return, to force him into the grave. But she never did. I won’t go as far as summarizing the conclusion of the film because it’s unnecessary. In the minutes after the film concluded, I realized the conclusion of Owen’s story was not the conclusion of mine. Instead, there was a message left for us, for the people whose stories still had not ended.

A message left in chalk, for the viewer, or for Owen.

Written in a bubblegum pink chalk with white highlights: “there is still time”.

“I Saw The TV Glow” speaks for a severely underrepresented community in many delightful ways. It speaks to the ever-present fear in trans people’s hearts. It speaks to a desire for understanding unique to trans lives. It speaks to a kind death never touched upon in any meaningful manner by cis voices. “I Saw The TV Glow” is an excellent film for any “allies” reading this article to watch, and a necessary film for any of my trans siblings to watch. And please, keep issuing corrections. The alternative is most certainly death.