I Saw the Shining of TV: Understanding Its Tragic Ending

IIf you’re looking for a movie that explains it all to you, I saw the glow of the TV, now in theaters, is not that film. The film, by writer and director Jane Schoenbrun, is effective because it prevents its characters – and the audience – from being sure where fantasy ends and reality begins.

The film is a sequel to the 2021 psychological horror film Let’s all go to the World’s Fair. This film used vlogging culture and online challenges to explore loneliness, identity and the power of screens. For I saw the glow of the TV, Schoenbrun, who is trans and non-binary, goes back in time to the period of her own adolescence and two retro mediums: cable television and VHS recordings. In a story about two teenagers with doubts about their identities and an obsession with a fake TV show, The Opaque Pink, Shchoenbrun explores how we see ourselves in pop culture and how it can be a gateway to understanding our own identities. It’s a film about projection, and it finds beauty, but also loss and terror, in the space between what we see and what we know to be true – and what we might, on a deeper, unspoken level, know for ourselves. in truth be true even if we cannot fully recognize it.

What is it I saw the glow of the TV About?

It’s the ’90s, and Owen (played initially by Ian Foreman and by Justice Smith in subsequent periods) is an awkward seventh grader with a kind mother (Danielle Deadwyler) and a strict, cold father (Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst). He meets Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine), a slightly older girl in ninth grade, and they form a strange kind of bond over Maddy’s favorite show, The Opaque Pink.

The Opaque Pink is the nexus around which I saw the glow of the TV– and Owen and Maddy’s lives – spin. It’s in the style of a late ’90s young adult series, complete with a 4:3 aspect ratio and the fuzzy, reduced video quality that pre-high-definition digital had. The Opaque PinkThe influences are numerous and obvious. Two teenage girls once met at summer camp, forging a psychic bond that they use to defeat Mr. Melancholy’s monstrous minions, including a gooey ogre made of ice cream, from opposite sides of the county. Think Buffy the Vampire Slayer with the adolescent horror of Are you afraid of the Dark, Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers‘costumed henchmen, and a touch of The Adventures of Pete and PeteIt’s surreality. There’s another show there too. Twin Peaks wasn’t a Nickelodeon-style YA series, but David Lynch’s acclaimed series played with the nature of reality in a way that ended up I saw the glow of the TVas The Opaque Pink causes Owen to break down.

Although she is not especially friendly with Owen, Maddy recognizes something in him and continues recording episodes of The Opaque Pink on VHS for Owen to watch because new episodes air after he goes to sleep. The show becomes a neon pink escape for the two. Her stepfather is abusive, and her only real friend abandons her to befriend the popular kids when Maddy starts liking girls. After Owen’s mother dies of cancer, he stays with his father, whose only line in the entire film is “Isn’t this a girl’s show?” when Owen asks permission to stay up to watch The Opaque Pink. Both Owen and Maddy are searching for something in their lives, perhaps Owen especially, since he can’t verbalize what he’s missing. Your mutual object of fascination, The dull pink, helps fill the void…until it’s cancelled.

Even worse, Maddy disappears without a trace after the cancellation. Owen continues to live his somewhat aimless life, getting a job at a Chuck E. Cheese-style arcade. Then Maddy unexpectedly returns with a revelation about The Opaque Pink This will change everything for Owen – if he believes it. Maddy claims she has been inside the world of The Opaque Pink. She and Owen are actually the show’s protagonists, Isabel (Helena Howard) and Tara (Lindsey Jordan), and the evil Mr. Gloom has defeated them and trapped them in this false reality. She asks Owen to come back with her in a process that involves being buried alive. According to the plan, Owen needs to “become” Isabel – here is some kind of identity transformation or transition being discussed, although the film doesn’t explicitly use these terms – once again (or finally, depending on your reading of the variations of the film). text and subtext levels). At the last minute, Owen backs out, unable to make the leap Maddy asked for. After all, it’s just a TV show… right?

How is it I saw the glow of the TV End?

The film ends many years later. After that fateful night, Owen never saw Maddy again and still works at the arcade. He looks old beyond his years and looks like he is dying inside – spiritually and physically. When he decides to watch it again The Opaque Pink he is shocked to discover that it is not the show he remembered and identified with so much. Now that it’s easily available on streaming and he’s no longer a kid, it’s cheesy and cheap, a far cry from the complex, scary drama he and Maddy once they saw each other. Has it always been this way and is it just his and Maddy’s perceptions that were different? Was Maddy telling the truth? I saw the glow of the TV doesn’t offer a firm answer, nor does it explain its jaw-dropping ending.

While working a child’s birthday party at the arcade with his co-workers (including Conner O’Malley, a comedian known for his manic style who brings just a touch of his uncontrolled energy to the film), Owen suddenly goes crazy in the middle of the film. of singing “Happy Birthday.” He starts screaming repeatedly for help, only to be strangely ignored by everyone in the room. When he goes to the bathroom to recover, he has yet another nervous breakdown – or maybe it’s a breakthrough. Standing in front From the mirror, it cuts through his chest and separates to reveal a beautiful, blinding light as the music swells. It’s strange and haunting, but ultimately triumphant, as if Owen has finally managed to achieve everything he saw in his path. The Opaque Pink.

We then cut to Owen meekly apologizing to the various guests for his outburst, the previous scene seeming like a fantasy, and the film ends.

What I saw the glow of the TVIs the finish average?

I saw the glow of the TV does not offer a definitive answer as to whether The Opaque Pink is it a real world in itself or is it just a TV show, and that uncertainty is essential to the film’s horror. In interviews since the film’s premiere at Sundance, Schoenrun has stated that it is a trans narrative. Owen’s story can be considered a metaphor for “eggs,” a term for trans people who don’t yet realize they are trans. (Lots more to read about trans people’s “eggs,” like here It is here.) Your identification with The Opaque Pink it’s an outlet for feelings he hasn’t been able to – or perhaps doesn’t want to – express. Seeing yourself, or a version of “you” you could be, in a piece of pop culture is a shared universal experience. This is why representation is important, because seeing specifically what’s inside you portrayed in a work of art can be an essential first step toward understanding who you are and who you could be. Especially in the 1990s, when explicit gay, lesbian, and especially trans narratives were rare in mainstream texts, The Opaque Pink is extremely important to Owen and Maddy. Their obsession with this may not be healthy, but it is necessary.

Maddy could be telling the truth about The Opaque Pink, but for Owen, it almost doesn’t matter. There was something about the show that spoke to some essential, yet complicated, part of it. When he refuses Maddy’s offer to take him to the world of The Opaque Pink so that he can access Isabel once again, the clearest reading is the rejection of the possibility of accessing his true self. It’s understandable. Whether literal or metaphorical, there is a Rubicon that Owen needs to cross. It’s scary that he can’t know if it’s the right thing to do or not until after he does it.

That’s why the end of I saw the TV glow It’s a punch in the gut. Something about seeing kids celebrating at a birthday party with their entire lives ahead of them, while so much of his own life has passed him by, triggers Owen. They are a manifestation of all the years he wasted living a lie. They are happy, fresh-faced kids inside an arcade whose 90s decorations look like something out of the ordinary. The Opaque Pink, celebrating his future in a setting that reminds Owen of the path he didn’t take. So when he opens the bathroom to reveal the light inside, it feels cathartic. He is not dead inside and there is still a chance for his true self to come out. There is horror in what is happening, of course – the way he self-mutilates his chest is body horror – but ultimately the act is a kind of justification; in The Opaque Pinkof Maddy and of who Owen could be.

But instead of ending I saw the TV glow On this powerful note of possibility, the film ends with Owen apologizing for who he is. The Opaque Pink remains a fantasy. Neither Owen nor the audience gets confirmation, leaving us with a terrible sense of uncertainty and tragedy. Owen never had the chance to fully see himself within the glare of TV. The hypotheses are scarier than any ice cream monster.