There’s so much that can be said about a film as breathtaking, original, and insightful as Jane Schoenbrun’s sophom*ore film, I SAW THE TV GLOW If you’re like me, and you keep up with a lot of different trans film critics and follow a ton of trans people on letterboxd, you’re also likely like me in the way that you’ve read more than your fair share of criticism and analysis of this film. If you’re like me in more than those ways, you might have realized that something has been sorely lacking from the bulk of the discussions, analysis and reviews of the film thus far — the perspective of people who are materially aligned with the main character, Owen, played by Justice Smith — a queer Black person. I love the fact that this film has garnered so much attention, and I’ve loved the different perspectives that I’ve read. Of the Black trans people I have in my life, none have really been interested in watching this film, and the few that have, didn’t enjoy it and didn’t really want to discuss it further. They also, similar to myself, didn’t want to rain on the parade of Jane, and all the people who love the film — trans joy is in such short supply these days. But after finishing I SAW THE TV GLOW for myself, waiting until the optimal moment to consume something I know would tear me up inside — I cannot help but feel that the failure to address how the main character of the film being portrayed by a Black person changes how it is perceived by many Black trans, queer and gender expansive people. I SAW THE TV GLOW is a horror movie for more than one reason — it displays the horror of what it is to live a life as a stranger, to live in a constructed truth that is made up of lies, and at the same time parallels what it’s like to live as a Black trans, queer, gender expansive person in a world that forces us to conform to white western hegemony, to remain palatable to white trans, queer, gender expansive society, always to our detriment, to our deaths. The horror of the film is portrayed as resting in the danger of assimilation, of fear based inaction, of a life not truly lived. But through my eyes, the horror I witnessed was largely due to the weight of how realistic it is when Black trans, queer and gender expansive people are left to rot, to beg for help and to apologize for it at every step of the way, just like Owen.
I’m perplexed by the concept that the film is hopeful, with people often citing a frame in which “There Is Still Time” is drawn in chalk on the street. If only this were the final frame of the film, instead of a weak, gasping Owen, barely clinging to life, apologizing for having a reaction to the fact that she has been left to die. I know, I am supposed to view what happens to Owen as being his own fault — he runs away from Maddy at year two, and he runs away again 8 years later. This, meant to say that it is our own fear to blame, that holds us back. Something I felt missing in the film is the fact that we are shown that Owen is deeply afraid to take the plunge, but it is never expounded on why. Perhaps because that’s too big a narrative for a horror film to capture, and I understand that. Due to the fact that these things are not extrapolated on in any way and since Owen is the main character who I am meant to empathize with — I see it differently. I am unable to blame Owen for the fear felt, for the fear that holds her back in 9th grade and again as an adult. I am unable to see Maddy, a white gender expansive queer person, as the stronger of the pair because they were able to take the dive. Because I know what it means to be a Black trans, queer , gender expansive person in this world. I know what it means, even when you do not let the fear hold you back from realizing yourself. We live in a world that has created conditions of assimilation for every group. Even in 2024, we are not yet in a place where being queer and trans means that you are permitted to be as unique and yourself as possible without consequence. There are consequences, and they are severe and intensified when your gender deviance is seen as threatening not just to cishet society, but to white queer and trans hegemony as well. This is a big reason I feel so pained by this film — I’ve heard from many trans people that there is hope in the message of the film. In the end, I am watching what is ostensibly a Black trans woman, choking on her own air, unable to capture enough, apologizing to everyone around her for pleading for help. This is not the first time she has pleaded for it. She was left behind when her fear paralyzed her in place. Given no grace, and left behind. I wish I could see this story removed from the reality that even when Black trans people are courageous enough to come out of the closet and be who we are, we still end up like this. Gasping for air, pleading for help, apologizing, left behind.
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This resembles something I have criticized for a while now, the desire to build a ubiquitous trans culture and the people in the margins that will erase and leave behind as well as the desire of white (and nonblack) trans people to project their realities onto Black trans people while refusing to acknowledge the stark differences between our realities that fundamentally change our perceptions. It matters that a Black person was cast in this role, and that the reality of familial, societal, communal and personal abandonment is far too real for too many Black trans people in this situation. It changes the messaging from something I could see as hopeful for closeted trans people who really need something to jolt them out of apathy and into the life they deserve when the center of this message being told to me is someone who, statistically, and from my very own Black trans experience, will be left behind regardless. If we were in the world where Owen continued to crack open his chest and allow herself to be Isabel, we would still be in the world where white supremacy exists and is enforced in every single community and group of people on earth.
It hurts when Owen asks Maddy if he can come over and watch The Pink Opaque with her again and she responds by revealing that she is a lesbian, trying to ensure her safety from Owen’s advances. This is such a layered moment because it is not just a girl being mistaken for a boy, it is not just someone who isn’t interested in romance or sex being mistaken for someone who is — it is a white fem reacting defensively to a Black person asking her something innocently, someone who has never displayed a hint of desire toward her. I am unable to see this interaction and not point that out as significant within it, within the dynamic of the entire film. At their first sleepover when Maddy is in 9th grade and Owen in the 7th, she tells him that he should be out by dawn lest her stepdad find him, cause then he would break her nose again. Owen, a little later, asks where she will be sleeping — she calls him a creep in response. I am unable to see this separate from race, the fact that he is sleeping over a white girls house, with presumably white parents — of course it makes sense that he wants to know where you’re sleeping. He isn’t safe there. But instead, it’s viewed as Owen wanting more information about her whereabouts for some creepy reason. I could never see it that way. I only see it as trying to maintain base level protection in an environment where you are liable to be killed for existing in it while Black.
I am unable to remove whiteness from my analysis of why I don’t see Owen as weak for not going with Maddy, as she, even as she takes the dive into terrifying, unknown territory, will retain the privileges and protections that whiteness offers in a white supremacist world. I cannot see I SAW THE TV GLOW, and divorce it from the reality of how often Black trans experience is flattened and erased in favor of white narratives of transition and becoming. I can not see this film and divorce it from the realities of Black trans, queer and gender expansive people living in the suburbs, intentionally alienated from people who might see and identify with and accept them as they are.
Elle Lett, a Black trans woman and the cofounder of a social epidemiology lab focused on Black Population Health once said “I’m consistently reminded by the trans community that I am Black first or more abruptly that my Black transness is different and only valuable when it overlaps with white transness.” I am reminded of her words while watching TV GLOW. I am reminded of all the times I have experienced things that taught me how often nonblack people only connect with us (Black trans, queer, gender expansive people) when they can see a part of themselves when they interact with us. The second we don’t resemble them, or if the journey to a similar place they are in is a little rough, we become strangers again. Living in a world with global antiblackness takes an intense toll on the mind and the body. It feels like I SAW THE TV GLOW wants me to blame Owen for not being courageous enough to face what it means to transition, but I just can’t see it that way. I have too much empathy for Black trans people fighting up against transphobia , antiblackness , transmisogynoir , ungendering , third gendering , demonization , fetishization , hypervisibility and invisibility all at once. We can’t wait for everyone, and sometimes we do have to leave people behind to chase the lives we really want for ourselves. I just can’t feel the hope that this film possibly meant to inspire in me because the reality doesn’t apply the same when we’re talking about Black trans people. I don’t believe this would be so stark to me if a Black person were not chosen as the lead role, because the choice forced me, just like in real life, to consider it in everything. I’m watching a Black trans woman be tortured in a nightmare dimension that far too closely resembles the reality of Black trans women who are alive right now for me to look past it. Repressing your trans identity, stalling your transition journey can absolutely kill you. It’s killed a lot of people before, more than we can ever know because their headstones don’t have the name they truly wanted on them, because the family burns the evidence, because history decided they could not be known. Pretending that Black trans people are against the same odds and given the same support when attempting to subvert that purgatory, is inaccurate, unrealistic, and horrific. Seeing the reactions of so many people who loved this film talking to those who found it to be depressing, I am unable to separate the fact that so many of the people upset that it could be seen as depressing, are white trans people who have transitioned already. This is relevant because the attitude that this kind of tough love is the thing that everyone needs is a very colonialist mindset. When I think of Black trans people suffering in the closet, the las thing I want to give them is tough love. I firmly believe there has to be a better, more empathetic way to urge people to live their lives than to convince hurting people up against extreme odds, that they will die if they don’t face their fear as soon as possible and just do it. There has to be a better way when I’m living in a world that has beaten down Black trans, queer and gender expansive people into hellish depths for so long, but just doing it by a different name. Sometimes there is too much fear to chase bliss. The answer is not abandoning those who cannot defeat their fear, it is to gather around them and create the conditions where they do not have to be so afraid. I am unfortunately unable to analyze this film without these facts being central to my perception of it all.
I SAW THE TV GLOW is beautiful, for so many reasons. Mostly because I’m amazed that something so viscerally trans has been shown all across the country, people are getting symbols from it tattooed. It makes me happy to see so many musical artists I love involved in the film, and that someone with such a big name and reputation like Emma Stone backed this so hard. I don’t want this essay to take away any of the good things that this film made you feel. I don’t want this to come across as a scathing critique of Jane Schoenbrun, as they are one of my favorite contemporary filmmakers and a beacon of hope for me in the landscape of current cinema. I don’t reject that the film contains messaging that can inspire those trapped to make changes and free themselves, to become themselves. My words here are to beseech everyone reading this to please, please, please, listen to the pleas of the Black trans, queer and gender expansive people around you. To please, please, please, give us our flowers while we are alive. To please, please, please be patient with Black trans people, to understand that our fear is heavy, generational, compounded by hundreds of years of no escape from antiblackness regardless of if we demand it or not. Jane Schoenbrun, thank you for making this film. Thank you for making films that remind me that pain is human. Thank you for riding so hard for Buffy fans. I am taking a risk releasing this essay for anyone but my friends to read, as I’ve seen many of the people who do not have a perfectly pleasant opinion of the film hounded for feeling that way, and again, my position as a Black trans person having an opinion about a white trans persons art that has entered a realm of sacredness to so many trans people, changes things. It compounds the risk. But, I love this movie. As painful as it is, and as much as it hurt me to watch, and hurts me to think about. I love this movie. But I also love myself, and all the Black trans people who have watched this and felt that something just wasn’t right, and all those in the future who might watch it and feel similarly, who want some comfort and acknowledgement that their feelings are okay to feel. Jane said in an interview with BrightWallDarkRoom ``The commodification of transness into an entertainment industrial complex as emotionally and morally and capitalistically bankrupt as our current space is, is not necessarily something to celebrate unequivocally. I think it’s something to tread very light into as we hopefully continue to do the work as a community of understanding transness as not an identitarian-based apolitical group. But in fact, as a political and ideological movement that is inherently oppositional to the binary, conservative stranglehold that cis straight white supremacist patriarchy has over all of our lives” — this quote makes me feel like Jane would be alright with what I’ve outlined in this essay, as it’s done with the purpose of sharing my (Black trans) perspective on the trans art being shared with the world, doing my part to prevent the idea that trans culture needs to be unilateral, constant, easily understood. Creating a space where we can exist together and all be heard, seen, felt, understood, cared for, dug out of the ground, finding new life, creating new love, more art and more freedom. Jane Schoenbrun has made yet another 5 star film that I’ll struggle to ever watch again (with tears in my eyes, and all my love).
To end this essay, I want to repeat again — I love this movie. With my hands crossed, recited like a prayer — please care for the Black trans, queer and gender expansive people in your life, please be patient with them/us and please — give us flowers while we’re still alive.
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