I saw I Saw the TV Glow

I’m gonna start this by instead talking a bit about Parasite, I never watched it during it’s theatrical run nor very soon after it’s success in winning several awards it was much later when I noticed it streaming with Prime Video did I finally sit down and watch it on a whim and instantly I could tell from the start “This here, I can tell it’s CINEMA.“ I’ve felt this way ever since, I wouldn’t say it was my first eye opening experience to it but ever since I’ve mentioned it to friends and family that like, there’s just this feeling when you sit down to watch something, maybe it’s to read something or even you’re booting up a game you’ve heard was very good. You feel the care, the intents, the feeling that what you’re about to experience is special. That’s Cinema. I wanted to start this by explaining myself because I don’t truly know when it hit me, but walking out of the theater freshly with my buddy, all I could feel was that what I witnessed will be something I think about at least once a month for what will feel like the rest of my life. I Saw the TV Glow does something so, depressingly beautiful with it’s story and it does so with a low budget feeling that gives it real sauce. At risk of sounding like a buddy with a closet dying to be filled with my Barnes and Noble discount Criterion’s, A24 has a knack of supporting flicks that just have the sauce and I’m not afraid to admit it especially for something like this. While I couldn’t bring myself to do so in the theater, thinking back on it now this movie brings tears to my eyes, it’s so brazenly rooted in a time that feels both so distant to myself but equally right in the same timeframe it would’ve hit me, it feels raw in that sense. We’re following this story as loosely as we can and eventually it feels like our narrator might be unreliable but if so then the reality of it all is so skewed and impossible. But I suppose that’s purposeful. I choose to take what we see in the film as truth in the understanding of the movie’s environment. Metaphors be damned I want to believe Tara, even if doing so makes the ending feel so much more grim.

I hope that people who see this movie, especially those who takes the metaphors and themes to heart, find it in themselves to be true and not end up suffocating especially in times like we have today. Somewhere sometime there’s a version of myself who ended up suffocating. I feel sorry for what that became, but feel glad that I am where I am now even if life is ever uncertain. I know this is less of a review and more of a deep thought brained vague posting about a movie I desperately think needs to be seen but I need to get my thoughts out there. It’s rare for me to see something so blatant in its self, so proudly queer without needing to even say it, so defiantly willing to make pain feel so real. I love this movie, it feels familiar like staying up late to try and catch an episode of that show you’re not technically disallowed from watching but it’s too late for you, it feels helpless in that way...but in the same way it’s also more hopeful. Art can rarely be put in boxes, it’s fluid like that. I feel like I Saw the TV Glow is both a cautionary tale about repressing queerness inside of you but also a masterfully tense coming of age tragedy. I will be thinking about this movie a lot, it won’t leave me anytime soon, and I feel so thankful to have had the chance to experience again cinema. Thank you Jane Schoenbrun, thank you A24, thank you all who worked on this movie, you all let something important into the world and I’ll cherish it for as long as my grey matter lets me.