A Life Unlived: I Saw the TV Glow
After an unexpected hiatus, I’m ready to make my triumphant return. October seems like the proper month in which to do that. This is, after all, a horror letter.
If you’ve forgotten who I am, no worries. I’m Wren, a writer based in Colorado, with a specific appreciation for the macabre. This is my spooky newsletter that focuses on folk and literary horror, but sometimes takes detours into other spooky themes. We’re going to take one of those detours today.
One thing that my partner and I initially bonded over was our join love of cinema. He wasn’t as lucky as I was to spend his college years steeped in movies and theatrical performances, but he had already developed an impressive watchlist by the time we met. It’s highly unusual for us to watch something together and have our opinions on it diverge so thoroughly.
But that’s exactly what happened with I Saw the TV Glow. I absolutely loved it, while he found it almost completely incomprehensible. Which brings us to the question: can you enjoy art that was not made for you and which didn’t have you in mind for its audience?
My partner and I couldn’t have more different backgrounds. I grew up a midwestern 90s kid steeped in pre-teen horror like Are You Afraid of the Dark? and Tales from the Crypt. I knew who Elvira was from a young age. I spent a good part of my childhood trying to understand why I never fit in anywhere, no matter how hard I tried, before words like ‘queer’ and ‘neurodivergence’ would help make sense of that. I went to multiple art schools when those were the only places that could feel like home.
Meanwhile, my partner grew up in the Soviet Union. His access to western cinema was mostly limited to bootlegged Russian dubs of action movies. Being an outsider wasn’t an option in a culture that demanded so much conformity. He also had very different issues with trying to figure out what ‘home’ means when the USSR collapsed and he found himself a citizen of Russia instead.
So saying he didn’t ‘get’ I Saw the TV Glow would be an understatement. Yet for me, who struggled with identity throughout the 90s while watching The Adventures of Pete and Pete and spending so much time alone or with the three friends I had, I felt both comforted and discomforted to see those feelings of being adrift and trying to latch on to anything captured so well on the silver screen.
This is a horror about the life unlived. Of rejecting the only path towards liberation, and staying in a place that isn’t good for you. It’s staying in the pain of being a bud, too afraid to blossom. The caterpillar too afraid to become the butterfly. The bird too scared to fly.
I would be remiss to not point out that the director is a trans woman and there is a distinctly trans read of this film. Jane Schoenbrun has stated that she meant for this film to be about the moment a trans person realizes they aren’t who society has told them to be. But I also don’t think that is the only way to interpret the film. Is the trans allegory there? Yes, but it doesn’t beat you over the head. It speaks to those of us who have always felt to call to reclaim our own identities, despite who we were ‘supposed’ to be, and the inherit pain and courage that comes with it.
If anything, this little horror film is an affirming piece of media that cries out ‘Yes! Yes! You made the right choice, even if it was hard!’ Because the bits of our lives that would have remained had we not stepped through that portal into liberation is not a place any of us would want to be.
Poor Owen. He never got to see who she could have been had she walked the path toward freedom. And it is the dawning realization that he has made the wrong choice, that he rejected his chance at living his authentic life because it sounded too crazy.
The dread and terror in this movie is not the in-your-face, make-you-scream variety. It’s quiet. It’s a mood. A vibe. But one that punches you in the gut if you’ve ever wondered if there was something more to your life than being the misfit in high school.