It’s been over a year since I Saw the TV Glow premiered at Sundance to the delight of the precious few trans critics and audience members (and a pleasantly surprising number of cis critics) that had the chance to experience it. Once it hit theaters everywhere thanks to A24 in May 2024 audiences fell for the film, often finding themselves relating to its protagonists and their plights. Many reacted with hope as much as horror, as they tried to process the feelings they were forced to confront about their own lives. Much like Owen, they were forced to tear their chest open and see what was inside. Director Jane Schoenbrun even noted a fascinating (and sometimes heartbreaking) trend on TikTok where people posted that they “saw the tv glow” and either heeded that call or reverted to a life of internal pain.
My own experience of I Saw the TV Glow occurred completely alone at a press screening with no one around to listen to my pained cries in the film’s final moments. I didn’t realize it then, but I was blessed to be alone in that moment, able to reflect on exactly why the film’s content hit me as hard as it did. I was like Owen, knowing that there was something “inside of me” (however corny and reductive that might sound) that I was ignoring for the sake of being comfortably numb. For years I’d identified as non-binary and used “they/them” pronouns, but I always felt some level of discomfort at extending that to being “trans”, in part because I never felt like whatever I was doing was enough.
I’ve joked in the past that I Saw the TV Glow is a trans take on being “scared straight” but that is exactly what the film did for me. Within days of watching, I had already sent an email to a doctor I’d consulted on trans healthcare just once, begging for another check-in and a discussion about how to kickstart a HRT plan that suited my needs. Perhaps it’s stupid to think about transition in any measurable capacity, especially when TV Glow doesn’t bother qualifying what is or isn’t enough to be trans, but I wanted something concrete-ish. It was then I restarted estrogen (and tried but bailed on spiro) and I haven’t looked back since, frequently texting other trans friends about all the fulfilling (and also all the deeply stupid) things that came with diving back in.
Watching Stress Positions, another Sundance movie from last year amusingly enough, both complemented the decision prompted by my TV Glow horror and described what my feelings on medical transition had evolved into: “I wanted to kill myself, and this sort of helped.”
It’s a dark joke, but one that rings true to my own experiences as trans. Even as the world continues to crumble around my community with laws being enacted to harm us, and every day offers a new reason to curl up in bed and want to stop writing, I can’t say I regret the last year of taking estradiol and experiencing all sorts of physical and emotional changes. The first time I had a doctor’s appointment, years ago, I was too scared of the world to actually go through with anything, but because of I Saw the TV Glow that mindset shifted. Now I was too scared of emptiness and stasis not to go through with anything.
In reflecting on my own situation, and witnessing Jane Schoenbrun’s call for stories from others who had been impacted by the film, I wondered how many others had undergone their own HRT journeys because of I Saw the TV Glow. In putting out my own call, I received plenty of folks who were willing and interested in sharing their stories, and what was revealed was a diverse collection of reactions to the film, its visuals, and its characters.
Stef Rubino, another Autostraddle writer, was one of the first to reach out, noting that they were “actively avoiding [TV Glow] for a while because I was afraid of how it would make me feel” and finally watched it “because I was tired of being a coward.”
“What really got me about I Saw the TV Glow was the way Owen was constantly searching for a model of how and who to be in all of the women he allowed into his life. I know for certain I’ve done that in regards to good masculine examples for myself because I was socialized feminine yet I feel like I’m always floating in a void between femininity and masculinity. I needed to find a balance and that’s where my own search came in. Owen’s desperation in searching for an answer through those models reminded me a lot of my young self and that brought me back to those feelings. I just wanted to be ME without constraint but I didn’t really know what that meant for a long time and it was painful to not have anyone showing me a path forward.”
For many, Owen’s journey was a point of fixation, with various trans people I interviewed citing a number of their scenes – slicing open their chest to reveal the television, dissociating in front of the fire or television, being drowned by their father, smiling while wearing a dress – as those that had a distinct impact. The list is endless, and varied, with some people, like J, a trans woman in her late twenties who wanted to go unnamed beyond an initial for this piece, noting that “the movie started resembling my own life to an uncomfortable degree and I was silently breaking down for the last 70 minutes.”
She continues by reflecting on that more, explaining how her own life was mirrored by the film: “When it was over I dried my face off, gave the film a big thumbs up, then went downstairs to open the movie theater for a kid’s birthday party. I was on track for HRT the next day.”
This is just one of the routes that we can imagine Owen taking at the end of the film, with the other being retreating back into themself. Much like many of us were in denial for a long time, J adds, “I had already known I was trans for 7½ years and had repressed those feelings for that entire time. The movie sends a very unambiguous message on that front.”
Others, like a Black transfem named Jayla, noted that “even as someone who had been medically transitioning years prior and had a similar life to Owen, I found myself leaving the theater feeling closer to Maddy/Tara.” Having gone with her girlfriend at the time to see the film, the two “had a conversation similar to when Maddy wanted to leave with Owen about leaving where we were in Orlando. I had been homeless at the time after leaving a family that didn’t approve and lost my access to HRT for awhile, it was hard being socially and medically transitioned way before and still being and feeling degraded living in Florida. I wanted to leave with her, but she couldn’t.”
“She had her own responsibilities understandably enough while I practically had a clean slate after that and just not being able to finish school. Maddy’s character did connect with me, especially imagining what they went through off screen and past Owen/Isabel not leaving with them, the pain and isolation that comes knowing your own hometown has nothing else left for you other than the person you care for. I did eventually leave Florida for Philadelphia, and while I’m doing better and feeling more myself here, it pains me having left someone I loved behind.”
Community, then, became what was important for Jayla: “Before I left I found a way to secure months worth of HRT, got into PA, stockpiled more, and found more trans people to commune with and not hide myself from. I’ve been unapologetically myself, even if it’s to the detriment of finding work here, but I live with people like me and I still get to do what I love, writing with some other queers in Philly to actually tell more of our stories. Very much wanted to be a part of telling my and others stories, and I’m happy being able to find that here.”
It was interesting hearing from people who had been out and medically transitioning for years, like Roxy, who described the aftermath of watching TV Glow as too shocking to “have much of an emotional response that first time” barely able to “explain the feelings I had to friends I saw immediately after.” Her second viewing held a different weight though, settling in the terror that she still felt like Owen, “that I was lost and aimless and unaccepting of myself despite the fact that I knew I was a trans woman and if I didn’t change that as soon as possible I would end up like Owen does at the end, and maybe I already did feel like that.”
This second viewing kickstarted what she refers to as her “second transition” and she didn’t “waste any time in trying to self actualize to a more active degree. I dyed my hair blue, started voice lessons in earnest, tried to get an assessment done to see if I had ADHD, started clearing my wardrobe out and buying more flattering and feminine clothing, really getting into learning makeup, and restarting progesterone. Maybe the most significant physical change I made was switching from estrogen pills to injections; within a week or two my head felt clearer than it had my entire life and I got those feelings of euphoria and rightness that a lot of trans people describe what finally having the correct hormones in themselves feels like (and I frequently worried before this that, because I didn’t have that, maybe I wasn’t really trans).”
“I was able to work through a lot of personal hang ups and issues regarding my sexual identity, what I wanted in life, who I wanted to be, basically every facet of myself. It also allowed me to be really proud and happy to specifically be trans, a trans woman, a fact that I find to be beautiful and powerful now instead of anxiety inducing and scary. To say that it has been transformative is an understatement — I feel like a complete person for the first time in my life, and while a lot of the consequences of this self actualizing haven’t all been positive, I think that the kick this movie gave me was one of the most pivotal things that has ever happened to me.”
Every single person interviewed navigated the aftermath of TV Glow differently and Blair Bishop, a trans writer, seemed grateful to have the film to navigate a number of feelings and life events as her feelings changed over time. “Before the film, I was presenting myself as — and identifying as — non-binary, and although I saw myself as wholly androgynous at first, I was offering more and more feminine articles to my clothing and aesthetic. The first two weeks after I saw it left me with a more fond appreciation for the people I surrounded myself with, the journeys they’ve taken to present themselves as they are, and any hint of honesty and humanity behind it was felt and promptly respected. Didn’t matter if it was my dad, my siblings, or a drunken conversation in the bar afterwards, it just helped me hone in on how to see that, and thus, myself. Once I sank into that social feeling, I fell out and lost what I saw in myself for a while.”
“Originally I wasn’t sure how to contend with these feelings. That was until shortly after I watched the film, I was given news that my mom was diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer. It struck me in the jaw like a bean bag round, as I immediately saw Isabel conversing with her mother. The fear of God kinda got put into me, and I saw it as the biggest fucking signpost readily available by whatever cruel bastard considers themselves fate, and while my mom stated that she’d be fine before long — chemo would only take so many months and she’d be back to herself — I couldn’t see that. It sounded like ‘mom talk’ and the worst case scenario always rings around in my head.”
“After the initial news struck me, I slumped over to the mirror for the first time in a while and said, ‘This isn’t me.’ Because it wasn’t. What I originally saw in my identity suddenly felt like a band-aid as I contested with the possibility that there was still something in there that wanted to crawl out, from the throat, born anew. Once I told my mom and my boyfriend, those two pillars of support were all I needed to explore my options and change myself for the better. On January 11th of this year, I took my first estrogen injection and the fear hasn’t returned since.”
The more time that continues to pass and the more stories that I hear from others, including friends who have come to the film later and then sprinted out for tattoos that feel representative of their identity more than the film, the more I realize that we’re all navigating the same general issues just in vastly different ways. Rubino – who has largely considered the social aspect of transitioning so easygoing in the past but has found themselves thinking about what they really want (“mainly, top surgery and a very low dose of T”) constantly these days – even extends their navigation of identity beyond transness and into their other communities.
“I’m definitely in community with a few people who have had similar experiences as me and are in different places in regards to how they’re transitioning and why. But I’m also in community with a lot of people who couldn’t be further from those experiences and support me unequivocally anyways. Weirdly enough, I’ve also found that a lot of the men I powerlift with have their own body and gender struggles that kind of serve as weird common ground for us. We understand each other in ways I couldn’t have predicted because yeah, being in a body and living in a society that wants to dictate what that body does and how it looks is just fucking torture for everyone. And I’ll keep it real for a second: There is some overlap with the pain of dysphoria I feel and the pain of dysmorphia they experience. It’s become a common language between us, and I feel like we’ve learned a lot from each other as well as given each other the care we need to keep moving forward.”
That such a small pool of individuals held so many different yet powerful reactions to I Saw the TV Glow is nothing short of beautiful to me. One can only wonder how many more lives a film like this has and will change, how many more questions might come up because of it, and how many more eggs will be cracked. We’re blessed this isn’t the only recent trans film, with a wealth of filmmakers putting their dreams and lives on screen for us to experience, but I find myself thankful that this film came to me (and others) at the exact time we needed.
I Saw the TV Glow is streaming on HBO Max.
wow i feel so seen by this