Halloween Series, part I
Happy Halloween everyone. I'm not particularly fond of spooks, but this year I've decided to do a watching of some horror movies. For the most part I am staying away from cheapo horrors which rely on jumpscares, and am primarily just watching films I was recommended by friends. First on the chopping block was "I Saw the TV Glow."
If I were to show the film to my mother, she would likely leave confused as to what the hell she just watched; but for me, it felt all too real. The main character, Owen, is shown to have what is likely to be gender dysphoria, but he never woke up to it, which is something I think happened to a lot of people who experienced dysphoria, but didn't have the means to understanding it. Near the beginning, the young Owen, returning home after watching "The Pink Opaque," Imagines himself as Isabel, and smiles. This sort of infatuation continues throughout the movie. I think it was pretty clear, through the context of several scenes that Owen wasn't infatuated with her in a sexual way (in the bleachers scene, Owen is shown not really caring about sexuality), but is instead infatuated with BEING her. However, due to the world he lived in, he never really had his moment where he put all the pieces together, and in the last scenes, Owen is shown to be a dishevelled middle-aged man, and has a complete meltdown as he finally puts it all together, but realises it is too late to change.
My whole life, something has felt...off. Sometimes it feels as if I were experienceing life through a television screen, that I wasn't really ME. That feeling still haunts me to this day; this sort of dreamlike state that I cannot dispell, except for a few, brief, lucid moments. WHen I was young, there was a show that was my "The Pink Opaque". The original Teen Titans. That show gave me the creeps as a kid, but watching back on it now, though there are still some freaky scenes, overall it is much less spooky than how I thought of it when I was younger. Like in the film, I would go every week to watch Teen Titans at my friends' aunts place. Their aunt (I can only remember the nickname we called her; Dodey) let us watch it on her CRT television in the living room. In the show, I found myself attaching to a specific character; and becoming infatuated with her as a kid. Raven. When I saw her, there was this feeling that stirred inside me. But it wasn't the feeling a lot of boys had when they saw her, this was...different. I wanted to be Raven. For a long time, my sexuality was irrelevant comapred to this feeling. Much to the frustration of my parents, I never had a girlfriend in high school, nor did I want one. Like how Owen said in the movie, I would often respond to questions of "Do you like girls? Do you like boys?" With just "I don't know." I saw all the good of me in Raven. Like me, Raven came from a shitty childhood upbringing, but she did not let that hold her back. She fought back against taht, and succeeded; Raven was everything I wanted to be, and she was a girl. I...wanted to be a girl, too.
I found it kind of funny, Owen's reaction to "The Pink Opaque" ending. It was shockingly similar to kid me's reaction to the ending of Teen Titans. "That's it?" Like Maddy, I would often think about how the show would continue, and I would often fantasise about me being in the show. This was the only way my little sheltered brain could understand my identity; by implanting myself onto someone else.
It wasn't until recent times that I started having meltdowns, like what was shown in one of the final scenes. I had started putting everything together. After years that felt like seconds, and as I started to get older, 18, 19, 20, 21...I snapped. I screamed at everyone. I screamed at my mom, I screamed at my friends, I screamed at God. It isn't too late for me, I suppose, but it often feels that way, like I missed that moment. "If only I had realised this sooner, my life would have become so much easier," I scream at myself. I look at my mature, masculine features and question my existence. There is this flashback moment in the movie, where it is revealed that Owen had tried on a dress while spending the night at his friend, Maddy's house. As he wore it, he had a look of joy on his face. That really struck me. As I search for moments of joy I experienced in my youth, I realise quickly that many are connected. When I was very young, I would sometimes fantasise about being a girl, and how much more wonderful my life would be if that were true. Thinking about it gave me butterflies in my stomach, and filled me with a warm fuzziness. In recent times, when I put on makeup, or wore something that was more fulfilling, that feeling came back, for the first time in eternity. It felt like I was alive again. It was then that I realise how dead I've been for most of my life, and it was from watching this film that I realised Owen carried that same feeling with him for his entire life.
That connection made me feel sick.
As he broke down, Owen cried for his mother. Owen only had one person in his life he could be himself with. He had a timid mother who lowered herself beneath her husband, a husband who only has one line in the entire movie.
This, too, I related to. My mother follows wherever my father leads; it has always been like that. My father is a staunch "realist," in that some things are for boys, and other things are girls. He wasn't entirely strict about it, he never beat me if I did something overtly feminine, but he threw this tremendous expectation of me being his son, that it felt as if I was being buried alive by expectation; suffocating. It is only by having salf-actualised; by separating myself from the curse that is expectation, that I can be free, but I still cry. Cry for all the pain that I suffered because I didn't understand what was hurting me.
This movie is for a certain kind of person, it might not be for you, and that is totally fine. For me, though, it felt as if the directer saw right through me, and that feeling of being exposed is one of the most frightening and uncomfortable feelings I know.
"I Saw the TV Glow" is a great representation of the feeling of dysphoria based derealisation, and how it can make your entire existence feel as if it were a television show, as well as the feeling of pure terror when you break through the veil. The realisation that you are dead, but you were so close to living.