Tilly's Trans Tuesdays

THE INTENTIONAL TRANS ALLEGORY OF I SAW THE TV GLOW, part 7

Welcome to #TransTuesday! Tillyvision comes in for a landing in THE INTENTIONAL TRANS ALLEGORY OF I SAW THE TV GLOW, part 7! Owen or Isabel? Who will survive, who will get buried forever? It may not be who you think.

This is a bad place to start, so for that go to PART 1!

Who would even start with Part 7? You goofs. See PART 2!

Maybe nobody would start with Part 7? See PART 3!

And yet people do weird things sometimes! See PART 4!

So much so that I feel I have to include links to all past parts! See PART 5!

Just so I can be sure you have them if needed. I’m so thoughtful! See PART 6!

1:19:42 – Owen runs home, surrounded by only dysphoria, fear, and despair, and looks into where his dad used to be, watching tv. The couch is empty, because it’s his now. He is going to take the place his father occupied, and “be a man” and give in to the masculinity that society expects of him.

Owen: “After that night on the football field, I locked myself inside.” He doesn’t mean his house, he means he locked Isabel inside of himself.

1:19:53 – Look at him surrounded by that green, looking at/only seeing fear. Note the yellow here is again a barrier, a metaphor keeping him (Isabel) inside. “I didn’t leave the house for days. I kept waiting for her to show back up, to force me underground. But she never did.” 

Nobody can force you to transition, you have to CHOOSE to. 

1:20:11 – Riding Around in the Dark by Florist plays, and if you think this song might have some transy lyrics that apply to Owen right at this moment too, you are not mistaken.

Eyes turning, light burning
And I’m far from gone
And the deepest feelings
Faces come and go

Owen: “I told myself I made the right choice. Maddy’s story was insane, and it couldn’t be true. But some nights, when I was working late at the movie theater, I found myself wondering what if she was right? What if she had been telling the truth? What if I really was someone else? Someone beautiful and powerful. Someone buried alive and suffocating to death.” 

Aw babe. BABE. You’re so close. SO. CLOSE.

Also! Again, A reminder that long before this movie I described my own dysphoria as being like drowning. Which is suffocation, my friends.

1:21:00 – LOOK AT THIS BRILLIANT SHOT. Owen: “But I know that’s not true. That’s just fantasy. Kids’ stuff.” His head is the same shape as the yellow popcorn on the screen behind him, HIS HEAD IS FULL OF FEAR.

1:21:15: – And now, the most important shot in the entire movie.

THERE IS STILL TIME. Look how much MORE jumbled and chaotic his head is now. But look at the end of the street, amidst all the despair, and the jumbled mind holding the truth… he’s ignoring it all and heading right toward fear. It’s still all he can see. Even though the pink message of his transness is right there, telling him it’s not too late.

1:21:35 – Owen: “I work [at the Fun Center] now, restocking the ball pit with balls.”

Like, uhhhh… he’s making sure to keep a good supply of balls, upholding the (cis) man society says he has to be. SUPERtext?

1:21:50 – Owen: “Time moves fast these days. Years pass like seconds.” Remember Maddy said that happened to her too? He’s still dissociating. “I just try not to think too hard about it.” 

Yeah, because if he DOES, what’s he gonna realize, do you think?

1:22:04 – “It was time for me to become a man.” OOOOOOF Supertext. “A real adult. A productive member of society.” YOU HAVE OBLIGATIONS, FOLLOW THEM AND IGNORE YOUR TRUE SELF AND TRUE DESIRES.

1:22:19 – Owen brings his new tv inside. “I even got a family of my own. I love them more than anything.” OBLIGATIONS OBLIGATIONS OBLIGATIONS to US.

1:22:30 – The new tv he’s dragging in is an LG, which has the tagline “Life’s Good”. 

Jane said this was the production designer’s choice when getting the box for the shoot, and how perfect is it? “My life must be good, this is what society says I’m supposed to do and want and be!” It’s genius. And shows you how so many different people come together to make collaborative art like this, and contribute to its meaning.

Also note the outside of the house: despair. Inside: fear. The house next door: danger. His “life,” such as it is, hasn’t changed at all.

1:22:58 – Owen puts out the fire of his inner self, his transness, his truth. For good. Or so he thinks. But it leaves him in darkness.

1:23:25 – Owen: “Anyway, like I was saying, it was raining the other night and I couldn’t sleep? So I started The Pink Opaque again. …and it was nothing like I remembered it.”

Remember what he said about Maddy, and how she couldn’t be right? It was just a fantasy, kids’ stuff? They weren’t exploring transness, they were just a couple of kids playing around. There was nothing more to it.

And he’s convinced himself that’s all it was, so when he watches the show now, that’s all he sees. Not the truth of it, but some sanitized, flattened, muted version of it. Kids’ stuff.

1:24:04 – Wizard of Oz and Mrs. Doubtfire DVDs next to the tv were chosen by Jane: “This is meta commentary about the history of queer cinema.” SUPERtext.

1:24:23 – As Owen watches it, he’s… wheezing. Again. 

Owen, bud, if it’s just goofy kids’ stuff… why on earth are you reacting like you just had the wind knocked out of you??

Because HE STILL KNOWS, despite all he’s done to convince himself otherwise. But this is so important, because it’s set up for the ending. 

We know his subconscious is telling him “there is still time.”

We know his dysphoria is still suffocating him.

Will he accept that’s what it is? Will he realize the internalized transphobia keeping him from self-actualization? 

1:24:35 – The world spins and flashes. Owen: “I just felt embarrassed.” That’s what society and internalized transphobia want you to feel.

1:24:55 – Cut to the fun center, and what do we have? Spinning dysphoria, fear, and danger, a CLAW MACHINE (if you remember from the earlier song, a heart) that can’t grab onto anything…

1:25:10 – A MR. MELANCHOLY GAME. Transphobia is everywhere, even here, Owen cannot escape it. Note that in the game Mr. Melancholy is fighting The Pink Opaque ghosts. It’s called “Mr. Melancholy’s Midnight Dash, the race for your life.” SUUUUUUPERtext.

1:25:35 – 20 years later, Owen’s (literally and figuratively) still in the same place. Surrounded by despair and fear… but there are some small hints of transness still.

1:25:46 – He opens a box of balls, he’s still pretending to be the MAN society says he is, still WHEEZING because it’s suffocating him. And if you wonder how that makes him feel, uh, gee, look at the colors the balls are… the transness is there, but it’s entirely overridden with fear.

1:25:54 – Look at his lips. He’s stopped taking care of himself, because he feels entirely disconnected from his body and sees no reason to. I did this too. So many trans people do, because we see no reason to. Our bodies aren’t “ours” so why should we care? I talked about this a bit in the Trans Tuesday on UNEXPECTED CHANGES OF TRANSITION.

1:27:00 – During the party, Owen is miserable, finds a spot alone in the corner. This was me at every party ever, it’s Neo in the club in the first Matrix. We don’t want to be perceived as the wrong gender because it’s so painful, we don’t want to interact with anyone because then we have to put on a painful performance of someone we’re not, don’t want to be, and don’t know how to be.

1:27:15 – And then, the most harrowing moment in the movie for every trans person who ever lived with dysphoria. 

Owen screams, gutteral, primal. It’s agony, it’s terror, it’s misery, it’s loneliness, it’s a LIFETIME OF SUFFOCATION AND PAIN and NOBODY. ELSE. CAN. SEE. IT. They’re frozen. They don’t react, because they don’t know.

“You need to help me! I’m dying right now!” He sobs.

This is life with dysphoria, not just at work but at home and with family and friends and everything you love, everywhere you go, every second of every day. 

You are drowning and dying and being buried alive and NOBODY KNOWS OR CARES (and some, in fact, may be tossing dirt on top of the pile to help bury you).

It tears my heart to shreds EVERY. TIME. I see it. This was my entire life pre-transition.

MY ENTIRE LIFE.

Justice Smith’s performance. The direction. Everything about it. It is magnificent and horrible and beautiful and agonizing all at once.

“Sorry. Ignore me.” Well we wouldn’t want our WAKING DEATH to be a BURDEN to the people around us, would be? That damned fucking Luna Juice from Mr. Melancholy can fuck off into the sun.

1:27:55 – On the commentary, Jane about Owen’s scream: “Come on dude, you know you’re Isabell” “What did Maddy say at the beginning of the film? Don’t apologize.”

1:28:12 – Owen screams. “Mommy!” He’s SCREAMING FOR THE FEMININITY HE LOST, because he gave it up, made the choice to ignore it and give in to transphobia. 

He coughs, seems to be choking on something. Wonder what it could be? Hmmmm…

1:28:16 –  Jane: “A couple people tried to get me to cut the ‘mommy.’” Devastating. I’m so glad they fought for it and refused to cut it. It’s so vital.

1:28:26 – Owen sits on the floor of the men’s bathroom. It’s the most heavily gendered place in society, only for MEN, and he’s got his shirt off. He’s getting real with himself. 

He’s… cracking. 

IN EXACTLY THE WAY YOU THINK.

1:28:37 – The sink is full of ugly blue gunk. Did you wonder why is this shot here? What is this? Owen had no liquids with him. But he was choking on something… 

THE LUNA JUICE.

He has expelled the final dregs of his own internalized transphobia!

1:28:54 – Owen cuts himself open, so he can finally look deep inside himself. What does he find?

1:29:36 – The dysphoria of URINALS (aka MEN and MANHOOD behind him), despair off to the side, he looks into himself and sees the static! 

The static Maddy told him that Mr. Melancholy put inside him to confuse him, and obscure his truth. 

He can see it for what it is, and that it’s in there. And if you can IDENTIFY IT, that is the first step to FIGHTING IT, getting rid of it, replacing it with your (recovered) stolen heart, and choosing to…

T R A N S I T I O N

And try to be rid of the static entirely. Look how he’s HAPPY to see it! 

Because now he knows for sure. His egg cracked. He’s trans and he knows it.

1:29:54 – Near the end of this sequence, PINK APPEARS WITHIN THE STATIC. His transness is still buried in there, and he can dig it out now that he can see the static covering it. The glow emanating from it even takes on a pink hue. 

Also the shape of the wound may, uh, indicate anatomical changes to his body that he needs And neither I nor this movie are saying you need bottom surgery to be trans or transition, this is just metaphor. 

1:29:24 – When Owen sees the static inside him, on the commentary Jane says: “A lot of different feelings going on here. Relief, transcendence, horror, peace, self-understanding, exhaustion… having a vagina on your chest.” The egg crack moment is a hell of a thing.

1:30:48 – Owen puts the fun center shirt and vest back on, but… maybe it’s just me, but before it looked like those were clothes Owen was wearing. But in this shot…

…when his breathing calms (he’s not suffocating, accepting himself has already helped some!)… it looks like he’s wearing a costume of Owen. The way the clothes hang, his posture… like he knows this isn’t the end of the road and he’s going to have to boymode for a while yet… but it’s just a costume. It’s always been a costume, but now he KNOWS it’s a costume.

For more on BOYMODING/GIRLMODING, see its Trans Tuesday.

And look at his lips! Before they looked like this…

But now? Uh…. hm, gosh, what happened that suddenly his body is already changing?

Again again again, you don’t have to change your body to be trans or transition (though a great many of us do). But metaphor.

1:30:59 – He apologizes to all the cis people, as transphobia has taught him, and it causes the suffocation wheezing to come back. This is… not going to be easy. Mr. Melancholy makes sure of that.

1:31:24 – It cuts to black, and we hear static. The static Owen now knows is there, covering up his truth.

1:31:26 – And when the credits appear, the static is gone… and the background isn’t black…

It’s PINK! Another Season by Frances Quinlan plays. Are you wondering if this is another transy song with lyrics directly applicable to Owen and where he’s going? Bingo.

Hello, dear
Acquaintance, even
If this isn’t over
What else could take shape?
How will you remember it?

Which, to me, all outlines Owen’s trajectory from there. 

This is a hopeful ending, because he knows for sure now, and the static will eventually stop (or lessen), and his transness will remain. And without the static, the Luna Juice, or Mr. Melancholy, he can embrace it and return his heart. And Isabel.

1:36:30 – On the commentary, Jack: “You reminded me that this is not real life. Like we’re working to access another reality which is our true reality and it’s really painful, but we know it’s true. …that this isn’t real and the constraints that are constantly on us are illusions and that we just have to trust each other.” “I’m just talking about being trans. You just have to be around people that remind you that your reality is real. Because otherwise you’d go crazy.”

1:39:17 – Jack: “If you bought this for someone to crack their egg, did it work?” Jane: “Yeah, bring this dvd around town, crack some eggs, pass it on.”

There’s been a lot of debate about the ending, with a lot of people seeing it as Owen retreating back into his false cis shell and never becoming Isabel. But this movie was never about him becoming Isabel, it was about him accepting that he is Isabel. And by the end he does.

Jane mentions at 1:22:00 on the commentary: “It was always important to me that ‘there is still time’ was there, not at the very end, but close enough to the end that hopefully it got its message across.” This was exactly how I interpreted the ending of the movie, and it delights me that that’s what Jane intended. “There is still time” was there right before the end scene for a reason.

He expels the Luna Juice.

He sees the static and internalized transphobia still inside him, in a shape very suggestive of bodily change for someone assigned male at birth.

His clothes then fit differently.

His lips/body are instantly taken better care of.

He’s going to become his true self. It’s not going to be easy or quick, but he’s going to get there. Isabel lives.

I know some people see the opposite, that the end is Owen denying Isabel yet again. But that’s part of the genius of it, to me, because it works just like accepting your own transness.

The signs are there. If you’re not looking for them, if you miss them, you might come to the wrong conclusion and deny your truth. But if you look closely, those signs are absolutely there and will lead you right to that truth.

Thank you for coming along with me on this journey through a truly incredible movie. I hope I’ve been able to help you see what I see, to know and feel the truth and beauty within.

To the entire cast and crew, thank you for helping to make this incredibly important film.

To Justice Smith and Jack Haven, thank you for the love and care you put into Owen and Maddy, for the honesty with which you portrayed them and the depth and reality you imbued them with.

And to Jane Schoenbrun, who has given us this beacon of trans cinema, who conveyed our pain and struggle with such nuance and care and love, thank you thank you for showing the world what so many of us go through. And thank you for imbuing it with hope.

I meant it when I said this movie is sacred to me. It forever has my heart.

THERE. IS. STILL. TIME.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

Addendum 4/2/2025

This is why I do Trans Tuesdays.
This is why it’s important to share our experiences.
This is why it’s vital that we talk about these things, if it’s safe for us to do so.

This isn’t the first time my trans media write-ups have been taught in classes, and it never ever gets old. It’s just the coolest thing.

Thanks so much to Jasiel for reaching out! (posted here with permission)

And check out this amazing slide she made for her students!

Addendum 11/3/2025

Justice Smith recently had some, uh… interesting things to say:

I was curious as to why [Schoenbrun] didn’t cast a trans actor to play that role. But they made me understand how me, as a cis person… I’m being used as kind of a device for the structure of the movie. Because, spoiler alert, my character lives in this nightmare realm, and I am actually the girl from the other realm.

I FUCKIN’ TOLD YOU!!! 🙂

THE INTENTIONAL TRANS ALLEGORY OF I SAW THE TV GLOW, part 6

Welcome to #TransTuesday! Tillyvision burns through reentry in THE INTENTIONAL TRANS ALLEGORY OF I SAW THE TV GLOW, part 6! Dysphoria and transphobia are coming for us with everything they’ve got, and it exacts a heavy toll!

You should obvs start with PART 1!

And continue you PART 2!

And then go to PART 3!

Go directly to PART 4!

Following on to PART 5!

58:27 – Owen kept The Pink Opaque tapes in a pink pillowcase, hidden away from the world. 

59:03 – He’s surrounded by dysphoria and fear. Owen: “A little while after Maddy disappeared, she sent me one more tape in the mail.”

59:16 – Owen is bathed in pink, watching the final episode. Isabel: “Mr. Melancholy is coming.” Tara: “If we’re going to defeat him this time, we’re going to need to harness the full potential of our shared powers.” 

Again, community. Maddy is Owen’s axe. None of us can do it alone.

59:20 – Look at the sky over them, fear and danger and despair, but the transness covers it all.

59:40 – A shot of the back of Tara, in a black tank top, with her Pink Opaque tattoo on the back of her neck. Why is this shot here? It’s setting up a later shot, we’ll get there in a minute.

59:53 – Owen: “But then, as Isabel approaches, she picks something up. A stray signal from the psychic plane. It’s a desperate message from Tara. The real Tara. She’s buried underground, in terrible danger.”

1:00:27 – Isabel lies in a grave, spitting up luna juice, sadness and internalized transphobia fed to her by Mr. Melancholy. Trying to kill her transness. Static flies across the screen, transphobia obscuring the truth.

1:00:33 – As Owen watches, still covered in blue, we hear static. Transphobia is obscuring his truth, too. Because he is Isabel.

1:00:37 – A shot of the back of Marco, the bearded moon woman, but in a black tank top and with the Pink Opaque tattoo, matching the shot of Tara I mentioned at 59:40. 

So when Marco turns, it’s revealed that’s not Tara, it’s a scary mockery of what you want to become. And that’s how you think the world will see you, because that’s what the world teaches you that you will see and become if you transition. 

This confirms what I said when Marco and Polo first appeared. This is what society and internalized transphobia tell us, all we’ll ever be seen as are “men in dresses” or “women with beards.” 

Again, neither or nor this movie are saying there’s anything wrong with that if that’s who you are! That’s cool! But this is metaphor, and that’s a very real bit of transphobia society worms into trans men and trans women, all to scare you and keep you from ever transitioning.

1:00:48 – As Polo drags Isabel away, the static returns, obscuring things. And it happens at her most intense screams. Owen hurt himself and obscured his own truth by locking Isabel away. And what did he do with her?

1:01:17 – Polo walks with a beating heart on a platter. Owen: “They cut out her heart.”

1:01:21 – The heart is put inside despair and dysphoria.

1:01:33 – And she’s given Luna Juice. This is transphobia from moon man Mr. Melancholy. She took the transphobia inside herself, literal internalized transphobia, and it buried her truth. Effectively “killing” isabel.

1:01:50 – Owen: “And then he makes his entrance. Mr. Melancholy… the big bad.” Dysphoria and despair, that’s all it brings.

And he’s got Owen’s transness trapped and held in the prison of a snow globe. Remember what Maddy asked Owen back at the Double Lunch? “Or do you ever have a hard time distinguishing between what happened in the show and what happened in real life? Like somehow the memories got jumbled around? Shook up in your head, like a snow globe.” 

Transphobia has locked down Owen’s transness and jumbled his thoughts so he doesn’t know what’s real, so he will not and cannot accept his truth. 

And it’s not just pink inside that snow globe, but it contains the tv with pink on it and Owen watching. It’s literally locking away Owen’s ability to access his truth and transness. 

1:02:08 – Mr. Melancholy licks Isabel’s face. It’s domination, as Luna Juice leaks out of her, showing you it’s still inside her. Transphobia traps, controls, and owns isabel. And it’s disgusting.

1:02:18 – Mr. Melancholy: “Don’t fight it. Let my poison work its magic. You’re gonna love the Midnight Realm. It’s such a wonderful, wonderful prison.”

1:02 :40 – Mr. Melancholy shakes up the snow globe. Static. Chaos. Everything’s jumbled and unclear.

1:02:54 – Mr. Melancholy: “Shh. It’s okay. Soon you won’t remember anything. Your real name. Your superpowers. Your heart. You won’t even remember that you’re dying!” 

And that’s what living with dysphoria, forced into that prison, is. It’s death. It’s worse than death. 

“Death before detransition” is a saying for a reason.

1:03:22 – Static, both seen and heard, as Owen’s image, entirely blue, becomes fuzzy and flickers in and out.

1:03:43 – The sky now looks like a shaken snow globe. Isabel is in the grave, Luna Juice leaking out of her mouth. Owen: “They bury her. Alive.” Very much what suppressing your true self is, your life becomes a waking death.. “And then… it just ended. Forever.” Darkness. Nothing.

1:04:28 – Owen gasps for breath in front of the television, because Isabel, his true self, was just buried alive. Worth noting again that one of the ways I described my own GENDER DYSPHORIA was “like drowning” and being unable to breathe.

1:04:40 – That kitchen is all dysphoria and fear. A fire ALARM beeps. Owen’s dad walks through and down to the basement, where Owen is.

1:04:50 – A phone is off the hook. Communication with the true self is lost, due to… what color is the phone? Yellow. FEAR. And what did Owen just do to himself? It all tracks.

1:04:56 – Owen’s smashed his head into the television. He tries to get back to Isabel, to his true self, to The Pink Opaque, even though he just buried her and gave it all up. The sparks are blue, sadness and despair. But note in all the sparks and chaos and flashing lights… the PINK is still there. You can deny your transness but that doesn’t make it go away.

1:05:14 – In the very yellow, fear-filled bathroom, Owen screams: “This isn’t my home! You’re not my father!” This is him fighting back, trying to reject the false cis reality and to reject masculinity. 

1:05:29 – Owen expels the blue despair of the Luna Yuice, trying to purge all his internalized transphobia. But notice the static returns.

1:05:45 – Once again we see the burning tv. On the commentary, Jane said they thought they needed this shot here but didn’t seem to know why. I think, subconsciously, they knew what this symbolized for Owen. His fear was still too great, and he killed Isabel, and then regretted it and wanted her back. But his fear still kept him from saving her.

1:05:56 – Owen is open and naked with himself in the mirror, there’s fear and dysphoria everywhere. That is not the face of someone who likes that reflection, or even sees themselves in it.

And so he immediately hides himself… in a MUTED GRAY. dull. Lifeless.

1:06:35 – He leaves the house, and sees the two men near the street. Chalk on the sidewalk behind them is jumbled, sadness abounds. There’s lots of transness still, but even the transness is sad now. 

He is kept from his transness by, judging by their posture and silence, sad men. Which is what he knows he will become if he doesn’t let Isabel out.

1:06:42 – Inside the inflatable planetarium, which as we discussed before, was the place where he’d have to finally choose. And so it’s no coincidence this is where we get Maddy’s story, about her choice to become Tara.

Also note how IMPORTANT it is that Maddie TELLS us this story, rather than us SEEING it in flashback. This is all about what these events did to HER. Pay attention to the words she says, and what she doesn’t say, and her emotions and expressions as she says them.

This is some REMARKABLE acting, but it’s also FANTASTIC writing to know that telling us this story through Maddy is so much better and more intimate and emotional than seeing it as flashbacks could ever be. Because what’s important is what it all did TO Maddie, and how she felt about it.

“I made it all the way to Phoenix on the money I’d saved,” a phoenix dies and is REBORN anew, going through a transition. Phoenixes are very trans, conceptually.

“The trees looked different, but everything else was exactly the same.” The GREEN of dysphoria was DIFFERENT, but nothing else had changed yet. Transition is a process and it takes time, it doesn’t all change the moment you decide to embrace your true self. 

“I started using a new name.” SUPERtext. “Sleeping at the cheapest hostel I could find.” Trans people are often poor due to losing homes and jobs and bigotry in hiring us. Being out and trans in a highly transphobic world is HARD, and it shouldn’t be. 

”The Pink Opaque was over.” It was no longer the goal she couldn’t see past. “I got a job at the mall. At Build-a-bear, filling the dolls up with stuffing.” Constructing a body the way YOU want it to be!

“I got out of that town, that place I knew would kill me if I stayed. But something was still wrong. Wronger, even. Time wasn’t right.”

1:07:55 – Hopefully you’ve been paying attention to the colors on Maddy in the inflatable planetarium and on and around Owen as he approaches her. Look at when he enters the hall toward the gymnasium, and it’s all red down there. No matter what his final choice is, there’s DANGER. If he transitions, he could lose EVERYTHING but himself. If he doesn’t transition, he will keep everything he has but lose HIS TRUE SELF. 

This is what society does for us, makes it dangerous no matter what we do.

1:07:57 – Maddy: “[time] was moving too fast. And then I was 19. And then I was 20. I felt like one of those dolls, asleep in the supermarket. stuffed.” You lose time from dissociating, like you’re asleep through your life. See the Trans Tuesdays on TRANS GRIEF and all the years I lost from dissociating, and the memories that were lost with them.

“And then I was 21. Like chapters skipped over in a DVD. I told myself, ‘This isn’t normal. This isn’t how life is supposed to be.’ I thought about running away again, about moving to Santa Fe and changing my name one more time.” 

I see this as Maddy thinking she was a trans man, but discovering that wasn’t right either, and she was in fact nonbinary. “But I knew that everywhere would be just the same. I had seen how it ended. I knew where I was.”

“A little bit after my 22nd birthday, I paid this burnout kid who used to hit on me in the food court $50 to bury me alive. I mean… he didn’t know he was burying me alive, but I doubt he would have cared too much even if he did.”

“I bought a coffin. I dug a hole. I got inside and I closed the lid. I said to myself, ‘This is crazy. What you’re doing is crazy.’ But another part of me knew that it wasn’t. That it was survival. And that I didn’t have much time. That what felt like years in this world was actually just seconds.” OOOOOF dissociation from dysphoria does be like that. It’s so messed up.

“So I waited. And then finally, the first spadeful of dirt hit the top of the box. And then another. And then another. I sang songs to myself. I counted to 10,000 without skipping any numbers. I pissed and I shit my pants and I forced my mouth to produce whatever saliva it could muster just so I’d have something to drink.”

1:09:41 – On the commentary, Jane: “I feel like if you don’t get it, you don’t get it. I find it so funny that people, in a lot of the Letterbox reviews of the film, people will be like ‘this long monologue that’s just exposition, they’re just telling us the story,’ it’s like… IS that what this is? I don’t think so.”

“I feel like if you’re not emotionally keyed in to the feeling of what happened and what is being described here, it is gonna just feel to you like exposition. But the idea of, like. this exposition is so beside the point to me. This is the emotional crescendo. And it’s a story of defiance and becoming. And I want to hear you say it. I want to hear you, like, talk about your commitment.”

Again, this is why it’s so much more important that Maddy’s telling us this, so we can see how it affected her, and what she’s trying to get across to Owen.

1:11:31 – Look at Maddy now, the most gender-neutral in appearance that she’s ever been. And no, this isn’t saying you have to be androgynous to be nonbinary, mind you, but visually it works as an excellent metaphor for showing her between, or outside of, “man” and “woman.” 

“I screamed as loud as I could for help. I apologized for the whole thing.” Maddy told Owen to never do that. But we see, even here, she was doubting herself. “And I begged god for someone to come along and save me. I tried and tried to claw my way out, but that burnout guy had packed the dirt in too tight just like I had asked him to do.”

“And then, after I don’t know how long, I felt myself start to leave myself. And it was like I was watching myself on a TV from across the room. And I was moving further and further away from the screen, until the screen was so small that I couldn’t even see myself anymore.”

1:12:33 – Maddy hits a button that turns the constellations in the planetarium into art of fully-realized beings. This is when Maddy flipped the switch on herself, from being a mere outline of who she was to becoming all of who she is.

She approaches Owen, slowly.

“And then I was clawing my way up out of the ground. And then I was at the surface, gasping for air, rain pouring down on me, thunder and lightning. And I was finally back there. Back at our old sleepaway camp.”

“And just like I was waking up from a bad dream, that whole life… that whole reality where I was Maddy Wilson… drifted away. Like a brief hallucination, that after a few moments I could hardly even remember. And all those memories that had felt so real, washed away with the rain back at our old sleepaway camp. And I was me. I was finally me again. And it was the season six premiere.”

The season six premiere, again, being the escape from the Midnight Realm – transitioning to escape dysphoria and find euphoria and the authentic self.

She’s down on all fours, slowly crawling toward him, pleading.

“I tried looking for you, but Mr. Melancholy had covered his tracks too well. I knew you must be buried somewhere close by, but I didn’t know where. And your signal… that signal that I used to be able to close my eyes and feel so vividly… was nowhere. I wasn’t picking up anything on the psychic plane.”

She’s so intense here, so passionate, so breathless.

“I found my heart. Isabel, oh my god! I found yours, too. And it was still beating, stored indefinitely in… in an industrial freezer. I left our hearts there because I knew I wasn’t done yet. And I found Mr. Melancholy’s cauldron. I found the Luna Juice he used to send us to the Midnight Realm, then I took a big sip straight out from the ladle.” 

She knew confronting someone stuck where Owen is would remind her of how she felt when she was stuck there. And then those internalized transphobic thoughts and feelings we have, that she fought so hard to overcome… might come back. But she did it anyway, because she couldn’t abandon Owen to that. Again we see the importance of community.

“And I laid back down, and I waited to fall back asleep. I knew I needed to come back here. I knew I needed to come back and save you. So that the show can continue. So that we can get to season six.”

Owen: “Maddy…” Maddy: “That’s not my name. And I haven’t told you anything tonight that you don’t already know. Tell me. Tell me you know it’s true. …you told me yourself you felt it. Remember? On the bleachers? You know what he put inside you.”

She’s talking about the static, the internalized transphobia, of transphobic society.

1:16:17 – Owen shakes his head no. Denial. “This is insane. I remember… I remember… playing in the snow. Driving to baseball games with my dad. Cooking with my mom.” He remembers that boys like sports and girls belong in the kitchen: he remembers conforming to the false cis binary.

1:16:28 – On the commentary, Jane repeats what Maddy said, that Mr. Melancholy put the static inside Owen, replaced his insides, and put his heart is somewhere else. Owen told her he felt it on the bleachers.

Jack in the commentary: “To keep you drugged.” Also known as taking the blue pill, for you Matrix and Begin Transmission fans out there.

The static, the internalized transphobia, is there to keep you from self-actualization.

1:16:38 – Maddy: “Those memories were put there to distract you. To keep you trapped.” The DISTRACTIONS and OBLIGATIONS of your life to keep you from realizing and accepting your truth. Matrix Resurrections deals with this too.

1:16:49 – Owen denies it, he cannot accept the truth that he buried Isabel. Or accept that he then tried to get back to her, tried to remove the Luna Juice of his internalized transphobia… but we see here it’s still won out. He’s made his choice. Owen: “It’s just the suburbs.” What are suburbs? A LIMINAL SPACE, between rural and urban, a little bit of a purgatory between one place and the next, pre and post transition. (No shade to people who live in suburbs and like them!)

1:17:09 – Maddy: “…we need to go back down into the soil.” We need to bury the false self so the true self can emerge. “Tonight. The longer you wait the closer you get to suffocating.” OOF.

The Matrix franchise deals with this too, about how the older you are the more obligations to society you have, the more you have to lose, and the harder it is to do. But Matrix Resurrections also very, very pointedly says: it’s never too late.

Maddy: “I’ve got everything ready. …no one will find us there.”

1:17:46 – A shot of Owen in the dress, but now it’s cropped to the same aspect ratio that The Pink Opaque was, so… it’s real, but filled with static and awash in fear. He lowers his head, and the green dysphoria towel behind him fills the screen. SUPERtext.

1:18:13 – They walk across the football field like before, Maddy is his axe, to help him battle Mr. Melancholy. But unlike before, his head is not held high. It’s drooped, his eyes on the ground, he’s dressed in despair. Maddy: “I know it’s scary. That’s part of it.”

1:18:39 – Owen: “It’s the drain lords. It’s just like the drain lords. It’s not real if I don’t think about it.” Oh babe. We’ve all been there. 🙁 You, and me, and Neo in the Matrix, and almost every trans person ever. 

But not thinking about our transness doesn’t make it go away. It just makes the misery continue.

Maddy takes his hand. They’re exactly on the 50 yard line, Maddy’s gotten him halfway there. He tackles her and then runs off, again his fear has gotten the better of him. Remember from back in part 1, a little after 1:28, when Owen saw the first commercial for The Pink Opaque? There was a sad shot of Isabel waving goodbye and/or trying to get Owen to notice her. Foreshadowing this exact moment, when he chose to leave her behind.

He keeps doing that. Will he ever overcome it? Can he? Time will tell.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

Part 7 is here!

THE INTENTIONAL TRANS ALLEGORY OF I SAW THE TV GLOW, part 5

Welcome to #TransTuesday! Tillyvision now in stable orbit in THE INTENTIONAL TRANS ALLEGORY OF I SAW THE TV GLOW, part 5! Our connection to community returns, and brings with it the hope of another chance at self-actualization!

You know the drill, don’tcha? Sure you do. PART 1!

Drill PART 2!

Keep drilling with PART 3!

This drill metaphor doesn’t work at all, but here’s PART 4!

46:08 – Owen apologizes to his dad for being home late. Even though he’s an adult now his father still controls his life. Look at all the FEAR everywhere around him. 

46:19 – His dad has fear behind him, is on a dysphoria sofa, is bathed in blue. This is what awaits you, Owen. The tv is all blue, playing a laugh track from a sitcom. This will be your miserable life.

46:30 – Owen on his bed, the light is yellow, walls around him are green. As he turns his tv on, it bathes him in blue. He’s on his way to where his dad is, a sad (for him) masculinity. But he turns the light out, the fear is gone if he just gives in. Narration from the tv: “…the invaders changed the planet’s atmosphere, creating an eternal night.” That’s what this life is.

46:57 – Owen walks through the theater. The movie is Transpmorphers (it’s a real movie!), a twenty-teens low rent Transformers, and it’s all yellow (SUPERTEXT), Owen is all blue. 

Narration: “The sun forever covered by the dark clouds.” SUPERTEXT. “The survivors fled underground, living in fear of the machines that now ruled the earth.” How very Matrix-y!

And in the Matrix (my book on it is here, btw!) machines = transphobic society, humans = trans people, living underground = going into hiding for safety. As Owen has done, even though he refuses to acknowledge his own truth.

I just wanna say really quick how genius including these clips of it were. The narration and colors fit the theme of I Saw the TV Glow so perfectly I was sure they had to be entirely fictional and made up for this movie! But nope, it’s real.

47:16 – Owen’s at the grocery store, by the produce. I feel like there’s something going on with the photos of produce above his head, even outside of the colors, but I haven’t been able to decipher its meaning. Sometimes produce is just produce. But he’s surrounded by all green, green things that are grown in nature. Dysphoria is “natural” for him.

47:49 – Maddy returns, and look how her gender presentation has changed. Also look how much closer to Tara on The Pink Opaque she now looks! It’s not identical (transition is a journey, she’s not done yet) but she’s definitely on the way. 

There’s all MEAT behind her, which I see as her having already had access to physicality and bodily form, BODILY AUTONOMY. See the Trans Tuesday on it for more.

And again, it’s behind her, so Owen can’t get to feeling like his body is his own if he doesn’t cross to where Maddy’s been (she’s holding a steak, showing you she’s been there).

48:31 – He meets her in the middle (but does not cross behind her to access bodily autonomy). Maddy drops the meat, as if to tell him changing your body is what will get him to where she is. Again, to clarify, nobody is suggesting you have to change your body to be trans or transition. We don’t do transmedicalism here, there, or anywhere. This is speaking in metaphor.

Also look how in this shot the meat behind Maddy looks much more pink than red. Transness is back there, and can be accessed by claiming his own bodily autonomy, if Owen’s willing to go for it.

48:56 – Maddy: “I know a place on the edge of town, it’ll be safe for us to talk there.” As his only access to transness, as a person who has transitioned, she knows a safe place or way for Owen to explore his transness again. 

Look at the sign for the Fun Center they walk beneath, and the colors there, and what that’s telling you about what Owen has done to himself, and the emptiness (those empty shopping carts again) surrounding him. There’s nothing “fun” for him there at all. Foreshadowing! Oho!

49:06 – It’s allllll red as we hear Claw Machine by Sloppy Jane. 

I’m in the eighth grade
sending grown men grainy
photos of my ribcage. 

You can read something sexual into that if you want, but the wording of “ribcage” should make you think otherwise. Sounds to me almost like sending a doctor photos of yourself to enquire about top surgery.

My bedroom has no doors
so I can never close them

So, fun fact that is not fun but is factual: my mother HATED when I closed my bedroom door. I didn’t know I was trans… I didn’t have the words, but if I did I’d have told you. My mom didn’t know I was trans… but she picked up on every bit of feminity I ever tried to explore and mocked, belittled, and punished me for it.

And I think she never wanted my bedroom door closed because then who knows what gender I might be exploring within. I’m just saying… there’s something to it. Even when cis people don’t know we’re trans, some of them know we’re trans.

i paint the ceiling black
so I don’t notice when my eyes are open

Listen, this is getting uncomfortable. When I was in high school, my entire bedroom was black and gray. I don’t even like those colors (no shade to those who do)!

But it’s how I felt, especially at the height of puberty. It took this movie to make me realize that connection, right now as I’m writing this. Shit. 

But think about that, truly, and what trans people going through the wrong puberty is like for us… to not even want to notice when our eyes are open.

Staying in that hell, that’s the danger.

49:39 – The sign behind the stage says this is the “Double Lunch!” We know from when Owen and Maddy first met that this is THE CLUB ON THE PINK OPAQUE TV SHOW! Maddy has escaped and found true reality (as Tara).

49:59 – It’s a very “trapped in dysphoria” song. And look at this portion of the lyrics:

I think I was born bored
I think I was born blue
I think I was born wanting more
I think I was born already missing you

aka
life has always been gray
all I’ve known is despair
this can’t be what my life is
where’s the real me I’ve longed for since I was born?

Kinda burns you up like you’re going through atmospheric reentry, doesn’t it?

51:09 – Owen and Maddy talking backstage. Dysphoria and fear are right behind Owen, and talking with Maddy is all red. Danger, danger is all he sees. To Maddy’s right, look at the lamp in trans pride flag colors on the desk, and on the far right how much smaller her own green dysphoria has become. Transition helps alleviate dysphoria.

51:15 – Owen: “They think you’re dead, Maddy.” That’s how so many cis people treat us when we transition, it’s CIS GRIEF over losing the fake person we never were (that only hurt us). There’s a whole Trans Tuesday about it.

51:35 – Maddy: “I’ll tell you everything. I just need to ask you something first.” Owen: “Does your mom know that you’re alive?” Remember that his mom represented his own access to femininity. Do you see what he’s asking her here? Are you still in touch with your femininity? Did you… transition?!

51:48 – Notice that even though they’re sitting in all red, Owen is also lit with yellow. He’s scared shitless by this. Maddy transitioned! I’m talking to her about it! Does that mean… I am…? OH GOD I’M SO SCARED.

52:10 – Maddy asks him if he remembers The Pink Opaque, the transness that they explored together. Of course he does, it meant more to him than anything else.

53:02 – Maddy: “…how do you remember it? … do you remember it as just a tv show?” Was it just us “playing around?” Or was there something real there?

53:18 – We get the shot of Owen through the door… IN A DRESS. THAT IS PINK. Femininity. Transness. Presentation change. Trans femininity. Supertext. 

Note the green towel behind him. This hasn’t eliminated his dysphoria, but for the moment it’s sure smaller than the giant fish tank, huh? And outside that room he’s in? Fear…. of getting found out. 

Owen says he remembers it only as a tv show. But he’s bathed in danger and fear, and his voice breaks. He’s so scared. Owen: “The last show before the young adult network switched to black and white reruns for the night.” 

We’ve heard that line before, but right now it’s telling you everything! This is when they were young adults, and it was the last thing they did before the world went back to black and white, lost its vibrance and joy and went back to being THE FALSE DICHOTOMY.

53:51 – Behind Maddy, look at the light on the wall. Pink! Maddy: “Are you sure that’s all it was?” Wasn’t trying on that dress more than kids playing around? Didn’t it make you feel things? Didn’t it clue you in to something?

54:11 – Maddy smiles as she looks next to the reflection of Owen in the dress. He’s seeing his true self (Isabel) and his transness for the first time. 

Owen smiles too, but dysphoria and especially fear are still there. This is so scary.

54:40 – Maddy asks him, when he thinks back about those nights watching the show, if he ever gets confused. “Like maybe the memory isn’t quite right.” This is dissociation!

54:54 – Owen, in his pink dress, walks on the football field like we saw Isabel do in The Pink Opague earlier. The pink ghost tattoo zaps into being on his neck. Madde: “Does time ever feel like it’s not moving normally?” Oh god the dissociation. 🙁

Life with dysphoria is so bad, many of us dissociate and lose not just memories, but often entire years of memories of our lives. Time seems to disappear, which Owen deals with a lot in this movie. I talked a bit about the loss of memories of my own life in the Trans Tuesdays on TRANS GRIEF.

55:02 – Static. Transphobia fills his head. Maddy: “Do you ever feel like you’re narrating your own life, watching it play in front of you, like an episode of television?” 

Holy crap, listen. This is also life with dysphoria, where you feel disembodied, like you’re watching yourself go through the motions. You’re disconnected from your own life, nothing feels real. So you literally wonder what is reality? What is real? You can’t tell, because the entire world has gaslit you into thinking you’re something you’re not.

The Matrix deals with this too. Took me an entire book to talk about it.

BARBIE deals with this, too! Reality is not what you’re told it is when you grow up as a trans person in a transphobic home and society that denies your existence.

“Or do you ever have a hard time distinguishing between what happened in the show and what happened in real life? Like somehow the memories got jumbled around? Shook up in your head, like a snow globe.” Like a snow globe. This isn’t just foreshadowing, it’s telling you what that snow globe will represent when it shows up.

55:30 – Isabel, in a pink dress, walks on the green dysphoria football field… with an axe.

55:35 – Owen, in a pink dress, walks on the green dysphoria football field with Maddy – she is his axe, his weapon against transphobia

I’m sure you’re tired of me saying “read my book,” but listen, these themes show up again and again for a reason. In The Matrix, the trans community is represented by the character Tank. Tanks are literally armored weapons. Later in the franchise the trans community is represented by the human cities of Zion and Io, which are defended by human-controlled mechs with giant guns.

The trans community protects and defends each other. We need each other to fight transphobia!

55:46 – Maddy: “I’m trying to go slow. I don’t want to alarm you.” If you just shout at someone that they’re trans, even if it’s true it’s going to likely scare them and just make them pull back even more. This is why “the egg prime directive” exists – don’t tell an egg you think they’re an egg (eggs are people who are trans and don’t know it yet, realizing is “hatching”).

Buuuut the egg prime directive is complicated, and often misinterpreted, and that’s a topic for another time (yeah, there will be a trans tuesday on it, but I haven’t written it yet, I’m still writing this one, gimme a break!).

54:48 – Standing on dysphoria, Owen in his pink dress with Maddy by his side, look up at the blue sky and Mr. Melancholy.

55:54 – Owen thinks they should tell the police or his dad. Uhhhhh I feel so weird let me check with my toxic masculinity and see what it thinks! Look at Maddy LEANING in on him, pressing the importance. Maddy: “No, you can’t tell anybody.” 

Do you know how many people you thought loved you and cared about you instantly reveal that they do not once they know you’re trans? It should be zero.

For many of us, it’s not.

For some of us, it’s a lot.

56:30 – Maddy: “I’ve been there. Inside the show.” She’s been transitioning. Note, again, they are inside the club from the show. Owen is also there, now, with Maddy, and doesn’t even realize it.

56:40 – King Woman sings Psychic Wound. (SUPERSupertext, phew), and that song title sure explains the despair of the blue lighting.

In the commentary, Jane said this moment was a release from the tension the audience and Owen are feeling. And, well, Owen just learned Maddy transitioned into Tara and that transness is real, and he needs to scream about it. 

Foreshadowing what he does later!

Why have I been punished?
I’ve been banished from the sky.

I didn’t ask for this, why is this happening to me? Why do people hate me for who I am? (you’re not gonna believe this, but The Matrix has Neo literally asking that question out loud). 

Also, in that franchise, flight is a metaphor for gender euphoria, the kind you can find with transition. In fact, long before ever realizing the “flight is gender euphoria” metaphor in The Matrix, I’d described my own first encounter with gender euphoria the exact same way – like flying.

I discuss that a bit in the Trans Tuesday on BODY HACKING, where I talk a bit about the first women’s clothes I ever owned.

And I went into that in even more detail in the Trans Tuesday on GENDER EUPHORIA.

So “banishing someone from the sky” is preventing them from ever accessing that euphoria, which means preventing transition.

clinging to his mighty chest
bury my face and cry
I bow to him just to sleep next to you
a force I can’t deny

For Owen, holding on to the man the thought he was, that society said he was, is what’s causing all his pain, keeping him from the real person inside.

when I’m spread on the bed
you remain the luscious fruit
help me I’m so chained to you
Someone tell me what to do

At my most vulnerable, you (the real me inside) are what I crave. I keep pretending you’re not real, that I’m not trans, that none of this is happening, but it keeps coming up again no matter how much I try to deny it.

Poor Owen.

57:52 – Owen leaves the danger behind as he walks into despair. Says a lot.

58:04 – Maddy tells him she can’t stay where he is much longer, she’s going back to her life as her true self. Maddy: “Do you remember how it ended? The final episode? The end of season five?”

Remember that Owen found the episode guide that mentioned the start of season six was escaping the nightmare realm… leaving dysphoria behind (hopefully) and transitioning. 

But the “show ended” before that, which means he never got to that point. Maddy: “You can’t trust anybody in your life. They’re all working for him… Mr. Melancholy.” Transphobia is everywhere, even in the people you love, and they all work to uphold the transphobic false cis binary matrix even if they don’t realize it. 

And many will again consciously turn on you the moment they know you’re trans.

You’ll never guess what movie franchise deals with that and explicitly shows how if you’re not fighting the system that oppresses trans people, you’re a vital part of the machinery that oppresses us… anyone? Any ideas? 

A hint… I wrote that damn book about it!

Maddy asks him to come to the high school at midnight, his last chance for her to help him out of the misery he’s in. 

58:44 – Owen digs through his closet, it’s all fear and danger inside and dysphoria outside. Tonight, Tonight by Snail Mail plays. Lyrics, anyone?

We’ll crucify the insincere tonight
We’ll make things right, we’ll feel it all tonight
We’ll find a way to offer up the night
The indescribable moments of your life
The impossible is possible tonight
Believe in me as I believe in you

This might be your last chance, Owen. You can do it.

He’s digging through the closet, which is where he has put himself, and his transness. 

IN THE CLOSET.

Almost every trans person has been there at some point, and choosing to bring our transness out of the closet and into the light of day can be so tough. Because society does everything it can to stop us and make us feel that it’s bad and wrong.

It messes you up. A lot. And look where it’s gotten Owen.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

Part 6 is here!

THE INTENTIONAL TRANS ALLEGORY OF I SAW THE TV GLOW, part 4

Welcome to #TransTuesday! Tillyvision exits the atmosphere in THE INTENTIONAL TRANS ALLEGORY OF I SAW THE TV GLOW, part 4! Our fear of our true selves is in the driver’s seat, and that’s baaaaad news.

You know you need to read PART 1 first!

And read PART 2 second!

And what a surprise, you need to read PART 3 third!

33:49 – Owen walks to Maddy’s house again, green grass, pink sleeping bag rolled up, blue sky… but it still has those hints of pink.

34:02 – The laughing clown doing an unsettling dance. RED light. DANGER. You’re going to LOOK LIKE A CLOWN IF YOU EXPLORE YOUR TRANSNESS, OWEN. These are his own fears rearing their head… but what are those fears based in? Internalized transphobia. Which is why that clown is a minion of Mr. Melancholy.

34:10 – Maddy’s show counterpart, Tara, calls that out as nonsense. Kills the idea of the clown with an axe. This is your first confirmation of connection between the axe, Tara, and Maddy.

And again you see they NEED EACH OTHER TO GET THROUGH. Community. Tara is the weapon Isabel needs to defeat that clown, internalized transphobia.

34:32 – Maddy cries while watching the show. She’s fully realizing her truth. It’s heavy. Owen looks at her, studying, learning. But look right next to him… a pillow in the trans flag colors, but there’s a MOON on it. 

But what’s on Owen’s shirt? A sun. Showing FEAR and DANGER.

Where does the moon get its light? REFLECTED FROM THE SUN.

The transphobia’s coming from inside the house, Owen! Ignore it, fight it, transness is right there if you’ll just reach out and grab it! (poor Owen)

34:51 – When the show is over, the green fish tank, dysphoria, is front and center again. There’s yelling and fighting upstairs. Did Maddy’s parents find out what she was doing in the basement?

35:19 – Maddy: “I’m getting out of this town.” She now fully knows her truth, and knows she can’t live it at home with a violently transphobic family. There are pink hearts on her shirt, she’s IN transness, but bathed in blue, sad because her family has rejected her for who she is. And look at the yellow fear behind her. It’s a scary thing to do. She also looks less femme here, she’s already moving closer to her true self.

35:45 – Maddy: “I’ll die if I stay here.” She’d have to suppress her true self and that is a very real kind of death. But also transphobic families pose a real threat of danger and violence to trans kids as I talked about before. As horribly sad as it is, it’s the truth.

36:10 – Owen: “If you leave, I won’t have anyone to watch The Pink Opaque with.” You are my only access to my transness and exploring who I am, if you go I will lose that! There is no safe space for him without her.

36:40 – Maddy tells him to sit up, we see his shirt is blue. Green dysphoria light washes over him.

37:05 – She unbuttons his shirt and pulls it down, exposing the true Owen: Isabel. Owen does not protest, or even seem startled by what she’s doing. At best his expression gives off a “What, here? Now?” vibe. This is emotional, and intimate, but it’s not sexual.

We know that “watching The Pink Opaque” together is them exploring the truth of their transness together, right? And if they’ve been doing that all along, it stands to reason they maybe swapped clothes, helped each other try things on (confirmation for this comes later on). He is not surprised by what’s happening.

Maddy draws The Pink Opaque ghost on him with a marker, making him closer to Isabel. As a reminder of his transness, so he won’t forget or lose it after she’s gone.

38:43 – Static floats over Owen’s head… blue and green, his mind a swirl of feelings (like Barbie in the white void with Ruth at the end of Barbie), but the pink is still in there. But he can’t see it clearly because of all the damned static.

39:05 – Owen furiously scrubs the pink ghost off his neck. Oh god what if they see? What if they know? What might happen? I CAN’T LET THEM SEE. Note that in the mirror he’s bathed in yellow light. Fear. 

On the commentary, at this moment, Jane says: “Shame.”

Jack: “I always feel hurt when I see this.”

Me too. It broke my heart. Because society’s transphobia and that internalized transphobia has told him his transness is bad and wrong, and he’s ashamed of it, ashamed that he can’t stop seeking it out and exploring it. He shouldn’t want to! It’s not “normal!” 

It’s heartbreaking. And I lived through it many, many times.

39:12 – Look at how much transness surrounds him in the daylight. His shirt, the sleeping bag, the blanket on the couch, the carpet. The green fish tank seems smaller and less imposing. This is what accepting your transness can do for you, Owen. You could start, like Maddy. And here, briefly, he thinks he might do just that.

39:30 – Maddy tells him not to tell anyone they’re leaving. He asks where they’ll go. Maddy: “We’ll know when we get there.” You don’t know what you’re going to get out of transition, or if you’ll find your truest self, or if or when it will end. But you’ll know when you get there.

40:00 – Owen goes to Johnny Link’s house, furiously rings the doorbell. It’s an emergency. Help. Terrified, he tells her the entire truth and tells her SHE has to tell his dad about the lies. Not that he’s been exploring transness, because that could be fatal. But she has to tell his dad that he’s been lying about where he’s going, so he’ll be punished and unable to join Maddy when she leaves. He’s too scared. He’s severing the link between him and Maddy, between himself and his transness.

40:20 – Owen: “You can’t let me go with her. I don’t want to leave my home.” He’s scrubbed the pink ghost off his neck as best he could, but traces remain. His shirt is still pink, but now it’s covered by green. Giving in to dysphoria won’t work. It won’t get rid of your transness, Owen. You’re just trying to pretend you didn’t see it, that it’s not there… but that doesn’t make it go away. 

40:27 – The chalk on the street outside is a jumble of pinks and blues, in equal amounts. And he’s entirely separated from it by the green grass.

40:37 – Owen: “My mom passed away the next July.” Well, he severed the link and cut off access to his transness… and so he LOST HIS ONLY ACCESS TO FEMININITY. 

And then Maddy was gone, she left without him.

40:46 – Maddy’s house is surrounded by cop cars, RED lights and YELLOW caution tape. Danger! Fear! This is what could have happened to you, Owen. This also, sadly, reflects the way transness worked for people in the past… they were often forced to uproot and disappear, “woodwork” and pretend to be cis. There’s more about this in the Trans Tuesday on TRANSMEDICALISM (and WPATH version 1).

40:58 – Owen: “All they found was her tv set, burning in the back yard.” Look at Owen’s face lit in half yellow, and half blue. You know exactly what this did to him.

41:03 – The burning tv. Yellow. Fear destroyed Owen’s only access to his transness, through Maddy and the tv. 

41:10 – Owen: “And the strangest part of it all was, the month maddy disappeared, The Pink Opaque got canceled.” SUPERtext. Yeah, he cut off his access to exploring transness so of course the “show” that represented that disappeared. 

41:39 – Cut to adult Owen watching the campfire again, its yellow light across his face.

41:51: We get a shot of future (or, I guess, present) Owen in the Fun Center, all blue and yellow and red. Lights flickering, things are dark and unclear and awful.

42:04 – Look at the one half-inflated balloon, the entirely yellow wall that meets the entirely blue wall. There is no joy to be found on this path he’s set himself on.

42:12 – Owen steps into the literal spotlight. We’re eight years later.

42:47 – Owen orders food in the drive through, it’s awkward and weird. EVERYTHING in life feels this way when dealing with dysphoria and having no confidence whatsoever. See the Trans Tuesday on CONFIDENCE for more.

And then see the trans tuesday on CONFIDENCE 2: INTO THE UNKNOWN, aka A WHOLE NEW WORLD, aka WHAT IS HAPPENING when, much to my surprise, everything changed for me two years into transition.

43:08 – Owen’s at work, there’s despair everywhere. The exit sign is a bright red… the exit from the sadness, transitioning? Owen only sees it as DANGER.

43:18 – Owen opens the door on the manager receiving oral sex from a woman. What does the idea of sex do to him? A little bit of fear and A WHOLE LOT OF DYSPHORIA. This is something that happens to a lot of trans people, where the idea of physical intimacy is terrifying and awful because we’re so alienated and horrified by our own bodies.

But also, for some of us, it’s terrifying in ways that get tangled up with sexuality. As I talked about in SEXUALITY IS NOT GENDER, I’m exclusively attracted to women and always have been. And that complicated understanding my own gender.

And so getting close to women in a sexual way was terrifying, because it amplified those feelings, and would almost make you confront them. Like… I may have sexual desires about this woman’s body I’m close to, but there’s something so much more than that under the surface about wanting to be her and have that body, and not understanding it. 

It would spike dysphoria and envy and despair and mix it all up with attraction and desire, and you’ll find this is why many trans people entirely dissociated during any sexual activity, pre-transition, if we were even able to handle it at all.

He gets LAUGHED AT for being uncomfortable with it. He apologizes, which again Maddy told him never to do. You don’t have to apologize for being uncomfortable due to the dysphoria you feel… especially in a situation that should not have even been happening in the first place, like sex in the workplace.

43:34 – Owen fills a bag with popcorn… yellow, blue, and red all around him, keeping him confined.

43:46 – He looks outside – DANGER of the exit signs, he sees only fear in the possibility of coming out… and emptiness as his only reward (look at the shopping carts, they’re all empty).

43:51 – Owen’s coworkers make fun of him for feeling weird about barging in on THE THING THAT SHOULD NOT HAVE EVEN BEEN HAPPENING. But HE’S the weird one? Look how he’s in despair, and that’s all he sees in his manager too. And on his manager’s side? Danger. Right behind him? Fear. And the green dysphoria permeating everything.

44:33 – Owen drives home, his own reflection is FEAR. For more on being terrified of our own reflections where we don’t see ourselves, see the Trans Tuesday on PHOTOS AND REFLECTIONS.

There’s sparking electricity from a power line down in the road. The connection has been severed, between Owen and his way forward.

44:43 – Fear and danger in the lighting where Owen is, despair where the connection has been severed and the electricity, which illuminates the dysphoria from the trees. But look at  the  street light, and the light on the ground underneath it. Doesn’t that look… PINK?! His dysphoria, sadness, and fear are BLOCKING THE PATH TO HIS TRANSNESS.

44:56 – When he gets out of the car, the ground looks RED, and now so does the streetlight. Danger, Owen! Trying to remove this blockage means your entire life would change, you know it!

45:24 – Owen looks down, the torn pages are from Maddy’s Pink Opaque book. This is what’s become of his transness, it’s in shreds. He sees MR. MELANCHOLY. Transphobia. That’s what’s keeping him from accessing his transness: his own internalized transphobia.

And there’s so much of it we have to overcome, and we can’t be our true selves until we do. And we can’t overcome it until we can recognize it, and Owen definitely can’t do that yet. For more, see the Trans Tuesday on INTERNALIZED TRANSPHOBIA.

45:41 – Owen turns the page over, sees Mr. Sprinkly, the scary ice cream man. Again, things that should bring you joy do not, when dysphoria blankets your life. 

45:50 – Owen opens the paper. This moment seemed really important. Did I try to read what it said?

I sure did try!

I tried and tried.

I had no idea these photos were being taken, btw. My wife was sitting on our sofa and thought they were hilarious so took photos of me up close squinting at the tv (and she’s right, they’re pretty dang funny).

To the best of my ability, here’s what I was able to decipher:

…escaped an ancient prison trapped inside the dark side…
…Man’s lunar forces have finally stolen one thousand…
…teenagers. Now there’s no moon. No sun. Just Melancholy….

…season Mr. Melancholy finally tricked Tara and Isabel…
…began back at their old sleepaway camp. Now our heroes…
…nightmarish hellscape the likes of which they never could have imagined…
…underground, hugged only by the branches of everyone’s…
…place where they first laid eyes on each other…

…that Mr. Melancholy’s reign has officially begun. Somebody get her a tissue!
Things have never been worse. A county-wide mandate passed by Senator Sprinkly…
…never-ending math class. A new dress code restricts any citizen in the entire county from…
…of music the college radio station now only plays mattress…
…the Double Lunch has been transformed from the coolest club in town into Mr. Melancholy’s…
…where he, Marco and Polo are keeping all four members of the “Absolute Loser Brigade” held prisoner…
…he’s not planning to kill them anytime soon. He’s just planning to feed endlessly on their weirdness…
…everything beautiful about their souls into stinky star fuel.

So where is Isabel? Where is Tara? Where
are our heroes when we need them most?
Somewhere very far away… in a town oddly…
…reminisced of the real world they need to…
…but different in so many subtle, insidious,
ways. But one thing is for sure, this town has…
…bled of magic and wonder.

It’s all conformity, all the…
…place our heroes no longer even remember…
…they are The Pink Opaque. Here they don’t…
…like heroes anymore. Here every monster…
…fought every joke they ever shared, all…
…heartstopping…
…the pages of this very episode guide…
…real. No instead, in this world, all…
…just the weekly transmissions of a dumb tv show. Absurd, right? Who would fall for such…
And Tara. at least at first…

Can Isabel and Tara find each other again on the hazy…
…as it glows dimly? The Luna Juice and soil is caught…
…I have much time. But then again, time might not work exactly… think it does. After all,…
…right now, aren’t I? But you’re also reading it right now. Strange.

Tara is the first one to realize something is very wrong.
…the “home” where she’s been placed is little more than…

Even though I couldn’t decipher all of it, that’s telling you the whole game right there. This is from “season six,” which we know later from Maddy is when the two of them “escape the midnight realm” aka get away from Mr. Melancholy/dysphoria and transition.

So they’re trapped in a living hell by dysphoria, losing their lives (and time) to dissociating.

Look how it gets metatextual, “the pages of this very episode guide,” “you’re also reading it now. Strange.” Weird wording for an episode guide, don’t you think? That’s because it’s not just an episode guide.

Owen knows he’s severing his own connection to his transness, and transitioning in the future, and condemning himself to a life of dysphoria and lost time from dissociating. This is his subconscious trying to call out to him, to get him to accept his truth.

Will he listen? Is he ready? Because we can never accept the truth about ourselves until we are.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

Part 5 is here!

THE INTENTIONAL TRANS ALLEGORY OF I SAW THE TV GLOW, part 3

Welcome to #TransTuesday! Tillyvision rockets through the sky with THE INTENTIONAL TRANS ALLEGORY OF I SAW THE TV GLOW, part 3! Exploring our transness has… made things super complicated!

Be sure you’ve read all the establishing stuff in PART 1 first!

And of course, the continuation in PART 2!

21:49 – It’s two years later and we see high school Owen, now in 9th grade and the beginning of his journey… and there’s green next to him, he has a blue shirt on and holds blue cotton candy in his hand. And he’s trapped between green carnival games and blue benches. He hasn’t been able to transition, and it’s made things even harder on him, it feels like the despair and dysphoria have grown.

22:15 – Owen’s mom bathed in greens and blues with the scarf on her head indicating possible hair loss from chemotherapy (she mentions health problems in just a second). If she’s Owen’s access to femininity, what’s this telling us? What does her potentially losing her hair signify?

This is NOT to say women, cis or trans, cannot be bald or have short hair, there is NOTHING wrong with that. But long hair is (stereotypically) associated with femininity, and so for the purposes of metaphor, this shows you that Owen is LOSING his access to it. 

For that matter, you can see how important my own HAIR was to finding my true self (also see HAIR 2, when I got my first haircut and the world seemed to change).

This fear of Owen’s is confirmed when…

22:33 – Mom: “So, how you feeling about my little health scare, buddy?” She is in blue, the bench is blue. He’s so sad. Owen: “I’m fine.” There’s a flashing red light behind them. Danger. Losing access to your true gender makes you despair and panic.

Mom: “It’s just… it seems like you’re always somewhere else lately.  I don’t know, I’m not sure if it’s ‘cause of me or… I don’t know. Maybe I’m just making it up. Just want to know that you’re on the right path, you know?”

Are you on the path to embracing your femininity like you want to, Owen? Isn’t this the wrong direction?

23:23 – Owen spits into the cotton candy and watches it melt. Ooh, look at this fun distraction from feelings I want to ignore, la la la.

23:30 – Teen Owen is lying in the back seat just like when he was a kid, but his head is in his mom’s lap. Clinging to what femininity he has left, he asks: “Can I stay up late to watch The Pink Opaque tonight?” 

Mom: “You know your bedtime is at 10:15 pm.” It used to be 10, his parents have given him a tiny bit more “freedom” but still don’t let him access his transness (The Pink Opaque is on at 10:30). Green and yellow lights abound, the roof of the car is blue.

24:13 – Owen’s dad, his masculinity, with his ONLY line in the entire movie: “Isn’t that a show for girls?” Red light flashes outside the window. Danger. 

How could you want to explore girly things. For children. You’re a BOY you know. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?

WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?

Mom: “Not tonight, honey.”

24:39 – Owen in bed, all in blue. “After that first sleepover, I couldn’t work up the courage to say more than three words to Maddy Wilson at a time.” Why? Embarrassment. Shame. Fear. “But when I told her I still wasn’t allowed to watch the show, she started leaving tapes for me.”

24:54 – As Owen walks through the school, we hear Starburned and Unkissed by Caroline Polache. Remember that one of the meanings for “Tara” was “star,” which means this song is maybe about Owen feeling like seeing another trans person, and exploring his transness, has burned him and left him alone. The lyrics do nothing to dispel this notion.

Wake up
Distorted to the bone
Salt on demand
Say you miss it
But, oh, I know you don’t
How many plans
With girls with makeup
Hey, you Casanova
Hey, you supernova
Come home
The kettle’s whistling
My heart’s a ghost limb reaching
Starburned and unkissed

As he walks through the school, we (and he) can finally see the signs on the wall. They’re all RED and YELLOW, danger and fear. You betcha. But they’re overlaid with pink drawings about The Pink Opaque, showing you that transness can overcome both.

The signs on the wall read:

“Carpe diem,” “to thine own self be true,” “winners never quit,” “excellence,” “semper fidelis,” “and I took the road less traveled by,” leadership valor service,” “character, scholarship,” “the only easy day was yesterday,” “honor duty country,” “commitment,” “veni vidi vici,” “knowledge is power,” “carpe diem” (again), “courage, without courage all other virtues are meaningless,” “success,” “pain is weakness leaving the body,” “to thine own self be true” (again), “reach for the stars”  

Every single one of those can be read as motivation for following your truth, embracing your true self, becoming who you really are, valuing community. 

He can see the signs more clearly now, even though they’ve always been there! This is a literal interpretation of THE SIGNS WERE ALWAYS THERE (that we’re trans), because we know those signs were there when he was a kid, even though we couldn’t read them.

One realllllllly important thing I want to say here, though.

All of the motivational sayings on those signs? Society throws those at all of us all the time. And they’re exactly what trans people need to transition in this highly transphobic society.

But when we DO that, society says no! Bad! Eww! Wrong! How dare you! 

Do what we say and be your true self but not like that.

Imagine how that would feel for you, cis friends. You’ve heard all of those sayings your whole life, too. Maybe they even motivated you to do something, to be true to yourself. And you were congratulated and rewarded for it.

But when we trans people do it, we’re often shunned and mocked for it.

Sit with that for a bit.

26:23 – Look at Owen walking down this hallway, transness on one side and despair on the other. He’s trying to find his way, trapped in this liminal space.

26:54 – He turns before the blue lockers overtake the hall (he’s decided to turn from the despair), into the red darkroom to pick up The Pink Opaque pilot episode on tape (we want this, but danger! What does it mean? What might happen?! What would people say?)

27:17 – He puts the pilot tape into the VCR, the screen in front of him goes blue. He’s accessing his transness, alone. Away from Maddy, away from everyone. And it makes him sad, because he can’t just BE that, he has to hide it from the world.

27:20 – Owen’s face, still bathed in blue. Owen: “I watched these tapes over and over again. But they never got old.” He explored his gender feelings time and time again, and it never became something he didn’t want to do anymore. FOR A REASON, bub.

But why is his face blue? Well. Okay. Listen…

27:34 – Marco and Polo, the moon people, with breasts and beards, in white dresses that look blue, doing their weird dance in the green forest.

This is why his face is blue. This is why he’s still full of despair. Not just because he can’t live his truth, because he’s afraid that if he did… societal transphobia, internalized transphobia, ALL transphobia… has told him this is all he’ll ever be.

Society makes us think, as trans women, we’ll only be seen as “men with breasts.” Makes us think, as trans men, we’ll only be seen as “women with beards.” You could never look like a “real” person of that gender.

NOW HOLD UP.

I don’t want your angry comments. Neither I nor Jane are saying there is anything wrong with having a beard and breasts, don’t get it twisted. I know some people who have both, they’re lovely and wonderful! Be whoever you truly are.

But also our highly transmedicalist society tells us that PASSING AS CISGENDER IS THE GOAL (it is ABSOLUTELY not, but that’s what we’re told). See the Trans Tuesday on MISGENDERING AND PASSING for more.

Our horribly transphobic society implants into all of us thoughts about what being trans “really” is, what it “really” means, the “only right way to do it.” It’s bullshit. IT’S ALL BULLSHIT.

But one bit of common internalized transphobia (and one I certainly had to deal with) was “I could never look like THAT cis woman, so why would I ever transition, I am clearly not trans.”

Society WANTS us thinking that so that we either don’t transition, or if we do we pass and cis and still uphold the false cis binary matrix. It is INSIDIOUS. Even within the trans community, this bullshit idea persists. And it all stems from cis doctors who gatekept medical transition and, for example, used to only “let” trans women access it if we could pass as cis women and were attracted to men.

See the trans tuesday on TRANSMEDICALISM (and WPATH version 1) for the roots of his horrific evil.

And once again, see the trans tuesday on INTERNALIZED TRANSPHOBIA for all the ways society worms these awful thoughts about ourselves INTO ourselves without our consent.

And Marco and Polo’s hair and facial hair are shaped to look like crescent moons, so we know they work for the man in the moon, Mr. Melancholy (transphobia). This is what Owen’s own internalized transphobia is telling him is all he could ever be. 

And the last thing a trans woman wants to be seen as is a “man with breasts.” (Transphobes like to call us that, btw, if you’re wondering just how real that is).

Isabel: “What’s happening to me? How do I know these things? Am I going crazy?” This is sure what it feels like when your egg cracks and you’re like, wait… how could the entire world have been lying to me? And yet it was. And does. And is.

Tara: “No. Never let anyone convince you of that. You’re like me. You’re special.” YOU’RE TRANS.

28:40 – Owen is bathed in blue, but LOOK HOW PINK HIS LIPS ARE. 

Tara: “We are the pink opaque. It’s our destiny.”

The Matrix talks a lot about this too, the difference between fate or destiny and choice. And what I want you to remember is that in terms of being trans, it’s both. We don’t choose to be trans, that’s the part that’s fate or destiny. We just are. But we choose to transition (or not).

Tara: ”I knew it from the moment I saw your tattoo in the dining hall. Heck, I knew it before I even met you. Can you feel it?” Again, sometimes we can kinda just recognize each other. Something about those of us who exist outside the false binary, I dunno. But it’s there.

And since we’re talking about connection and community, we get this shot again…

29:10 – Isabel: “I don’t even have my learner’s permit yet!” This is about driving on the surface, sure, but it also means, like… this is the first time I’ve ever thought about or explored my own transness. And then, ECHOED BY OWEN AS ISABEL SAYS IT: “How can I have a destiny?”

Right? We didn’t ask for this! We didn’t want it! We can choose what to do with our own lives! Why is this happening to me?

29:17 – Owen’s dad comes in and he speeds to shut the tv off so he isn’t caught. Let me tell you, I lived that moment.

When I was a kid, I don’t know how old, maybe 9 or 10, I was watching this movie on tv that was about lesbians. It wasn’t porn or even R-rated, it was just like… a drama about two women who were in love with each other.

I can’t remember much of anything about it at all (thanks, dissociation! We’ll talk more about that later), other than I was intensely intrigued by it for reasons I couldn’t tell you (not remotely sexual).

Hi, it’s me, I’m a lesbian.

But I didn’t know that at a time, because I had no idea that the feelings I had that made me feel like a girl meant that I was a girl, or that I could BE the girl I really am. And I already knew I liked girls, but I was a boy… right? (no) But that’s what my family and friends and all of society told me! They couldn’t all be wrong, could they? (yes)

Anyway, my mom was virulently homophobic and transphobic and I guess she heard something that made her panic and she came tearing into the room at a run, but I heard her coming and changed the channel really quick.

Because even then, at that age, when nobody in my family had so much said a word EVER acknowledging that anything other than heterosexuality and cisgender people existed, I knew, I Knew, I KNEW they would freak the fuck out and punish me for watching it.

Kids pick up on these things.

29:20 – There’s static all around Owen’s head, his truth is again obscured.

30:09 – Owen is now in pink. All the connection to the show has made him get closer to his own transness. He hasn’t accepted it yet, but he’s closer than he’s ever been. But he still can’t get too close to Maddy or people might talk, might suspect. 

He asks if Maddy and Amanda still watch The Pink Opaque together every week. Did you notice Maddie is now in blue, and her hair and clothes have a much more femme presentation than before? She’s pulled back from the more gender-neutral presentation that she was more comfortable in.

Why would she present more femme now? Why is she in despair?

Maddy says she hasn’t talked to “that asshole” in a year. Amanda told the entire school that Maddy “tried to touch her tit,” which is a lie.

Amanda (a fellow trans person, mind you) painted Maddy as a sexual predator. Well… that never ever happens to trans people, nope. (this is sarcasm, if you missed it)

Like, I’m not even going to link you to the million articles calling us sexual predators. It’s just standard bigoted operating procedure now.

But Amanda did that? Yep. And then joined the cheer squad.

Cheerleading is super athletic and great, but allllso cheerleaders generally conform to rigid gender stereotypes… skirts, makeup, long hair. We all know what cheerleaders look like.

So what we have here is that Amanda rejected her transness and dove into pretending to be as cis as she could. Remember how she dressed way more femme, and could not escape all the dysphoria that was around her when we saw her before? And I said it’d be relevant later? Later is now!

She couldn’t escape her dysphoria, so she gave up on her transness and dove head-first into conforming to compulsory cishet life because that’s what others expected to see from her. Including perpetuating dangerous transphobic lies about Maddy, to help distance herself from her (see? I’m not trans like her! She was just assaulting me, the creep!).

Amanda’s a pick-me. A Caitlyn Jenner. A Buck Angel. From The Matrix (Reloaded, most all), the Merovingian. A trans person who sold out the rest of us, due to the way society rewards you for conforming to that compulsory cishetness they force on all of us. 

And this was telegraphed from earlier, with her Black & Milds. She cared about “appearing cool,” because the way she appeared to others was more important than how she appeared to herself. And so of course she conformed to what society told her was the “right” way to be.

Ugh. Screw you AND your Black & Milds, Amanda. 

And I think Maddy is more femme-presenting here than she’s been so far… longer hair, a femme tank, a long skirt, more makeup on… because she liked Amanda (not romantically, I don’t think, just as another trans person). But she got caught up in Amanda’s regression and thought if she did it, too, maybe Amanda would still like her. But no, that’s not how it works, is it?

Or, perhaps, Maddy tried to give up her transness too, but discovered she couldn’t, or didn’t want to. Because being your true self was more important.

Maybe it’s both of those things. And she’s mad at herself for letting someone push her to be less like her true self.

31:17 – Owen: “If you wanted, I could come over again.” Remember when WE explored our transness together? We could maybe do that some more! They clear up this is not a sexual thing. Maddy is into girls, and Owen is genuinely like… that’s fine, I don’t care. I don’t think he’s romantically or sexually into Maddy, but Owen IS a girl so either way that doesn’t bother him.

31:20 – In the commentary, Jane: “Justice and his very prevalent Adams Apple there, that’s how you know he’s trans.” Like, Jane was joking, yes, but… it’s funny because it’s true.

32:40 – Maddy asks him if he likes girls and/or boys. Owen: “When I think about that stuff, it feels like someone took a shovel and dug out all my insides. And I know there’s nothing in there, but I’m still too nervous to open myself up and check.” 

You can feel hollow when trying to think about who you are romantically or sexually attracted to, because you don’t understand your own gender and that super complicates things. See The trans Tuesday on SEXUALITY IS NOT GENDER.

Note that Owen’s AFRAID to look inside, and it’s not because there’s nothing in there, because he’s afraid if he explores those feelings he’ll discover what IS in there is his transness. And remember he DOES open himself up and look at the end of the movie! He progresses. He changes. He is not the same Owen at the end (remember that).

33:03 – Owen: “I know there’s something wrong with me.” That’s what society tells you about the feelings you have when you’re trans. “My parents know it too, even if they don’t say anything.” He’s afraid of what they’d say, and they already treat him like they know. 

My parents subconsciously knew I was trans, even if they consciously didn’t realize. This is something I’ve talked about with multiple other trans women who were the eldest child in their families and had similar experiences.

Our parents, even my VERY rigid-gender-role ones, never treated me like an eldest son. They treated me like an eldest daughter. And so many other trans women have said the same.

Subconsciously, they picked up on cues (maybe in the same way we trans people can sometimes spot each other), and somewhere in there they KNEW, and they treated us like it… even while consciously berating, mocking, and punishing us for any behaviors outside the cishet “norm.”

Cis boys totally did this, too (and many trans women I’ve talked to also experienced this). Subconsciously they pick up on how different we are, how we don’t conform to what they expect cis boys to be, and then punish us for it.

It was a wild and bad time, friends.

33:29 – Owen asks Maddy if she feels hollowed-out, and she says she doesn’t know. She doesn’t want to admit it, but look at her face. She absolutely does feel that way (this is some great acting by Jack Haven).

38:38 – Maddy: “Maybe you’re like Isabel. Afraid of what’s inside you” AHA! Yeah, just maybe he is.

And what do you think happens when all of society teaches you to be afraid of the truth you feel might be deep inside you? It’s a rough journey, friends.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

Part 4 is here!

THE INTENTIONAL TRANS ALLEGORY OF I SAW THE TV GLOW, part 2

Welcome to #TransTuesday! Tillyvision has achieved liftoff and we’re headed for the stars in THE INTENTIONAL TRANS ALLEGORY OF I SAW THE TV GLOW, part 2! We’re starting to explore our transness, but have no idea what that means.

Here’s PART 1 if you missed it!

6:56 – Owen: “Are your parents voting too?” Maddy: “No, Ms. Driscoll lets me use the dark room after school. So I’m just waiting for my pictures to dry out.” This exchange is so elegant and brilliant in what it conveys. The metaphor lets you instantly know Maddy is further along the transition path than Owen is, she goes to the school but he’s just visiting. And she works in a darkroom… what color is a dark room?

I know, film is so super old-school, the kids may not know. To develop photo prints correctly, you cannot have bright light and so they’re done under a RED LIGHT (danger).

So while Owen is searching for answers, and is curious about himself and his transness, something within him sees a trans person further along the path and it’s setting off alarms and warning bells within him.

And that’s kinda how it is sometimes when you start to realize, because society teaches you that it’s bad and wrong and weird and gross to be trans, and you maybe panic because OH GOD WHAT DOES THAT SAY ABOUT ME?

We’ll talk a whole lot more about how those thoughts get inside our heads later on. Because Owen’s going to find out, too.

7:12 – Owen: “That looks like the best book ever.” I mean, there’s his interest in his own transness stated plain. SUPERtext. Maddy: “Do you watch?” Are you trans? Owen: “No.” Incorrect, buddy! But we tell ourselves that a lot early on, even while simultaneously seeking the answers that would prove it wrong.

8:05 – Owen: “What grade are you in?” Maddy: “Ninth.” A Freshman (freshman, perhaps). But freshmen are new, so while she’s ahead of Owen but still fairly new to it herself. 

Maddy: “What about you?” Owen: “Seventh.” Still not to the beginning, at grade 9, and not even on the cusp of it yet. 

8:41 – Maddy: “Election day is cool, right? It’s like colonial day. Or when they bring the inflatable planetarium into the gymnasium. It’s like the school gets transformed into something else, you know? It’s special.” 

This is absolutely key to remember when we get to the actual inflatable planetarium near the end. Because Maddy tells us that it’s about the choice you’re making to TRANS(gender)FORM yourself, and how special it is.

9:00 – Owen: “It’s a kid’s show, right? The Pink Opaque?” Hey, transness is unserious, a goofy fantasy. This was how Owen was initially taught by society to think about transness, and it will come up again. Maddy: “No. No way. Who told you that?”

9:16 – Getting confirmation that Maddy sees it the same way he does, see how quickly he changes his tune. Owen: “I see commercials for it all the time, it looks amazing.” He sees transness in himself all the time, it looks AMAZING. And with another trans person, he feels safe to admit it. Maddy hands him the episode guide. 

Look at Owen, sitting against the Fruitopia vending machine, but with his back to it. Close to his transness, but not acknowledging it. And look at the other vending machine… GREEN (dysphoria), and he’s facing it. He can’t see his transess because all he sees is his dysphoria. Maddy is the opposite, she’s turned her back on her dysphoria (which doesn’t mean that she doesn’t have it, but it’s not controlling her) and she’s facing her transness head-on.

There may also be something to the way the Fruitopia machine has such a clear, pronounced reflection, and the snack machine has almost no visible reflection at all. Dysphoria prevents us from seeing our true reflections in mirrors (and photos), making them incredibly difficult for many of us. But embracing our transness can (hopefully) lead us to seeing our true reflections.

More on this in the Trans Tuesday on PHOTOS AND REFLECTIONS.

9:50 – Maddy: “It’s the last show in the block before they switch to black and white reruns for old people.” Those are the people who don’t believe in transness and only see in black and white. You will be unsurprised to learn that The Matrix and Barbie both also deal with people who only see in black and white, also known as the false (cis) binary, also known as THE FALSE DICHOTOMY.

Owen says he’s forced to go to bed before the show comes on. His parents are keeping him from his transness, and I can’t tell you how often cis parents do this, often without even consciously realizing it. See the Trans Tuesday on GENDERED CHILDHOODS.

10:32 – Owen laying on the back seat of the car, green lights are all over, but there’s plenty of yellow and even red. Why? Because he asks if he can have a sleepover at “Johnny Link’s house,” a lie, but it’s his link to seeing Maddy, The Pink Opaque, and his transness. His mom says he has to ask his father. He asks his mom if she’ll ask his dad for him.. 

If you read his parents as I mentioned, his access to his own femininity and masculinity, this is basically saying that to access his transness (see the show), his femininity (mother) needs to get permission from his masculinity (father). 

When I was living a horrid painful lie trying to be the cis man society said I was, in order to start exploring my transness, my false masculine side had to relent enough to let me explore femininity, where I found my transness. This is brilliant.

11:43 – As his mom’s face turns toward Owen’s father, it’s bathed in blue. She despairs at his masculinity having all the power.

12:00 – Owen sits at the top of the stairs listening, we only hear his Mom saying he’s old enough and a good kid. His femininity is fighting for him.

12:15 – There’s a dark, pinkish light behind yellow fog, fear is obscuring transness. There are more chalk scribbles on the street, and the ghost looks angry now. Owen’s going to explore his transness, and though intensely curious, he’s mad about it. Because why, right? Why do we have to do this? We never asked for this. Why is this happening to me? (Neo goes through a very literal, vocalized version of this in the first Matrix. So does Barbie in Barbie).

12:27 – Owen walks between the green grass with his pink sleeping bag to Johnny Link’s front door. He’s carrying his transness with him, but dysphoria is everywhere. Sleeping bags keep you warm and make you feel safe, whenever you have to sleep outside of your own bed. Acknowledging your transness can do that, too. There’s a calming sense that comes with being self-assured in who you are.

12:52 – Owen fakes ringing the doorbell (because he’s going to Maddy’s, Johnny Link is just his cover). But it’s important to realize that in order to access transness, he has to lie to his parents. So many of us have to find times and places to explore ourselves away from our own parents, because what would they think? Say? Do?

Every time I so much as explored the tiniest shred of my complicated gender feelings as a kid, my mother yelled at me, forced me to stop, told me I could not, ridiculed me. It’s a very sad reality for a lot of us, and even outright dangerous for some.

13:00 – His mom’s in a pink and blue shirt when dropping Owen off. I think this signifies Owen’s transness IS his femininity, and that makes him despair because he doesn’t know what that means, or what to do about it.

13:23 – Once his mom is gone, Owen leaves, walks over the green grass under blue sky. Dysphoria and despair surround us, the sleeping bag of our transness all rolled up and trapped in the middle. Thunder rumbles. A storm is coming (accessing your transness in-depth for the first time can sure enough feel like that).

13:45 – Owen knocks softly (Maddy also has to hide her transness from her parents), and the rain has started. Now we’re in it.

13:50 – There’s pink on the tv as Maddy talks with Amanda. Owen comes in the BACK DOOR, because transness must be kept secret from those who would harm us over it.

14:27 – Announcer: “And now a brand new Pink Opaque.” The light from tv turns pink, and there’s a green fish tank behind them. Look at Maddy’s clothes and how kind of gender-neutral they are (also baggy, in the way many of us trans folks use to hide our bodies from ourselves, pre-transition). Amanda is much much more feminine in presentation.

Note the looming dysphoria of the large fishtank behind them. They’re both dealing with it, but facing their transness. That it’s right over Amanda’s head, however, is another important detail to remember for later. Also… if Amanda is also trans, is that her name because she’s “a man, duh”? I mean, probably not, but the thought made me laugh.

Owen: “Is it okay if I come sit down?” Gosh that transness sure is interesting, can I… explore it too?

14:39 – Isabel, on tv: “Tara is my imaginary best friend, and I’m hers. We met at sleepaway camp,” Owen is right now AT A SLEEPOVER, and Tara is Maddy. And they’re imaginary best friends, because right now all either of them can do is imagine their true selves.

“…discovered we had an ancient psychic connection.” I kinda think all trans people do. We see the world the same way. Again, reference my earlier mention of the friend I had a connection with and found out later on we’d both transitioned.

Maddy is super into it, but Amanda seems bored. Remember how close her head was to the green dysphoria of the fish tank? Her dysphoria is, perhaps, winning. This is foreshadowing what happens with her later.

“Now, even though we live on opposite sides of the county, we help each other fight the forces of evil,” which is also known as transphobia, both internalized and externalized. Important to note they have to HELP EACH OTHER TO DO IT. This is why trans community is so vital, because we can often see internalized transphobia in each other that we cannot see in ourselves, and then help each other fight it.

If you need more on the evils of INTERNALIZED TRANSPHOBIA, see its Trans Tuesday.

14:55 – As Owen approaches the tv, his face becomes more and more pink. “We are… The Pink Opaque.” We are trans! You are too!

15:02 – We get our first shot of Isabel, the true Owen, walking in a GREEN forest, surrounded by dysphoria, looking scared, in a pink shirt. Owen worries even if he could transition to his true self, it wouldn’t make the dysphoria go away (it doesn’t always, sadly).

15:07 – We get our first shot of Tara, looking very gender-neutral, face lit in pink, and looking UP, hopeful and determined. Maddy’s entire outlook right there… transition is the way forward, to better things.

15:09 – Look at this shot of Maddy and Tara’s heads together, holding hands, with their pink opaque ghost tattoos on their necks. Community, solidarity, together in their transness. It’s showing you how connected the two of them are (and how every trans person is connected to every other).

15:20 – Two guys sitting on a curb, pink chalk scribbles all over the street in front of them. Note how chaotic the chalk scribbles are here, and how little to no blue is in there. Owen’s head’s a jumble, but it’s all focused on his transness.

“The last sprinkly-stick of the summer,” and they’re blue popsicles. Transition can lead to a lessening of despair. “What a bummer. Definition of. It’s not fair, man. Why does the winter have to be so cold that you can’t eat ice cream during the winter?” “You know what I wish? I wish the ice cream man didn’t have to leave when the weather got cold in the winter.” 

When despair is all you’ve known for your entire life, the thought of it lessening or leaving can be scary, though that feels counter-intuitive. But it’s all you’ve ever known, and so moving from that to something new (and better) can be overwhelming.

15:53 – Shot of a kid sitting on a blue bed with a clown on it, blue curtains behind him. “I wish he never went away.” Our despair is safe, right? Not in a way that protects us, but in a way that is known. Familiar. And it’s too easy to get lost in it and think that’s all there is, or that’s how it’s supposed to be. 

Even worse is that’s how transphobic society wants us to feel, and teaches us it’s normal and no big deal. Certainly not enough of a problem to do anything about!

15:58 – Mr. Sprinkly, the creepy ice cream man, dripping everywhere, holding a double blue popsicle. His eyes are blue. His suit is red. The walls are yellow. Danger. Despair. Look behind him, dysphoria, despair and fear clouding out transness. 

We learn he works for Mr. Melancholy (transphobia). He speaks in static, which is what transphobia uses to fuzz our heads, block our hearts, keep us from ourselves.

Worth noting I’ve heard many trans people say their dysphoria was like living with a constant loud static in their head, obscuring and covering everything…

But ice cream is supposed to make you happy, right? And bring you joy. But when you’re living with dysphoria, even the things in life that should bring you joy are tinged with sadness and awful crushing despair that’s obscuring the truth (of your transness, and the true joy you should feel).

The birth of my son, my original wedding with my wife… happiest days of my life at the time, still entirely miserable because I felt so bad due to dysphoria.

Relatedly, now that my dysphoria is all but gone, my wife and I re-did our wedding and the difference for me was night and day. See the essay on A TRANS RE-WEDDING.

16:10 – And so this is where we get a clearer shot of that ice cream truck in the opening shot. The green dysphoria (on something that SHOULD bring you joy) is obscuring the pink of transness. Further, the pink is smoke that’s rising. Dysphoria can set fire to your transness, and ruin any chance of you ever finding that joy. If you let it.

And as we learned from that opening shot, this is the path Owen is on, this is where it will lead him.

Maybe.

16:35 – Owen watching Amanda smoking outside, a large green sign under the window. See how Amanda cannot escape her dysphoria? Foreshadowing. 

Maddy: “You can go out and join her if you want.” Owen: “No, I don’t smoke cigarettes.” Maddy has to tell him it’s not a cigarette, it’s a Black & Mild. Because Amanda’s much cooler than that. Or Amanda wants to appear that way, anyway. Which will, again, be important to remember for later.

Look at how both Owen and Maddy are both wearing drab, baggy clothes to hide their bodies.

17:00 – Maddy: “Are you sure you don’t want a ride home with Amanda’s mom?” Owen: “I told my parents it was a sleepover.” I have to maintain the lie! Or I will get caught! And then he lays down under the green dysphoria fish tank. 

17:27 – Maddy: “Isabel’s a scaredy-cat. She’s kind of the main character, but she’s also kind of a drip.” Are you listening, Owen? Find your courage, don’t give up. “Tara’s my favorite, she’s super hot, and she doesn’t take shit from anybody. Plus, she’s an expert on demonology.” Tara is Maddy’s ideal self, how she wants to think of herself and who she wants to be, and she’s an expert on demonology/transphobia.

Maddy: “…each episode they help each other fight a new monster from across the county.” Owen: “Okay. Is the ice cream man in every episode?” There’s only one way transphobia affects us, right? 

Maddy: “No. That’s just a monster of the week.” lol no, sorry kid, there’s hundreds of ways transphobia fucks with us, and we gotta fight ‘em all, every week.

“Mr. Melancholy is the big bad. The man in the moon. He’s always messing with time and reality. He wants to rule the world, to trap Isabel and Tara in the Midnight Realm. So each week, he sends a new supernatural foe their way.” Important to mention here the Midnight Realm is where Maddy and Owen already are (but don’t realize it yet), the pre-transition waking death we find ourselves in and think is just how life’s supposed to be.

Owen: “Because they’re part of The Pink Opaque?” Maddy: “No, because they ARE The Pink Opaque.”

Owen is confused. “Right. Sorry.”

19:04 – Maddy: “DON’T APOLOGIZE.”

This is the thesis of the entire movie, I think, something every trans person needs to learn. 

Society tells us our transness is wrong, and bad, and a burden, and weird, and sick, and awful, and a mistake, and not real, all at once. They make us think it’s something we should apologize for.

DO. NOT.

We are real and valid and we deserve to live as our true selves in peace, just as every cis person does.

19:20 – Owen asks if it’s okay for him to sleep there, and Maddy says yes as long as he’s out by dawn, because if her step-dad catches him he’ll break her nose again. Being caught exploring her transness at home is met with violence.

This is a very real threat many trans kids face. You can learn more about the prevalence of it in the Trans Tuesdays on the 2022 US TRANS SURVEY RESULTS.

19:33 – Maddy turns out the light. When the only other trans person he knows leaves, Owen is left in darkness, with only all that green dysphoria hovering above his head.

20:05 –  Maddy: “Sometimes… The Pink Opaque feels more real than real life. You know?” Because the “real life” of forced cisgenderness is living a lie that makes the world feel broken, yeah.

20:18 – “Taper” by Maria BC plays, and the lyrics sure read like a person dealing with their transness and succumbing to dysphoria. Look at this choice bit:

Oughta make my peace and douse the fire
When the night’s so deep it breathes
When the night’s so deep
It tapers every desire

And so then of course we get to…

21:07 – Adult Owen looking into the fire again, contemplating his trans fire within.

21:15 – As Owen walks home, there’s the despairing blue sky, the dysphoric green grass, his despairing blue flannel, his transness rolled back up in the pink sleeping bag… but now there’s some pink clouds fighting back against the despair. Look what hanging with one trans person and exploring his transness has done for him already.

21:30 – We see Owen walking, surrounded by green, fading into Isabel walking, surrounded by dysphoric green, but… happy at the end, and running out of it. With a smile, looking UP, hopeful.

His first time exploring this side of himself and he thought… maybe I can get there, and leave the dysphoria behind.

The importance of this shot is it’s showing you Owen wants to be his true self and leave dysphoria behind. But that’s so much easier said than done.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

Part 3 is here!

THE INTENTIONAL TRANS ALLEGORY OF I SAW THE TV GLOW, part 1

Welcome to #TransTuesday! So so SO many people have been asking for this, and waiting for it, and I’m delighted to tell you that I took untold levels of psychic damage just to bring you: THE INTENTIONAL TRANS ALLEGORY OF I SAW THE TV GLOW, part 1!

Yes, that’s right, it’s time for another installment of Tillyvision, because the masses demanded it (but also because I really wanted to). I love doing these deep-dive breakdowns, but they’re very time consuming, much moreso than your average trans tuesday. This is why I can’t do them more often, even though I’d like to. And the list of movies and television I have to cover on them is already dauntingly long. But we’ll get there! In time.

This one was especially tough, because I Saw the TV Glow has left every trans person that I know in literal tears. It’s a really important but incredibly difficult watch, and I took six hours to go through it and take notes on it and over ten hours to write it up. It’s been difficult, as what it’s saying is not easy to get through. Because many (most?) of us trans folks lived it.

At first, though people were repeatedly asking me to do one of my trans allegory write-ups on it, I wasn’t sure if I would. I wasn’t sure if I could. But then I saw trans people missing some important things about what it was saying. And I saw cis people.. yes, even with this movie that is basically all SUPERtext (a term I coined to mean the opposite of subtext)… think this is only a story about a kid who’s obsessed with a tv show.

And so I knew I had to. Art is subjective, of course, and everyone takes something different from it. But I feel like a lot of people, cis and trans alike, have missed some of what the movie itself lays out for you to interpret. Especially the ending.

So I knew I had to tackle this, but I didn’t know how. At first I thought I’d eschew my regular timestamp breakdown and talk about it more broadly, maybe in only one or two essays. But when I began my research and note-taking rewatch, I realized that it was much too densely packed with brilliance for that.

But at first, look, this is hard to explain. This movie feels… sacred to me. It is holy. It is the clearest depiction I’ve EVER seen put to film of the war with gender dysphoria, and what it does to those of us who have it. It’s so accurate it hurts. SO MUCH.

It’s so important because this is our pain. This is our lives (such as they were). And so it feels a little like blasphemy to break it down piece by piece. And I worried that in doing so, I’d lose so much of what it meant to me.

The good news is that didn’t happen, I only find it more sacred now. But having to break it down in this way wounded me deeply, because it meant diving into and examining the most painful part of my life (and the most painful part of life for, I’d wager, every trans person who’s struggled with dysphoria).

At times, this will not be an easy read. Because the movie isn’t an easy watch (not because it’s bad or harmful or bigoted, but because it’s so true to our pain). But it’s important.

It’s so, so important to talk about this, to help people understand.

THIS IS WHAT WE”RE DEALING WITH.

Grab somebody you love, who will hold you after watching and reading, because we’re all going to need it.

It should also go without saying, but… massive spoilers ahead.

Buckle up, my babies. Here we go.

Right up front, let’s just get this out of the way. The story is about two trans people, Isabel and Tara, who have been forced down into the false cis shells of Owen and Maddy. So to make this as abundantly clear as I can: THE WORLD OF THE PINK OPAQUE IS THE REAL WORLD.

Writer/director Jane Schoenbrun (who is trans) confirms this themselves in the commentary.

This means everything you see with Owen and Maddy is not real. But how can that be? It’s going to take this entire series of essays to explain that to you.

But note that two other mega intentional allegories for transness, the Matrix franchise and the Barbie movie, both ALSO deal with false realities and determining what is “real” (for that matter, so does season one of Silo, which I also did a series of essays about).

This is a common thing for trans folks, because we spend our lives gaslit by basically the entire world that everything we know and feel about ourselves is wrong and cannot possibly be true.

Yet it doesn’t change how we feel, or what we know. And so reality doesn’t feel real, because it’s not. This is what being forced to live a lie and told you’re wrong about your own sense of self does to you.

FOR CLARITY, I will refer to Owen by he/him and Maddy by she/her. But Owen’s true self is Isabel (she/her) and Maddy’s true self is Tara (they/them).

I believe the chalk you see on the street at key points in the film is an indication of Owen’s present mental state, of what’s going on in his head.

And much like with THE MATRIX, which I wrote a whole book about, and with my essays on THE INTENTIONAL TRANS ALLEGORY OF BARBIE, I Saw the TV Glow uses color as a key part of its allegory.

PINK is the most important, where it stands for transness, or access to your transness, transition, etc. The very name of the “show” (the true reality) that Owen and Maddy are obsessed with, The Pink Opaque, is also part of this. 

“Opaque” is there because this movie is from the perspective of Owen, a pre-transition, pre-egg-crack trans woman, and when you exist in that state, your own transness is a mystery to you. It’s opaque, you cannot see through it to what waits on the other side. (for those unfamiliar with trans colloquialisms, an “egg” is someone who doesn’t realize they’re trans yet, and their “egg cracking” is when they realize they’re trans)

In fact, this is also why The Pink Opaque tattoo is a pink ghost. Pink = trans, ghost = spirit. It’s a signifier that your spirit, your soul, your true inner self is trans.

Also of huge importance is GREEN, which is representative of gender dysphoria.

BLUE is despair. RED is a danger warning (for both real and imagined dangers). YELLOW (as in the Matrix films) is fear.

“Owen” has a mixed and indefinite meaning, but could mean “sheep,” “good/desire,” or “born of”. But when you look at all of those, for a person who’s trans and doesn’t know it or why their life is miserable… hits kinda hard, doesn’t it?

“Isabel” traces back to Elizabeth, which means “my god is an oath.” Oaths are promises about your future actions, and Isabel is the future (and true) person Owen will become. I don’t think this is saying that Owen sees his true form of Isabel as a god, but…

Like, pre-transition and even early in transition, I would think of my potential “final form” as something sacred, a blissful, happy existence I hoped to one day achieve (and I did! And you can too!). So to me, that’s what this is implying. Isabel is the “otherworldly, divine” form Owen wishes he could be (even if he can’t admit that to himself).

“Maddy” could be short for Madeleine or Madison, so let’s look at both. “Madeleine” traces back to Magdalene, from Mary Magdalene in the Christian New Testament. Jesus cleansed her of evil spirits, and she then stayed with him through his sacrifice. That sure reads like ridding yourself of dysphoria to sacrifice your false form and attain the divinity of your true form, doesn’t it?

“Madison” traces back to Matilda, which means “strength in battle.” This is also what “Tilly” means, btw, so now you know to not mess with me 😌

And this is fascinating because of the two, Maddy is definitely the strong one… and even takes the place of a weapon during the movie, which we’ll talk about way down the line. 

But BOTH of those meanings work for “Maddy,” which is pretty genius.

“Tara” means “elevated place,” which suuuuuuuure is what you could call the post-transition, final form of a trans person! It could also mean “star” which is… elevated and in the heavens, shining like a beacon. Both of those meanings work for “Tara!” 

I love when we writers do this shit. 💜

I also believe that Owen’s mom is a stand-in for his femininity, and his dad is a stand-in for his masculinity. For many of us, our mothers and fathers are our first examples of access to both femininity and masculinity, and that shapes a lot of how we see both of those things.

Okay, time for timestamps! Special shout-out and thanks to Millicent Alexis Book for helping me obtain some of the screenshots you will see across all parts of this deep-dive.

0:33 – Our first chalk drawing, setting up Owen’s internal state. Most prominent in there is the sad blue ghost. You’ve already seen the movie, so you know The Pink Opaque symbol of transness is a pink ghost with glasses and wide-open eyes. What do glasses help you do? SEE CLEARLY. This ghost is blue – despair. Its eyes are clouded and can’t see things clearly.

This is a direct and clear indication that Owen is the furthest from his true self, from transition. Inside, he’s a mess (weren’t we all). We’ll get to the ice cream truck at the end of the street in a little bit, when there’s a clearer shot of it, but note that’s where this path he’s on right now will lead him.

1:11 – Young Owen’s watching tv, changing channels. He’s searching for… something. Meaning. Clues about himself. Answers to questions he doesn’t know how to ask. I did this too! Many trans people do. See the Trans Tuesday on SEARCHING FOR MEANING WHEN YOU’RE TRANS (and don’t know it).

1:20 – The screen and his face go pink (transness is here!) in a commercial for The Pink Opaque. This is his first encounter with the idea and concept of transness, even if he can’t name it or understand it. Something in him is saying wait, my life is wrong, the world is wrong, this is not who I am, this is not reality.

1:28 – “Isabel’s BATHROOM has a new supernatural infestation that no exterminator can take care of.” Bathrooms are the most heavily gendered spaces we have (the Matrix uses them specifically for this same reason). 

A “supernatural infestation” is gender dysphoria. It infests your mind, and is a power you cannot control (pre-transition). And no, no exterminator or specialist or outside person can fix it. ONLY WE CAN. The Matrix again deals with this exact same thing. No one is coming to save us but US.

WE are “The One” we’ve been waiting for to save us.

Isabel, in a pink dress (Isabel is the true Owen, pink = trans), leaps out the bathroom window between green (dysphoria) curtains. Transition lets her slip past dysphoria!

Isabel walks down the street with an axe, and has the pink opaque tattoo, which we can see is the polar opposite of the ghost drawing in the opening chalk shot.

She’s then walking with the axe on a football field, and gives a slow sad wave, like she wants someone to notice her or is saying goodbye. Which is basically saying “Here I am, Owen, notice me, BE me, or you’re going to lose me.” Remember this for when we talk about the football field later on.

Also, football fields are a very traditionally male space, spaces where trans women pre-transition often find ourselves (not exactly on football fields, but you know what I mean… in spaces for men. This is metaphor!). But she has an axe, and is ready to fight.

1:40 – “They can’t hurt you if you don’t think about them,” said from the tv while Owen’s face is in pink, and he seems mesmerized. This is what I, and many other trans people, told ourselves about our weird and complicated gender feelings all our lives.

If we just don’t think about it, it can’t hurt us and we won’t have to do anything about it!

Because that always works. Oy.

“Anthems for a Seventeen Year-old Girl” by Yeule plays. The title sure says a lot, and I’m not going to quote all the lyrics, but it can definitely be read as a person leaving their fake life behind and changing into someone new, but being super uncomfortable with it and wishing they weren’t trans. Here’s a small excerpt:

Used to be one of the rotten ones and I liked you for that
Now you’re all gone, got your make-up on, and you’re not coming back
Can’t you come back?

2:00 – The colors are very trans pride flag adjacent as we cut to the parachute and young Owen walking inside it. His first encounter with his transness has opened him up, this feels representative of him exploring the feelings inside about his transness. 

All the other kids are just playing, but he’s walking (searching?) alone. This is foreshadowing the inflatable planetarium near the end of the film, where he has an important choice to make. But here, there’s no choice, only exploration of what he finds within.

3:16 – Teen/adult Owen: “It was raining last night and I couldn’t sleep, so I started my favorite TV show again. The Pink Opaque.” He keeps coming back to transness. Also, though we haven’t seen it happen in the movie yet, you’ve watched it already and know when Owen first goes to Maddy’s house to watch the show… it’s raining.

The rain reminds him of the first time he truly connected with his inner self and his transness, so he puts the show on again.

And I think this fire we see him looking at here is his inner fire, his desire to become and exist as his true self. He’s staring at it, contemplating, trying to make his choice. It’ll take him the rest of the movie to make it.

But you can tell what’s informing the interim choices he makes, look at the light on his face. Yellow. Fear.

He tosses something on the fire, it flares, and then he sits and looks at it with sad, dead eyes. This is what the eyes of every trans person pre-transition look like in our photos, mine included. It’s tremendous acting from Justice Smith.

4:14 – Young Owen is at Void High with his mom, who is voting. In the commentary, Jane Shoenbrun said the school they shot in already began with a V and it would cost too much to change it (especially on the football field), so they just picked a word that started with V. But “void” is perfect, because life is very much like a void pre-transition. 

4:47 – Owen sees Maddy for the first time. Also pay attention to the school mascot being vultures, which is very much what it feels like every transphobic cis person in the world is… circling you, waiting for you to fall so they can pick your carcass clean. 

Maddy’s reading The Pink Opaque episode guide. She leaves, he watches her go, his face in a blue light. In his first sight of Maddy, he saw in her the same thing he saw in the ad for the show… something he recognized within himself, but couldn’t identify. And it makes him sad, maybe because he wishes he could be like her (having access to transness with the episode guide).

I’ve mentioned in multiple trans tuesdays how I had a friend pre-transition, that I always felt this intimate connection with that I couldn’t explain, different from just friendship (and it wasn’t romantic or sexual). I had no idea what it was. We lost touch, reconnected a few years into my transition… and she’d transitioned, too. It happens. We can’t define it, but sometimes we can see it in each other.

Owen’s mom calls him to the voting booth. Look at the yellow curtains.

Why would he fear the voting booth? Well he doesn’t, but it’s symbolic of what he does fear. Because what is voting?

A choice for the future.

And what does Owen have trouble making through the entire movie? A choice for his future. It terrifies him.

You’ll see yellow used a LOT in this way during the movie if you watch for it… veils or barriers between Owen and that which he fears. Our fear keeps us from what we desire, keeps us from ourselves. Our true selves.

Once he’s in the voting booth, look at the lighting on all the choices… it’s a blue-green. Dysphoria and despair are all he sees as his options.

6:01 – Owen walks the school hall, past signs that it’s too dark to read. Those signs are important, but note that right now, at this age, they’re just shadows to him. Unclear. He hasn’t absorbed their messages yet. We’ll discuss them more later on, when they’re clear to him.

6:29 – As he walks through the cafeteria, the tables have been turned upside down. In the commentary Jane says they’re “like turtles.” If you turn a turtle on its back, it can’t move or right itself. It’s vulnerable. They’re trying to convey to you that Owen is in a vulnerable state here, his mind having started to wonder about his true identity and not being able to make sense of it.

Genius little detail, I tell you what.

In here, the Fruitopia machine (a very bright pink) is a huge “there is transness here!” sign. In the commentary, Jane said it “announces ‘welcome,’” and to a kid looking for more information about his own transness, yeah, it would.

We’ve barely gotten started, but we’re gonna break there for this week. There’s so much more to show you.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

Part 2 is here!