You can always tell a cult film, yeah? It’s the one where the film doesn’t even seem to be made like it had an audience in mind. It’s more like a voyeuristic spy mission about something weird you missed. The film challenges you to love it. And, if you do, you become part of a select group that meets privately, away from prying eyes and ears – almost completely the opposite of the film itself, huh? In this way, lovers of cult film are not unlike conspiracy theorists: they’re both groups of folks who are in on a secret -an empowering secret- with special knowledge only they see.
Of course, there’s a huge difference: cult films, you know, exist, and most conspiracy theories are FULL OF SHIT. I’ll take the Eraserhead fan far ahead of the asshole who believes vaccines cause autism.
Today we have a film so cult it achieved such status before it even hit the theater. Let me say off the top that between I Saw the TV Glow and The American Society of Magical Negroes, Justice Smith is having a really weird 2024. I Saw the TV Glow is essentially about a lonely kid named Owen (Ian Foreman as 7th Grade Owen, Justice Smith as every-other-age Owen) and his lonely mediocre adventures. The year is 1996 and Owen has no friends, an ogre for a father, and a mother dying of cancer. Owen’s only friend is the TV and he seems taken with an ad campaign for show that comes on past his bedtime, “The Pink Opaque.”
Pink Opaque is a title that jars my sensibilities, btw. It neither rhymes nor is alliterative, yet hints at both. I feel like if it were at least an onomatopoeia I could get behind it. Alas.
But I digress.
One day after school, 7th Grader Owen is taken with a 9th Grade lesbian, Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine), entirely because she’s reading an episode guide to The Pink Opaque, a monster-of-the-week show not unlike “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” (The producers even went for the same “Buffy” font for the post-titular sequences, a nice touch). Pink Opaque is about two girls who share matching neck tats and ESP, which helps them fight monsters. None of that really matters except for the part where the show, like “Buffy,” has -clearly- a limited appeal. This is a cult movie about a cult show.
Just when Maddy seems beyond Owen, she bends and invites him into her world. Knowing that his parents would object on several counts, Owen fakes a sleepover at the house of a former friend and goes to Maddy’s for his first viewing of the Pink Opaque. And then he was hooked. Knowing Owen lacks access to the show, Maddy starts taping the episodes and leaving them for Owen to watch at school.
And this is where I leave you. You know too much already.
Have you ever considered your own relationship with a TV show? I know I did. Have I gotten to the end of series and mourned the loss? Sure. “M*A*S*H*”, “Buffy”, “Daria” can all be described that way for me. Several other shows I have mourned prematurely because the show jumped the shark. That’s a far more common relationship. It’s like breaking up. “I’m sorry, Dallas, but I can’t take you seriously after you decided an entire year was a dream.”
I question if this was a phenomenon more common to my generation where we had to wait at least a week for a new episode of our favorite show (and often longer if there were a dead week or summer reruns happening). Also, I came of age before that advent of the VCR. A show w
as on at the time it was on. That’s it. You were there for it or you weren’t. There wasn’t any stoppage, any replay, or any later showing. You had to choose your friends based on the shows you watched. Did this make us more or less likely to treat a TV program as a personal relationship? I cannot say. But I do see the value of binge-watching.
I Saw the TV Glow is about our relationships to TV and how a TV show can become a substitute friend or even parent. Owen has … nothing, so he befriends a show. For much of the film, we think he’s taken with Maddy, but this isn’t the case. Owen is such an extreme introvert that Pink Opaque becomes his only friend. And this is a movie that reflects what it’s like when you care more about a TV show than any person in your world.
For my money, Act III, a tad incomprehensible and a whole lot of: “That’s really how you’re gonna end this thing?!”, is a mess. I feel like writer/director Jane Schoenbrun either didn’t know how to end her movie or couldn’t finance she wanted. There’s no way she meant to leave the audience so unsatisfied. While it was tough to identify with the hero (as it is in most cult films), I enjoyed the premise and the questions the film raised enough not to let my enormous disappointment over how the film ended spoil my viewing entirely. I certainly recognize when a TV show becomes a member of your family or your inner circle and I think this film should be rewarded for pointing us there.
There was once an outcast named Owen
With a childhood he was intent on foregoin’
Then, suddenly, Opaque
Became his weekly cake
And those friendship seeds he was sowin’
Rated PG-13, 100 Minutes
Director: Jane Schoenbrun
Writer: Jane Schoenbrun
Genre: I smell a cult film
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Cult movie fans
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: People who like it when the movie is easy to understand
