SXSW 2024

I had a feeling after watching this that it would take me a bit longer to write down my thoughts with all of the other films I have in the festival, maybe it would be easier if I had something concrete to pin down about this film. It’s been almost a week and several sequences and lines feel permanently etched into my mind, something that if you’ve seen this film is a very unsettling feeling.

The idea that the best of art can sometimes act as a mirror, reflecting a part of ourselves back to us and seeing it in a new light is painfully true with I Saw The TV Glow. I can’t think of a film that so perfectly captures the intoxicating quality that escapism can have, a world that feels right and where beautiful, impossible things can happen. But the flip side of that is when escapism becomes an avenue for coping, you begin to live life with tunnel vision, only living for the next moment to escape. What you feel can’t happen in this life, or in any life, is only possible through the means of art and storytelling.

I can’t tell you how many times films have shaped the way I view myself, from minuscule insecurities to major building blocks of how I understand my identity. But watching this film made me come to with how much of it has been my way of seeing the world, of trying to live my life. And why that is. Part of it was film being one of my first interests, one of my first true ions. But I would be lying if I said that was the only reason. It's because I’m scared of being hurt and experiencing something that I won’t know how to come back from. I’m so scared of being something real and genuine to others and not someone experiencing sincerity through a filter. But I’m also scared of the time I have fading away and no matter what I do there’s nothing I can do to change that.

This film obviously hit me in a multitude of ways, one of them being as a non-binary person and the uncertain feeling of trying to reject an identity that has been part of you for so long and into a life that feels like uncharted territory, but to me this film also communicates a greater message through its story, well not so much a message but a plea. A plea to live your life truthfully, to not just live a life through a filter, that no matter how scary it gets that you won’t let go. And it does so by orchestrating possibly one of the most frightening and upsetting second halves to any film given the PG-13 rating, a cautionary peek into a possible future, a possible bright unbearable reality.

I didn’t really know what to do with this film at first, all I can say was that I was so distraught that for the first two minutes after the credits rolled I felt like I didn’t know where I was, stepping out into a city I didn’t know hundreds of miles away from home. It left a hole of perpetual sadness in me. But after that, I thought about the life I want for myself moving forward. I thought about the people that have been there for me, that for all the times I feel like my world was ending that it still kept going. I thought about, with a bit of hope, that there’s still time.

I may not know what I do a year from now, a month from now, or even next week, but as long as I know who I really am, I’ll be okay.

We’ll crucify the insincere
Tonight