#tara isttvg

[kitabasis]

(Lyrics from If I Could from the I Saw the TV Glow OST)

I’m sure there’s multiple interpretations/meanings of this but right now I’m just hit with…oh my god Tara loves Isabel so much…

[joe-spookyy]

nothing like going into watching I Saw The TV Glow completely blind as a buffy fan. as soon as they started the pink opaque i was like aww haha this reminds me of btvs! then. my ears perked up when someone was named tara. and then the tv font being the same as buffy’s has me raising my eyebrows. and then amber benson herself showed up for about 3 seconds and i did about 18 backflips in record time. and it made me want to be a better transgender. huge film

[in-this-essay-i-wont]

I think what a lot of ppl r missing abt maddy/tara leaving Owen/isabel behind in their old suburban town is the fact that when maddy/tara left, they didn’t thrive and find themselves per se. I mean, they had the freedom to express themselves a bit more outside of their parents seemingly a bit suffocating hold, but it’s not like they were in queer paradise or anything. They wanted to die. They wanted it to end because they couldn’t survive, metaphorically speaking. Maddy/tara skipped town thinking everything would magically feel better. They didn’t. They still felt suffocated and odd in this life, the same way Owen/isabel did. Only when maddy/tara ‘escaped’ into the show and found her true self within the escapism of this show did she want to live again, and find Owen/isabel to take her with them into a world where she could finally feel like herself. Maddy/tara didn’t leave Owen/isabel for dead in this suburban town- they left to find a world they could both finally live in together as themselves.

[mbharestuff]

Top Five Episodes of The Pink Opaque

5.) S1E04 Who You Calling Dummy? - I'd put this higher if it wasn't so similar to the Buffy episode "The Puppet Show." Weirdly enough, this came first. Still, Buffy basically does everything this episode did better! And Tara does not come off well with the way she treats the wooden loser!

4.) S410 Isabel's Magic Dress - Completely shifted the tone of the season halfway through. It got shockingly raw--I'll never forget the way Tara chews out Isabel on the psychic plane, with that dress blowing in the wind, lightning flying everywhere. Some of the best performances in teh show.

3.) S5E02 Melancholy Youth - For most of the series, Mr. Melancholy is untouchable and incomprehensible. Near the end of the original run, we finally get answers about him and his throne. The tone is set for the nightmare that is the last season. You loved this one, Isabel.

2.) S1E05 The Curse of Mr. Sprinkly - Stone cold creamery classic. It's like the archetype of a standard classic TPO episode. Mr. Sprinkly still gives me nightmares sometimes!

1.) S602 Escape from the Midnight Realm (Part 2) - Isabel. Isabel. Isabel. Isabel. Can you hear me, Isabel? I know you're still there. I can feel you. It's going to be okay. Listen to my voice. Oh, my dear Isabel.

[meowteefz]

I've seen I Saw The TV Glow in theaters twice. I hope to see it at least once more before it stops showing. I have my tickets from last time I saw it pinned on my wall.

I seriously can't communicate in a human language how much this film means to us. It's sickening how deeply it touches me. Grabs me. Holds me.

[honkygay]

a small detail that kills me in i saw the tv glow is tara’s character is confident, doesnt mess around and is a go getter.

tara in the midnight realm wouldve felt that drive, that knowing feeling that she didnt belong there but she couldnt leave until she found *someone* and wouldve felt that since fucking birth and she would’ve been searching since.

Isabel is a lot more skittish and quicker to hide, less likely to make a scene, but tara has been looking for isabel and *thought* she’d found isabel in amanda- the girl we see tara hanging out with in the first sleepover. tara was always searching for isabel.

but she found her eventually, they *both* found isabel eventually.

also a paralell to this theory i like is isabel trying to find tara in the final episode of season 5 of the pink opaque- failing because tara is buried deep underground but she finds a fake tara instead and it costs her. isabel couldn’t find tara cuz she was buried too deep to scream for help, and tara cant find isabel in the midnight realm cuz shes buried too deep, the soil packed in too tight.

[mistyheartrbs]

i saw the tv glow script released online. lots of compelling things in here

-the timelines were originally going to be more jumbled, with the revelation that maddy disappeared happening right after the 1996 sequences and jumping between 1998 and 2006 for the remainder of act 2 - i think it was the right call to make it mostly linear instead. keeps you hoping every time you watch it that maybe This Time owen will run away with maddy instead of knowing up front that she's gone from his life for eight years

-parallels that broke me:

-originally maddy had two friends instead of just amanda - feels like if they'd kept that their pink opaque counterparts would be marco and polo instead of mr. melancholy himself, so probably a stronger choice to take one of them out. still interesting though

-owen (unknowingly spending her entire life trying to get off mr. melancholy's wild ride) i can't wait to go to florida and get on mr. melancholy's wild ride

-again i think it was the right call to make the dress scene silent/dreamlike but also this is so cute???

-i do kind of wish they'd kept the double lunch conversation in a corner boot instead of at the bar counter - something about the physicality in these stage directions --

-- of maddy extending her entire body over the table, straining to reach owen who doesn't move at all, is so so good

-in this version, maddy calls owen during the finale and they watch it air live together over the phone. this made me specifically very emotional

-OW!

-left there like a reminder for the viewer... ;-;

-the girl in the streaming version of the pink opaque is called "Fake Isabel" here, but she's "Fake Tara" in captioned versions of the actual movie. since nobody calls her by name in the scene we don't know which is correct, but either one is heartbreaking in a different way. if the girl is meant to be tara, that's a warping of owen's memory of a dear friend, the defiant and furious and devoted tara flattened into a one-dimensional girly Spunky Tween - and it means isabel is gone, missing from the show entirely (because she's rotting away on a couch in the suburbs). if she's meant to be isabel, then she's nothing like owen ever was, and there's the very disturbing implications of a Black character being replaced with a white blonde girl. erasure from the narrative. losing your mirror.

-final fun center sequence explicitly takes place in 2016 instead of "twenty years later" here. Huh.

-this ending seems somewhere between the alternate ending where owen escapes the fun center that justice smith alluded to in a couple of interviews and the one we actually got:

-in conclusion: where are jane schoenbrun's oscars. and their buffy reboot showrunning deal

[faecaribou]

I Saw The TV Glow gave me. feelings. Me when the trans horror movie

[chai-en-kaadhale]

utena and i saw the tv glow utena and i saw the tv glow utena and i saw the tv glow "escape with me and stop repressing yourself" and anthy and isabel being entirely self aware of their predicaments and not moving from their positions but rather being complacent, worn out by their surroundings and the fake realities twisting around everyone's truth and identities and the memories that were lost from other timelines/realities and the fact that theyre kids and the "end of the world" being the guy who wants to keep everyone trapped in ohtori just like mr. melancholy and desperately, desperately needing escape andand andnd andndgbgngnnd

you know what if utenanthy could escape then isabel WILL bury herself one day trust (delusion)

[toasted-valentine]

@pyrotechnicarus was right, that tv can fucking glow.

[trans-leek-cookie]

the ending of i saw the tv glow fucked me up because in a meatphor sense she's going to spend the rest of her life in misery because she was too afraid to embrace her true self. her happy self. and in a literal sense she's LITERALLY being buried alive which is like top 100 fears of mine and the fact her inhaler stopped working which is like. the sign that she's losing oxygen kept me up at night. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAA

Ourgh yeah the burying alive is. Fucked up if real! But personally I've said before but I do see the ending as not Great but at least hopeful, I think even if she doesn't accept herself right away she's going to at least try to like, find people who can help her, because she is screaming for help at the end, even if no one responds. And that's much better than suffering in silence. At least, that's if you assume her life outside the Pink Opaque is real in some way, which tbh I do. I think even if she were to bury herself like Tara, it wouldn't perfectly put her in Isabel's body, and she wouldn't be young again. Idk I'll say that I think the world of ISTTVG is supernatural and sitting within unreality rather than full fantasy, and neither The Pink Opaque or "Real Life" is fully true. I think they blur together one way or another

[itslenagain]

Went to see I Saw the TV Glow with my girlfriend last night and cannot stop thinking about it (spoilers below cut)

The movie begins in the 90's and follows the life of a main character called Owen, a 7th grade kid who seems disconnected from the world. Owen meets Maddie, a 9th grader who is a fan of a TV show called "The Pink Opaque," which features Isabel and Tara, two girls who have a psychic connection to each other. Maddie convinces Owen to sneak out to watch the show with her. They develop a friendship over time as Maddie sneaks Owen tapes of the show. Owen watches the tapes over and over, becoming obsessed. Maddie disappears, and Owen moves through life, disconnected from everything except "The Pink Opaque." Several years pass, and Maddie reappears, now calling herself Tara. The lines of reality become blurry when she says that Owen has been put in a trance by a villain known as Mr. Melancholy. She reveals the show is real and that Owen is actually Isabel, and to be saved, Owen must be buried alive in order to reemerge as Isabel. Owen is faced with a difficult choice; to take the risk in order to become Isabel, or to turn away and leave "The Pink Opaque" behind.

I'll call her Isabel from this point forward, because despite her choice to turn away, she is a trans woman.

The pacing and structure of the movie felt bizarre, and I think this was intentional; dysphoria is being presented as something that affects your entire world. Dysphoria is not simply an internalized, individualistic concept, rather it bends and twists your entire perception of reality. Isabel comments on how time seems to move in strange ways. Even her favorite show, when she revisits it as an older adult, isn't the same as she remembers. A24 is known for movies that aren't afraid to get weird, and this one is no exception.

Watching her struggle to balance what she is feeling inside (which at the end is represented by her literally cutting her chest open to reveal "The Pink Opaque" inside her body) with her reality over time is heartbreaking. Her father, who only speaks 1 line ("Isn't that show for girls?") still manages to come across as harsh and inflexible. Her mother, who seems from their short interactions to be more concerned and possibly willing to help, dies when Isabel is a teen. Isabel is asexual and already feels othered by those around her in that way.

For me, the most devastating moment happens when Maddie/Tara returns to help Isabel escape Mr. Melancholy and become her true self. Isabel, clearly terrified, fights back and says, "If I don't think about it, it goes away." She runs from Tara and from burying Owen. Shortly after, she walks over a chalk drawing that says "There Is Still Time" as she talks about how badly she wanted Tara to come back and try to help her again... but Tara never does. The subsequent time skips show her trying to "do the right thing" by starting a family, getting a job, and forgetting about "The Pink Opaque..." but it never goes away.

It's surreal and incredibly uncomfortable, but the film portrays the trans experience in a way I have not experienced before, and I think it is an important piece of media. Isabel cannot escape her transness no matter how hard she tries. She can push it away, she can refuse to confront it, she can try to ignore it, but in the end, it's still there inside of her.

[mayze2]

So called free thinkers (me) when the movie doesn’t show its characters reaching their happy endings onscreen:

[owo-writing-man]

I need an edit of Owen (you could do the reverse which I'll do as well) from I saw the TV glowed to the song piano man. Now let me explain the vision

"now John at the bar is a friend of mine He gets me my drinks for free" (edits of owen. Generally. Maybe a few hanging out with Maddie)

"And he's quick with a joke or to light up your smoke." ( him living his adult life. The tv. The party. Unpacking the balls)

"But there's some place that he'd rather be"

(When he's wearing a dress. With Maddie.)

"He says "bill I believe this is killing me" as a smile runs away from his face" (scene where he screams "I'm dying" /where he cuts open his stomach)

"well I'm sure that I could be a movie star" ( flashes of isabel. If you want angst. Start with the flash of her in the grave)

"If I could just get out of this place" ( head through screen/ cuts his stomach open)

Okay now the Maddie edit.

"Now John at the bar is a friend of mine." (Maddie and Owen hanging out)

"Who gets me my drinks for free" (the mailed tapes)

"And he's quick with a joke. Or to light up your smoke. But there's some places he'd rather be" (the scene where she talks about running away. The "I'm going to die here")

He says "bill I believe this is killing me as a smile runs away from his face" (her explaining it all to Owen. In the bar and at the astronomy building)

"Well I'm sure that I could be a movie star." ( her as Tara)

"If I could just get out of this place" ( switch between Tara dead in her grave. And to her laying down on the floor in the astronomy room)

[shoutyourporpoise]

I think something that struck me in ISTTVG is that Isabel has that meeting with Tara, runs, and then talks about waiting for her to come back and convince her again. Like she saw that as, yes, a scary thing she ran from, but also as a sort of refusal of the call, and she’s waiting for that second Major Thing to happen that’ll spur her into action.

But Tara isn’t coming back, because she’s in the same position Isabel is in, which is to say she’s *dying,* and her coming back was her last-ditch effort to plead with Isabel to recognize that situation they’re both in. The second major event for Isabel isn’t a thunderclap from the sky; it’s just the rest of her life where she’s slowly dying.

[scythe-wolf]

I think I need an assigned ISTTVG buddy to geek out with about theories and fanfics or I might just explode so if you think that might be you hi my name is Oli I am 26 I am a transmasc genderfluid Aspec lesbian(maybe?) I am a huge Tara kinnie I am a furry and I am stoned a lot of the time