If you were on Tumblr during the Dark Ages, you’d know just how much queer people cared about TV shows. A lot of us just kind of grew up in places where you couldn’t see yourself anywhere, so you ended up escaping into universes where you felt safer or more comfortable. Escapism is pretty bog-standard stuff when we talk about queerness and media, but I Saw The TV Glow makes the case that it’s more than that.

Owen and Maddie, the two main characters in Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw The TV Glow, are obsessed with a TV show called The Pink Opaque. Their obsession is so strong that it’s one of the central plot points of the film. As teenagers, the two of them meet on Saturdays to watch the series together. It’s a meetup that they have in secret; the show is geeky and corny, something both Owen and Maddie are reflexively defensive over.

Both of them are outsiders. Maddie explicitly tells Owen that she likes girls, and Owen… Owen is trying not to think about anything. Their defensiveness makes sense—they both lean on the show to be okay.

The show itself is part Buffy, part Are You Afraid of The Dark?. Like, if it were real, it would absolutely have had a massive cult following on Tumblr. It follows two queer-coded teenage girls, who are connected psychically by a strange tattoo on their necks, as they resist the attacks by the Man on the Moon, a.k.a. Mr. Melancholy.

Ironically, they begin to feel like the show is the only real part of their lives. Both of them are constantly in a state of dysphoria-induced dissociation; time passes both too slowly and too fast; their life feels like it’s happening through a screen; nothing feels real. They end up mixing up their real memories, their projections of who they want to be, and the imagery from the show, all into one vibrant, pink soup.

As the film goes on, we (both the viewer and Owen) begin to realise that The Pink Opaque is not as we remember it.

(Mild spoiler – skip to the next paragraph to avoid) When Owen watches it later on in his life, he finds that the show isn’t what he remembered. That Buffypoint of reference is nowhere to be seen. The cool sapphic 16 year-olds with the neck tattoos? They’re just regular pre-teens. There are cheesy jokes and poor production quality in place of dark grittiness. There is no Pink lighting to be seen. In his living room, Owen is washed out in pale blue, all vibrancy sucked from the frame.

See, the show wasn’t just a form of escapism for Owen and Maddie. No, it was literally a place for Owen and Maddie to see themselves and who they wanted to be. The viewing was active, and in their heads The Pink Opaque became entirely separate from the actual show on the screen. Maddie saw an immensely deep connection between two queer-coded characters, and read herself into it. Owen saw a beautiful young Black woman, and read himself into her.

In other words, they infused the show with so much personal meaning, that it became more than just a show. It literally became them/they literally became it.

For a lot of queer kids, there are no real-life people who they can see themselves in. Instead, we’re confronted by an external world that is actively hostile to us. There’s no affirmation, but instead there are people who try to bathe us in colours that they choose for us.

What I think the film captures so, so well, is that desperation to see yourself somewhere, and what happens when that somewhere is the only place you can find yourself. I had a phase where I built my identity around the media I loved; those were the only spaces I felt I could truly explore my self. To be completely honest, I got a bit too engrossed in those things—instead of moving forward and really trying to place myself in the world, I entrenched my identity further in those things. IRL was unsafe, IRL was pretend. My private space, my private shows, my private art—that’s where I could really be myself.

In I Saw The TV Glow, we see what happens when a person is unable to find the courage to bring their self out from the media they hid themselves in.

When Owen and Maddie watch The Pink Opaque, they get to bask in shockingly vibrant pink glow of the show. When they’re away from there, the colours of the film come to odds with the characters. Owen’s gender trouble in particular sees him pulled between electric blue melancholy and overwhelmingly pink joy.

When the fictional show comes to an end, and Owen runs away from the difficult truths the Pink illuminates, his life is painted in tasteless fluorescent green, a life lived under the tube lights of the Wal-Mart vegetable section. The gender dysphoria is locked away, and the Pink disappears, replaced with colours that inspire nothing.