@toganium4175 @strawberry_cubes Back in the day (like as late as the latter part of the 1800s and sporadically even later) there was an actual "scientific" reasoning that trauma could impact babies in much more exaggerated ways than we now know, and also in superstitionally just silly ways. The man called "The Elephant Man", Joseph Merrick, had a very real disorder, yet many people, even doctors, accepted his mother's claims that she "was kicked by an elephant while she was pregnant" as the cause for his unsual appearance. Freaks is wonderful, and very modern for its time.
i first watched I Saw the TV Glow while living in a homeless shelter with people i didn’t know in an area i was unfamiliar with. i had *just* gotten top surgery, and that was the final piece of my transition, my life, **me**, that really fell into place. fuck, i was living with cis men and i wasn’t even a year on HRT. it was a surreal experience, hearing Maddie recite lines i’d said myself a million times. “i’m going to die here.” it haunts me even now. some people write stories, some essays (which is fine), but at the three month mark of *my* HRT journey, i got on a plane and flew to a strange city to live with someone i’d never met before, carrying only what i could fit in a suitcase and backpack. my mom had found out i was on testosterone. i needed to leave. if i didn’t, i was going to die. not because she would kill me, but because that’s what it felt like when she took it from me. dying. that’s what it felt like when she cradled my face after screaming at me for hours, and told me that i looked more like her daughter then than i ever had. and then Maddie’s monologue. if i had the space on my skin i’d tattoo every word myself. the friend who forced me to watch I Saw the TV Glow is a younger, pre transition transmasc that i met over Discord. when we talked about it after i watched, he said he related to Owen. understandably. and i suppose i would’ve, at some point. but i relate to Maddie. i relate because i did what i had to, i paid some burnout kid to bury me alive and even while watching the movie i was underground. i still have dirt under my nails. it was terrifying. it was suffocating. i lost parts of myself in the fight to live for the first time, but it isn’t the coffin i have nightmares about, it’s the home i was raised in. i mean, i was watching the movie in a homeless shelter. i was homeless because i am trans. i was recovering from a major surgery on my own, suffering from complications on my own, but honestly? i still visit. being homeless was bad, but nothing will ever be worse than having my heart in someone’s refrigerator, choking on vomit and dirt while pretending it’s childhood and family. i was a beautiful girl. a part of me didn’t want to lose that. but after breathing fresh air for the first time (trying masculine clothes and a binder), i couldn’t deny myself the right to breathe.
i really can't understate how much i appreciate your perspective on this, beautifully put. while not to the same extent, i can absolutely relate to the suffocation and that sense that if something doesn't change soon, i was going to die. after the family i was living with found i was trans, it was like i was living in the same space but i was pushed away from the others i was sharing it with. spending hours in that dimly lit, musty, cramped room on the second floor, writing videos trying to get away from it all. i was fortunate enough to have other family who took me in, and now i live with my best friend, but sometimes i still second guess myself, wondering if i "made the right choice", but then i remember that room on the second floor and i realize how i could never go back to that life.
I saw the TV glow is my favorite movie of the year and more than anything, I agree with the "there is still time" message to a fundamental level. Whenever I hear trans people lament having lost out on years of their life (often childhood) as their true gender, that "lost time dysphoria" as I sometimes hear it called, I want to grab them by the shoulders and shake them until they internalize how much it _doesn't matter_ . It doesn't matter how valid the hurt is, there's _nothing to gain_ from wasting even more time lamenting the past, instead of taking on the present and future. Paralyzing yourself from getting what you want because you're not getting it the way you wished you had will just turn into a vicious cycle. The inertia of lament is a powerful trap that _must_ be sliced clean off.
Maybe this is misguided, but I would also think that cis women can relate to body horror, and that feeling of your body working against you, due to the beauty standards pressured upon us. You talk about your experiences with body hair as a trans woman, and I as a POC cis woman really felt a connection with your response to it. It's as if, irregardless of biology, the body works against us. I had hair on my entire body from an extremely young age, a lot of women do. Hair is just one thing too- don't even get me started on fat or muscle or fashion or diets. I think cis women can feel the same familiarity towards body horror. This isn't to discount your experiences of course! Moreso just to add my own!
Trans experiences are human experiences. They're just amplified theough a certain set of lenses, and most of those aren't lenses that apply exclusively to trans people only. We're all refracting. Better for everyone to have a wider range of reference points.
Anyone can relate to body horror, cis or trans, man or woman. There's no one experience that's exclusive to a select group of people, I think. You aren't misguided at all.
I thought Owen was seeing the Pink Opaque (her real life) inside her, not static. Especially because she seemed to have this overwhelming sense of relief for just a moment like she couldn't believe what she was seeing.
I think even as a late transitioner, I saw the tv glow can still hit. I am 8 years into my transition and I'm not where I wanna be. I don't have the body I wish I had. I still live a life on the sidelines. And sure I live a life that's more authentic. I also hide away in my home more than I ever have these days and especially more than in early transition in which I did the least. I gave myself that agency 8 years ago and all it's really meant is I don't really have any armor anymore to protect me from my own failures. I gave myself the keys to my own life and it turns out I went and crashed it into a ditch somewhere. And I've been scared to admit that for a long time. I've been scared to admit that I often forget my shot, scared to admit that transition didn't fix a lot of things actually, and scared someone will ask me, "So does that mean it actually wasn't right for you?" If I think back to the horror of those early realizations. Coming out, of contemplating attemtping something so big and overwhelming, wondering who I would loose if I told them. I think another one was can I even do this? Am _I_ even capable of it in a way that I could be satisfied with? I guess I don't know the answer to that yet. I feel like one of the worst things I could have imagined then did wind up happening to me but I'm still here. And there is still time. I don't think I'm the only trans person going through this, so I wanted to share it for the girlies who can relate. And for the people who are just now exploring themselves and are kinda intimidated by it. You're stronger than you think. And you can survive more than you'd believe. Even if you're scared, give it a shot, do it scared. I don't regret trying or failing and You get to decide when you're done. There is still time.
trans guy here. sending love ❤ there are so many facets to life; just because there are still hardships, doesn't mean you should doubt yourself. transition comes with many difficulties for us in this society, and so does the rest of this life. it's okay to have messy feelings. we're all squishy humans with so many different parts. you should be kind to yourself. a lesson i've learned from my trans identity and life in general, is our incredible ability to change. even when it feels like you're stagnating, it's not over. incredible things can happen before you've even realized it. i believe in you ❤
Tysm for sharing something so personal because as a trans guy I can relate. I’m not visibly trans in any way, and I haven’t had any gender affirming care, but I still feel disgusted by myself even asking fellow trans people about my identity. But I know definitively that I am a man. What a lot of transphobes fail to realize is that’s it not access to gender affirming care that makes people have regrets about their transition, it’s the transphobia that does that. They make us ashamed of ourselves, they make our life a living hell, and then they’re surprised when we get scared, when we doubt if we’re ready, because they make transitioning into this revolutionary thing. They force us to fight for our right to exist, when really all we want is to chase our joy.
The last 10 minutes of the film just made me incredibly sad… I often feel like I transitioned too late (I started hrt at 21) but that’s not true, I shouldn’t take the time I have now for granted. I’m lucky to have realized so early and have friends and family who support me, and I am more cognizant of that now.
Imma be honest, the not wearing shorts thing was not even something I realized I did. Same with not wanting my picture taken. And anytime someone would ask me why, I would just answer "I don't know, I just dont like it". Hells, I wore hoodies every single day even in summer and I slouched so my shoulders wouldnt be so wide, and the reason why was something I only realised in hindsight. Ive been out for 2 years, gonna hopefully start HRT soon and I am probably the most self-fulfilled ive ever been in my life. All throughout my teenage years I felt a disconnect from everyone else, I looked around and didn't see myself in those kids that were supposed to be just like me. Took me a while and some good friends to finally figure it out. There's still time.
this movie was the start of myself exploring my identity. It gave me a sense of existential dread I couldn't shake. I still don't know what I am, but it got me to try on makeup, which I had never done before. I went to a drag show and it was so fun. I Saw the TV Glow is my movie of the year, even if it made me confront the fears of what's inside.
I think it was a tweet about that former Bachelorette contestant who said “haha I was joking I’m not actually trans, I pretended to be trans to own the libs” it was either that or some other famous person admitting to having egg-like thoughts about gender and all the comments were queer and trans ppl saying “there is still time” and I absolutely love that this film has made that a trans-coded slogan.
Thank you for sharing your art!! The not wearing shorts thing, I felt that so hard. Took me until I was like 21 to shave my legs. I’m 25 now and have been on HRT for about 2 years, and I’ve never been in a better place. There’s still time.
I remember like stealing moms razor cuz she would not let me shave and then i would need to wear shorts around her so she wouldn't see it was shaved pffft
The director also directed 'We're all going to the worlds fair' which similarly explores gender and puberty, but through the lense of creepypastas and unfiction. It reminds me of being an undiagnosed child who didn't understand the concept of an ARG and thought things like sonic exe were real, and of the extreme version of that, the irl slenderman assault.
Which funnily enough schoenbrun before that directed A Self-Induced Hallucination which is a documentary composed of archival footage from TH-cam about the slenderman stabbing case - if you haven’t seen it already the entire thing is on TH-cam, highly recommend. It’s also even more interesting in hindsight because Jane schoenbrun hadn’t realized they were trans yet at the time of making it
i love the director of both, they do great work:} i’m both trans and i have severe mental health issues and the representation is good, although i dont speak for everyone
I am not trans, yet this movie hit on so many things i experienced in queerness and as a young boy. Gender expectations are what screw us all up as kids. I felt a pit in my stomach when the dad asked "isnt that a girls show?" because my mom said the same thing to me. The idea of take such a big leap of faith to finally live your life the way you were meant to and the fear behind that is so real to me. and in fact my leap of faith (revealing my sexuality) literally lost me all my friends and worsened the way my mom treated me. Ive worked with phobic/sexist idiots who talked about wether or not i was sexualiy active with women and how that informed my value as a person. finally living a life where i love the people, things, and yes even tv shows that i love with no fear or judgement didnt happen until my 30s. I quess what im trying to say is that my empathy for what Trans people are currently going through comes from the fact that I also had to see the TV glow at some point.I think everyone does in some sense.
as a lesbian i really resonated with maddie. there’s something about being a lesbian for me that once i knew that, i knew i wasn’t cis at the same time. i do identify with parts of being a woman, but specifically with being a lesbian woman, who doesn’t fit the standards of femininity that society expects. learning how to accept being nonbinary and embracing it was almost forced upon me when it came to being a lesbian, because they’re so intertwined. i really think that’s what happened with maddie; i felt so seen that she was the one to first break through the nightmare because it’s so much harder to suppress who you love and what you are at the same time. i love that the butch experience and the transfem experience were both treated with so much love and care in this movie.
When I saw this movie for the first time I was out (ftm) for about seven months. Before I came out, I had told a friend I felt like I was suffiocating, that I felt like a background character in my own life. When I saw this movie I felt so seen, and felt so much dread and terror at seeing the path that I almost took. This is my favorite movie.
Autogynophilic is _not_ what Jame Gumb (Buffalo Bill) was in the original novel. That line? "I'd fuck me so hard" -- nowhere to be seen. He cares about being "beautiful," sure, but beauty isn't about sex for him -- it's about affection. The affection his mother never gave him and so, in his volitile state of unending abandonment and trauma, he seeks to be reunited with his mother by becoming her. Jame earnestly beileves he is a transwoman and, though he is wrong in this, it would ironically still have saved the lives of several innocent women if someone had at least humored his fantasies and gotten to the bottom of his problems to bring him effective treatment that way. The movie iteration was very obiously exaggerated and dehumanized to prey on the public's transphobia. Whereas you could almost pity Jame in the novel.
I remember the first time I heard about the tv glowing. My response was literally "I don’t get the TV glowing thing the internet is doing right now. TVs are supposed glow, thats the point" and upon being told it was a trans thing, I said "I thought they were talking about literal TVs"
In my reading of the film, the most terrifying aspect of it for me was Mr. Melancholy, who I interpreted as symbolizing society at large-its malevolence and hostility and desire to break you and force you to conform despite what you know is best for yourself. What an amazing film, and a great analysis of it.
15:04 this is not about the essay at all but the detail of Aigis causing sparks to fly up when she ragdolls across the floor because she’s a robot is really good I don’t think I can ever watch this movie - it’s one of those things that I feel like I’ve had spoiled too much by the internet (and long before this video) - but I’m grateful it exists, even if it illustrates a deep fear of mine.
this was a really good video. I Saw The TV Glow was really impactful for me as well. It perfectly captures the day to day misery of trying to force yourself to go through the motions of being in the wrong body. I particularly liked how the film framed the terror of going through puberty and discussing sexuality too. The lines about feeling like your insides are scooped out, the framing of the quiet sadness you feel when the boys talk about girls and give you a look expecting you to join in, the desperate need to feel like something is good about your body as it slowly starts to turn against you so you start turning to the grown men, who are only there for the grainy photos of your ribcage, etc. are all portrayed so viscerally in the film and it really spoke to my experiences. I'm unfortunately still closeted, but it's nice seeing films with such explicit theming becoming popular. I think it shows a growing acceptance of trans people, however small, which gives me hope for the future, both for myself and others. Loved the analysis, great work!
honestly i love the use of color throughout the film. There are so many scenes that use pink and blue to convey an internal struggle between gender identity
I've had a couple of body disphoria nightmares. I don't want to get into specifics, but just imagine that some of the things you're most disphoric about suddenly start to grow all over your body. The thing you've been trying to hide and hoping to eventually change is now all over your body, emphisizing your gender yet also exluding you from society because of the weird disease on your body. I cannot describe the pure fear, disgust and sadness that dream caused, and the relief when I woke up. My dreams are too real sometimes.
I saw this movie at an indie movie theater in downtown Asheville back in June. I'm a cis guy....but my god, did it devastate me. The entire movie is gorgeous and such a fascinating world that sucks you in entirely. But the final few scenes.....good lord. I've never once cried, at a movie, in a theater. Until this one. My heart was ripped out. But it's weird how there's this undercurrent of hope TOO. This call to action.... Don't let yourself waste away. Take hold of your life and BE. No matter what. You'll never regret that.
I watch the TV glow hit me especially hard as someone who's not sure if they ever wanna transition. I feel I'm not "trans enough" to warrant being under all that social, medical, and financial pressure of transitioning. It doesn't feel worth it. But I know if I don't I'll end up just like the end of that movie.
;^; when you brought leg hair, is was fully the same for me. i ended up getting heat stroke a non insignificant amount, because i refused to wear anything that didnt cover them. i knew it was the hair but i always told everyone else i didnt like how pale they were. i never tried to shave my legs until i was 24 though. saw my older brother get chewed out because my little sisters waxxed his legs for fun and he went with it... for a few years, i couldnt even wash my legs directly because the feeling of wet hair on them made me sick to my stomach im so happy you were able to go through with shaving earlier than me goldy!! like not in a jealousy/envy way either! it can be so hard to cut through the brain blocks no matter how much you know what the issue is. im glad your wife is so supportive too!!❤
my experience watching i saw the tv glow "oh owen has tgirl energy" "wouldnt it be funny if owen turned out to be a woman" "she should get estrogen" "she's definitely a woman" * when matti came back * "oh i guess not... bummer" "wait... maybe" "oh my god is she right or not, I don't know" "oh yeah owen's definitely a woman" * when owen tackled her on the football field * "OWEN NOOOOO GIRL DONT DO THIS" "PLEASE start estrogen" "nooo" "oh my god." "girl please,,, its not too late" "STOP APOLOGIZING"
Got me tearing up 😭 I never knew about I Saw the TV Glow and omfg your explanation of it and conclusion are the most accurate things ever. I’m a transguy and I feel like that’s what I do; don’t stand out and just get by. I’m not at all how I’d like to be and haven’t tried hard to get anything to change because it’s so overwhelming and terrifying; it’s what I want and dream for so much but the process to be truly happy over just fine is so difficult.
8:00 as a trans man after hearing you mention the sexual fantasy part, I recently was accused of such a thing!!!! except...Im ftm...it made me infuriated, but, hearing this isnt just something only I was accused of it pleased me in knowing Im not alone!
It's kind of a fascinating magic trick in the movie that by never explicitly stating it's about being trans but also unmistakably being about a trans experience, it helps bridge understanding for a lot of people. Everyone has their own struggles with "who am I?" and "is there something wrong with me?" And confronting those feelings and thoughts is scary no matter what. But for too many people, it's the gender aspect that becomes this live wire that makes them ignore the commonalities to focus on the otherness.
I'd also made the comment on another video on the movie about how having the Dad character have ONLY that one line and then basically a distant, silent, judging figure is an amazing choice. Too many stories go overboard in making that kind of figure EXPLICITLY antagonistic to the point of overtly hateful. But this gives a lot of people an out because THEY don't act like that. By leaving it ambiguous as to HOW bad his reaction might be, it preserves the kind of real life dread Queer people can face. And the cis people viewing this can't cleanly separate themselves from the dad.
I am Owen, I can’t come out, not right now, and I do feel scared and I feel like it’s better to conform. I have something nice, a house, with a lot of problems yeah but a nice house, with food, I have a family, it’s easy, going outside completely alone is so scary, so I do think about just conforming, but I owe my life to this movie, every time I think about conforming I think about this movie, it reminds me that if I do, I’m going to die. I can’t come out, but once I finally can, I will, is so frightening, but I’m not going to let myself die, I’m going to bury myself, is going to be scary, difficult and an isolated experience, is not going to be pretty, but I will do it
I kinda took Maddie drawing the ghost symbol on Owen’s neck as a form of confession, like saying “When you accept who you are… I wanna be with you”. It just felt so tender to me and felt like asking someone out on a date type of moment. I think Maddie wanted to be with Owen, but Owen wasn’t giving.
When you brought up robin in enies lobby i genuinely stumbled because i was standing up from the intense feeling of connectedness i had to her. Shes always been my favorite and i think you putting words to this video helped me figure out why
Not too sure if anyone noticed this but in the "theres still time" the second L in still is slanted and i cant help but think thats on purpose i looked up what it could mean and it said things like in math it could be a less than sign, a slanted L means stigma or summation, and one said in algebra it means infinity and i think thats nice just wanted to see if anyone else thought of that
the way i started fucking BALLING my eyes out during the end of this video, thanks for making this girlie, this movie sounds fucking great. "There is still time." YEOUCHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
At 17:18 - Don't be calling me out like that. (I consider myself aro / ace but... at least _part_ of the issue is, indeed, that "the idea of having sex while being perceived as a man [is] difficult, frightening, and dysphoria-causing". I think I'm still aro / ace as a woman but, well, I'm still early in my transition and we haven't _really_ tested that hypothesis.)
At 19:40 - This was on my list of reasons to transition. Even if they don't see me as a woman, I figure it's a way to other myself for those kind of men. They won't think I'm one of them.
There was no live action Scooby-Doo movie where they decapitate a real zombie. But, there is a direct to vhs animated movie called “Scooby-doo: zombie island” where they do the exact scenario on a zombie
@@goIdy might have been amalgamated with the scene in the live action scooby doo where shaggy also attempts to take a monsters mask off, and instead warps their real face in really weird ways?
listen i think this is a wonderful video essay but i do have to say that Mary Shelly's frankenstein in the books does NOT involve two men making the monster. Its just frankenstein the doctor trying to play god. but he DOES have a really weird fixation about 'making the perfect man' but then being apalled at the thing hes made which could be a queer reading of its own i think
I love this video and it’s message, it’s really cool :> Also I read through the comment at 8:42 and I wish it was here because there are so many things I wish I could correct them on, and actually give them constructive criticism on it, because I feel like people are much more likely to change their views if they aren’t just shouted/not given actual constructive criticism. Sorry if that’s not relevant/you don’t want to read it Your video is rlly cool :>
oh i've read through that comment a few times and what sucks is, i feel they were on the cusp of not being hateful, but then it kinda devolved into made up talking points. i would've loved to refute their points and try to make a difference, but the way i see it a lot of the time interacting at all just isn't worth it in the end. what's funny is i received that comment while i was at work and i'm like "damn i'm making more money reading this comment than they ever will make posting it"
Great video! I have a lot of feelings about this movie and I enjoyed your perspective. You had words that I didn’t have. Also at 24:18, I didn’t think that Owen had a real family at all. I thought they meant the characters in Pink Opaque. Owen says that they like TV shows, Maddie says that Isabelle and Tara are like family to her. That and we never see Owen’s family and the only time that they’re mentioned is when Owen is bringing in the new TV.
The unknown is often cited as the most essential and primal of all fears, but as I've looked into experincing and telling horror stories myself (such as _Slay the Princess,)_ I've come to understand that this is an icredibly hackneyed, even dated, understanding of fear. If you will observe human psychology, you will notice that the average person is quite comofortable not knowing things. (A large chunk of them vote conservative ffs.) If I were to present you with a jar of gumdrops and didn't tell you how many were inside, you wouldn't start panicking over the possiblity that there might be 56 gumdrops instead of 345. The possibility of life on other words, new applications for radioactive isotopes, or an AI rebellion, keeps scientists awake at night with awe and curiosity, not terror. A person who does happen to fear the unknown immediately stands out as neurotic; the image of the paranoid conspiracey theorist. As a point of fact, the number of things you know is always hugely eclipsed by the portion of things that you don't know. You are only ever conscious of what you don't know when, well, you'd rather know it and are fixated on the possible ramifications of not knowing. Thus the unknown can only be an essential, personal fear for somone who's built their life around _controlling_ their surrondings through their awareness. A person who thinks they've got it figured out, but the peices just don't quite fit. When the interior is maddingly larger than the exterior. Said fair is properly contextualized under the fear of _disorientation,_ not the nebulous term "the unknown." Body horror, on the other hand, is the bane of the person who is in some way alienated from the body. For transpeople, this is entirely self-evident: your mind says, "Woman," and your body says, "PINGAS" . . . I mean, "Man." At least in the case of trasnwomen specifically. But the thing that has the potential to terrify almost anyone about the body is it's autonomy; that it can have involuntary responses which violate your sense of self. This is well, _disorienting_ for people because the reductive myth of our own times is that a person is a sense of action and agency located somewhere behind the eyes and that this centre of awareness _is_ who we are and is defined as who we are by the fact that it is in _control._ So for the body to _not_ be within control of the self is to annihilate this social myth of selfhood. Our entire notions of what it means to be humans or people instead of anthropoid apes or animals is undone. Such is equivalent to reducing man to a piano key, and, Dostoevsky so well pointed out, men will hysterically burn paradise itself to the ground to avoid such a fate. Everything to do with the fear of teh body comes back to this basic metaphor of the body's capacity to contest, and even destory, the self. _Paradise Lost_ is that same metaphor in a different genre. "Are you still there? Are you still you?" But, the thing is, the body isn't frightening in that way if you know that. It's just that most people in 21st century western culuitre don't. We're socialized out of it and to demonize the body. Overcoming that alienation and fear would be to return to Eden. (An event that, hypothetically, is set to occur within the Christian mythic cycle.) What the fear of the unknown and the fear of the body have in common, then, is the fear of losing onself. The fear of death. But not the fear of death in the sense we are used to which is the cessation of a poorly defined biological process understood to be "life" because people will chose to end their lives to espace their fears. (This is certainly true of many transpeople who never received proper care and respect.) This is an abstract fear refering to the violation of the self. Homophobes do not fear homosexuals for what they may physically be capable of but on the basis that their behaviour may spread and change other people, that behaviour being regarded as an essential part of the self in the "Ship of Theseus" philsophical sense. "I am a plumber. I fix leaky facets. If there's a leaky facet I can't fix, I'm not a plumber. Therefore I must prepare myself to fix every eaky facet I encounter or my identity as a plumber will cease to be." It's like that but held with far more conviction. This explains who seemingly arbitrary and petty disagreements about how to interpret the world can spiral into war and genocide. Implicit to how we regard the self is the implicit assumption that to be wrong, or to fail to perform, is worse than death itself. All forms of fear and motivation return the the essential myth of the self's iviolability and ascendency. God Almighty, World Without End, upon His celestial throne and flanked by His angels and His four creature-acolytes, lest some stray detail penetrate the layered defences to the centre of the mandala. And farewell King.
I only started my hrt journey a little over 2 months ago and watched this movie about halfway through that at the start of October and it broke me (granted I was having probably the worst of the mood swings I’ve had so far lmao I cried for like 3 hours). I just saw and felt so much of myself in Owen. I knew what I wanted for a long time, even when I couldn’t put words to it. I even started hrt research when I was 12, I just didn’t fully understand it then. I would hide under the sheets at 3 in the morning and search stuff on my 3ds because that’s all I could get online with lol. I just did everything I could to repress how I felt for so long, even trying to compromise as just going non-binary for ~3 years and not actually changing anything to be happier. Now I’m done playing into that thought process though, and no matter how scared I am for the future I’m happy I finally realized that there is still time.
Well written and well presented. Great content. I don't normally comment, but you deserve more attention from the algo gods. I honestly thought this was a "big" channel and i was curious how I hadn't come across it before, then I saw that this a smaller channel somehow! Hope it gets more attention, the quality is very good.
3:10 as an autistic person with a HUGE hyperfixation on saw (and a general lover of horror) I’m holding back writing a whole ass essay rn…. But to sum it up, I don’t personally think saw is a torture 🌽 series… at least not fully. I’d say it’s more in the gore or splatter genre; There’s WAYYY too much of a story to be a true torture 🌽 series (especially the early films). Movies like Human Centipede *do* have plot, but also not really. There’s wayyy more of a focus on the grossness of it all. It’s hard to explain…. It’s really just a *vibe*. The *vibe* of the cinematography. The *vibe* of how the creators talk about their work…. It’s all a vibe Okay I’m done, if you read all that, thank you for indulging me 😭
yeah you’re absolutely right, lumping saw and the human centipede into that category of film is disingenuous to an extent. i mainly said that for the sake of brevity, but yeah the aesthetics (vibes) of it all really do play a role in how they’re viewed in contrast to films of that genre
This movie felt like a fever dream but it's damn relatable. An anime character made me realize I'm not straight. I think as a closeted trans media was my only scape. And the movie captured what that felt like. Why can't i be a boy and me in a mans arm?
I just watched the full movie rn (it's like 10:45 PM rn) it was absolutely fire, and I didn't really understand it until I locked in. gotta say it was fire frfr :3
1:24 body horro is more was shockph to me tho it cab be good sometimes my favorite type of horror is phycologycal 😈 tho a mix between phycologycal and bodyhorro hits different 💥 by that I mean body horror but instead of body it looking into your brain
Know it's not exactly relevant to the video, but Zombie Island. The piece of Scooby-Doo media where they go to remove the mask and the entire head comes off and it turns out to be a real zombie is Zombie Island. There's also a sequel to it to but uh... We don't talk about the sequel, no no.
Great video! On a related body horror note: I’m still angry at the Gurren Lagan ending. What if your body and existence was just created for a purpose beyond your control, when you don’t measure up you’re discarded, and now as an adult you just have to live feeling sometimes puppeted by ideas someone else programmed into you, and then when you feel like you’ve finally broken through: you die and disappear without a trace. Now that’s relatable too 🥲
The Scooby-Doo movie your taking about is Scooby-Doo on zombie island and not live action it's animated. It also my favorite Scooby-Doo movie. Go watch it the soundtrack is amazing ❤
USING THAT RENDITION OF FLOW FROM FFXIV FOR A BACKING TRACK YOU LITTLE SHIT!!!! Also yeah I really get the "It didn't fuck me up as hard" thing. I hatched January 17 of 2012 I struggled through the system to get hrt from September 9th 2012 to March 1st 2018, I've written novels and novelettes with trans protagonists that deal with dysphoria attacks and doubt and am best friends with Mordred euniexenoblade nee mioxenoblade trans-mom on Tumblr, all that innoculated me to some of the horrors of I Saw The TV Glow. This has caused my takeaway to be "Jane really End of Evangelioned all over Online Trans Fiction with this movie" and to write that whole script. Fuck it, I got three days off of work I can make that essay that quickly, I know what I'm doing and I want that video out by halloween.
I keep seeing people use Silence of The lambs saying it's a bad representation of trans. IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE BECAUSE THEY DISCUS HIM IN THE FILM He is not trans He hypes up the stereotypes cause hes fucked up pretty much. But it is addressed. They made a point of making a scene describing the difference. Hell it even show hannibl having a respect for trans people and kind mad the killer is giving that kind of illusion. It's a missed plot point that since released has been ignored to push the idea that it's a misrepresentation of trans people when it's actually saying trans people arent killers.
have you watched Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde? I saw it recently and thought there might be a lot to say about its transness, would love to hear your thoughts on it
Fun fact: a woman blamed her miscarriage on 1932’s Freaks, which has got to be one of the funniest responses to a movie ever.
You might say she thought the movie was . . . abortive.
@@amanofnoreputation2164Put ur phone down
Imagine a movie being so bad or so offensive that your unborn baby goes “nawwwww I’m out of here”
@toganium4175 @strawberry_cubes Back in the day (like as late as the latter part of the 1800s and sporadically even later) there was an actual "scientific" reasoning that trauma could impact babies in much more exaggerated ways than we now know, and also in superstitionally just silly ways. The man called "The Elephant Man", Joseph Merrick, had a very real disorder, yet many people, even doctors, accepted his mother's claims that she "was kicked by an elephant while she was pregnant" as the cause for his unsual appearance. Freaks is wonderful, and very modern for its time.
i first watched I Saw the TV Glow while living in a homeless shelter with people i didn’t know in an area i was unfamiliar with. i had *just* gotten top surgery, and that was the final piece of my transition, my life, **me**, that really fell into place. fuck, i was living with cis men and i wasn’t even a year on HRT.
it was a surreal experience, hearing Maddie recite lines i’d said myself a million times. “i’m going to die here.” it haunts me even now. some people write stories, some essays (which is fine), but at the three month mark of *my* HRT journey, i got on a plane and flew to a strange city to live with someone i’d never met before, carrying only what i could fit in a suitcase and backpack. my mom had found out i was on testosterone. i needed to leave. if i didn’t, i was going to die. not because she would kill me, but because that’s what it felt like when she took it from me. dying. that’s what it felt like when she cradled my face after screaming at me for hours, and told me that i looked more like her daughter then than i ever had.
and then Maddie’s monologue. if i had the space on my skin i’d tattoo every word myself.
the friend who forced me to watch I Saw the TV Glow is a younger, pre transition transmasc that i met over Discord. when we talked about it after i watched, he said he related to Owen. understandably. and i suppose i would’ve, at some point. but i relate to Maddie. i relate because i did what i had to, i paid some burnout kid to bury me alive and even while watching the movie i was underground. i still have dirt under my nails. it was terrifying. it was suffocating. i lost parts of myself in the fight to live for the first time, but it isn’t the coffin i have nightmares about, it’s the home i was raised in.
i mean, i was watching the movie in a homeless shelter. i was homeless because i am trans. i was recovering from a major surgery on my own, suffering from complications on my own, but honestly? i still visit. being homeless was bad, but nothing will ever be worse than having my heart in someone’s refrigerator, choking on vomit and dirt while pretending it’s childhood and family.
i was a beautiful girl. a part of me didn’t want to lose that. but after breathing fresh air for the first time (trying masculine clothes and a binder), i couldn’t deny myself the right to breathe.
i really can't understate how much i appreciate your perspective on this, beautifully put. while not to the same extent, i can absolutely relate to the suffocation and that sense that if something doesn't change soon, i was going to die. after the family i was living with found i was trans, it was like i was living in the same space but i was pushed away from the others i was sharing it with. spending hours in that dimly lit, musty, cramped room on the second floor, writing videos trying to get away from it all. i was fortunate enough to have other family who took me in, and now i live with my best friend, but sometimes i still second guess myself, wondering if i "made the right choice", but then i remember that room on the second floor and i realize how i could never go back to that life.
I saw the TV glow is my favorite movie of the year and more than anything, I agree with the "there is still time" message to a fundamental level. Whenever I hear trans people lament having lost out on years of their life (often childhood) as their true gender, that "lost time dysphoria" as I sometimes hear it called, I want to grab them by the shoulders and shake them until they internalize how much it _doesn't matter_ . It doesn't matter how valid the hurt is, there's _nothing to gain_ from wasting even more time lamenting the past, instead of taking on the present and future. Paralyzing yourself from getting what you want because you're not getting it the way you wished you had will just turn into a vicious cycle. The inertia of lament is a powerful trap that _must_ be sliced clean off.
holy shit acclaimed author princessfelicie
@@desertplanet3253 i wish
Holy shit you worded this so perfectly
Would I be too trans to relate this sentiment to hit RPGmaker game In Stars and Time?
Maybe this is misguided, but I would also think that cis women can relate to body horror, and that feeling of your body working against you, due to the beauty standards pressured upon us. You talk about your experiences with body hair as a trans woman, and I as a POC cis woman really felt a connection with your response to it. It's as if, irregardless of biology, the body works against us. I had hair on my entire body from an extremely young age, a lot of women do. Hair is just one thing too- don't even get me started on fat or muscle or fashion or diets. I think cis women can feel the same familiarity towards body horror. This isn't to discount your experiences of course! Moreso just to add my own!
I watched the substance recently and it is this EXACTLY
Trans experiences are human experiences. They're just amplified theough a certain set of lenses, and most of those aren't lenses that apply exclusively to trans people only. We're all refracting. Better for everyone to have a wider range of reference points.
@@rho7754 This is a great take and also my response to people who think that trans- and queer-inclusive feminism is hurting cis women
Anyone can relate to body horror, cis or trans, man or woman. There's no one experience that's exclusive to a select group of people, I think. You aren't misguided at all.
women trying to go five minutes without making the conversation about themselves:
I thought Owen was seeing the Pink Opaque (her real life) inside her, not static. Especially because she seemed to have this overwhelming sense of relief for just a moment like she couldn't believe what she was seeing.
that was my thought with it too
agreed
I think even as a late transitioner, I saw the tv glow can still hit. I am 8 years into my transition and I'm not where I wanna be. I don't have the body I wish I had. I still live a life on the sidelines. And sure I live a life that's more authentic. I also hide away in my home more than I ever have these days and especially more than in early transition in which I did the least. I gave myself that agency 8 years ago and all it's really meant is I don't really have any armor anymore to protect me from my own failures. I gave myself the keys to my own life and it turns out I went and crashed it into a ditch somewhere. And I've been scared to admit that for a long time. I've been scared to admit that I often forget my shot, scared to admit that transition didn't fix a lot of things actually, and scared someone will ask me, "So does that mean it actually wasn't right for you?"
If I think back to the horror of those early realizations. Coming out, of contemplating attemtping something so big and overwhelming, wondering who I would loose if I told them. I think another one was can I even do this? Am _I_ even capable of it in a way that I could be satisfied with? I guess I don't know the answer to that yet. I feel like one of the worst things I could have imagined then did wind up happening to me but I'm still here. And there is still time. I don't think I'm the only trans person going through this, so I wanted to share it for the girlies who can relate. And for the people who are just now exploring themselves and are kinda intimidated by it. You're stronger than you think. And you can survive more than you'd believe. Even if you're scared, give it a shot, do it scared. I don't regret trying or failing and You get to decide when you're done. There is still time.
trans guy here. sending love ❤ there are so many facets to life; just because there are still hardships, doesn't mean you should doubt yourself. transition comes with many difficulties for us in this society, and so does the rest of this life. it's okay to have messy feelings. we're all squishy humans with so many different parts. you should be kind to yourself. a lesson i've learned from my trans identity and life in general, is our incredible ability to change. even when it feels like you're stagnating, it's not over. incredible things can happen before you've even realized it. i believe in you ❤
Tysm for sharing something so personal because as a trans guy I can relate. I’m not visibly trans in any way, and I haven’t had any gender affirming care, but I still feel disgusted by myself even asking fellow trans people about my identity. But I know definitively that I am a man.
What a lot of transphobes fail to realize is that’s it not access to gender affirming care that makes people have regrets about their transition, it’s the transphobia that does that. They make us ashamed of ourselves, they make our life a living hell, and then they’re surprised when we get scared, when we doubt if we’re ready, because they make transitioning into this revolutionary thing. They force us to fight for our right to exist, when really all we want is to chase our joy.
The last 10 minutes of the film just made me incredibly sad… I often feel like I transitioned too late (I started hrt at 21) but that’s not true, I shouldn’t take the time I have now for granted. I’m lucky to have realized so early and have friends and family who support me, and I am more cognizant of that now.
15:00 - "no *dad* shes not a girl yet, she is a robot girl! she becomes a girl later in the plot! 🙄"
- 17yo me, probably.
Hey, I'm a robot girl! And I wrote a story about a clockwork girl's journey through time. Very cute. You sound adorable!
Imma be honest, the not wearing shorts thing was not even something I realized I did. Same with not wanting my picture taken. And anytime someone would ask me why, I would just answer "I don't know, I just dont like it". Hells, I wore hoodies every single day even in summer and I slouched so my shoulders wouldnt be so wide, and the reason why was something I only realised in hindsight. Ive been out for 2 years, gonna hopefully start HRT soon and I am probably the most self-fulfilled ive ever been in my life. All throughout my teenage years I felt a disconnect from everyone else, I looked around and didn't see myself in those kids that were supposed to be just like me. Took me a while and some good friends to finally figure it out.
There's still time.
This made me tear up I’m genuinely so happy for u it’s rlly heartwarming to hear about trans joy
The Scooby-Doo movie you're talking about Is Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island.
YES! Highly recommended, utter peak
0:26
Yes! That movie is exactly where that happens. Though, Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island is animated rather than live action.
this movie was the start of myself exploring my identity. It gave me a sense of existential dread I couldn't shake. I still don't know what I am, but it got me to try on makeup, which I had never done before. I went to a drag show and it was so fun. I Saw the TV Glow is my movie of the year, even if it made me confront the fears of what's inside.
I think it was a tweet about that former Bachelorette contestant who said “haha I was joking I’m not actually trans, I pretended to be trans to own the libs” it was either that or some other famous person admitting to having egg-like thoughts about gender and all the comments were queer and trans ppl saying “there is still time” and I absolutely love that this film has made that a trans-coded slogan.
Omg lol
Thank you for sharing your art!! The not wearing shorts thing, I felt that so hard. Took me until I was like 21 to shave my legs. I’m 25 now and have been on HRT for about 2 years, and I’ve never been in a better place.
There’s still time.
I remember like stealing moms razor cuz she would not let me shave and then i would need to wear shorts around her so she wouldn't see it was shaved pffft
The director also directed 'We're all going to the worlds fair' which similarly explores gender and puberty, but through the lense of creepypastas and unfiction. It reminds me of being an undiagnosed child who didn't understand the concept of an ARG and thought things like sonic exe were real, and of the extreme version of that, the irl slenderman assault.
Which funnily enough schoenbrun before that directed A Self-Induced Hallucination which is a documentary composed of archival footage from TH-cam about the slenderman stabbing case - if you haven’t seen it already the entire thing is on TH-cam, highly recommend. It’s also even more interesting in hindsight because Jane schoenbrun hadn’t realized they were trans yet at the time of making it
i love the director of both, they do great work:} i’m both trans and i have severe mental health issues and the representation is good, although i dont speak for everyone
I am not trans, yet this movie hit on so many things i experienced in queerness and as a young boy. Gender expectations are what screw us all up as kids. I felt a pit in my stomach when the dad asked "isnt that a girls show?" because my mom said the same thing to me. The idea of take such a big leap of faith to finally live your life the way you were meant to and the fear behind that is so real to me. and in fact my leap of faith (revealing my sexuality) literally lost me all my friends and worsened the way my mom treated me. Ive worked with phobic/sexist idiots who talked about wether or not i was sexualiy active with women and how that informed my value as a person. finally living a life where i love the people, things, and yes even tv shows that i love with no fear or judgement didnt happen until my 30s.
I quess what im trying to say is that my empathy for what Trans people are currently going through comes from the fact that I also had to see the TV glow at some point.I think everyone does in some sense.
as a lesbian i really resonated with maddie. there’s something about being a lesbian for me that once i knew that, i knew i wasn’t cis at the same time. i do identify with parts of being a woman, but specifically with being a lesbian woman, who doesn’t fit the standards of femininity that society expects. learning how to accept being nonbinary and embracing it was almost forced upon me when it came to being a lesbian, because they’re so intertwined. i really think that’s what happened with maddie; i felt so seen that she was the one to first break through the nightmare because it’s so much harder to suppress who you love and what you are at the same time. i love that the butch experience and the transfem experience were both treated with so much love and care in this movie.
When I saw this movie for the first time I was out (ftm) for about seven months. Before I came out, I had told a friend I felt like I was suffiocating, that I felt like a background character in my own life. When I saw this movie I felt so seen, and felt so much dread and terror at seeing the path that I almost took. This is my favorite movie.
Autogynophilic is _not_ what Jame Gumb (Buffalo Bill) was in the original novel. That line? "I'd fuck me so hard" -- nowhere to be seen. He cares about being "beautiful," sure, but beauty isn't about sex for him -- it's about affection. The affection his mother never gave him and so, in his volitile state of unending abandonment and trauma, he seeks to be reunited with his mother by becoming her. Jame earnestly beileves he is a transwoman and, though he is wrong in this, it would ironically still have saved the lives of several innocent women if someone had at least humored his fantasies and gotten to the bottom of his problems to bring him effective treatment that way.
The movie iteration was very obiously exaggerated and dehumanized to prey on the public's transphobia. Whereas you could almost pity Jame in the novel.
I remember the first time I heard about the tv glowing. My response was literally "I don’t get the TV glowing thing the internet is doing right now. TVs are supposed glow, thats the point" and upon being told it was a trans thing, I said "I thought they were talking about literal TVs"
In my reading of the film, the most terrifying aspect of it for me was Mr. Melancholy, who I interpreted as symbolizing society at large-its malevolence and hostility and desire to break you and force you to conform despite what you know is best for yourself. What an amazing film, and a great analysis of it.
15:04 this is not about the essay at all but the detail of Aigis causing sparks to fly up when she ragdolls across the floor because she’s a robot is really good
I don’t think I can ever watch this movie - it’s one of those things that I feel like I’ve had spoiled too much by the internet (and long before this video) - but I’m grateful it exists, even if it illustrates a deep fear of mine.
this was a really good video. I Saw The TV Glow was really impactful for me as well. It perfectly captures the day to day misery of trying to force yourself to go through the motions of being in the wrong body.
I particularly liked how the film framed the terror of going through puberty and discussing sexuality too. The lines about feeling like your insides are scooped out, the framing of the quiet sadness you feel when the boys talk about girls and give you a look expecting you to join in, the desperate need to feel like something is good about your body as it slowly starts to turn against you so you start turning to the grown men, who are only there for the grainy photos of your ribcage, etc. are all portrayed so viscerally in the film and it really spoke to my experiences.
I'm unfortunately still closeted, but it's nice seeing films with such explicit theming becoming popular. I think it shows a growing acceptance of trans people, however small, which gives me hope for the future, both for myself and others.
Loved the analysis, great work!
honestly i love the use of color throughout the film. There are so many scenes that use pink and blue to convey an internal struggle between gender identity
She glow on my TV till I saw (this video enlightened me beyond comprehension)
I've had a couple of body disphoria nightmares. I don't want to get into specifics, but just imagine that some of the things you're most disphoric about suddenly start to grow all over your body. The thing you've been trying to hide and hoping to eventually change is now all over your body, emphisizing your gender yet also exluding you from society because of the weird disease on your body.
I cannot describe the pure fear, disgust and sadness that dream caused, and the relief when I woke up. My dreams are too real sometimes.
Ive had these same thoughts and fears. It makes me so disgusted when i have them I wish I could claw off my skin
I saw this movie at an indie movie theater in downtown Asheville back in June.
I'm a cis guy....but my god, did it devastate me.
The entire movie is gorgeous and such a fascinating world that sucks you in entirely.
But the final few scenes.....good lord. I've never once cried, at a movie, in a theater. Until this one. My heart was ripped out. But it's weird how there's this undercurrent of hope TOO. This call to action.... Don't let yourself waste away. Take hold of your life and BE. No matter what. You'll never regret that.
I watch the TV glow hit me especially hard as someone who's not sure if they ever wanna transition. I feel I'm not "trans enough" to warrant being under all that social, medical, and financial pressure of transitioning. It doesn't feel worth it. But I know if I don't I'll end up just like the end of that movie.
;^; when you brought leg hair, is was fully the same for me. i ended up getting heat stroke a non insignificant amount, because i refused to wear anything that didnt cover them. i knew it was the hair but i always told everyone else i didnt like how pale they were. i never tried to shave my legs until i was 24 though. saw my older brother get chewed out because my little sisters waxxed his legs for fun and he went with it... for a few years, i couldnt even wash my legs directly because the feeling of wet hair on them made me sick to my stomach
im so happy you were able to go through with shaving earlier than me goldy!! like not in a jealousy/envy way either! it can be so hard to cut through the brain blocks no matter how much you know what the issue is. im glad your wife is so supportive too!!❤
my experience watching i saw the tv glow
"oh owen has tgirl energy"
"wouldnt it be funny if owen turned out to be a woman"
"she should get estrogen"
"she's definitely a woman"
* when matti came back *
"oh i guess not... bummer"
"wait... maybe"
"oh my god is she right or not, I don't know"
"oh yeah owen's definitely a woman"
* when owen tackled her on the football field *
"OWEN NOOOOO GIRL DONT DO THIS"
"PLEASE start estrogen"
"nooo"
"oh my god."
"girl please,,, its not too late"
"STOP APOLOGIZING"
you MONSTER for pulling the Gurren Lagann track at the end right before I have to go to work. Thank you. Really, thank you.
Got me tearing up 😭 I never knew about I Saw the TV Glow and omfg your explanation of it and conclusion are the most accurate things ever. I’m a transguy and I feel like that’s what I do; don’t stand out and just get by. I’m not at all how I’d like to be and haven’t tried hard to get anything to change because it’s so overwhelming and terrifying; it’s what I want and dream for so much but the process to be truly happy over just fine is so difficult.
8:00 as a trans man after hearing you mention the sexual fantasy part, I recently was accused of such a thing!!!! except...Im ftm...it made me infuriated, but, hearing this isnt just something only I was accused of it pleased me in knowing Im not alone!
It's kind of a fascinating magic trick in the movie that by never explicitly stating it's about being trans but also unmistakably being about a trans experience, it helps bridge understanding for a lot of people. Everyone has their own struggles with "who am I?" and "is there something wrong with me?" And confronting those feelings and thoughts is scary no matter what. But for too many people, it's the gender aspect that becomes this live wire that makes them ignore the commonalities to focus on the otherness.
I'd also made the comment on another video on the movie about how having the Dad character have ONLY that one line and then basically a distant, silent, judging figure is an amazing choice. Too many stories go overboard in making that kind of figure EXPLICITLY antagonistic to the point of overtly hateful. But this gives a lot of people an out because THEY don't act like that. By leaving it ambiguous as to HOW bad his reaction might be, it preserves the kind of real life dread Queer people can face. And the cis people viewing this can't cleanly separate themselves from the dad.
I am Owen, I can’t come out, not right now, and I do feel scared and I feel like it’s better to conform. I have something nice, a house, with a lot of problems yeah but a nice house, with food, I have a family, it’s easy, going outside completely alone is so scary, so I do think about just conforming, but I owe my life to this movie, every time I think about conforming I think about this movie, it reminds me that if I do, I’m going to die. I can’t come out, but once I finally can, I will, is so frightening, but I’m not going to let myself die, I’m going to bury myself, is going to be scary, difficult and an isolated experience, is not going to be pretty, but I will do it
I kinda took Maddie drawing the ghost symbol on Owen’s neck as a form of confession, like saying “When you accept who you are… I wanna be with you”. It just felt so tender to me and felt like asking someone out on a date type of moment. I think Maddie wanted to be with Owen, but Owen wasn’t giving.
When you brought up robin in enies lobby i genuinely stumbled because i was standing up from the intense feeling of connectedness i had to her. Shes always been my favorite and i think you putting words to this video helped me figure out why
insane that i got a prageru ad for this video. but i loved this!
fellow dirk kinnie spotted hell yeah
Not too sure if anyone noticed this but in the "theres still time" the second L in still is slanted and i cant help but think thats on purpose i looked up what it could mean and it said things like in math it could be a less than sign, a slanted L means stigma or summation, and one said in algebra it means infinity and i think thats nice just wanted to see if anyone else thought of that
yess i’m so glad to hear junji ito mentioned 🥰 all of his works are my current hyperfixation as someone who’s always loved body horror
By the end of the movie I just kept whispering “Please go back. Just go back, Owen” and she never did and I felt so sad for her 😭
idk why it’s so effective every time you instruct the audience to “laugh” it just gets me and i do; you’ve succeeded
the way i started fucking BALLING my eyes out during the end of this video, thanks for making this girlie, this movie sounds fucking great.
"There is still time." YEOUCHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
14:59 : "why do you play as a girl ?"
And now we have gooner aesthetics everywhere (especially Fortnite) and every guy plays as a girl.
At 17:18 - Don't be calling me out like that. (I consider myself aro / ace but... at least _part_ of the issue is, indeed, that "the idea of having sex while being perceived as a man [is] difficult, frightening, and dysphoria-causing". I think I'm still aro / ace as a woman but, well, I'm still early in my transition and we haven't _really_ tested that hypothesis.)
At 19:40 - This was on my list of reasons to transition. Even if they don't see me as a woman, I figure it's a way to other myself for those kind of men. They won't think I'm one of them.
There was no live action Scooby-Doo movie where they decapitate a real zombie. But, there is a direct to vhs animated movie called “Scooby-doo: zombie island” where they do the exact scenario on a zombie
Scooby Doo on Zombie Island!! It’s not live action but the scene you described happens in this one
i have no clue why my child mind remembered it as being live action, maybe it's time to finally conquer my fears...
@@goIdy might have been amalgamated with the scene in the live action scooby doo where shaggy also attempts to take a monsters mask off, and instead warps their real face in really weird ways?
listen i think this is a wonderful video essay but i do have to say that Mary Shelly's frankenstein in the books does NOT involve two men making the monster. Its just frankenstein the doctor trying to play god. but he DOES have a really weird fixation about 'making the perfect man' but then being apalled at the thing hes made which could be a queer reading of its own i think
Was thinking the same thing. Frankenstein is my hyperfixation and i kept going "no no thats not what its about igor isn't real"
I’m a simple girl… I see a fellow trans girl, I follow. ❤
0:26 The movie isn't live action, it's the animated movie "Scooby Doo on Zombie Island
I love this video and it’s message, it’s really cool :>
Also I read through the comment at 8:42 and I wish it was here because there are so many things I wish I could correct them on, and actually give them constructive criticism on it, because I feel like people are much more likely to change their views if they aren’t just shouted/not given actual constructive criticism.
Sorry if that’s not relevant/you don’t want to read it
Your video is rlly cool :>
oh i've read through that comment a few times and what sucks is, i feel they were on the cusp of not being hateful, but then it kinda devolved into made up talking points. i would've loved to refute their points and try to make a difference, but the way i see it a lot of the time interacting at all just isn't worth it in the end. what's funny is i received that comment while i was at work and i'm like "damn i'm making more money reading this comment than they ever will make posting it"
Great video! I have a lot of feelings about this movie and I enjoyed your perspective. You had words that I didn’t have.
Also at 24:18, I didn’t think that Owen had a real family at all. I thought they meant the characters in Pink Opaque. Owen says that they like TV shows, Maddie says that Isabelle and Tara are like family to her.
That and we never see Owen’s family and the only time that they’re mentioned is when Owen is bringing in the new TV.
The unknown is often cited as the most essential and primal of all fears, but as I've looked into experincing and telling horror stories myself (such as _Slay the Princess,)_ I've come to understand that this is an icredibly hackneyed, even dated, understanding of fear.
If you will observe human psychology, you will notice that the average person is quite comofortable not knowing things. (A large chunk of them vote conservative ffs.) If I were to present you with a jar of gumdrops and didn't tell you how many were inside, you wouldn't start panicking over the possiblity that there might be 56 gumdrops instead of 345. The possibility of life on other words, new applications for radioactive isotopes, or an AI rebellion, keeps scientists awake at night with awe and curiosity, not terror.
A person who does happen to fear the unknown immediately stands out as neurotic; the image of the paranoid conspiracey theorist.
As a point of fact, the number of things you know is always hugely eclipsed by the portion of things that you don't know. You are only ever conscious of what you don't know when, well, you'd rather know it and are fixated on the possible ramifications of not knowing.
Thus the unknown can only be an essential, personal fear for somone who's built their life around _controlling_ their surrondings through their awareness. A person who thinks they've got it figured out, but the peices just don't quite fit.
When the interior is maddingly larger than the exterior. Said fair is properly contextualized under the fear of _disorientation,_ not the nebulous term "the unknown."
Body horror, on the other hand, is the bane of the person who is in some way alienated from the body. For transpeople, this is entirely self-evident: your mind says, "Woman," and your body says, "PINGAS" . . . I mean, "Man." At least in the case of trasnwomen specifically.
But the thing that has the potential to terrify almost anyone about the body is it's autonomy; that it can have involuntary responses which violate your sense of self.
This is well, _disorienting_ for people because the reductive myth of our own times is that a person is a sense of action and agency located somewhere behind the eyes and that this centre of awareness _is_ who we are and is defined as who we are by the fact that it is in _control._
So for the body to _not_ be within control of the self is to annihilate this social myth of selfhood. Our entire notions of what it means to be humans or people instead of anthropoid apes or animals is undone.
Such is equivalent to reducing man to a piano key, and, Dostoevsky so well pointed out, men will hysterically burn paradise itself to the ground to avoid such a fate.
Everything to do with the fear of teh body comes back to this basic metaphor of the body's capacity to contest, and even destory, the self. _Paradise Lost_ is that same metaphor in a different genre.
"Are you still there? Are you still you?"
But, the thing is, the body isn't frightening in that way if you know that. It's just that most people in 21st century western culuitre don't. We're socialized out of it and to demonize the body. Overcoming that alienation and fear would be to return to Eden. (An event that, hypothetically, is set to occur within the Christian mythic cycle.)
What the fear of the unknown and the fear of the body have in common, then, is the fear of losing onself. The fear of death.
But not the fear of death in the sense we are used to which is the cessation of a poorly defined biological process understood to be "life" because people will chose to end their lives to espace their fears. (This is certainly true of many transpeople who never received proper care and respect.) This is an abstract fear refering to the violation of the self.
Homophobes do not fear homosexuals for what they may physically be capable of but on the basis that their behaviour may spread and change other people, that behaviour being regarded as an essential part of the self in the "Ship of Theseus" philsophical sense.
"I am a plumber. I fix leaky facets. If there's a leaky facet I can't fix, I'm not a plumber. Therefore I must prepare myself to fix every eaky facet I encounter or my identity as a plumber will cease to be."
It's like that but held with far more conviction.
This explains who seemingly arbitrary and petty disagreements about how to interpret the world can spiral into war and genocide. Implicit to how we regard the self is the implicit assumption that to be wrong, or to fail to perform, is worse than death itself.
All forms of fear and motivation return the the essential myth of the self's iviolability and ascendency.
God Almighty, World Without End, upon His celestial throne and flanked by His angels and His four creature-acolytes, lest some stray detail penetrate the layered defences to the centre of the mandala. And farewell King.
I only started my hrt journey a little over 2 months ago and watched this movie about halfway through that at the start of October and it broke me (granted I was having probably the worst of the mood swings I’ve had so far lmao I cried for like 3 hours). I just saw and felt so much of myself in Owen. I knew what I wanted for a long time, even when I couldn’t put words to it. I even started hrt research when I was 12, I just didn’t fully understand it then. I would hide under the sheets at 3 in the morning and search stuff on my 3ds because that’s all I could get online with lol. I just did everything I could to repress how I felt for so long, even trying to compromise as just going non-binary for ~3 years and not actually changing anything to be happier. Now I’m done playing into that thought process though, and no matter how scared I am for the future I’m happy I finally realized that there is still time.
Well written and well presented. Great content. I don't normally comment, but you deserve more attention from the algo gods. I honestly thought this was a "big" channel and i was curious how I hadn't come across it before, then I saw that this a smaller channel somehow!
Hope it gets more attention, the quality is very good.
I believe you're thinking of Scooby-Doo: Zombie Island
This is the first video of yours I’ve seen and I’m so glad i discovered you omg, subscribed right away
THAT COMIC?? ARE YOU KIDDING ME
I I i
I I I _
girlie i am 3 months into hrt and i just finished writing and drawing a trans comic for comic class
17:23 THAT'S WHAT I THOUGHT,THAT'S HOW I FEEL 😭 THIS hits so clothes to home 😭 (ftm)
I discovered I was trans when I was 11. I am 21 in a month and still closeted. This movie broke me haha.
3:10 as an autistic person with a HUGE hyperfixation on saw (and a general lover of horror) I’m holding back writing a whole ass essay rn….
But to sum it up, I don’t personally think saw is a torture 🌽 series… at least not fully. I’d say it’s more in the gore or splatter genre; There’s WAYYY too much of a story to be a true torture 🌽 series (especially the early films). Movies like Human Centipede *do* have plot, but also not really. There’s wayyy more of a focus on the grossness of it all. It’s hard to explain…. It’s really just a *vibe*. The *vibe* of the cinematography. The *vibe* of how the creators talk about their work…. It’s all a vibe
Okay I’m done, if you read all that, thank you for indulging me 😭
yeah you’re absolutely right, lumping saw and the human centipede into that category of film is disingenuous to an extent. i mainly said that for the sake of brevity, but yeah the aesthetics (vibes) of it all really do play a role in how they’re viewed in contrast to films of that genre
8:34 ESKAY MENTIONED👏
You're thinking of Scooby Doo Zombie Island. Not live-action, but they take the zombie's head off. Best Scooby Doo movie
Wow. Shame on me. I never heard of this Film before. Thank you for this essay. I hit that sub button so hard. Once again: Thank you.
I’m sorry but the ffxiv music activated me like a sleeper agent
This is an important video. Thank you for your voice!
Wow I feel like I was just gutted and had my soul ripped out. Dope video
babe wake up new co2goldy dropped 🗣🗣🗣
Incredible video, please continue to make more! ❤❤
7:30 - i'm ftm and experiencing this in the opposite way.
This movie felt like a fever dream but it's damn relatable. An anime character made me realize I'm not straight. I think as a closeted trans media was my only scape. And the movie captured what that felt like. Why can't i be a boy and me in a mans arm?
Less than a minute in and you remind me of the body swap from the Scooby-Doo movie. Dang there were signs forever ago.
I just watched the full movie rn (it's like 10:45 PM rn) it was absolutely fire, and I didn't really understand it until I locked in. gotta say it was fire frfr :3
3:20
TWO THINGS I'VE NEVER SEEN🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
i got the joy of seeing the movie in theatres and it was absolutely beautiful
I’m hyped this popped up in my recommended :)
man i just watched this movie for this video and now i cant stop shaking thinking about it
Schoenbrun is the only person who could make me hyped for fred durst in 2024
I'm trans and I named myself after The Metamorphosis. Is that too on the nose?
1:24 body horro is more was shockph to me tho it cab be good sometimes my favorite type of horror is phycologycal 😈 tho a mix between phycologycal and bodyhorro hits different 💥 by that I mean body horror but instead of body it looking into your brain
Know it's not exactly relevant to the video, but Zombie Island. The piece of Scooby-Doo media where they go to remove the mask and the entire head comes off and it turns out to be a real zombie is Zombie Island. There's also a sequel to it to but uh... We don't talk about the sequel, no no.
Lovely video!
8:47 I see how it is...
I just suscribed and I've never been this proud of a decission.
I don’t like how every time you mention something about you being trans I can immediately go “yea that’s so me”
babe wake up new peak dropped
16:35 GOD FUCKING DAMN IT
Great video! On a related body horror note: I’m still angry at the Gurren Lagan ending.
What if your body and existence was just created for a purpose beyond your control, when you don’t measure up you’re discarded, and now as an adult you just have to live feeling sometimes puppeted by ideas someone else programmed into you, and then when you feel like you’ve finally broken through: you die and disappear without a trace.
Now that’s relatable too 🥲
i love saw, i
The Scooby-Doo movie your taking about is Scooby-Doo on zombie island and not live action it's animated. It also my favorite Scooby-Doo movie. Go watch it the soundtrack is amazing ❤
USING THAT RENDITION OF FLOW FROM FFXIV FOR A BACKING TRACK YOU LITTLE SHIT!!!!
Also yeah I really get the "It didn't fuck me up as hard" thing. I hatched January 17 of 2012 I struggled through the system to get hrt from September 9th 2012 to March 1st 2018, I've written novels and novelettes with trans protagonists that deal with dysphoria attacks and doubt and am best friends with Mordred euniexenoblade nee mioxenoblade trans-mom on Tumblr, all that innoculated me to some of the horrors of I Saw The TV Glow.
This has caused my takeaway to be "Jane really End of Evangelioned all over Online Trans Fiction with this movie" and to write that whole script.
Fuck it, I got three days off of work I can make that essay that quickly, I know what I'm doing and I want that video out by halloween.
jjk mentioned raaaaaaah
I keep seeing people use Silence of The lambs saying it's a bad representation of trans.
IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE BECAUSE THEY DISCUS HIM IN THE FILM
He is not trans
He hypes up the stereotypes cause hes fucked up pretty much. But it is addressed. They made a point of making a scene describing the difference. Hell it even show hannibl having a respect for trans people and kind mad the killer is giving that kind of illusion.
It's a missed plot point that since released has been ignored to push the idea that it's a misrepresentation of trans people when it's actually saying trans people arent killers.
I watched this movie because there was nothing else to watch and after i saw it I thought I was gonna die
yeah
I feel like crying
Me when I'm a transfem film major (I am. and so is my best friend/ex. and so is another friend.)
and as i always do, i'm not gonna confront it LMAO
I love Alex G
have you watched Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde? I saw it recently and thought there might be a lot to say about its transness, would love to hear your thoughts on it
i actually remember coming across that film while doing research for this video, ill have to look into it !!