I SAW THE TV GLOW: When Sadness Can Be Just Too Much

Owen and Maddy can’t be who they are in Jane Schoenbrun‘s I Saw the TV Glow. Those reasons started in traumatic childhoods but are now inside themselves. For Owen, his dad’s control and lack of acceptance. He doesn’t even try to “get” Owen. If Owen expresses interest, like in the Pink Opaque, he humiliates him: “Isn’t that a show for girls?” How could Owen reveal his feelings? Even to himself. Plus, his mom, who did try, got sick and died. Maddy? Her mom doesn’t give a crap when she goes to bed, or likely cares about her at all. Her stepdad is abusive. These kinds of childhoods lead to loneliness and a lot of sadness. And, prolonged loneliness morphs into melancholy. What do you do with those feelings? They can be just too much. That’s why “Mr. Melancholy” has grown big, angry, and poisonous.

Mr. Melancholy & His Drain Lords

Mr. Melancholy lurks inside Owen (Justice Smith) and Maddy (Jack Haven). Yes, he’s a character in The Pink Opaque, but The Pink Opaque is the world that Owen and Maddy live in, fighting demons of trauma and tormenting feelings. That causes despair, which no one wants to feel. So, Mr. Melancholy isn’t just the sadness. He’s about turning against feelings, getting rid of them. That’s his mission, with lots of backup. When feelings are too much, he sends his monster drain lords to scare off the feelings – and wash them away.

“If you don’t think about it, it can’t hurt you,” Tara said in The Pink Opaque. There’s numbness, too. But feelings don’t go away. As hard as you try, you can’t get rid of them. Plus, what if you aren’t completely sure you want to “go dead?” Maybe you’re still looking for something – (some kind of) connection with another human, even if you’re scared. 

That’s Owen. He lives with the fears many people have: of being himself, reaching out, and getting rejected. So, he’s become as lost, disconnected, and lonely as Mr. Melancholy, the man in the Moon – way out there disconnected in nowhere land. Owen walks around in a daze so that he doesn’t notice people or want anything. But Maddy has The Pink Opaque episode guide and, well, young Owen wants to watch it. Owen loves TV.

Plus, Maddy’s the only person who “gets him.” Wanting something is a fight, though. It’s like ice cream; so good, you want it all year long. But, when you can’t want, the Ice Cream man becomes a terrifying monster. And, “After the first (Pink Opaque) sleepover, Owen couldn’t get the courage to say more than two words to Maddy Wilson.” For a few years.

Two Confused Kids in a Lot of Psychic Pain

If you’ve been hurt as a child, people seem dangerous. That’s Owen. He walks in a trance, ignoring what’s around him, talking to no one, except when he meets Maddy and has a sleepover at her house to watch The Pink Opaque. She’s kind to him, as kind as the guarded Maddy can be. She watches with Amanda, her best friend (until she isn’t.)

Years later, Maddy’s alone, sitting way up in the bleachers, furtively eating her food, looking like she couldn’t care less about the food or wanting anyone around. Owen gingerly sits next to her. Maddy doesn’t watch The Pink Opaque with Amanda anymore, “She told the whole school I tried to touch her tit. That asshole!  Amanda is a secret agent sent to make my life miserable.” Owen offers to watch the TV show with her again.

Maddy awkwardly says, “You know I’m into girls, don’t you?” Owen replies: “Oh yeah, it wasn’t like that.” She asks if he’s into girls or boys. He likes TV. When he thinks about “that stuff, I feel like somebody scooped out my insides … I’m too afraid to look to see if there’s anything there.” Maddy says, “Maybe you’re like Isabel, afraid of what’s inside of you.” He is, and so is Maddy; two kids in a lot of psychic pain, in I Saw the TV Glow.

Maddy tells him, in a melancholic voice, “Sometimes, The Pink Opaque seems more real than real life …I’m getting out of this town … Soon. I’ll die if I stay…” Owen says to her, “If you leave, I won’t have anyone to watch The Pink Opaque with.” Maddy draws a pink shape on his neck (from The Pink Opaque). The tattoo is a ghost. He tries to scrub it off.

Escape Into Fantasy (The World of TV)

Owen Saw the TV Glow when Maddy disappeared. Her burning, glowing TV … her disappearance, an escape from a reality that she hates. But trying to escape feelings doesn’t work. It only makes you a ghost – too opaque to find out who you really are.  

Yes, Owen loves The Pink Opaque. But Maddy gets lost in it. She believes she and Owen are Tara and Isabel. Flashback: Owen is in the basement, dressed in Isabel’s dress, pink with spaghetti straps, the pink ghost symbol lighting up the nape of his neck, a slight smile on his face. Maddy, when she reappears in a supermarket after her disappearance, asks Owen: “Do you ever have a hard time distinguishing what happened in the show and what happened in real life?” Confusion of reality is a part of Maddy’s escape from psychic pain.

Maddy tries to fight the pain that brings her down. On the wall, a message is inscribed, “Pain is weakness.” Yet, retreating into a fantasy world doesn’t have an auspicious end. We see what happens to Tara and Isabel. Mr. Melancholy and his drain lords overpower them.

At a place on the edge of town, a singer sings: “I saw the TV glow … My heart is like a claw machine … It can’t hold onto anything …I was born blue … (Screaming) Help me, I’m so chained to you. Someone, tell me what to do. Ah, ah, ah, ah, Feeling like a psychic wound.”

Owen has no one he can hold onto. His mother’s dead. So, Maddy’s (and Mr. Melancholy’s) pull are strong. He doesn’t want to lose Maddy. But, although he doesn’t let himself get lost in Maddy’s fantasy world, he never comes alive or finds himself either.

Mr. Melancholy Is About Killing Sadness

Mr. Melancholy isn’t about the sadness. He’s about killing sadness. Feelings are life. But sometimes feelings can be just too much. Mr. Melancholy says, “Don’t fight it, let my poison work. You’re going to love the midnight realm … Soon you won’t remember anything: your real name … your heart. You won’t even remember you’re dying.” Mr. Melancholy displays a hideous grin. That’s what happens when you’re too scared to feel.

It’s the “not thinking about it” defense. In The Pink Opaque, Tara says about the Drain Lords: “They can’t hurt you if you don’t think about them.” But they can. Not thinking about it doesn’t make your sadness or despair go away. You’re just not thinking about it. And, this is Mr. Melancholy’s survival tactic. But do you “survive,” or just go dead?

When Isabel and Tara try to fight for their lives, Mr. Melancholy springs into action. He’s the force inside that is terrified of feeling anything. His drain lords, Marco and Polo, are dispatched. And, Marco puts Tara in a grave. She vomits up a blue substance, her “blues,” her sadness.  As if it could be gone. Polo gets Isabel, strangles her, and cuts out her heart, her still-beating heart. (Her heart, which is the part of you that has all your feelings.)

We watch Owen and Maddy struggle with the deadness of “not thinking about it,” in I Saw the TV Glow. For Maddy, as well as many severely traumatized people, the desire to “go dead” becomes a wish or attempt to commit suicide. To make the feelings “go away” permanently. Maddy tries to die. Owen is on the side of not giving in to deadness completely, as tempting as an escape from hard feelings can be. It can be a real fight.

The Fight with “Going Dead” (Or, Not)

Maddy “made it all the way to Phoenix with the money I saved. But it all looked the same…. I got out of that town that I knew would kill me, but something was still wrong. Wronger, even.” You can go to a place where you’re in a dead prison. But what’s going on inside you isn’t really gone. It’s still haunting you. And, this can make you more depressed.

So, a little bit after her 22nd birthday, “I paid this burnout kid who used to hit on me in the food court $50 to bury me alive … I bought a coffin. Dug a hole. I got inside and I closed the lid.” But she clawed her way out. She knew she had to save Owen; that the show had to continue. You see, Maddy can’t get back to reality. She never does. There’s too much pain. Going dead to feelings is a trauma survival strategy that she can’t give up.

Maddy has to believe that “memories were put into my head to distract me from my real self.” She tries to convince Owen that he feels the same way. But he doesn’t. Owen remembers baseball games with his dad and cooking with his mom.  He won’t let Maddy talk him out of that reality, as frightened of sad memories and loneliness as he is.

It’s a fight. If he doesn’t follow, will he be alone forever? But Owen pushes Maddy down and runs away. Back to his home. He locks himself inside for days, waiting for her to show up and try to pull him into deadness. He’s scared of that, but also sad when she doesn’t.

He tells himself he made the right choice, but… can he come alive? It doesn’t look good.

“Is There Somebody There?” To Help with Sadness?

Owen is as isolated as the street he’s driving on in his lonely car, his mother’s old car. And now she’s gone. A powerline goes down. Sparks fly. He calls out, “Hello, is somebody there?” No one answers. There is no one to help in his shut-in world.

He apologizes for being home late, but his dad stares at him without saying a word. (“Hello, is somebody there?”) On TV, a commentator says: “90% of the earth’s population was destroyed. The invaders changed the planet’s atmosphere; the sun, forever covered by dark clouds.” This is how severe depression feels. It shuts you down: “Survivors fled underground in fear of the machines that now ruled the Earth.” Going through the motions is another self-protective strategy against the feelings Owen cannot escape.  

At his job, he goes along, halfheartedly singing Happy Birthday at a party. But then all the feelings Owen can’t feel force themselves to the surface. He screams, as the singer screamed about psychic pain, for his dead mommy. But nobody pays any attention. In the bathroom, he cuts his chest open with a box cutter and sees the glow of a TV inside. The TV in I Saw the TV Glow is not real life; it’s not about his heart, which is terribly broken.

Owen walks through the arcade, apologizing for his outburst. For his real feelings. His sadness and the loss of his mother. But everyone turns away. “Is somebody there?” Owen shouldn’t have to apologize for his pain. He can’t feel his grief alone.

No one can.

Owen has so much sadness. He needs to feel it to be who he is. But in I Saw the TV Glow, he can’t, with Mr. Melancholy in control. He needs somebody there to help him.