#glow matrix

[poppetsisters]

Fake Reality Prison

[iamthetruestrepairman]

I love you stories driven by fear for change. Stories where someone doesn’t want to take that leap, can’t take that chance. Stories where the risk is just too high, and you suffer for it. Stories where there was a person you were supposed to be, but you never gave yourself the chance. Stories where you know there’s something wrong with the way you’re living, but admitting that would mean you had to do something about it. Characters who lose your shot because you never let yourself take it, you’ll always be my favourite

[timcassie]

Happy pride to trans allegory movies 💕

[libraryleopard]

me going off to see i saw the tv glow: not sure what this is really going to be like but it looks interesting!

me walking out of i saw the tv glow: oh okay so it's the matrix for trans girls who really liked buffy the vampire slayer

[gopissgorl-dot-twitter]

it's fair to say this film has got me in my feelings

[talistheintrovert]

did you hate Emilia Perez? here are some better things to watch!!

[carbon-fiber-internal-organs]

[synthient]

Matrix parallels aren't the only or primary lens to read this movie through. But I gotta do the special interest shuffle (spoilers for I Saw The TV Glow throughout):

We get at least one overt matrix reference, which is the bit where Owen's movie theater is showing a sci fi movie where humans have been driven underground after machines took over the surface

There's the obvious thematic overlap of "is reality real," "are my memories real," "to what extent is my reality shaped by information/entertainment technology," "is there an Outside to escape to," "would I want to if I could," etc.

The pods and the coffin. "What if I was something powerful and beautiful, suffocating"

There's also some interesting overlap with matrix 4 specifically re "what's the line between transition and suicide," "to what extent is transition a kind of death," to what extent is not transitioning a kind of death." Along with the general stuff around nostalgia and mythologized source materials and hauntology (a term Schoenbrun has used in interviews & that I first heard in a matrix 4 podcast, lmao)

The pods and the heart/luna juice sequence both posit Being Made To Live Like This as a visceral bodily violation

Tv glow is maybe more cynical about the possibility of a true Outside/alternative to the system. Though Zion turns out to not be fully "outside." And Maddy's vision (of a slightly more magical suburbia that still can't escape the confines of "the county") is probably supposed to be less The Only Vision, and more filtered through the lens of someone young and very early transition. Generally though, tv glow is much more focused on interiorty and personal transformation (or lack thereof) than overt politics, although a critique of capitalist suburbia is certainly the background radiation

Also interesting, I think, that "how does kitsch and 'bad art' shape our identity formation" becomes a central question of the later Wachowski oeuvre. And something that's always been present in their work--and has maybe been one of the most polarizing things for viewers--is the combo of "we want to make serious art, And we want to make the kitsch we adored growing up. at the same time." The pink opaque conceit perhaps manages to draw enough of a boundry between The Art and The Kitsch to head off some of the confusion and frustration re "how much of the kitsch is intentional, and how much is an attempt at serious art that failed"

The Family (and the whole concept of having loved ones to leave behind) is basically nonexistent in the matrix trilogy, and Just Evil Robots Don't Worry About It in 4. Tv glow gets much more into this. Though both the saintly mother & and the monstrous father equally serve to keep you trapped, in the end

Anyway. Perhaps the matrix has shaped the entire concept of "trans cinema" to the extent that you kind of have to engage with it on some level. Perhaps it's simply that We Are All Having The Same Thematic/Philosophical Preoccupations. All very interesting regardless, to me

[rookthebird]

chat should i post "neo from the matrix would have fucking loved i saw the tv glow" or should i post "owen from i saw the tv glow would have fucking loved the matrix"

[morerichka8]

vibrations

[thesilliestcryptid]

i like movies ,:))))

[fantasypeasantgirl]

i saw the tv glow and the matrix have done irreparable damage to my outlook on life because what do you mean I have to get an unfulfilling job and limit my own self-expression for other people

what do you mean this is actually just the world

[ojinngode]

Simulacra.

[salmakia]

these are kind of the same movie to me...do you get it

[exceptionally-stupid]

I’ve not seem the matrix, but from what I understand of it, it is fundamentally the same movie as I saw the TV glow

[dust-rats]

so I Saw The TV Glow is the opposite of The Matrix