Trans person seeing I Saw the TV Glow: I found the metaphor for transness quite powerful, but it was maybe spelled out just a little bit too much. Cis person seeing I Saw the TV Glow: This movie is definitely about watching television. - ThreadSky

emilystjams.bsky.social • 326 days ago

Trans person seeing I Saw the TV Glow: I found the metaphor for transness quite powerful, but it was maybe spelled out just a little bit too much.
Cis person seeing I Saw the TV Glow: This movie is definitely about watching television.

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megandisciscio.bsky.social•326 days ago

Recently I was talking to a friend about the movie Now and Then and how it deserves a remake where the Christina Ricci/Rosie O'Donnell's character gets to grow up to be trans...as everything about the young version of their character suggests should happen!

christyadmiraal.bsky.social•326 days ago

I think this also has to do with the company you keep and the commentary you read -- I thought the metaphor was lovely and sad but a little heavy-handed and I'm cis -- but also Owen puts on a dress and smiles for the first time in the entire movie and that feels very hard to miss!!!

emilystjams.bsky.social•326 days ago

I do think it's couched as either a repressed memory or a FEELING about that time that perhaps didn't literally happen, and it's also part of the movie's larger mystery, so I think a lot of people are able to strip the transness out of it to some extent.

emilystjams.bsky.social•326 days ago

(All movies belong to their viewers, this is a complex film with multiple readings, you are allowed to find your own subtext in works, etc., but also, the frequency of this interaction with the movie amuses me.)

emilystjams.bsky.social•326 days ago

A thing I have frequently found when I, say, go on Blank Check and share a trans reading of a film is that it BLOWS PEOPLE'S MINDS. Like it took 20-some years and BOTH Wachowskis coming out as trans before people were, like, "Perhaps The Matrix is a little bit trans."

emilystjams.bsky.social•326 days ago

I deal with this in my own work! My novel is, broadly speaking, a transition story (BOOOOO), but I wanted to tell that story through a different lens than usual. And even so, I kept bumping into things I thought were extremely basic/universal that just confused all cis people.

emilystjams.bsky.social•326 days ago

I am aware I do not need to write for the cis gaze, but I cannot help but think about them and want to care for them, like a child who got lost and needs to find their parent.

www.cinevibezhq.com•326 days ago

That’s just empathy

tillybridges.bsky.social•326 days ago

trying to get trans stories of any kind past cis executives, producers, and editors has almost universally required me to instruct them in Trans 101 info on… everything. And even then they still usually don’t make it through.

kevidently.bsky.social•326 days ago

I write for the straight gaze all the time. I used to feel weird about it and then I stopped. For me, it's about reaching as wide an audience as possible to share my stories as accessibly as possible. Maybe it makes me a hack? But at least I'm not paid well.

emilystjams.bsky.social•326 days ago

I honestly do not worry about this. The stories I write will reach the people who need them/want to read them, and some of those people will be cis and some will be trans, and that's neat!

owl-sounds.bsky.social•326 days ago

Speaking as a CIS, yes, transness is completely mind blowing. Thank you for your service.❤️

tillybridges.bsky.social•326 days ago

So many cis people still deny even that. Despite saying directly in my book on it that I do t want their opinions, they will seek me out to throw them at me. It’s wild

chicagomstie.bsky.social•326 days ago

The Matrix has proven, I think, to be the Platonic Ideal of this dynamic.

radosh.bsky.social•326 days ago

While watching (as a cis person) I def thought it was spelled out more than necessary but the way it's stuck with me since I realize that it made me feel the trauma of staying/being forced to stay in the closet in a visceral way that I had not fully considered before

alecjkm.net•326 days ago

This feels like an extension of what you were talking about last year with Barbenheimer. You are way past egg cracking 101 or whatever but I, a cis person, come out of that with a new understanding.

justinfalcone.com•326 days ago

where does ISTTVG fit in the rubric of "egg cinema"? It hits a lot of the beats in your essay but idk if it still "counts" if its made by an out trans person with the intention of trans allegory

emilystjams.bsky.social•326 days ago

I don't know! I think to make egg cinema, you cannot be conscious, on some level, that your main character is an egg. But I do maintain out trans people can make egg cinema, so I may be contradicting myself!

zacharyherz.bsky.social•326 days ago

Notes on Egg

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