Welcome to #TransTuesday! Tillyvision exits the atmosphere in THE INTENTIONAL TRANS ALLEGORY OF I SAW THE TV GLOW, part 4! Our fear of our true selves is in the driver’s seat, and that’s baaaaad news.
You know you need to read PART 1 first!
And read PART 2 second!
And what a surprise, you need to read PART 3 third!
33:49 – Owen walks to Maddy’s house again, green grass, pink sleeping bag rolled up, blue sky… but it still has those hints of pink.
34:02 – The laughing clown doing an unsettling dance. RED light. DANGER. You’re going to LOOK LIKE A CLOWN IF YOU EXPLORE YOUR TRANSNESS, OWEN. These are his own fears rearing their head… but what are those fears based in? Internalized transphobia. Which is why that clown is a minion of Mr. Melancholy.
34:10 – Maddy’s show counterpart, Tara, calls that out as nonsense. Kills the idea of the clown with an axe. This is your first confirmation of connection between the axe, Tara, and Maddy.
And again you see they NEED EACH OTHER TO GET THROUGH. Community. Tara is the weapon Isabel needs to defeat that clown, internalized transphobia.
34:32 – Maddy cries while watching the show. She’s fully realizing her truth. It’s heavy. Owen looks at her, studying, learning. But look right next to him… a pillow in the trans flag colors, but there’s a MOON on it.
But what’s on Owen’s shirt? A sun. Showing FEAR and DANGER.
Where does the moon get its light? REFLECTED FROM THE SUN.
The transphobia’s coming from inside the house, Owen! Ignore it, fight it, transness is right there if you’ll just reach out and grab it! (poor Owen)
34:51 – When the show is over, the green fish tank, dysphoria, is front and center again. There’s yelling and fighting upstairs. Did Maddy’s parents find out what she was doing in the basement?
35:19 – Maddy: “I’m getting out of this town.” She now fully knows her truth, and knows she can’t live it at home with a violently transphobic family. There are pink hearts on her shirt, she’s IN transness, but bathed in blue, sad because her family has rejected her for who she is. And look at the yellow fear behind her. It’s a scary thing to do. She also looks less femme here, she’s already moving closer to her true self.
35:45 – Maddy: “I’ll die if I stay here.” She’d have to suppress her true self and that is a very real kind of death. But also transphobic families pose a real threat of danger and violence to trans kids as I talked about before. As horribly sad as it is, it’s the truth.
36:10 – Owen: “If you leave, I won’t have anyone to watch The Pink Opaque with.” You are my only access to my transness and exploring who I am, if you go I will lose that! There is no safe space for him without her.
36:40 – Maddy tells him to sit up, we see his shirt is blue. Green dysphoria light washes over him.
37:05 – She unbuttons his shirt and pulls it down, exposing the true Owen: Isabel. Owen does not protest, or even seem startled by what she’s doing. At best his expression gives off a “What, here? Now?” vibe. This is emotional, and intimate, but it’s not sexual.
We know that “watching The Pink Opaque” together is them exploring the truth of their transness together, right? And if they’ve been doing that all along, it stands to reason they maybe swapped clothes, helped each other try things on (confirmation for this comes later on). He is not surprised by what’s happening.
Maddy draws The Pink Opaque ghost on him with a marker, making him closer to Isabel. As a reminder of his transness, so he won’t forget or lose it after she’s gone.
38:43 – Static floats over Owen’s head… blue and green, his mind a swirl of feelings (like Barbie in the white void with Ruth at the end of Barbie), but the pink is still in there. But he can’t see it clearly because of all the damned static.
39:05 – Owen furiously scrubs the pink ghost off his neck. Oh god what if they see? What if they know? What might happen? I CAN’T LET THEM SEE. Note that in the mirror he’s bathed in yellow light. Fear.
On the commentary, at this moment, Jane says: “Shame.”
Brigette: “I always feel hurt when I see this.”
Me too. It broke my heart. Because society’s transphobia and that internalized transphobia has told him his transness is bad and wrong, and he’s ashamed of it, ashamed that he can’t stop seeking it out and exploring it. He shouldn’t want to! It’s not “normal!”
It’s heartbreaking. And I lived through it many, many times.
39:12 – Look at how much transness surrounds him in the daylight. His shirt, the sleeping bag, the blanket on the couch, the carpet. The green fish tank seems smaller and less imposing. This is what accepting your transness can do for you, Owen. You could start, like Maddy. And here, briefly, he thinks he might do just that.
39:30 – Maddy tells him not to tell anyone they’re leaving. He asks where they’ll go. Maddy: “We’ll know when we get there.” You don’t know what you’re going to get out of transition, or if you’ll find your truest self, or if or when it will end. But you’ll know when you get there.
40:00 – Owen goes to Johnny Link’s house, furiously rings the doorbell. It’s an emergency. Help. Terrified, he tells her the entire truth and tells her SHE has to tell his dad about the lies. Not that he’s been exploring transness, because that could be fatal. But she has to tell his dad that he’s been lying about where he’s going, so he’ll be punished and unable to join Maddy when she leaves. He’s too scared. He’s severing the link between him and Maddy, between himself and his transness.
40:20 – Owen: “You can’t let me go with her. I don’t want to leave my home.” He’s scrubbed the pink ghost off his neck as best he could, but traces remain. His shirt is still pink, but now it’s covered by green. Giving in to dysphoria won’t work. It won’t get rid of your transness, Owen. You’re just trying to pretend you didn’t see it, that it’s not there… but that doesn’t make it go away.
40:27 – The chalk on the street outside is a jumble of pinks and blues, in equal amounts. And he’s entirely separated from it by the green grass.
40:37 – Owen: “My mom passed away the next July.” Well, he severed the link and cut off access to his transness… and so he LOST HIS ONLY ACCESS TO FEMININITY.
And then Maddy was gone, she left without him.
40:46 – Maddy’s house is surrounded by cop cars, RED lights and YELLOW caution tape. Danger! Fear! This is what could have happened to you, Owen. This also, sadly, reflects the way transness worked for people in the past… they were often forced to uproot and disappear, “woodwork” and pretend to be cis. There’s more about this in the Trans Tuesday on TRANSMEDICALISM (and WPATH version 1).
40:58 – Owen: “All they found was her tv set, burning in the back yard.” Look at Owen’s face lit in half yellow, and half blue. You know exactly what this did to him.
41:03 – The burning tv. Yellow. Fear destroyed Owen’s only access to his transness, through Maddy and the tv.
41:10 – Owen: “And the strangest part of it all was, the month maddy disappeared, The Pink Opaque got canceled.” SUPERtext. Yeah, he cut off his access to exploring transness so of course the “show” that represented that disappeared.
41:39 – Cut to adult Owen watching the campfire again, its yellow light across his face.
41:51: We get a shot of future (or, I guess, present) Owen in the Fun Center, all blue and yellow and red. Lights flickering, things are dark and unclear and awful.
42:04 – Look at the one half-inflated balloon, the entirely yellow wall that meets the entirely blue wall. There is no joy to be found on this path he’s set himself on.
42:12 – Owen steps into the literal spotlight. We’re eight years later.
42:47 – Owen orders food in the drive through, it’s awkward and weird. EVERYTHING in life feels this way when dealing with dysphoria and having no confidence whatsoever. See the Trans Tuesday on CONFIDENCE for more.
And then see the trans tuesday on CONFIDENCE 2: INTO THE UNKNOWN, aka A WHOLE NEW WORLD, aka WHAT IS HAPPENING when, much to my surprise, everything changed for me two years into transition.
43:08 – Owen’s at work, there’s despair everywhere. The exit sign is a bright red… the exit from the sadness, transitioning? Owen only sees it as DANGER.
43:18 – Owen opens the door on the manager receiving oral sex from a woman. What does the idea of sex do to him? A little bit of fear and A WHOLE LOT OF DYSPHORIA. This is something that happens to a lot of trans people, where the idea of physical intimacy is terrifying and awful because we’re so alienated and horrified by our own bodies.
But also, for some of us, it’s terrifying in ways that get tangled up with sexuality. As I talked about in SEXUALITY IS NOT GENDER, I’m exclusively attracted to women and always have been. And that complicated understanding my own gender.
And so getting close to women in a sexual way was terrifying, because it amplified those feelings, and would almost make you confront them. Like… I may have sexual desires about this woman’s body I’m close to, but there’s something so much more than that under the surface about wanting to be her and have that body, and not understanding it.
It would spike dysphoria and envy and despair and mix it all up with attraction and desire, and you’ll find this is why many trans people entirely dissociated during any sexual activity, pre-transition, if we were even able to handle it at all.
He gets LAUGHED AT for being uncomfortable with it. He apologizes, which again Maddy told him never to do. You don’t have to apologize for being uncomfortable due to the dysphoria you feel… especially in a situation that should not have even been happening in the first place, like sex in the workplace.
43:34 – Owen fills a bag with popcorn… yellow, blue, and red all around him, keeping him confined.
43:46 – He looks outside – DANGER of the exit signs, he sees only fear in the possibility of coming out… and emptiness as his only reward (look at the shopping carts, they’re all empty).
43:51 – Owen’s coworkers make fun of him for feeling weird about barging in on THE THING THAT SHOULD NOT HAVE EVEN BEEN HAPPENING. But HE’S the weird one? Look how he’s in despair, and that’s all he sees in his manager too. And on his manager’s side? Danger. Right behind him? Fear. And the green dysphoria permeating everything.
44:33 – Owen drives home, his own reflection is FEAR. For more on being terrified of our own reflections where we don’t see ourselves, see the Trans Tuesday on PHOTOS AND REFLECTIONS.
There’s sparking electricity from a power line down in the road. The connection has been severed, between Owen and his way forward.
44:43 – Fear and danger in the lighting where Owen is, despair where the connection has been severed and the electricity, which illuminates the dysphoria from the trees. But look at the street light, and the light on the ground underneath it. Doesn’t that look… PINK?! His dysphoria, sadness, and fear are BLOCKING THE PATH TO HIS TRANSNESS.
44:56 – When he gets out of the car, the ground looks RED, and now so does the streetlight. Danger, Owen! Trying to remove this blockage means your entire life would change, you know it!
45:24 – Owen looks down, the torn pages are from Maddy’s Pink Opaque book. This is what’s become of his transness, it’s in shreds. He sees MR. MELANCHOLY. Transphobia. That’s what’s keeping him from accessing his transness: his own internalized transphobia.
And there’s so much of it we have to overcome, and we can’t be our true selves until we do. And we can’t overcome it until we can recognize it, and Owen definitely can’t do that yet. For more, see the Trans Tuesday on INTERNALIZED TRANSPHOBIA.
45:41 – Owen turns the page over, sees Mr. Sprinkly, the scary ice cream man. Again, things that should bring you joy do not, when dysphoria blankets your life.
45:50 – Owen opens the paper. This moment seemed really important. Did I try to read what it said?
I sure did try!
I tried and tried.
I had no idea these photos were being taken, btw. My wife was sitting on our sofa and thought they were hilarious so took photos of me up close squinting at the tv (and she’s right, they’re pretty dang funny).
To the best of my ability, here’s what I was able to decipher:
…escaped an ancient prison trapped inside the dark side…
…Man’s lunar forces have finally stolen one thousand…
…teenagers. Now there’s no moon. No sun. Just Melancholy….
…season Mr. Melancholy finally tricked Tara and Isabel…
…began back at their old sleepaway camp. Now our heroes…
…nightmarish hellscape the likes of which they never could have imagined…
…underground, hugged only by the branches of everyone’s…
…place where they first laid eyes on each other…
…that Mr. Melancholy’s reign has officially begun. Somebody get her a tissue!
Things have never been worse. A county-wide mandate passed by Senator Sprinkly…
…never-ending math class. A new dress code restricts any citizen in the entire county from…
…of music the college radio station now only plays mattress…
…the Double Lunch has been transformed from the coolest club in town into Mr. Melancholy’s…
…where he, Marco and Polo are keeping all four members of the “Absolute Loser Brigade” held prisoner…
…he’s not planning to kill them anytime soon. He’s just planning to feed endlessly on their weirdness…
…everything beautiful about their souls into stinky star fuel.
So where is Isabel? Where is Tara? Where
are our heroes when we need them most?
Somewhere very far away… in a town oddly…
…reminisced of the real world they need to…
…but different in so many subtle, insidious,
ways. But one thing is for sure, this town has…
…bled of magic and wonder.
It’s all conformity, all the…
…place our heroes no longer even remember…
…they are The Pink Opaque. Here they don’t…
…like heroes anymore. Here every monster…
…fought every joke they ever shared, all…
…heartstopping…
…the pages of this very episode guide…
…real. No instead, in this world, all…
…just the weekly transmissions of a dumb tv show. Absurd, right? Who would fall for such…
And Tara. at least at first…
Can Isabel and Tara find each other again on the hazy…
…as it glows dimly? The Luna Juice and soil is caught…
…I have much time. But then again, time might not work exactly… think it does. After all,…
…right now, aren’t I? But you’re also reading it right now. Strange.
Tara is the first one to realize something is very wrong.
…the “home” where she’s been placed is little more than…
Even though I couldn’t decipher all of it, that’s telling you the whole game right there. This is from “season six,” which we know later from Maddy is when the two of them “escape the midnight realm” aka get away from Mr. Melancholy/dysphoria and transition.
So they’re trapped in a living hell by dysphoria, losing their lives (and time) to dissociating.
Look how it gets metatextual, “the pages of this very episode guide,” “you’re also reading it now. Strange.” Weird wording for an episode guide, don’t you think? That’s because it’s not just an episode guide.
Owen knows he’s severing his own connection to his transness, and transitioning in the future, and condemning himself to a life of dysphoria and lost time from dissociating. This is his subconscious trying to call out to him, to get him to accept his truth.
Will he listen? Is he ready? Because we can never accept the truth about ourselves until we are.
Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com