disjointed thoughts on X-Files, I Saw the TV Glow, and other consumptions

I started watching X-Files again, which I didn’t think would inevitably lead to a tie-in with I Saw The TV Glow, but alas, here we are. Here’s an inane and rambling sort of look into the numerous things I’ve been consuming1 and how they all morphed together.

X-Files 

When I was a kid I was terrified of aliens. I read a book too early about them and had a nightmare of being abducted that filled me with so much fear I raced downstairs to cry in my mother’s lap. I remember what she was wearing too: a rich purple shirt with a smiley face on it. Years later, Zach would buy a long-sleeved shirt with a similar vibe: melting goopy smiley yellow faces. Funny how that happens.

I started the X-Files because I’m a TV addict and it was one of the acclaimed shows I hadn’t seen yet. I watched it with a past boyfriend and we’d listen to a podcast, hosted by Kumal Najini that waded through the old message boards highlighting what other people were saying about the show at the time. He also told you which episodes to skip and which ones not to, which was super helpful.

I stopped watching for years. The show takes a dip in tone and it’s hard to watch a show you started years ago again. But there’s still something refreshing in the return to that past consumption with a new set of eyes (or heart). It’s something I think I Saw the TV Glow (a movie about a monster of the week show)2 tackles well: the things we consume at different periods of our lives look different as we grow, but still hold their same intrinsic value.'

Five seasons in and I’m reminded just how much we all could use a new monster of the week show and how the age of prestige streaming shows has completely destroyed any chance we have at getting 24 episodes seasons ever again. Also Scully, girl it’s been 5 seasons! Just accept that Mulder’s going to be right but in an obnoxious roundabout way!

Queer Mentorship and I Saw the TV Glow

I Saw the TV Glow got me thinking a bit about queer mentorship. The film follows Owen, an isolated and repressed 7th grader who runs into Maddy, the reading-in-the-dark-emo-adjacent-9th-grader who first introduces Owen to the Pink Opaque. Throughout the show we see their relationship grow and form, each sharing the small bits of their trauma that make them feel like outcasts.

To Owen, Maddy is his quasi-queer mentor: first getting him to disobey his parent’s rules and come over to watch the Pink Opaque together, then lending him tapes when he’s too afraid to come again, and finally coming back from the Pink Opaque to save him from his boring and mundane life in the suburbs and help him unleash his true identity. Queer people don’t really get a manual for how to be queer. At the very least I didn’t. We rely on others to help us fill in the gaps while straight people tend to get nurtured into their whole selves by the collective hand of society. I think most queer have some person (or persons) who showed them the reigns of how to be queer. Maybe it’s a best friend, a brief fling, or a dedicated boyfriend3. Someone brings you in, shows you what movies and TV shows to watch, bars to go to, lingo to learn. The process of transitioning from the non-queer self to the queer self can be hard and frightening. In Owen’s case, it can feel jarring, and disorienting but exhilarating.

Sooner or later that mentor has to leave. Or at least, in Owen’s case they did. As Maddy mentions, she’d die if she stayed there, she’s certain of it. I think a certain thread of melancholy comes from this inevitable departure. Our queer mentors can only take us so far. They can walk us to the edge of revelation, but we have to take the step into that void alone.

Frances Quinlan’s song from I Saw The TV Glow, Another Season.

I noticed Frances Quinlan the moment the ending credits started because who else has such a distinctively lyrical voice like that? I’ll be super honest, I didn’t really notice because I only know them by their band Hop Along, but still. I immediately went to Wikipedia to make sure I wasn’t imagining something, and nope they’re on the official soundtrack!

In particular this lyric:

Could have been ripped directly from my journal (or notes app)4. It also fits into the above thing about queer mentorship just a bit. The idea that Quinlan could be singing about the person from their past they mentored, hoping that in some strange way, they’ve managed to find some stable place of their own.

Chicago

I’m going to Chicago for the first time in a couple of weeks so I’ve been fully in vacation mode for the entire month of June. I don’t think Zach and I have taken a vacation-vacation to another city before. I went to Boston with him about a year ago but that was for a conference he was attending. This is different because we’re going together, it’ll be the first time we’ve left Cookie since we got him, and we lined it up so that we’re going for one weekend of Chicago Pride.

If you’ve got good Chicago recs let me know!