I Saw the TV Glow

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Dudeudes, Hello, and welcome to this episode of Superhero Ethics. Today we're talking about the movie I Saw the TV Glow. It's an independent movie from a twenty four that uses the idea of horror as a metaphor and allegory for trans experience in some really powerful ways. That led us to want to talk about trans representation in film and the way this movie uses it as an allegory to the way horror is used as a genre to talk about the kind of things that we love here on

And let me just.

Start by asking you, Riki, you saw this movie, you recommended it to me, What was kind of your initial take on this movie?

Amazing?

Just an amazing movie. And of course horror is my wheelhouse. Anytime I can get you to watch a horror product, I'm thrilled and This one is weird because you had some trouble categorizing it to define it, and it does get described as horror, but it doesn't feel like it, Like once you watch it, it just doesn't feel like a horror movie. And I'm the Wikipedia page describes it as psychological horror. I think that's kind of a good fit.

The world, right, And that's a big part of what threw me with this movie.

And I want to say, I think a lot of listeners probably have not seen this movie yet. It's not been well talked about, although it's gotten a lot of kind of indie discussion. I would highly recommend pausing this pausing this pod. I would highly recommend pausing this podcast. Finding it online. It's available a couple of different places

Uh.

It's a movie about two young people they start out as a night I think thirteen and eleven and then kind of the age throughout the movie, who become friends in the nineties over their shared love of a TV show called The pink O Pike, and The pink O Pike is very much supposed to be a kind of Buffy related show that they show scenes from it that even use the exact same font and style for the

Is the show in the characters? All this kind of stuff, But what it.

Eventually builds to is that it is, in allegory, a metaphor for the experience of being trans and of figuring out that you are trans because the discussions about you know, what is inside me and all this kind of thing. It's very hard to explain because she's really got to watch it, but it's basically leading up to the main character coming to realize that she is trans, but that she's been hiding that her entire life and hiding hiding from it, and that the show has been this incredible

And I think you're right.

I'm someone for whom I grew up where horror was Friday the Thirteenth and Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween, the slasher movies, and I've come to understand that horror can be other things that there's you know, like get

About to die. And this movie has none of that.

And I think because of that, I kind of missed a lot the first time I was watching, because I thought it was gonna be a movie about trans people.

Living in a horror movie.

And then right I thought it was gonna be about trans people in a horror movie, and their transness was going to be connected to things and gonna be some metaphors, but it would still be kind of a traditional horror movie. But at the end, as you said, what we realize is that what it's instead doing is saying it's not

His transnists or her transness.

And I use this pronouns interchanging because the director and the writer has done that as well. It's kind of part of the point. We don't get to see the character like post transition, but that the kind of real horror is what if you have been living this melancholic, empty existence of closetedness and so yeah, so it didn't really line up with any.

Of my ideas of what horror was.

And I think I kind of because that went in with the wrong framework, and I'm taking for you it was kind of a very different experience.

Well, yeah, I want to start by addressing the pronoun issue because in the movie they never use the word trans right or or cis or I think ever mentioned gender. They refer to Owen as you know, he him, and there's never as you said, there's never a post transition. So it's unclear like if you just watched the movie, what you know, how you should refer to Owen. So I will probably continue to refer to Owen as he him throughout the discussion because that's how the character is

So in the movie.

Within the movie, there's the TV show they watch, the pink Opake, And in that show there's a villain called mister Melancholy who captures the two protagonists of the TV show in a place called the Midnight Realm. And it's framed as like this different existence where they are kept in kind of a suspended animation of melancholiness, and they need to escape that to return to their real world. And then what happens in the movie reality the reality

And important to this when Maddy comes back. Their presentation in the young earlier part of the movie was cis female.

They do say.

That they like girls. You mentioned how they never much word like trans. They also never say lesbian. They never say ace, although Owen says that he just at one point Mattie asks you like girls, he says, I don't really know.

I like TV shows.

But when Maddy comes back, her gender identities is presented much more androgynous, and she does he hasn't changed her name.

She ask me to pronouns, but clearly.

She has stepped outside of the realm of sis presentation.

So just with quick note, we're going yeah.

And in one of the flashbacks, there's like a brief half a second shot of Justice Smith's character Owen, wearing a dress, so like when they were watching the TV show, presumably like they had like a sleepover and Owen put on a dress, and that that is like the only like clear visual hint right of kind of what's going on, And of course, like we know more in our reality because the writer, director Jane Schoenbrun, is trans and has talked about this movie and about the issues around it.

Down your throat. This doesn't do that at all.

And in fact, like if you can watch it and just like not understand or know at all what's going on, but if you do know, as you said, like on a second viewing it, just like everything opens up. You're like, oh, oh.

Well, And I will say, and this is not a critique all. I think this is just our two different perspectives. I think I picked up on a lot of the transnists in that first watch in a way that I think a lot of folks don't. And because similar how like when you and I watch anime, sometimes there are things you point out that I don't see because I don't have that cultural context.

And I'm doing a lot of research about this.

I've seen a lot of this kind of breakdown of CIS folks saying not by all means on either side of this, but like SIS folks saying like, yeah, I didn't really get that it was about transnist till the very end until I read more about it or something like that, and trans folks saying like, oh no, like that part I could tell from the very beginning and you're right, because there's a lot of little cues like that.

Oh, isn't that a show for girls? You know?

And him having this very close relationship with his mother but not with his father, not with his father. And one thing I think that becomes really important is and here I am curious, and I'd love to hear from younger listeners if you've noticed this. Nostalgia is a very important part of this movie. As I said, it's very Buffy referential. And I came of age and came to

Was talking about.

Asexuality was a word that was barely being talked about. And I went to a pretty liberal progressive high school and my friends were mostly from liberal progressive families. But even there, like there were books that we had about being trans about being queer that I remember, like friends passing them to each other in paper bags because we didn't want the teacher to see them, and other kinds of like this this idea of secrecy being a part of it.

And this movie does something really brilliant where.

For a long time Owen isn't for his entire childhood, Owen isn't allowed to watch the movie by his parents. He has and so Maddy has to give him the videotapes in secret, which by the way, is also a whole nostalgia thing of like, you know, now, we're just so used to like oh yeah, and even can go find a show and like just erase your search history when your parents aren't looking like whatever. But the idea that like you had to get VHS tapes to watch a show because it was hard to find and someone.

Had to give it to you in secret. It just it hits so much of my.

Nostalgia of being a young queer kid in the nineties, and I think that's very, very intentional.

And the nostalgia part also plays into the plot going on, because in his adult life, Owen rewatches The pink Opake, like on a streaming service and it's different, like literally we are shown a scene that he watched as a kid that is different, like the character is portrayed differently, and that is to a kind of tap into that nostalgia of like the show that we liked as kids maybe aren't quite as good or in this case as scary, like the original portrayal of the villain was much scarier,

Than I remember. But it is also playing off.

Of the reality of the movie of being trapped in the midnight realm and literally like reality being changed and alternate for Owen.

Yeah, And I think that's a great example because this first time I was watching it, I got stuck on the this is an actual horror thing happening. So I was thinking, like, is the idea that something supernaturally changed this on streaming services or is this a secret government conspiracy? Like I was thinking in those terms instead of recognizing this is all metaphor.

And I'm wondering, I'm.

Maybe looking too deep into this, but I'm wondering if you thought this as well. It's not just a Buffy standoff, but there's clear, very clear Buffy references in the way that whole show plays out, the pink O pake. And one of the things that's happened with Buffy and with Buffy fandom is that obviously we've learned a lot of things about Joss Whedon that are pretty terrible and that has, you know, affected the way a lot of people think of this show a show that was incredibly formative and

I don't believe so, because there's no there's no mention in the story in the movie story of the creator of the TV show, Like there's some credits are flashed on the screen, but the Maddie and Owen never talk about the creators of the show. They just talk about the plot of the show and what's going on. So I don't think that is part of it. And of course, like I agree that the especially the font is like the biggest that is like the same font as the

Is really bad if you watch it. Unfortunately.

That's very fair.

Yeah, I think another part of the nostalgia thing is that there's also the sense of the unreliable narrator, because in a lot of ways, Owen is very clearly the narrator, and there's fourth wall breaks, like he will just look directly at the camera and tell you the kind of things that might otherwise be in a voiceover, where your a sense of like maybe this isn't a book someone else is reading, Like no, he.

Just talks to the TV.

What we clearly learn that he's not always telling the full story because, like you mentioned that, we get shots of Owen in a pink dress, and I think it's a pink dress very similar to one that Isabelle, who's the kind of shyer, less comfortable accepting what they are character. And it's also the Black Girl and the Tube Girls, and Owen is black and Maddie's white. So I think it's really set up that Owen sees himself as Maddie. Owen sees himself as Isabelle, and Maddie sees herself as

I thought was very intentional and very powerful.

Yeah, he mentioned real quick.

Tara from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the character, the lesbian character who's in a relationship with Willow. There's actually Amber Benson, the actress who played Tara is in this movie as the mom of Owen's friend who he tells his parents he's going to his friend's house when he's.

Going to Maddie's house.

Right, there's the scene where he kind of gives up, I guess and tells Amber Benson's character, I don't think her name is given, tells her, I've been lying to my parents. I need you to tell them, basically, like to ground him forcing himself to not be able to go to Maddie's house to watch the pink Opake as part of like his denial.

Well it's specific because she's about to run away and she wants him to come with her, and that's when he's like, no, you got to do this. And that felt really appropriate to me because I do think part of his whole story and again, this really fits into the whole metaphor is his idea of like, living outside the rules is dangerous, that the rules.

Will keep me safe.

And it makes sense because he has a very overprotective mother and parents, to the point where even in high school he has a ten thirty bedtime, which Maddie points out it's kind of ridiculous for a high school student.

Father played by Fred Durst, by the way, hilarious, Not quite, I guess, as cameo, I don't know.

I don't know what he's been up to. Yeah, Branch added some acting.

I only know if like I think he was the lead singer of some band, Like I only know of him because he mentioned an eminem song in a pretty sexist way.

Yeah, he was the lead singer of Limp Biscuit.

That's it. Okay, that's it.

Yeah.

Yeah, but you again kind of feeding into the nineties nostalgia in a cool way.

Nineties two thousands nostalgia.

Yeah, tangent sidebar it every time, like one of those actors or actresses from my youth is like a parent in a movie.

I dialetle on the inside.

You know when my teen crush Winona Ryder was the parent in Stranger Things, Yeah, exactly.

It did a lot, did a lot.

Yeah, No, I totally get it, though, and I think it's part of what Well, let me just ask you, as someone who's not in the trans community, but clearly I know, like trans writes and stuff like that are very important to you, even part of the Magic Judge community, uh, which you know, in which there's a lot of trans folks. What what I'm curious kind of how you viewed those What were the things that you were picking up on that kind of were signaling that or you know, however

Well.

I knew going into watching the movie because I this movie was on my radar because I pay attention to a lot of horror adjacent news and content creators who talk about horror.

So I knew going in.

I was like, Okay, like I definitely want to watch this, and so I was looking at everything through that lens, and I mean, it makes sense to me, it doesn't,

Just to clarify for those who don't know, egg is a metaphor that's often used within trans communities.

Of that like discovering who you are and letting.

That out is cracking the egg, and that people kind of look it back and be like, oh, yeah, that moment five years ago where I kind of like really loved my friend's dress that was kind of one of the first cracks in my egg, et cetera.

Yeah, and it and this movie I think follows in a tradition that in some ways goes back to like The Matrix. Of course I could be farther back, but The Matrix is often cited as that type of egg cinema because, of course, now we understand that the Wachowskis are trans and they were presenting as male at the time I've transitioned to female.

And.

That you know that in that movie, it's literally like you are in a reality, computer generated reality and then escape to the real world. So It's like the same thing, right, the escape from one reality into the real one. So Maddie in this movie, I saw a TV glow has a scape from the Midnight realm, which is their their matrix, their prison, and then comes back and tells, Ohen, look, you got to get out of here.

This isn't real you you are going to die in here.

In fact, and that especially, there's a scene shown where Isabelle, right Matt Owen's kind of pink Opake persona is being buried alive, and I think like dirt is literally being thrown on her body by the by the villains, and Owen in his reality suffers from asthma and as he gets older, has more and more trouble breathing. Right, So it's this like the two realities are paralleling to like, oh, that's what's going on, right, And and that's what I said earlier, is that you can understand it as just

I think that's really true, and I think that's you know, I like things that are more clear and direct and hit you over the head. But I also think that you're right, there's a real need for stories like this, especially where it's a story that it does speak so much to people who are within the experience, but also not in a way that is alienating or pushing away anyone who isn't necessarily, And I'm to say, like, I think there's some stuff that should be so trans that

Well, the thing that happens in the movie, right Owen has to like sneak around and watch the pink O pig because he doesn't want his parents to know like that, I think that experience in our real world is what the creator is trying to avoid, Like creating this movie that you can watch and yeah, like if you listen to the people talk about it, you know, and you

Like protest and stuff.

Because again, like they never use the word trans Like there's a there's like a half second of Owen I wearing a dress, and.

There's like three or four long shots of it, but yeah, right, it's pretty pretty short.

And there's like the the idea of his character in the pink O Pike being female, but again, like that is something I think that is a way that these movies have been able to talk about these issues is through like a supernatural or scientific like gender swap.

Yeah, like this feels like the kind of movie that a fifteen year old in a very you know, conservative household wouldn't have, wouldn't have to hide in their church history necessarily.

Yeah, exactly might. And and the thing is like it's not that media like.

This doesn't turn people trans right or turn people gay or whatever. Like that is such a terrible concept. Because you can watch this and like understand, like, oh, appreciate that this is about a trans experience and say, okay, I understand that I like it. I like what I'm seeing, but that's not me, Like that's how I felt like. I you know, I've thought about it in my life, in my lifetime because like, for example, when I when as a kid video games, I would often play female.

Characters, right, yeah, to do a different thing.

And for some people that can be kind of a window into your self identity and it can be like the first beginnings of questioning your gender. It wasn't for me, but like those kinds of things I think are important.

Well and as well, Like I'm a very careful I'm not speaking for you, but in general, I think it's very possible for people, and I think this is a good and healthy thing for people to question their gender and come to the answer that there sys Like to me, that's very different than just never questioning it and taking his default. And I really I think it's a great time to really talk about kind of the monster the horror of this movie because it's so tied into what

Be specific about transnists.

But I think like someone who's always wanted to be an artist but it's for you know, has become a nine to five, you know, corporate job, but always want to do something else.

I could easily see seeing themselves in this movie.

Of you knowuse the final scene of Owen literally cracking himself open and realizing that there's this whole living self, his soul inside of himself that he thought was dead, you know, to me, like, yeah, the person who starts painting again at age fifty, who gave it up at sixteen.

It's just as much there.

But it's also very much this very real metaphor for transnis and hearing we speak very personally. I think there can be a lot of generational conflict around and I see this in a lot of tradition, a lot of communities where one community had to fight very hard for rights and they won some fights, and as a result, younger generations now get to enjoy things they didn't get to enjoy, and there can be resentment both sides and like, oh, why don't you appreciate us, or oh, why are you

It's even more so.

The idea of this, like because when I talk to other people who've discovered their gender, you know, accepted their gender much later in life.

There's also this sense of like how much time have I wasted? How much time?

Like could what would my life have been like if I could have been this? And I think I think this movie really speaks to that in a way that both acknowledges that at but it's also like, that's the whole point of own cracking himself open at the time. It's that when he cracks himself often that that glowness, the glowing of the TV, which has been this representation

But it doesn't mean that you're dead. It doesn't mean that you're over.

It doesn't mean that because you didn't accept it as a as a teenager a young adult when it was presented to you, the horror that therefore you have to deny the rest of your life isn't true.

Mm hmm.

Yeah.

And then you said the TV glow, Right, it's obviously the title of the movie. There's a couple of times where the glow is presented as a portal, right, And at one point he literally like tries to go through his own TV. I think, like smashes his head into his TV and it's his dad, Fred Durst, who stops him, right, And I think at that time Owen is saying something, saying something. I can't remember the exact line he says.

In the final scene, right.

He shouts out at his job at the like fun center job. He shouts out like help me, like I'm dying here, and the reality freezes and every other character is frozen, and you know, it doesn't react to him, and then like a reality kind of restarts.

Yeah, And I.

Like, again, to me, I understand the metaphor, it doesn't speak to me, But that scene was so powerful because I think it's a it can be a universal feelings you've been saying of I'm trapped, like I'm dying here in this life, like I want to escape it, So that can be a universal feeling regardless of what he did specifically, you're.

Trying to escape.

Yeah, yeah, very much so. And I think that's that's to me, that's what's so important to intersectionality. It's what's so important to you know, any of these things, like I think we I think there's this balance that that it's really hard to find between on the one hand, saying the experience of this one person or this one community is unique and separate and no one else should relate to it because that's insulting to that community, or saying we're all oppressed in the same way.

We all have the same experience. It's all the same thing.

And I think it's really important to be able to find that balance of saying like, yeah, the experience of a trans person, or the experience of a black person, the experience of a woman, or of a disabled person or an Asian person, or any of these things is going to be unique and different, and that uniqueness has to be honored and looked at, but that they are also similarities.

In the ways we can all relate.

You know, there are things you have said about, you know, your name being mispronounced, or other aspects of being Asian American and things like that, and discrimination and depression you've dealt with that I don't. I have never dealt with those things, but they connect enough to things that I have dealt with that I can understand. And I just love the way that this movie does that of you know, and I because I think it is just such a

But nothing else about this specific thing you wanted to mention.

No, I think we're good on this movie. It's and I just want to reiterate, it's it's very different. Like if you've listened to this discussion so far and you haven't seen it, of course, like I highly recommend you watch it. I don't think if people are squeamish about horror as the genre, it just it doesn't hit any of those notes.

Yeah, you know, there's no.

The psychological like existential horror like it. It may make you think about stuff afterwards in a way that is uncomfortable and so so that's something to be aware of, but it's not going to like gross you out or like give you the jump scares and make you afraid, you know, keep make you keep the lights on at night. I don't, at least I don't think so.

Yeah, definitely.

A couple of the last things I reason I want to say one is that I realized I never quite made this connection. But part of why I went on that whole thing about the horror, the tragedy being a person not really a person, having lived so much of their life without realizing who they are and what they are, is that, as you said, there's this myth that movies like this, or movies that are more explicit about things, turn people trans Where's the reality.

Out which is just total BS.

Right, that's total BS.

But the reality is that they are fighting against this horror, which is what they're doing is saying there is like there are words for that thing you have inside yourself that you think there aren't any words for. And I think that that is so powerful and kind of on that subject. I don't have no idea of the experience of this movie anything to do with this. It seems like this was a truth already known but has only

That Wikipedia has already been updated.

Has it awesome? Okay, so yeah, that's kind of cool. And the last thing I wanted to say, and this is just one more of those. It's like a small little detail, but that was so poignant, and that this one I missed the first time through, but I really the second time. There's a scene early in the movie where Maddie is talking to Owen about the show and Owen is trying to understand, and Owen is clearly kind of confused because Owen is jumping in right in the middle.

Owen has just watched like a.

Random episode from season four of a show that he's not seen anything of before. Maddie is a little bit not really like, you know, malicious way making fun of him, but he's kind of like, you know, teasing him and kind of surprised, like, oh, don't you know that when he asks some questions and they're kind of specific, like he asks at one point, so does this mean that they are part of the pink Opake?

And she says, no, it means they are the pink Opake.

And once I connected this movie as the metaphor that it is that feels like such an allegory to a person discovering later in life that they are queer, they are trans and trying to jump into online conversations about this to learn about this where there's just so much lingo and it's great and it's wonderful, but it changes every three or four years, and there's so many acronyms,

I think that's right.

I think a lot of like subcommunities can have these whole lingo and language that again, because Owen is later in life discovering it, he doesn't know and that's part of the problem for him.

Yeah, I deal with that a lot in gaming communities. Yeah, there will be like light teasing or gate light gatekeeping over URMs.

Right, if you use.

A certain term that's older, it's like, oh, well that's a boomer.

Term, right, yep type of thing. Yeah, yeah, see that happen totally.

So So one thing we were thinking about in terms of this conversation is that this is by no means the only sort of transness as a big issue in a movie that's come out this year. There's another one that's come out that just got thirteen Oscar nominations. It is very well regarded by a lot of the film community world. Amelia Perez, I've heard it often pronounced with a much more Mexican pronunciation of those words that I'm not going to try and recreate.

And it's it's. It is a much more specific movie.

It is a movie about a trans woman and her the experience of her trandness is a very big part of the movie. It is also very badly regarded by, frankly, a lot of the trans community and a lot of the Mexican community. And and Riki, I know you wanted to talk about that in comparison with this Where Where Where?

Where? Is it few that that this movie intersects well.

I think this movie, first off, like, it's very important that the actress who's playing the title character is trans Carlos Sophia Gascon, and she has been nominated for an Academy Award. It's the first time in history that an openly transferson has been nominated for an Academy Award. And like, there are a bunch of other like firsts in terms

You know.

The first Oscar ever won by a black woman, I think possibly by a black person was Hattie McDaniel in nineteen thirty nine, who won the Oscar for playing the slave made to Scarlett O'Hara and Gone with a win, a incredibly racist movie and an incredibly racist portrayal through no fault, I mean the way the character is written. But still it's an amazing achievement and and nothing should ever be taken away from Hatti McDaniel for it.

Yeah good, yeah, good comparison. So what is going on with this movie? Like why is it being criticized? I think there's a couple of things going on, like what what have you seen?

Discussed?

The best way I can describe this, both from all the critiques and stuff that I've read and also from my own viewing of it is and this is my terminology, but I think it's similar to what a lot of people said. It's kind of like the Green Book of Transnis.

Not challenged, but I think like celebrating their lack of racism, right.

And it was largely panned by large members of black community and black film critics and stuff like that, and one I think it one best picture, and that was seen as a kind of like, oh, this is this is you know, an example of we're not celebrating black film creators. We're we're celebrating like white people being heroic in the face of.

Racism, et cetera.

And this.

A trans character is one of the main characters, and it's certainly the title character, but so much of it play And there's a great article that I read recently by that was put out by Glad that I will link to that really kind of goes through it all the problems with it, but it just it plays into almost every stereotype that people have about trans people. It's

Yeah, I.

Just want to go down the the biography of the film here, because it's written and directed by Jacques Audiard.

I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly.

That's a French film director, and he's French, and by all we know a cis male, right, So they are a French cis male has written and directed a movie about a Mexican trans woman, and and that it it raises an eyebrow, right, And the same thing like The Green Book, I believe was written and diregged by different people, but from what I can find, they're both white, right, So it's like, yes, like people who are not of the identity creating something about very like strongly portraying a

And of course, like Spike.

Lee has been snubbed multiple times by the Academy, and it was a lot of people roll their eyes. It's like like Spike Lee again, it's been snubbed, but the specific way of like the Green Book beating out the Black clansmen and then being celebrated. It's like this great movie for black people. It was like, no.

Context there be This was coming right on the heels of the Oscars So White campaign that have been talking about how often black black creators and black movies and black you know, actors and directors and people across the board were denied denied Oscars, and so I think there was this kind of self congratulated tone by Hollywood and like, no, look, it's not Oscar So White anymore.

We rewarded this movie about racism. And it's like, and I'm sure there's a similar thing with a Millia Peres now.

And yeah, I mean Maherschela Ali I think was the most prominent black person who won and who won an Oscar with regards to that movie, right, And it's the kind of thing like that. It's called these are often called like white savior movies.

Yep.

In the same way that Hidden Figures, a movie about the black mathematicians who helped the NASA Space program to make all the calculation to be able to get a rocket into space.

And go to the moon.

And yet right, the main character, like the most prominent character is Kevin Costner's white Guy, and the scene that was shown in the trailers that we remember as him taking like a golf club to the whites only.

Sign above the bathroom yep.

And so like it's that kind of thing where oh yeah, like as a as a white person or as a non black person, like you feel good because this white guy is like standing against racism, but it's not.

It should be more.

Centered on the black characters because that's what it is purportedly about.

And so the same thing here is.

That the this this French Cismle Guy is creating a movie that is getting all this buzz and is elevating the trans discussion, which I think is good, right, having more trans representation.

In movies and TV everywhere in life is good. But when the trans community is saying this is a bad portrayal, this is a harmful portrayal, then that you know, we gotta we gotta question that, and we got to listen to them. And then like again the comparison to Green Book and Black Clansmen. I saw the TV Glows got no nominations, right when when it is the actual representation of trans experience that we you know, in our opinion is very good.

Yeah, very much, so very much.

I think part of that budget, you know, Milli pre is getting a much bigger budget, Like there's I was thinking about, where does I see the TV Glow fit in terms of an Oscar conversation, And I think the unfortunate thing is because it is fairly low budget and like some of the like some of the like Justice what they do to age Justice Smith just looks bad unfortunately. And there's some other stuff like that where it's like it feels like the production values are not what you

And horror horror gets often ignored, yes or sidelined for award season. That has definitely been a thing historically, and uh.

And they are the fact that I think if any horror had been nominated, it was probably gonna be no know Saratu and the fact that it also got no nominations has except for like some technical things, has been also part of the whole, like horror gets shut out and stuff like that.

Yeah, I mean this has been a thing among horror fans for a long time.

I think the most prominent.

Horror movie to do well and then Oscars was Silence of the Lambs YEP, which also has a problematic portrayal of a possibly transperson in Buffalo bill Is for that time, like they didn't call himself trans and it's not clear.

In the movie portrayed as a man who cross dressed.

But right, historically we can see that maybe as a precursor.

Right, No, exactly.

And there's two other movies I want to bring up that I think in the last couple of years have also done like much better jobs than Amelia Perez.

And these are both sort.

Of closer to the metaphor idea, but both really powerful and both animated and both kind of on the surface kids movies, which I think is really important because I think, you know, this whole idea of grooming children is absolute bullshit.

Saw the TV Glow.

See I and this, like I have a different opinion on Luca and this might just be our different lived experiences and how we view things. But to me, stuff like that is more about race, mmm okay, And and that could also just be the Star Trek of me is like different races in Star Trek are often used for discussions about race, like are like human races like black, white, and Asian, et cetera.

So that's that's that's a different frame.

I got an animated movie that has been often cited as an egg movie. It's called Your Name. It's Japanese anime. The Japanese name is Kimino Nawa and it is about It's a rom com and it's one of my favorite movies of all time. I've mentioned it before, but it is about a man and a woman or a boy and a girl. They're teenagers who body swap through un known magical powers.

It's never explained.

They just body swap and then like live their lives for a while and like each other's bodies and keep going back and forth and communicate to each other through like written notes or like text messages to themselves. And it has like a few of those tropy moments that like often gender body swap movies do about when you

Yeah, no, I can see that. It's definitely what I'd love to say.

And there's one other example that I think a lot of folks are kind of maybe even wondering why we haven't talked about yet. But another example of think where sci fi is used as a great metaphor from one of the things transness which is the trills and the character of jed Zia Dax and other Daxes in Star Trek, Deep Space nine and Star Trek in general. We're gonna talk about that in our Bonus member section, which is

In our show notes, we're gonna start.

Letting people know what's the next episode we're doing, so that you have a chance to kind of send us feedback or send us thoughts, or watch along or anything like that. I want to also let you know that it's not always going to be the case. But we're mostly going to be recording on Thursdays at twelve o'clock Central time. Sometimes we're gonna do other times as well, but we're getting ready to sort of send out a