Join us for a screening of Jane Schoenbrun's film I Saw the TV Glow (2024). The screening will be followed by a post-screening discussion as part of Dr Darren Elliott-Smith's research project The Struggle is Real: Queer Horror and Trauma.
About the film:
I Saw the TV Glow (2024) directed by trans filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun (We're all Going to the World’s Fair (2021) is an indie-horror which focuses on the relationship between two angst ridden teens, Owen (Justice Smith) and Maddy (Jack Haven) who bond over their love of the fictional cult TV series The Pink Opaque (a Buffy The Vampire Style, monster of the week TV horror serial). The show and their obsessive love of it, provides escape from a world of bullying and oppression that sees Owen and Maddy as Others within a high-school milieu of jocks and prom nights. They begin to feel that the lead characters of The Pink Opaque (Isobel and Tara) are indeed fictional versions of themselves, and that the TV world is in fact reality leaving them questioning their own lives and identities. I Saw the TV Glow has been praised by LGBTQ+ scholars and critics alike in its representation of embodied Otherness, dysmorphia and alternative sexuality. Schoenbrun's film uses LGBTQ+ fan experience to demonstrate how film and TV can play a vital part in allowing queer folks to find themselves via identification with characters and situations on screen.
About the post-screening discussion:
The screening will be followed by a post-screening discussion where the film's themes and representations will be considered in contrast and comparison with audiences' own lived experiences of difference, loneliness, isolation, desire, and trauma. We will ask those joining the discussion to think about the ways in which we engage with film and TV shows in order to find expression and identification in a world that increasingly feels oppressive for those who identify as LGBTQ+.
Please note: the post-screening discussion is entirely optional. Participants who do decide to join us are able to leave the discussion at any time, and a quiet space will also be available should anyone feel they need some time on their own.
About Dr Elliott-Smith's research project:
Queer Horror is a sub-genre that describes horror and Gothic media that has been reclaimed by LGBTQ+ communities. Queer Horror often confronts, reinterprets and works through previously oppressive tropes and conventions from the genre to allow for an expression of trauma, anxiety and desire felt deeply by LGBTQ+ folks in the recent difficult cultural moment. This series of screenings is programmed by the University of Stirling/Creative Stirling as part of an ongoing community/academic project entitled The Struggle is Real: Queer Horror and Trauma. Taking some key examples from recent cinema, these film screenings will be introduced by published academics working in the field of Film, TV and Gender Studies and will be followed by post-screening discussions around the themes and experiences raised by and represented in the films.
Please note: this event is 18+.
