Gays Burying Ourselves Immersive and Subversive Uses of Neon Noir in I Saw the TV Glow

• Published in: M/C journal Vol. 28; no. 1
• Main Author: Joseph, Kaela
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 18.03.2025
• ISSN: 1441-2616; 1441-2616
• DOI: 10.5204/mcj.3140

Introduction Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow (ISTTVG) is a psychological science fiction/horror film which draws upon audiences’ associations between serialised television and queer identity development to ask a terrifying question: would you bury yourself alive to solve the mystery of a parallel life not yet lived? The film is an allegory for queer experiences of internalised heteronormativity and concealment in which the villain is not the typical monster of the week, but our own selves, suffocating under the mundanity of surroundings we have yet to break free from. Neon noir elements are used throughout, including dark and mysterious subject matter explored through expressionist cinematography and neon lighting, grim settings utilised to foster anxiety and paranoia, and morally ambiguous characters who embody archetypes such as the femme fatale and anti-hero. Neon noir as a framing device is simultaneously immersive and subversive, engrossing the audience in something familiar, while warping it until it feels unequivocally queer and immeasurably horrific. It trades the neon lights of the city for those of television sets and makes its setting the suburbs, acknowledging that it is the typicality of high school gymnasiums that feels dangerous to queer people, not back alleys. The overall dreamlike quality of queer temporality tells us “there is still time”, while constantly reminding us that time is running out. The femme fatale does not tempt the protagonist with her feminine wiles but with the allure of the protagonist’s own, suppressed femininity. The protagonist then is not an anti-hero due to physical violence enacted towards others, but for emotional violence enacted towards the self. This article explores neon noir as a major device in ISTTVG through cinematography, setting, and character, and explains the connection between noir’s broader roots in the Hays Code and the evolution of the trope ‘bury your gays’. Noir and Queer Storytelling To understand noir’s usage in ISTTVG, it is necessary to first understand the shared histories of noir and queer storytelling, with “queer” used for the purposes of this article as a broad umbrella under which all non-heteronormative sexualities and genders are encapsulated. Noir as a genre originated in the United States shortly following the establishment of the Hollywood Production Code, colloquially known as the Hays Code (Smith). The Hays Code placed several prohibitions on depictions of queerness, and sexuality in general, forcing queer storytelling in Hollywood-produced media to become subtextual (Russo 31) or coded (Hulan 17). This was something noir storytelling embraced. Noir, after all, has been described as paranoia put to screen (Gürkan 17), and sometimes it is what audiences do not see which stokes their deepest, underlying fears, thus achieving consternation through imagination (Smith). Paranoia during the time of the Hays Code was also something audiences already had in spades. While classic noir, like all media of the time, was inarguably influenced by the Hays Code (Pavés 360), it is also inseparable from post-World War II anxieties about morality and social change (Gürkan 17). Noir has many definitions; however, the original noir films of the 1940s and 1950s are typically recognised by their expressionistic depictions of that which was considered at the time to be socially deviant but potentially alluring (Gürkan 20). Noir films served as cautionary tales, especially about the dangerous temptation of urban life (Gürkan 20). Noir thus adhered to the Hays Code by depicting ‘deviant’ characters facing major consequences for their actions, including death (Smith). For queer characters, this often meant punishment for simply being queer (Hulan 21). While more complex and nuanced depictions of queer characters were certainly attempted in classic noir films, these attempts were routinely rejected by censors, either heavily edited or outright repudiated by the Production Code Administration responsible for upholding the Hays Code (Pavés 370). This trend of punishing queer characters, especially by death, simply for being queer has continued well beyond the Hays Code (Hulan 21), which ended in 1968 (Rosenfeld). In fact, while a fair amount of scholarship about this trope, sometimes referred to as ‘bury your gays’, does focus on the code’s influence, the trope is older by a considerable number of years, originating in at least the late nineteenth century and still present in media to this day (Hulan 17-9). The trope more recently became part of non-academic, popular discourse, in the early twentyfirst century, following an increase in dedicated spaces for fans to discuss trends in queer media representation online, with a focus on lesbian deaths in serialised television in shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) and The 100 (2014-2020; Hulan 23-4). Noir’s successors, neo-noir and neon noir, however, have largely subverted this trope by letting the gays be the ones who hold the metaphorical shovel, enacting violence rather than only being victims of it. Examples include Bound (1996), in which women lovers stage a heist towards their shared freedom, dropping bodies in their wake, and Love Lies Bleeding (2024), in which women lovers enact similar, violent revenge before driving off to their new lives together (Smith). Another recent film, Femme (2021), pits queer characters against one another, illustrating the ways in which internalised shame sometimes causes queer people to attempt to bury one another, socially or through acts of violence (Tadeo).  ISTTVG is unique in that it is not rooted in violent revenge or repentance, but in violent liberation, requiring its protagonists to bury themselves, literally, in order to become who they truly are. ISTTVG follows teenage characters Owen (Justice Smith) and Maddy (Jack Haven) through their shared fixation on a science-fiction/horror genre television show, The Pink Opaque, which itself depicts teenage characters Isabel (Helena Howard) and Tara (Lindsey Jordan) in supernatural conflict with a seemingly ever-present villain named Mr. Melancholy (Emma Portner). The film’s first act ends with Maddy’s strange and somewhat unexplained disappearance. When she resurfaces in the second act, Maddy declares that she and Owen are, in fact, Tara and Isabela respectively. She further states that the pair were buried in separate graves by Mr. Melancholy, causing them to slowly suffocate, making the world they have been living in as Maddy and Owen a shared delusion they must escape in order to survive. Maddy/Tara tells Owen/Isabela that the only solution to their survival is self-burial, something Maddy/Tara has already undergone once. Given the seeming absurdity of self-interment, the audience and Owen are left sceptical of Maddy/Tara’s proposal, despite some evidence that she may be telling the truth. Owen ultimately decides the risk is too high, and abandons Maddy/Tara’s insistence to return to the dirt, and their other lives, leaving Maddy/Tara to complete the act alone. With an entire act still left in the film, however, the audience is reminded by a chalk scrawl across the sidewalk that “there is still time”, and the remainder of the film focusses on Owen, haunted by the possibility of Isabela, appearing to slowly suffocate into old age. The audience and Owen/Isabela never definitively learn whether Maddy/Tara’s version of reality is the correct one, but it is the uncertainty about this which is used effectively as queer allegory – that it may be scary by necessity for queer people to bury an inauthentic version of themselves and the lives they have led in the hope that something better lies beyond that ego death. ISTTVG Cinematography ISTTVG, like original noir, uses paranoia, especially about that which remains unseen or only partially seen, to drive its central allegory. ISTTVG, however, is better classified as a neon-noir due to its place in time (produced following the 1950s) and its specific use of neon lighting to achieve the light/dark, or dramatic chiaroscuro lighting effect that is characteristic of noir, neo-noir, and neon-noir cinematography alike (Miller). When applied specifically to science fiction and gothic fantasy, from which ISTTVG clearly draws influence, this has also been characterised as “neon-gothic” (Pop 190). Neon-noir is typically neon-lit to accentuate a foreboding or futuristic urban landscape as both setting and character, but in the technicolour of modern film as opposed to the black and white of classic noir (Miller). Other techniques such as stylised framing and camera angles are additionally used to create an immersive, “dreamlike state” which adds to audience anxieties, especially in science fiction/horror neon-noir films that tackle fears about modern or futuristic technologies (Miller). It is unsurprising that ISTTVG’s writer/director, Jane Schoenbrun, would use such techniques, as Schoenbrun has themself identified noir (Night of the Hunter 1955), neo-noir (Southland Tales 2006), and neon-noir (Blade Runner 1982) as influences on their own directorial and storytelling style. What is somewhat unique, however, about ISTTVG is its use of the television, and other technologies such as projectors and arcade games to achieve chiaroscuro and dreamlike effect that is not necessarily critical of these technologies. Typically, in neon-noir/neon-gothic films, neon lighting is used to highlight that which is fake, inauthentic, or non-human (Pop 207-8). Take, for example, the film Videodrome (1983), which also explores television as an alternate reality, but as a cautionary reality that is intended to cause unease (Thierbach-McLean 1-5), or Blade Runner (1982), with its exploration of the seemingly thin line between humanity and artificial intelligence (Pop 203). Unlike these examples, ISTTVG “validates” (Daschke 2) its audience’s draw towards TVland, recognising the comfort that queer peo