I Saw The TV Glow uses nostalgia and fandom to say something profound. Deadpool & Wolverine, er, doesn’t. Isn’t it time for a grown-up conversation about this?
In a moment early on in Deadpool & Wolverine, out this weekend, a bunch of characters stand around and watch Wolverine die.
This isn’t as spoilery a declaration as you might think, because if you’re the sort of person who cares about Deadpool & Wolverine spoilers, you’ve probably seen this scene multiple times already. Through tears and a palpable sense of awe, Deadpool, Matthew Macfadyan and a room full of TVA agents are watching the end of 2017’s Logan.
Also in UK cinemas this weekend (and with one-millionth of the marketing budget) is Jane Schoenbrun’s psychological horror, I Saw The TV Glow. In it, two young introverts, played by Justice Smith and Brigette Lundy-Paine, find common ground in a Buffy The Vampire Slayer -like, monster-of-the-week TV show called The Pink Opaque. The programme practically takes over their lives as teens – their friendship depends on it and neither, it seems, can think of anything else.
But when Smith’s character, Owen, puts an old The Pink Opaque VHS in his machine years later, the show which once defined his personality doesn’t look quite as he remembers. Monsters, which were once terrifying, would now look more at home on CBeebies than late-night TV. Dialogue he could previously recite verbatim rings false. The comfort he clung to through his childhood years just doesn’t work anymore.
Considering how completely fandom and nostalgia have defined blockbuster cinema over the last decade or so, it’s surprising more films don’t deal with the phenomenon critically. Where previous pop culture crazes have gone through periods of myth-busting and revision, nostalgia-bait itself has gone pretty much unacknowledged. Instead, studios take it as wrote that we want to see a de-aged Harrison Ford return as Indiana Jones, or Hugh Jackman return as Wolverine, without trying to ask why we want it.
So, why is the comic book fandom obsessed with which characters will cameo in Deadpool & Wolverine? What does it mean when films are sold on what came before, rather than what they can offer in the present? What does dressing Tobey Maguire back up as Spider-Man actually do? What are these films trying to say?
I Saw The TV Glow addresses the problem by making nostalgia and fandom symptoms of something bigger, rather than ends in themselves. The Pink Opaque, while once providing vital solace and escape for our troubled teens, grows into something that isn’t exactly unpleasant – but it doesn’t fill the same role it once did. As Owen gets older, the fantasy which once sustained him is no longer enough. He craves something real.
Schoenbrun uses the way we consume popular culture as a powerful metaphor for the trans experience, and I’d beg and plead with anyone to go see it this weekend – it’s a properly excellent little film that deserves the support. That includes Disney, who should (but almost certainly won’t) use TV Glow as a lesson.
Nostalgia can mean something more than a marketing gimmick; fandom, while bringing a lot of positive things to so many people’s lives, can quickly turn toxic when it defines art too heavily. Feel free to bring back the actor who played Fred The Magnificent Moose in your latest superhero epic – but at least think about what bringing him back into the fold means cinematically.
Read more: I Saw The TV Glow review | Blazingly original, empathetic filmmaking
In TV Glow, for example, the subject of the nostalgia only exists in the world of the film, but we can feel Owen’s longing – the wistfulness of trying to rediscover something which will never be quite as good as the first taste. Marvel and Disney as a whole could embrace that feeling, but they don’t. Instead, actors return to classic roles seemingly more for their marketing value than anything else – blink-and-you’ll-miss-them appearances that unintentionally end up feeling sad anyway. “Why don’t we make films like that anymore?”, they’re almost begging us to ask. Wouldn’t the cameo-calories feel a lot less empty if the film acknowledged this in some way, rather than forcing its stars to smile through gritted teeth as they repeat the same routines ad infinitum?
Here at Film Stories, it feels like we’re more down on Shawn Levy’s new film than most, and that’s fine. If audiences are getting what they want out of Deadpool & Wolverine (and plenty of online reactions would suggest they are), then Marvel have done their job. But a serious conversation on the point of all these cameos is well overdue. Logan, after all, is a film that stands up to multiple viewings. I’m not sure even its biggest fans would say the same of Deadpool & Wolverine.
I Saw The TV Glow and Deadpool & Wolverine are in UK cinemas now.
