I Saw The TV Glow follows Owen as he moves through life with the sinking notion that “time isn’t right.” He and his only friend Maddy bond through their shared affinity for their favorite television show The Pink Opaque which follows teens Isabel and Tara as they use their psychic connection to fight the evil Mr. Melancholy, the “big bad” with the power to alter the perception of time and reality. Owen watches the show in secret because it’s past his bedtime. “Isn’t that a show for girls?” his father asks in his only speaking line of the entire movie.

The movie has been met with mixed reviews from non-queer audiences, many who seem to just not get it. For genderqueer communities it’s trans media made by trans people for trans people and with the way it gets talked about it might as well be close to gospel. On the cusp of a frightening step towards fascism, I’ve been thinking about the people who just don’t seem to get it. Time and reality have been warped so that we think the last time was normal, so that we think this is normal. This is not normal. There is still time.

Owen and Maddy feel inexplicably connected to the show, as if it’s almost a part of them. As the years pass, the show is abruptly cancelled with Isabel and Tara trapped underground, suffocating after being force fed what Mr. Melancholy refers to as luna juice. “The best part is, you won’t even know you’re dying,” his ominous warning booms. The Pink Opaque gets cancelled just as Maddy runs away from home.

Mr. Melancholy looms large. We’ve been suffocating for far longer than the current administration. We’ve buried the AIDs epidemic, created a police state, and declared corporations people. We’ve always lived with a cruel, and unforgivable past, but for a while it seemed like humanity was improving. It’s a hard truth that for perhaps the first time in any of our lifetimes we’ve been faced with a decade of backsliding and existential threats. There is still time.

Years pass for Owen in what feels like seconds when Maddy, presumed dead, unexpectedly reappears. They corner Owen in the bar and convince him to hold off on contacting the police or their family. “I’ve been there,” they reveal. “I’ve been inside the show.” Maddy claims to be Tara from The Pink Opaque and starts to refer to Owen as “Isabel.”

After being tasked by Maddy to rewatch the series finale, Owen appears to realize that she is not in her reality, and that she is actually someone “beautiful and strong” on the other side of the television screen. Her father finds her with her head stuck inside her television set and pulls her out. But when Maddy tells Owen that in order to wake up back in their own reality they must bury themselves alive, Owen panics and runs away, never to see Maddy again. She instead buries her identity deep down inside herself.

More years pass and Owen rewatches The Pink Opaque on a streaming platform only to find it’s not quite as she remembers. It seems childish now and water-downed. She feels uneasy. More years pass and her asthma gets worse. A warning, or a message of hope is written in chalk on the street: There is still time.

Is everything about the election of Donald Trump as you remember it? We made it out okay, didn’t we? We’ve watered it all down. We’ve caved and we’re burnt out. Somewhere along the way it seems that we lost sight that somewhere deep down we’re beautiful and strong. Our country (or at least its people) has the potential to be beautiful and strong.

We know what we must do to reawaken, but it’s scary. It’s defiant. Sometimes it’s hard to not see the struggle as nothing more than suicidal and hopeless. Until we wake up, we are not okay. Immigrants are not okay, queer and trans people are not okay, women are not okay, people of color are not okay. The last time wasn’t okay either. Not everyone made it out okay the last time. And not everyone will this time. Time. There is still time.

Working at a children’s entertainment center, Owen has a panic attack while working a birthday party. The world freezes around her and she screams out that she is dying as she stumbles into the bathroom where she cuts open her chest revealing glowing TV static confirming the truth that she had known all along. As she stumbles out of the bathroom, she apologizes for the inconvenience to the patrons of the entertainment center who pay her no heed. The film abruptly ends.

Not everyone agrees on the message at the end of I Saw The TV Glow. Some see the ending as devastatingly tragic. Owen spends so much time convincing herself that this is normal and that she is okay that she spends her life living a lie and both metaphorically and physically suffocates while trapped under the ground.

I choose to believe the more hopeful interpretation. That she’s finally accepted herself for who she is and there is still time to do something about it. We have no other choice but to view the conclusion optimistically.

It’s often frustrating how many people don’t seem to get or care how serious the circumstances are of the new era that started today. Maybe it’s burnout, maybe it’s burying what we all know deep down, maybe it’s just propaganda, but the capitulation to the new administration’s definition of normal is bleak. It feels like we are collectively suffocating under the influence of luna juice at the hands of Mr. Melancholy, and I am begging us to wake up. I am begging us to realize who we can be. I am begging for class consciousness. There is still time.

I think we all have a Mr. Melancholy in our life that we have to deal with to become our truest selves. We owe it to ourselves and we owe it to each other. No one is going to be a perfect activist and no one can or should focus on what the administration is doing 24/7 for their own self care. But we all have the obligation to do something. We have the obligation to do anything. As bleak as everything feels, I have my joy, and I have my hope.

And with that hope, there is still time.