‘I Saw the TV Glow’: Jane Schoenbrun on Why Trans Stories Don’t Need to Explain Themselves and How Directing Is Just ‘Angry Sex Between Art and Commerce’
Schoenbrun aims to maintain an oppositional artistic stance through "angry sex between art and commerce."
I’m so viscerally disgusted by 95% of the things that I have to do to promote this movie. To operate in these hallowed halls of capitalism and not feel absolutely insane, it requires some kind of taking the red pill. Or privilege-tinted sunglasses.
“‘The Matrix’ is very in conversation with trans themes that my work is also interested in: this feeling of unreality that can be a potent metaphor for being trans in the world or figuring out that you’re trans,” they continue
I’m very suspicious of any externalized representation of transness,” Schoenbrun confesses. “Trans experience is something that’s classically represented by Hollywood as this very external force, when actually it is so internal.
Back to “The Matrix” and feeling not quite right in the world: that is a much more potent, relatable way of talking about how it feels to be trans but not quite understand it yet. As opposed to, ‘I looked in the mirror and wanted beautiful lashes and locks.’”
“I worked really hard to make this film weird, like a provocation,” Schoenbrun says. “I’m structuring my life in a way where I can keep my values and my gaze outside of a system. I describe it sometimes as angry sex between art and commerce.”
“To be trans is not just a thing I was born with, but a political ideology and a decision to exist in a certain way that’s non-normative and challenging the hegemonic structures of power,” Schoenbrun continues. “I want to stay a person who I like. Too much power and too much collaboration with a system of power, I start to get hives.”
“Everyone has a Maddy. Most queer people have someone who’s shepherded them through the discovery of their own queerness.”