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For the director of I Saw the TV Glow, Buffy the Vampire Slayer was just the start

To director Jane Schoenbrun, Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s second season was a pivotal text.

I just felt so much empathy for this girl who needed to become an adult too fast — who was more mature than her mom in that moment and knew that taking care of her responsibilities meant that she was going to feel very alone in some central way. Even though I couldn’t fully grasp it, it wasn’t hard to see flickers of a queer or trans experience in that affirmation of selfhood in the face of absolute isolation from your friends and family. We see The Pink Opaque change in tone and production values over time as Owen grows up, and it works so well to illustrate how we start to see things that we loved as children differently as adults.

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