As I said in the title, general thread, so if you want to post whatever thoughts you have about the movie unrelated to my question, it’s all good
In the part where Owen is an adult and rewatching The Pink Opaque, Owen comments that the show is nothing like they remember, and it’s cringy and embarrassing. The “new” version of the show we see is a lot more juvenile and corny than what was shown earlier in the movie, which I think a lot of people, trans or not, experience when revisiting shows they watched as a child.
But one thing I noticed that was drastically different in a way that couldn’t be misremembered was that the characters were completely different. Instead of two teenage girls, it’s four young kids, three girls and one boy. Also all four kids are white, while Isabel/Owen are half-black, and only one of them seems to have the “pink opaque powers”. If that one girl with the pink opaque powers is supposed to be the analogue for Tara, then the show Owen sees as an adult is missing an analogue for Isabel. I believe this is what causes Owen the distress we see in that moment, and not the simple fact that it’s cornier than they remember. But what aspect of the trans/genderqueer experience is this supposed to represent?
Maybe I’m just reading into it too much, but it feels like there’s something significant there, especially since so many other parts of the movie have small details that people who have ever questioned their gender identity can recognize as symbolic of their experiences, and completely replacing what the pink opaque (as a group) is supposed to be when Owen rewatches the show seems like a big detail. I just don’t get what was going on with that, if anything.
The Pink Opaque allows Isabel to vicariously live out her gender without having to make the hard choices that doing so in the real world would require (which she repeatedly refuses to do). But eventually drugs stop working, so to speak. A children’s TV show isn’t enough to stave off adult despair. As Isabel is no longer able to project the richness of her inner life into the show, it is revealed as it truly is, crass and artless.
Or alternately, or simultaneously, this is the final victory of Mr. Melancholy. Not only is Isabel shut out of the real world for good, the one link with her real life, her real self, has been drained of meaning. Isabel already lost her chance to escape with Maddie, and now the last remnants are taken from her.