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.
Childrens programming, especially if it has gone on for long enough can radically change in tone/execution and the show in the movie has run for 5 seasons. But I personally think the Pink Opaque of Isabel and Tara never existed but were used as a way for Owen to disengage from their gender noncomformity. When Maddie returns, she asks Owen if they remember the Pink Opaque and the emphasis on memory can be due to Owen memory hole’d trans experience which get painfully dug up.
I mean, who hasn’t lived out their queerness in derivative media/fanfics? I personally head canon the tapes that Maddie sends as tapes of her acting out her own version of the show or something like that since queerness is so tied to self expression and creativity.
One part of the movie I really hated was how Isabel acted toward her caregivers/Owen treats their parents. Also the fact that Owen being half black is never touched upon. Race and transness intersect really hard so it was odd that it never came up (though Justice Smith is an incredible actor and played his role of repressed egg to near perfection). I also didn’t like Maddie/Tara, I think her character was too melodramatic for me personally. But thats probably due to the fact that the movie captures the trans zeitgeist of the 90s and early 2000s where transness was near invisible in western society unlike today (mashallah)