"By drawing pictures, dreaming of [Dottie], and sitting glued to the television after school, Steven participates in Mulvey’s understanding of cinematic identification. His idealization of Dottie, which manifests as desire, reinforces Lacan and Mulvey’s complementary beliefs that identification, at least through an experience like the mirror stage, is never a particularly whole process–otherwise determining the subject one identifies with as detached from the original spectator."

In a world of instant messages, videos, and films seen by millions across the world at the same time, we are not truly connected to one another until we attempt to understand somebody experiencing life differently from ourselves. I Saw the TV Glow uses technological symbolism to perfectly encapsulate the queer journey and what it means to not only see your truth, but to accept it, and be willing to show the world.