Carsey-Wolf Center at UC Santa Barbara 
Panic!: I Saw the TV Glow
- Tuesday, June 3, 2025 / 7:00 PM - 9:30 PM (PDT)
- Pollock Theater
- Screening Format: 4K digital projection (100 minutes)
- With Haley Dahl (Sloppy Jane)
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Director: Jane Schoenbrun
Starring: Justice Smith, Jack Haven, Helena Howard, Fred Durst
Jane Schoenbrun’s coming-of-age horror film I Saw the TV Glow (2024) follows Owen (Justice Smith), a withdrawn teenager who finds solace in the late-night supernatural television show The Pink Opaque, introduced to him by his rebellious classmate Maddy (Jack Haven). As their obsession with the series deepens, Owen begins to question the nature of his own reality, uncovering unsettling truths about himself and the world around him. When Maddy leaves town, Owen finds himself unable to follow, retreating further into his suburban isolation, where the flickering glow of television becomes both a refuge and a haunting reminder of the life he feels slipping away. Blurring the boundaries between fiction and self-perception, the film reflects the anxieties of growing up in a world that enforces rigid definitions of gender norms. In doing so, it taps into the broader societal panic over transgender identity, capturing the fear of living in a world that demands conformity at the cost of one’s true self.
Musician Haley Dahl (Sloppy Jane) will join moderator Alice Fulmer (English, UCSB) for a post-screening discussion of I Saw the TV Glow and her appearance in the film and soundtrack.
This event is free but a reservation is recommended in order to guarantee a seat.
Biographies
Haley Dahl (Sloppy Jane)
Haley Dahl is the visionary force behind Sloppy Jane, a genre-defying chamber pop project known for its theatricality and ambitious conceptual scope. Her 2021 album Madison was recorded entirely in West Virginia’s Lost World Caverns, using the cave’s natural acoustics as a haunting and immersive sonic backdrop. A punk frontwoman turned self-taught composer and pianist, Dahl channels heartbreak and longing with influences from David Bowie, Courtney Love, and Queen. She recently reunited with her label head and former bandmate Phoebe Bridgers on the soundtrack for I Saw the TV Glow, appearing both musically and on screen in Jane Schoenbrun’s critically-acclaimed film. With each project, Dahl continues to build sprawling, surreal emotional worlds of vulnerability and transformation.
Moderator Alice Fulmer (English, UCSB)
Alice Fulmer is a poetess and PhD student at UCSB in English. She studies medieval poetry and its contemporary intersections in gender, sexuality, and disability. Her research ranges from Marie de France to Geoffrey Chaucer, with her poetics influenced by Dylan Thomas and Jericho Brown. Her debut poetry collection Faunalia came out in 2023 on Sul Books, and a sophomore poetry manuscript is freshly finished.
This event is sponsored by the Carsey-Wolf Center and the Santa Barbara Transgender Advocacy Network (SBTAN).
CWC Presents: Panic!
The Carsey-Wolf Center’s 2024-25 feature series Panic! explores the complex relationship between media, an anxious public, and the turbulent currents of social, cultural, and moral panic. The series will examine how such panics have appeared on screen over the decades, but also consider how the screen itself—as technology, as gathering space, and as a site of fantasy and desire—becomes the object of reactionary backlash. Panic! will be a yearlong showcase of the films, discourses, and cultural practices that have tested the limits of public acceptability, and that have much to teach us about the cycles of panic that define our own political moment.