Wrong voice, wrong channel, wrong body: transgender cinematic representations of the embodied production of voice

As the 2020s has seen an increase in institutional and social discrimination against transgender individuals, I Saw the TV Glow — a genderqueer coming-of-age indie horror film written and directed by trans and non-binary filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun — becoming a standout hit at the 2024 Sundance film festival has resulted in the film emerging as a prominent object within cultural and academic discourse on transgender representation in cinema. A key piece of the film’s depiction of transness, I argue, is the formal presentation of the disembodied and embodied voice in the film. The study of the voice in cinema has undergone an evolution similar to the field of film studies, as structuralist work on the voice at the end of the 20th century has given way to post-structuralist accounts that more closely examine stardom, sexuality, and gender. Work on the transgender or genderqueer voice in cinema is still a burgeoning field, the discussion revolving primarily around how the voice is an object that produces gender dysphoria and/or euphoria for the subject. In this thesis, I consider how the 2024 film I Saw the TV Glow foregrounds the voice as a key object of negotiation for transgender individuals in altering how their bodies are culturally mediated.