My thoughts on Heated Rivalry
By Jenifer Carter
My other writing and research threads have been completely derailed over the past few weeks because I fell deeply into the Heated Rivalry rabbit hole after the Crave/HBO adaptation dropped. As a long time slash fic enjoyer/gay transmasc, it’s been so interesting watching the discourse machine cycle through takes about why women are responding so strongly to this show.
A few takes especially stuck out to me because I think they elide broader considerations about how heteronormative sexual scripts undermine how people understand their own desire.
Compulsory heterosexuality is poison
This first comment I think is very sad, and I want to be clear I am not trying to dunk on OP:
The romance formula is specifically fun (imo) because it offers readers a chance to vicariously experience the somewhat agonizing joy of falling in love; however, the formula can also reify a specific heterosexual narrative that reduces marriage to the “supreme moment” of a woman’s life [1]. If the story must end with a HEA/HFN[2], then whatever follows the conclusion of the marriage plot is anticlimax.
Paul Morrison’s description of compulsory heterosexuality rings true:
Yet for all its ubiquity, the marriage plot isn’t quite: betrothal, not the eternity of having and holding, is the conventional fulfillment. The narrative dynamics of heterosexual desire characteristically suspend their operations on the threshold of a future that strategically remains future, the better to mystify their relation to the past. [3]
Heterosexual desire leaves no room for desire as such. Instead these social scripts reduce heterosexual fulfillment to marriage, a finish line simply to be crossed before domestic life may begin.
At long last, safe and attractive men
This one also makes me sad. Heteronormativity and its embedded gendered scripts have resulted in such a toxic imagining of masculinity that OP and the 1,000+ people who engaged with this post now exist in communities where the men they know can’t offer even empathy in a romantic relationship.
To think that straight men are fundamentally unable to process their emotions, and queer romance offers the only model for emotionally mature masculinities, is depressing and reductive. People of all genders and sexualities have the capacity to be awful at love and relationships! But this particular take rings with such resignation and this is just how straight men are, and implies that heterosexual relationships often result in settling for a lesser romantic love.
That’s just gender dysphoria, probably
As someone who has become deeply depressed after reading or watching queer M/M romance, I feel fairly comfortable assuming these people are experiencing an intense gender euphoria/dysphoria from this show. I am both thrilled and devastated by Connor Storrie’s gender expression, tbh. The intimacy between Ilya and Shane on the show feels more aligned with how I experience attraction towards men than I find in heterosexual romance stories.
Heated Rivalry discourse keeps trying to theorize why women love this show, but operates from the assumption that these fans are always heterosexual or cisgender. Popular understandings of gender and sexuality are still so firmly rooted in normative heterosexuality to the point it becomes almost impossible to imagine that so many people could genuinely be experiencing gender dysphoria so acutely from watching this show. Maybe it’s more likely than we think!!
My personal take is that Heated Rivalry is so popular because the actors are super attractive and it’s fun to watch them kiss each other. The production and performances are very good, breathing life into what honestly a kind of poorly written book with a good concept.
I think gay romance allows authors to sidestep some of the gendered dynamics that are usually found in straight romance novels.
Shane and Ilya are, for all intents and purposes, equals from the outset: physically, athletically, and financially. Where women in romance novels usually have to pass some sort of bar to earn the esteem of their male counterpart—are they a capable warrior? do they past the domestic test? can they tame the dangerous lover?—Shane and Ilya know they are peers. There isn’t any fierce territoriality or protectiveness over each other, and their sexual relationship doesn’t have the same paternalistic bent that heterosexual scripts tend to have. Shane is coming out, but he’s not virginal and is able to expresses the same level of conscious desire as Ilya. There is nothing to prove. The characters are allowed to move through their emotional arcs in ways that can feel more honest and interesting than straight romance novels tend to offer.
Overall I’m having a great time watching this particular cultural moment unfold, and think it’s funny that there’s a lot of speculation about why women like seeing attractive men on screen. But I’m mostly interested in what comes next. Plz plz plz let it be more good television and less prestige drama garbage.