“Heated Rivalry” and the Line Between Representation and Fetishization
For at least the last month, the Internet has not shut up about the “gay hockey show”, otherwise known as Heated Rivalry. For better or for worse, I have watched it, and I have a lot of feelings about it, some of which I would like to share. Because, with shows like this, I think there is a very fine line to be drawn between appreciation for and fetishization of marginalized stories by dominant target audiences.
For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, Heated Rivalry is the TV adaptation of a hockey romance novel written by Canadian author Rachel Reid. Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) is a Canadian hockey star on the Montreal Metros, and Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie), a Russian on the Boston Raiders, is his rival. The Metros and the Raiders are Major League Hockey (MLH) teams, stand-ins for the real-life Montreal Canadians and Boston Bruins of the National Hockey League (NHL).
The first season begins just before Shane and Ilya’s rookie season, and it spans the course of about a decade, during which the two engage in a secret sexual relationship that culminates in them falling in love.
As the show’s creator, Jacob Tierney said himself, “‘this is a Harlequin romance. This has a happy ending … This is about two boys in love and a lot of sex.’” (1)
I wasn’t going to watch it all, but I have a friend who loves it, so naturally, we watched all six episodes in a group setting, which was honestly the way to do it. It made it more fun, and it got me to actually finish watching where I may not have continued past the first episode if I were watching alone.
The first thing I’ll say is that calling it a “hockey show” is generous. Sure, the main characters are hockey players, and their relationship stems from the fact that their teams are rivals, but hockey is not by any means a central focus of the show. If that’s what you’re there for, you’ll be disappointed.
But if they’re not showing hockey, what are they showing?
That brings us to the issue I have with this show. Its first half was heavily sex-focused, and there was very little relationship-building or character work to balance it out.
For me, the sex itself is not the issue. In general, I don’t have a problem with sex scenes as long as they contribute to the story’s development, and in Heated Rivalry, the sex does contribute to the story. After all, the whole point is that Shane and Ilya start off as rivals who hook up nearly every time they play each other. However, in the beginning, it doesn’t feel earned. We don’t know anything about these characters (that is, unless we’ve read the books, which I have not), so our attachment to them really shouldn’t strengthen in response to these scenes.
But somehow, the show reeled in a large audience, and I have trouble understanding how exactly so many people could see those first few episodes and have their attention captured by Shane and Ilya’s romantic relationship. Because there wasn’t one. Their dynamic was honestly more toxic than anything.
I didn’t feel the “yearning” people said kept them hooked. Lusting, sure, but not yearning. That didn’t happen until the second half, when they have interactions that don’t involve sex, and they say more to each other than “Fuck you”, which seems to be at least half of their exchanges in the beginning.
There are also fewer time skips in the second half, which helped build the emotional tension, although I would have been more invested if there had been more of a romance from the beginning. Taking three episodes to get to that part is one thing when there are twenty or even ten episodes in a season. It’s another entirely when there are only six.
We don’t even get much insight into why it’s so dangerous for the two of them to be involved. Why do they have to be so secretive? What do they both stand to lose? We can make assumptions—and eventually it is explicitly stated that it’s dangerous for Ilya because it’s illegal to be gay in Russia, so if he comes out, he can’t go home—but I don’t think this is the kind of thing that we should be left to assume. It should be a bigger plot point, not something thrown to the side in favor of sex scene after sex scene over and over again.
So, because there’s so little emotional substance in the first few episodes, the question becomes: Why did people keep watching? And that’s what bothers me a little bit, especially since the show’s primary audience is straight women.
Now, when I say that, I want to be very clear about the fact that I’m not saying you can’t write or enjoy a queer romance if you’re heterosexual. You absolutely can. But I think we need to be a little bit more critical with how we evaluate that. There needs to be a conversation about why it is that this story is such a hit with heterosexual women.
Along the same lines, attention has been brought to the fact that the author of the books, Rachel Reid, is herself a woman, yet she writes romance novels about gay men. I’m not entirely sure what Reid’s sexuality is or is not (although she’s in a heterosexual marriage), but I do think that it’s unfair to criticize her on the basis of sexuality, whether she’s hetero- or bisexual. In fact, I think she’s already summed up the nuance of the situation fairly well herself. She said:
“I’m not a man, and I’m not a gay man, and I’m not a bisexual man. That’s who I’m writing about. I don’t think that the people that I am attracted to, at this stage in my life, gives me like any kind of credibility to write about gay men or bisexual men … I would not ever, like, try to use my sexuality as a way of being like, ‘See, I have the right to write these books,’ because I don’t think that that’s how it works … It’s like, you have to just be sensitive and thoughtful when you approach these books, [or] whatever you’re writing.” (2)
Overall, I agree with her. Being a bisexual woman doesn’t give me any more or less of a right to write characters whose sexualities differ from mine, and being a straight or gay woman wouldn’t either. As writers, we’re allowed to write stories about people who aren’t exactly like us. Otherwise, there would be no such thing as a diverse cast of characters. But, there is a very fine line between what’s acceptable and what’s not, and that’s what makes the issue so complicated.
We want representation, but not at the price of authenticity.
I can’t judge how good a job Reid did or didn’t do representing the dynamic between Shane and Ilya for two reasons: (1) I haven’t read the book, and (2) I’m not a gay or bisexual man any more than she is. But regardless, the adaptation we saw on screen wasn’t written by her. Rather, it was created by Jacob Tierney, who is himself an openly gay man.
Admittedly, Tierney’s sexuality does make me feel better about the show because, presumably, he can make it more authentic than Reid can. But not everyone’s experience is the same. So what seems realistic and authentic to him may not be the same to another queer man.
I’m not by any means saying that women like Reid aren’t allowed to write about these types of relationships, nor am I saying that the only people who are allowed to watch Heated Rivalry are gay men. No. But I need us to consider the implications of the fact that the majority of the show’s audience has no idea what it’s like to be a gay man. So what are they getting out of it?
One point in particular that has caught my attention is that sexual relationships between two men are not as reliant on gender roles as those between a man and a woman. That’s a generalization, yes, but in this case, I feel like it applies. Shane and Ilya’s relationship may have been toxic at times, primarily in the beginning, but especially being a sports romance, I felt like it did a good job of avoiding toxic masculinity and the negative portrayal of women.
Even today, after so much progress has been made, misogyny is still something women face in almost every aspect of life. Women are used to seeing themselves depicted in adverse ways or dominated by men on screen. The idea that men need to be the dominant ones in every situation is so ingrained in our society that it frequently bleeds into the media we consume, and at least to me, there’s nothing romantic about that.
But when women consume media focused on a man/man relationship, they aren’t seeing those demeaning depictions of themselves as they might in a story focused on a heterosexual or sometimes even a lesbian relationship. And I think that’s part of what draws them in. That’s why straight women make up such a large part of the target audiences for things like Heated Rivalry. Because it’s an escape from a world where gender roles are repeatedly forced on us, even if it isn’t necessarily by ill intent.
That said, we can’t forget about the fact that one group can’t erase its struggles by romanticizing those of another. Society greets homosexuality better now than it did even just twenty years ago, but coming out still isn’t an easy thing to do, especially in the current political climate. It can still be dangerous, and knowing you’re different can make you feel alienated. It’s not something to glamorize.
We need to be just as careful with how we treat media like Heated Rivalry as we are with how we treat media focused on women, because we should know by now that there are consequences to thoughtlessness. We have been misrepresented in literature and television for a long time, and we can’t allow ourselves to continue to do the same thing to others.
Being an ally is a great thing, but it doesn’t mean you get to claim to clearly understand experiences that are not and never will be your own. You can only put yourself in another person’s shoes to a certain extent. All we can do is be there and support and respect the people we want to stand beside.
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