Sand you haven’t seen it yet Heated Rivalrysomeone probably told you about it. The low-budget Canadian series produced and then broadcast on HBO Max six episodes about two rival hockey players who fall in love – is has become a global phenomenon. So much so that the two protagonists (Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie, beautiful and very talented) were chosen to carry the Olympic torch on the route to Milan-Cortina, in the Feltre stage, on January 25th.
The series proved to be much loved by a transversal audience: men and women, of all ages and countries. In Japan, a word was “coined” that defines the audience of female fans: “fujoshi”, which literally means “rotten girls”, in a self-deprecating sense, because they are crazy about a romantic and gentle yet exclusive virility.
An explanation of this long and very broad wave seemed enlightening to me. I found it on an episode of the podcast “Critics at Large” of New Yorker. There are three points proposed by the magazine’s critics.
Barbara Stefanelli (photo by Carlo Furgeri Gilbert).
The first is sincerity. We live immersed in irony, in emotional detachment, in the fear of appearing naive. Heated Rivalry it does the opposite: it takes itself seriously. It talks about desire, tenderness, the fear of losing someone without any cynical filter. And this is today more subversive than any provocation.
The second point is genealogy. The series is part of a long tradition of gay love stories – from Maurice by EM Forster a Brokeback Mountain by Ang Lee – which have always spoken to everyone: because they tell the universal experience of loving someone in a world that doesn’t allow it. The forbidden feeling is the oldest of narrative engines: there is, rightly, no need for a specific sexual orientation to get to the heart.
Connor Storrie (Ilya Rozanov) and Hudson Williams (Shane Hollander) in Heated Rivalry. (Sabrina Lantos/HBO Max)
The third is the most subtle: the evolution of the wardrobe. In the series, there are “closets within closets,” levels of secrecy that go beyond simply hiding one’s orientation. In an era in which gay relationships are, at least in theory, accepted by the dominant culture, the story of the clandestinity is transformed. It is no longer (only or mostly) a question of homophobia: the critical passage is the distance that often runs between who we really are and who we show ourselves to be. And it is an existential passage that passes through every identity and probably every couple.
This is why we found ourselves and found ourselves crying in front of the fifth episode (warning: small spoiler here!): not because they are suddenly carried away by a passion for hockey or for the free variations of sexuality, but because the story talks about something we know well. Vulnerability, the courage to say “I love you” to someone who might not respond, the struggle to be authentic and take risks. Heated Rivalry reminds us that great love stories don’t need to look like us to concern us.
Have you ever risked for a forbidden love? And to what extent? Write to us at [email protected]
All articles by Barbara Stefanelli