About the Glory of Butts and Sex Scenes as Storytelling*

I am very late to the Heated Rivalry party, and that is because I resisted it until last week. On paper, the tale of two gay hockey players is tailor-made for me; there's a reason my friend Gautam likes to call me a fruit fly.** But in practice, I was put off by the hype. There's no better way to get me not to watch something than to tell me I need to watch it.

But — butt! — I succumbed at last, and okay, I get it. This is a show that is as bingeable as it is ruthlessly sexy. It is essentially six episodes of years-spanning montages interspersed with a few shots of men chasing a puck around the ice and innumerable scenes of its two leads getting naked and having their merry way with each other. This description may make the series sound like porn, and indeed, parts of it do qualify as softcore, but what distinguishes Heated Rivalry from porn — and many sexually explicit mainstream movies — is that the sex scenes function as effective storytelling. Over the course of the series its two protagonists progress from horny rivals to two men in love, and while that shift is communicated through dialogue, it's most vividly articulated by how they treat each other in the bedroom (and living room, and shower, and kitchen, and on and on and on). That's what made the show so unexpectedly moving for me, and also caused me to mourn what is frequently missing from sex scenes, namely narrative.

So often sex scenes, particularly straight ones, are inert, unsexy things that have nothing to say about the characters and everything to say about the (usually male) director. They're there for titillation, and while I have nothing against titillation, I prefer when it's original and/or weird and/or in service of something more substantive. Don't give me actors who look like they're undergoing a joint colonoscopy in a nudist colony. Or if you're going to, at least tell me a story. Or make me die laughing.

Which brings me to another thing that I found refreshing about Heated Rivalry — and, while we're at it, Pillion: butts! Specifically: male butts. Between the show and the movie (and, arguably, several seasons of Bridgerton), we're living in a buttissance (assissance?). Yes, film and TV have shown us many, particularly in more recent years, but not since the swimming hole scene in A Room With a View (if you know, you know) can I remember a more joyful, um, embrace of the naked male form, at least in mainstream culture. This may seem like a small thing, these butts, and in the grand scheme of things it very much is, but I will take gender equality anywhere I can find it, especially on the screen. How many times have we been shown boob after boob, for no apparent reason other than someone behind the camera enjoys looking at naked ladies? How many times have men been allowed to keep their clothes on while women, for reasons completely unrelated to plot development, are required to misplace theirs?

It's not lost on me that both Pillion and Heated Rivalry are by and about gay men, and that it's historically been queer people who have pushed society towards a more nuanced and open understanding of sexuality and gender, to say nothing of how they're depicted on the screen and beyond. That evolution is inextricable from the stories told in Heated Rivalry and Pillion, and I'd say makes them all the more joyous. So I hope that the success of both the series and movie will beget more — more complicated love stories, more sex scenes that have something interesting to say about their characters — and, of course, more butts.

*With apologies to my parents, who are probably reading this.

**To borrow Carrie Fisher's terminology, I prefer fag moll.