Far-right pundits like Ben Shapiro, Candace Owens, Franklin Graham, and others from the "manosphere" can always be counted on to zero in on—and condemn—any cultural offering that skews into queer territory, especially if it poses as a threat to their retrograde notions of masculinity. 

So what are they saying about "Heated Rivalry"? After all, the insanely popular six-episodes series about closeted hockey players is full of everything they hate—explicit gay sex, positive representations of same-sex love, and a huge buy-in from the "woke" media (the show currently holds a 99% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes). 

Well, to put it simply, they're saying...nothing.

I have made it my mission since the series premiered to chart conservative responses to the show, and here's the thing: It's just crickets, everywhere. And not just with pundits. A recent search of the Fox News website a full month after the show's premiere on HBO Max—and in the wake of a tsunami of coverage of the show on mainstream outlets ranging from "Good Morning America" to USA Today—yielded zilch. It's the same with Newsmax, OAN, The Daily Wire, etc. Even Trump, who can't help but weigh in on even the most banal entertainment news, has kept mum.

The popularity of this series has continued to balloon weeks after the first season ended, and the overwhelming fan reaction to its two leads, Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie (soon to be Olympic torch-bearers), has inspired Beatlemania comparisons. "Heated Rivalry" has become so entrenched in mainstream culture it recently merited a "Saturday Night Live" parody. So why does it continue to be such a taboo topic for the far right?

I have some thoughts. Well before the series aired, Rachel Reid's series of "hockey smut" romance novels on which the series is based drew a large fanbase of straight women, and not just from blue states. This demographic has embraced the series with the same rabid devotion, and these readers have since become Heated Rivalry's most effective publicists (they were even called out by Storrie and Hudson during their appearance on this year's Golden Globes). Women have saturated social media with their enthusiastic and wonderfully obsessive takes on the show, and they have even created a mind-bending new meme: Shooting videos of their husbands reacting to episodes of the show in real time. (Spoiler alert: they love it.)

Many straight men, as it turns out, don't seem to be threatened by the show's content. Hockey podcasts like What Chaos feature their hosts watching—and often having intense emotional reactions to—the show's episodes. Even Gary Bettman, the commissioner of the NHL—an organization whose institutionalized homophobia is a major subject of the show—can't say enough good things about "Heated Rivalry," which he confessed to binge-watching in one night. 

The show's take on masculinity runs deeply counter to the manosphere's cartoonish and toxic version. Its protagonists are high-performing, seriously competitive athletes who also happen to be kind, compassionate, and vulnerable. One of the two "jock" lead characters embodies all of those characteristics while still being frank about preferring a passive role in sex with another man. It doesn't hurt that the charming actors who portray them are 100% comfortable in their skin—and just as comfortable touching, kissing, and embracing each other in interview after interview.  

This is the opposite of the closet, where conservatives have always insisted homosexuality remain (which may explain why Grindr always crashes in cities hosting RNC gatherings). Homosexual love, the tragedy of hiding oneself in the closet, and even gay sexual dynamics have all become topics of conversation among people who probably hadn't focused on any of them a couple of months ago. These are conversations that I would argue our current government and its enablers never wanted us to have, let alone enjoy having. 

So what's a far-right pundit or news network to do? Denounce the show and risk alienating not only LGBTQ+ fans but a broad, and ever-increasing, swath of straight people? Risk unleashing the ire of the "moms" whose protective instincts toward the show and its actors are not to be reckoned with? Or join the bandwagon of support for the show and face the consequences of alienating their base?

It's a no-win situation for them, but I am convinced it is a big opportunity for everyone else. "Heated Rivalry" is not just a hugely popular television show. It has become one of those cultural touchstones that is changing public opinion in the way only the best kinds of "soft power" can. 

The far right's notions of what it means to be a "man" are hopelessly dated and increasingly dangerous to anyone who doesn't happen to fit into that narrow template. Thanks in large part to this modestly produced Canadian television series that came out of nowhere, these notions have never looked weaker than they do right now.

What if the likes of Shapiro, Graham, Carlson, and Owens—not to mention JD Vance and Trump—were forced to come out of this closet of their own making and respond to the show? My hunch is it doesn't matter whether their response would be negative or positive—or even if they simply deflect—because once they're directly implicated in the conversation, their strange, and frankly sad, assertions about alpha males, low testosterone, and the like will be seen for what they actually are: An idea of masculinity that is more performative than anything in "Heated Rivalry."

This interview with Kari Lake, just nominated to lead Voice of America, was conducted by British jourmalist Emily Maitlis in July 2024 during Lake’s failed senatorial campaign. Voice of America's mission statement reads, in part:

“An essential guarantee of the journalistic credibility of Voice of America content is the “firewall” enshrined in the 1994 U.S. International Broadcasting Act. The firewall prohibits interference by any U.S. government official in the objective, independent reporting of news, thereby safeguarding the ability of our journalists to develop content that reflects the highest professional standards of journalism, free of political interference.”

Maitlis’s interview, which unravels Lake's election denialism and triggers her allergy to facts, serves as a reminder of how effective serious journalism can be—and how rare interviews of this depth and caliber with pollitical figures seem to have become in this country. (It also served as inspiration for this Instagram meme.) 

Detail of photo featuring Drew Starkey, Luca Guadagnino, and Daniel Craig at the 2024 Venice International Film Festival. (Vianney Le care/Invision/AP)

When I’ve seen a Luca Guadagnino project I really like—I Am Love, or Call Me by Your Name, or We Are Who We Are—I’m inclined to place him in the same category as truly great filmmakers like Pedro Almodóvar, Claire Denis, or Apichatpong Weerasethakul. The quirks and tics—a heavy dependence on pop music, the obsession with youth, the frictionless romanticism—feel organic, necessary. 
   I saw Queer last night and, well before it was over, experienced the same sinking feeling I had after watching Terence Malick’s ponderous To the Wonder (2012): all of the mannerisms that had made Malick’s previous work unique and powerful—like, for instance, those nearly unintelligible voiceovers (murmur-overs?) accompanying shots of, say, rustling trees—not only felt forced and cheap, their presence in an inferior film retroactively affected my feelings about his earlier work.
   Guadagnino has a habit of using straight actors to play gay roles, and that’s more than fine with me (I can’t imagine a better, and more consequential, performance along those lines than that of Paul Mescal in Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers). But, at least in Queer, it smacks of a kind of sophomoric wish fulfillment. Showing James Bond and the kid from Outer Banks having sex (which, by the way, is not explicit, despite all of the breathless PR suggesting otherwise) in this uneven film strikes me as the equivalent of a self-hating young gay kid (like myself, for instance) making his G.I. Joes kiss each other by knocking their heads together. It feels forced, and maybe even a little spiteful—look what I made these straight guys do! And it has made me inclined to go back to scenes in Guadagnino’s earlier films—like Challengers, in which Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist make out in front of Zendaya—with a bit more skepticism about his motives.
   I didn't love Daniel Craig's performance, which felt effortful and kind of panicked, and the jukebox-y employment of contemporary music, even Nirvana’s “Come As You Are,” seemed cheap and easy. The final third of the film—revolving around an ayahuasca trip the two leads take in the jungle c/o the ever-brilliant Lesley Manville—was the strongest part of the movie, but it wasn’t enough, at least for me, to overcome its weaknesses.