No more martyrs
Heated Rivalry, queer romance and the end of tragic legitimacy
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 22431032 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Mark Joseph O’Connell (0000-0002-1027-9338, Seneca Polytechnic, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 14 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 161-179 |
| Publication date | 2026-06-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Journal of Popular Television (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2046-9861 • E-ISSN: 2046-987X |
| Publisher | Intellect (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1386/jptv_00158_1 |
| OpenAlex | W7168223471 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 3 |
This article examines the cultural significance of Heated Rivalry (2025–present), arguing that it is a decisive break from the long-standing narrative tradition in which queer male desire is legitimized through suffering, loss or death. Situating the series within a historical lineage of queer representation: from classical Hollywood coding and AIDS-era tragedy to prestige cinema’s aesthetics of respectable suffering, the article argues that Heated Rivalry marks a shift from survival as endurance to intimacy as futurity. Drawing on queer theory, romance studies, television studies and auto-ethnographic spectatorship, the analysis shows how the series imports the conventions of queer romance, like explicit sexuality, emotional reciprocity and the refusal of tragic closure, into the domain of contemporary ‘prestige’ television and professional sport, a space historically hostile to queer intimacy. Rather than resolving critiques of homonormativity and assimilation, Heated Rivalry stages these tensions by operating within elite, masculine structures while resisting sanitization through erotic centrality and emotional excess. By reading romance not as escapism but as a future-oriented narrative form, this article intervenes in scholarship on queer media pessimism and ‘Bury Your Gays’ paradigms, arguing that queer joy, continuity and attachment now function as sites of political and cultural meaning rather than narrative compromise.
Narrative · Politics · Queer · Queer theory · Rivalry · Romance · Cinema and Media Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Sports, Gender, and Society
| Highly cited | No |
|---|