Untitled

Hudson Williams

But this is not what makes Heated Rivalry feminist (feminist here being used as a perfect antonym to misogynistic, for the sake of brevity). How the men in any given story behave or what views they hold in and of itself is not what makes a story feminist or misogynistic. You could write a story in which all the men are vile misogynists who beat and rape women daily, and it could still be a feminist work of fiction. Inversely, you could write a story in which all the men are picture-perfect allies to women, and it could still be horrendously misogynistic. Part of the problem with a lot of performative "feminist" stories is that their writers made the mistake of believing that they can make their story feminist by making their male characters respect women (it's the "punching-a-rapist" shortcut I've talked about before).

But that's not how it works. What does the narrative say about women? What does the narrative say about the men's views and actions? Narratively, Heated Rivalry isn't particularly feminist. It's not misogynistic either. That's just not really the lens through which it is asking us to view and analyze. You can analyze it through that lens - obviously, because I am - but the narrative isn't drawing our attention there or purposely "saying" anything about feminism.

The reason I think of Heated Rivalry as a feminist show has more to do with its creation than it does with any of its actual content. I do appreciate how Ilya was characterized, but the narrative is not drawing our attention to how Ilya treats women except when Ilya goes to hit Alexei for calling Svetlana a whore. The narrative isn't rewarding Ilya for respecting women, nor is it endorsing the way Ilya respects women. The narrative isn't paying attention to that hardly at all. And this is part of what fascinates me about the choice to characterize Ilya this way. It wasn't to "say" anything. It wasn't for the purpose of demonstrating what a good man Ilya is. It is simply how Ilya is characterized. He's just fucking like that.

And this goes back to what I've said before, what I've applauded Heated Rivalry for before - the amount of music in this show written or sung by women is exceptional. Most shows' soundtracks are not predominantly women. And I don't believe the music chosen for this show was chosen with the intent of "being the show that has a soundtrack with a lot of women." There's nothing performative about it. It's not being done to "say" anything, or "be feminist." They simply chose the best music for each scene, and because misogyny wasn't influencing their choices, it just so happens this show ended up with more women on the soundtrack than men. This is what I mean by its creation is what makes it feminist, not its content. Ilya is like that for the same reason the soundtrack is like that.

With most feminist stories, performative or not, there's this purposeful effort to insert feminism. In many cases, it's necessary, successful, poignant, and not at all performative - but that's still the approach. Put Feminism In. With Heated Rivalry, it's more like they accidentally left misogyny out, lmao.

Not completely - believe me, there are knit-picks I could make, knit-picks I have made. But I have never watched anything else in my life that is more visibly uninfluenced by misogyny, or the existence of misogyny (all purposely feminist works are influenced by the existence of misogyny, since there'd be no need for a purposely feminist work without it). Because of this, even though narratively Heated Rivalry isn't particularly feminist, I still think of it as a feminist work.

It has me asking the question, what would media look like if there was no need to insert feminism? What would media look like if there just...wasn't misogyny? Not in the story, but in real life?