Ilya Rozanov’s Impact As Representation of Queer Russians
alright here we go
this isn’t really structured as an essay, but is a detailed analysis
first of all, i need to establish that a lot of my points come directly from personal experience — i am a mixed race kid born in kazakhstan, half-russian and half-kazakh, raised primarily in russia. i am also queer myself, although i was raised as a woman (i am now agender). this analysis will heavily focus on cultural elements, because they are crucial for understanding the depth of ilya’s character and why he acts the way he does.
i was quite apprehensive about ilya initially — western film loves to portray russian people as a caricature and use them for tasteless gags without really examining anything in depth (I’m looking at you stranger things, yes, you). i was concerned heated rivalry would remain surface-level about ilya’s background and portray him as a stereotypical, cold-hearted russian dude. i was also concerned about his accent being too caricatural, concerned about the potential dialogue in russian (as a linguist, russian dialogue in western film is infamously stiff and unnatural. looking at you again, stranger things), so you can imagine my surprise and delight when all of those concerns ended up being unfounded.
to be completely fair here, ilya does sport some stereotypical character traits — he’s brash, confident, distant and unafraid to offend others. but in contrast to other russian characters in western film, ilya has a warm flirtatiousness that i haven’t really seen before. and most importantly, his characterisation doesn’t end there.
at first glance, it seems that ilya doesn’t face any struggles with his sexuality at all. he is experienced, confident, the leading man to shane’s anxious discovery of himself. in reality, ilya’s understanding of his sexuality is directly tied to his personal conflict with his family and his culture.
said conflict is introduced in the very first episode of the show. during the scene where he is being drafted as the new all-star player for the boston raiders, he is being watched over by his father, grigori rozanov. grigori is portrayed by an older actor, and sports a number of medals attached to his suit, which likely implies that he is a war veteran. it is also established later on that he is ‘police’, which, culturally, means that he’s very friendly with some big heads in the government, not that he is literally a police officer. it is a man with trauma, powerful and influential. even without external cultural context, you can already see the toxic and abusive power dynamic this creates between him and ilya.
in the scene, ilya’s facial expression is one of discomfort — he’s smiling very awkwardly, chewing at his lip, his eyes are darting around. this immediately stops as soon as his father speaks; he puts on a cold, serious mask. grigori dismisses his son’s achievements and insists that he needs a lot of discipline, otherwise he will become ‘lazy’ (he means this in a ‘he’ll start slacking off’ kind of way). afterwards, he addresses ilya directly, in russian, using a very condescending tone of voice, and instructs him to listen closely to what he’s being told. the exact phrasing he uses is best translated as ‘understood?’, which might sound more neutral in english but in russian has a slightly aggressive connotation. i’ve seen quite a few people expressing surprise when reacting to this scene and being confused as to why ilya’s father isn’t showing any pride. i regret to inform you that this dynamic is, unfortunately, very common for the culture, especially between a father and a son.
to explain it further, i’ll have to talk about the way i was raised a little bit. russian (or post-USSR region) parents are typically very strict, demanding and authoritative. they are often emotionally distant, neglectful or even outright abusive. i will require you to put your nuance caps on here, because this behaviour is not necessarily a product of malice, and more a product of cultural norms. showing emotion, whether positive or negative, is seen as a weakness. more so for men, but for women as well. you are taught very young that you have to keep your emotions to yourself — nobody wants to see it. i was scolded and punished very frequently for intense emotional displays as a child. Mother and Father would scold me for crying. Grandmother would scold me for laughing too loudly. looking too happy. your parents are your caretakers, perhaps, providing food and shelter, but you definitely aren’t expected to lean on them for more than that. in my experience, it wasn’t very common. what you are expected to do, however, is be productive. be successful. provide. this is your duty as a son or a daughter, and if you fail, you are no longer of any worth to these people. it is your duty to take care of your parents and siblings, not the other way around. because of that expectation, whether you are achieving something grand or not doesn’t matter — after all, you’re just fulfilling your duty as a human being. no matter how hard i worked, i don’t think my parents ever genuinely said they were proud of me. because there is nothing to be proud of, really. it’s what you have to do.
with this cultural context, grigori rozanov’s characterisation immediately lands as extremely accurate. all of those norms and expectations are expressed in a few sentences and we are immediately shown the way they impact ilya.
ilya is desperate for his father’s love and acceptance, but he knows he will never get it. because they do not exist.
i have more to say about grigori, but now, let’s focus a bit on ilya’s queerness.
ilya is initially portrayed to be very at ease with his sexuality — he leads shane during their encounters, he’s not afraid to flirt and come on strong. but there’s a lot of pain and repression lurking underneath, only it’s not as obvious to the naked eye.
despite what the russian government will have you believe, there are, of course, plenty of queer people in russia. how dangerous it is to be queer there has fluctuated over the years, but it has never been truly safe. it’s a part of yourself you’re forced to hide for years, if not forever. the physical aspects of queer sexuality are often discovered early on — boys fooling around with boys and girls fooling around with girls — (ik this is a little contrived but just for the sake of the point) but later on dismissed as one grows up. even if there is no shame, there’s an unspoken understanding that it can never become something more. you’d never be able to emotionally commit to each other, because it’s not simply dangerous, it’s life-threatening. it can only be this — heat and bodies and mouths clashing.
we learn in the first episode, first hand from ilya, that back in russia, he was regularly sleeping with his hockey coach’s son. he brushes it off as nothing serious when explaining to shane, but most likely, he treats most of his sexual encounters with other men as such. because how is he supposed to know that it could be something more? i find it really intriguing that he establishes this to shane, because it implies ilya is so drawn to him he almost unconsciously considers pursuing him more seriously. otherwise, he wouldn’t have said anything and proceeded with the hook-up regularly. there’s nothing to explain, because it can never be real, can it?
a lot of ilya’s emotional avoidance later on in the series is rooted in this unspoken belief. he runs from shane not because he doesn’t love him, but because he believes it can never be real. that they can never be a couple. this is something people do behind closed doors, in secluded corners, in secret. it’s not something to commit to, not a real, tangible possibility.
ilya is in the closet not because he’s necessarily afraid, but because he doesn’t expect to have other options. in russia, there weren’t any other options.
in addition to this, ilya is also emotionally repressed because of the way he was raised. there are many things on the table that he cannot knowingly treat as real possibilities, including expressing his true emotions, which makes it very difficult for him to be vulnerable with shane. the intimate and genuine side of him comes out mostly during sex, especially at the beginning, because it is the only time that it can.
this is why ilya only accepts shane’s invitation to the cottage after witnessing scott hunter kiss kip on national television — he is actively being shown that there are other options.
all of these feelings are incredibly familiar to me, as a queer person who grew up in russia. a lot of my own repression wasn’t always rooted in shame, but hopelessness. the knowledge that this was something you could never really have. it took years to deconstruct, the same way it took ilya years to be brave enough to chase after something he really wanted.
now, I’d like to talk about the concept of ‘duty’ that i introduced earlier some more. for this section, queerness and ilya’s personal trauma will overlap.
in russian culture, the concept of ‘duty’ doesn’t simply involve your family. it involves your entire being — your duty as a citizen of russia, your devotion to the country, to the collective entity. an example of it is the scene at the end of episode 1, where grigori tells ilya to ‘apologise to russia’ after losing his game. i’ve seen quite a lot of people say that this moment was exaggerated, but once again, i regret to inform you it is a very common phrase. because of the concept of duty that overlaps our entire lives, our personal failures are deemed as overarching disappointments to the country. we are not good enough to serve it, therefore we should apologise to it.
this abstract concept of duty affects multiple areas of ilya’s life. he feels obligated to keep giving money to alexei, because it is his duty to provide for his family. i’ve seen many reactors be confused as to why ilya was even entertaining him, but this is the piece of context they were missing. it is unthinkable to cut him off. you’d be betraying yourself, more than anything. ilya unquestioningly obeys his father (at least in his presence) because of the same sense of duty. he avoids his feelings for shane out of the same sense of duty — he couldn’t possibly leave russia to be with shane. he’d be betraying himself and his duty.
in episode 5, when shane attempts to have an open discussion about their feelings for each other, ilya is dismissive. he doesn’t want to be, but he sees no other way to go about it — duty, hopelessness and fear are all crushing him. shane, however, is able to reach through to him and ilya allows himself to be vulnerable. this marks the definite shift in their relationship, because shane’s love and gentleness overpower, if temporarily, every cultural bias poisoning ilya’s life and preventing him from reaching for his own happiness.
the scene of grigori’s funeral that comes later in the same episode cements that shift and is absolutely masterful. there is a lingering shot of grigori’s numerous medals, from ilya’s POV. the medals are a very clear representation of duty, and now, with the man supposed to be wearing them gone, the duty is as well. this allows ilya to consider never coming back to russia, because there is no longer any duty to uphold. alexei’s behaviour later on only drives him further to cut ties — the abstract duty has lost its meaning and no longer holds weight for ilya. he can pursue something he really wants, even if he’s terrified. svetlana’s reassurance also helps this a lot.
i don’t think ilya was genuinely considering committing to shane then and there. after all, you can’t just shed years of your upbringing in one day. but the seeds are all planted in that scene, and masterfully so.
ilya’s russian monologue to shane is my favourite scene in the whole show. I’ve written about it before on this blog, saying how the composition of the shot reminded me a lot of the subway station tunnels near my home in moscow. he’s encased by walls covered in graffiti, laying his heart out in what is essentially a box made of concrete. the overhead lights are reddish in tint (they’re usually bright clinical white), painting the scene with a sense of danger and tension. ilya can only confess his feelings to shane in a language he doesn’t understand because he is still scared and has little hope. he looks out at the scrap of city in the distance before gathering his courage to even say it in russian and we see a brief flare of a police car’s siren — doing this is still incredibly dangerous. but he goes through with it. other things ilya says in this monologue also directly correlate with my previous points — he talks about his duty for his family choking him, draining him. he gave them everything, like he was supposed to, but there was never any gratitude, never any warmth. because there wasn’t supposed to be. he feels guilt for betraying his duty by not being able to take care of his father on his deathbed. and it kills him. he wishes things were different. he wishes for genuine connection. but it was never going to be found there. that feeling, i know all too well…an incredible, character-defining scene for ilya. I cry every time I see it.
in the finale, ilya’s character development is incredibly cathartic and powerful. I cried (again) when I heard him confess first, whispering ‘ya tebya lyublyu’ into shane’s skin. for context, ‘i love you’ is not something we say very often. i don’t remember my parents saying it to me much, if at all. ‘i love you’ is reserved for extreme situations. it must have taken such strength of character for ilya to say it then and it hit me really hard. ultimately, what made him be able to express his genuine feelings was shane talking about plans for the future — together — something ilya previously thought impossible. hearing and seeing shane be willing to commit to him must have been so grand. did I already say i sobbed my eyes out for this?
in conclusion, i absolutely adore the way ilya’s character was portrayed in the show. his cultural background was respected and directly influenced his character’s choices. his conflict with his family was layered, complex and realistic. i really saw myself in him. he wasn’t at all a caricature. he had tangible growth and was able to leave behind the harmful biases of post-soviet culture. i’ve already seen a couple of people in the russian fandom express gratitude and satisfaction with ilya’s portrayal, and i couldn’t agree more. i didn’t expect it at all, but it was masterfully done.
if anyone has further questions, please leave them in the comments, i will gladly answer.
tagging you bc u said u wanted to read about it @torntrianglesleeves @two4dashow @voidcrumbs
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