that there is a debate about whether or not heated rivalry is a "good" or "bad" show is so interesting to me because by what metrics are we discussing the quality?
Example, I can very thoroughly explain why the novel heated rivalry is pretty mediocre on the flipside I can thoroughly explain why heated rivalry the tv show is actually pretty good. However for both I am not comparing either against non-comperable titles within their own mediums. I don't compare HR The Novel against something like Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca because aside from both being novels they aren't comparable in any meaningful way. One could argue the technique of it all, in that Du Maurier's is vastly superior to Rachel Reid's and like sure, but the technique of prose used in Rebecca is already intentionally different than the technique attempted in Reid's Game Changer series.
Similarly I wouldn't compared Heated Rivalry the tv show to Unbelievable or Game of Thrones (I had to dig because I don't watch tv shows I watch movies). Their intentions are inherently different, aside from existing within the same medium they have little else in common.
This is where we get into the "high art" vs "low art" debate. For laymens Heated Rivalry may seem like "low art" because of society's inherent rejection of explicit sex - specifically sex for pleasure, even more specifically gay sex for pleasure - and its overall association with pornography (the lowest form of "art" there is right?).
Yet not so to one of the most famous American film critics of the last century, Roger Ebert, who used to review porn and even gave some films 3-stars out of four. I won't get into a debate about whether pornography is ethical, I'm not educated enough on the subject to even participate in such a debate. Rather this is about the associations we make about art with sex in it. Associations we make sometimes entirely subconsciously simply because of the puritanical environment we exist in. Even if you are not religious you will have internalized religious talking points around sex.
Since the inherent association with sex in media, specifically explicit sex in film is that explicit sex is bad we automatically associate it with "bad art". Bad here, being "of low value" not bad as in morally bad (but also, isn't that too what some people mean?).
More than likely you have seen some form of post on social media that has called a show - whatever that show is, but especially about queer shows - "basically porn". Pornography is specific, it includes actual non-simulated sex, where as a film like Infinity Pool features simulated - aka fake - sex. However explicit it is still, 100% fake. You are being sold an illusion where as pornography is very much The Real Deal. But people will make such claims to connect The Media with low and bad art whilst also attaching a certain moral standing on The Media.
This show is bad - both conceptually of low value and morally of no value.
The "sex-is-evil-unless-it's-done-purely" rhetoric is a tangled web to unpack and one I'm not equipped to do so. Rather let's go back to art, and the concepts of low vs high art.
John A. Fisher of the University of Colorado writes in his thesis High Art vs Low Art, "even though “high” and “low” read as adjectives of contrasting quality, we should not equate the high/low distinction with a third distinction, that between good and bad art. [...] conversely, it does not seem plausible that all “low art” could turn out to merit the status of art but be all bad. Even if rock music is low art, some songs – for example, by the Beatles, Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix – are surely successful and important examples of art. Thus we cannot equate high art with good art and low art with bad art."
One could look at queer films such as: Brokeback Mountain, Happy Together, Gohatto, The Handmaiden*, and The Color Purple as high art thereby making Heated Rivalry low art. In which case, I could see this perspective overall. I might be inclined to agree with it in a sense, however, being "low art" does not, as Fisher points out, equate "bad art" or of low value. Whatever distinctions we make regarding what is and isn't high and low art is a matter for theorists to debate upon not necessarily for the public. As we are ignorant of most film theory anyway.
[*The Handmaiden is also the subject of a lot of debate as "bad art" because of its explicit sex scenes even though it is undoubtedly well filmed and would typically automatically be considered "high art" the sex is the main point of contention and often used to claim it is "bad/low art"]
No, what matters more is if we are moved by what we are watching. Lawrence of Arabia is easily miles better than Mortal Kombat. However to even compare them is faulty as the films are so vastly different in design and intention. While Lawrence is the better film, that doesn't make Mortal Kombat less entertaining a film. The existence of one does not negate the value of the other.
I could easily detail why I think Heated Rivalry is a good show based on things like technique, improvements made on the source material, etc. But that won't convince people that it is a "good" show unless inherent bias is considered and confronted.
We have a tendency to believe what we like is good and what we dislike is bad. This is untrue. I thoroughly enjoyed the 1983 film Krull, but it is by no means a good movie. Likewise I didn't at all enjoy 2022's The Menu, it was however a well made and good film. An American in Paris is undoubtedly a good film and a mainstay of American film that I found dreadfully boring. Two things can exist at once; our own individual tastes do not inherently equate the overall quality of the work.
So is Heated Rivalry a "good" show or a "bad" show? I think the better question is, would you or would you not enjoy the show based on its own merits and your own individual tastes.
