If attractive actors in their mid-twenties stop being the most represented demographic in movies and TV shows, then the industry is dead and so is its audience, along with every televised sporting event since the beginning of time.
To nobody’s surprise, beauty sells. In an ever changing world with an ever changing audience, it’s often the only sure way to get someone to buy into a show at all. With attention spans decreasing at a speed previously unknown to man, these actors better be full of beauty.
Enter the twenty-year-olds: fresh, full of dreams, and never in short supply. As soon as the ugly ones are weeded out, boom! There’s the cast of the newest teen romcom, and they’re going to play characters at least ten years younger than them (this last part is nonnegotiable).
Following this logic, what’s even better than one beautiful young actor? TWO beautiful young actors. Together.
Put them in a room, dim the lights, play a really random club song no one’s ever heard, and suddenly a couple of cameras are broadcasting it straight to TVs everywhere. It’s the “show of the summer”, and TikTok has already made a trend based on one of the actors, which has bled from Instagram down to YouTube and onto your mom’s Facebook for some reason.
This recipe is slightly adjustable, of course, or else the general public would catch on to the illusion of original media currently being shoved under their noses. (Ha ha ha ha! What fools!)
Create a setting, like Canada or somewhere; a dash of sports, maybe hockey; even a little diversity could bring in more people, could draw in a different crowd; throw in a healthy dose of cliches, potentially “enemies to lovers” and “forbidden romance”; spice it up with a very…heated…romance that’s also somehow incredibly touching, something that could stretch over the course of, say, a decade, but built in with a happy ending that could heat even the iciest of hearts…
It’s Heated Rivalry. It’s a description of hit TV show and book, Heated Rivalry.
This show (and its incredibly attractive lead actors) is everywhere. On runways, in interviews, on talk shows, at the Oscars, at the Emmys, at the Olympics, carrying the torches?! Do these guys even play sports?!
It doesn’t matter, because every screen has been bogged down with this show and its cast, whether the owner of said screen even knew “gay hockey romance” was a genre or not. (It is, courtesy almost single handedly of Rachel Reid.)
The answer to the question – “WHY? WHY AM I WATCHING THESE MEN SAY THAT ON NATIONAL TELEVISION?!” – is simple: they’re hot. And for six nearly hour long episodes, they’re being hot together. Sold.
Heated Rivalry is the show of the moment, and has been for the past two months at least, but it’s not the first show to follow this well-used recipe for film. It’s not even the most recent.
A visit to any streaming service or cinema will only yield a disappointing crop of remakes and adaptations that would make any tried and true cinephile weep.
New shows and movies are always coming out (constantly churned out by the well oiled capitalist machine that is fueled by Hollywood’s burning desire for money) and it’s fair to say that at least half of them follow the tried and true rules that cherish the young and pretty.
Shows and movies have come a long way from where they began, and Hollywood has also changed in more ways than visible from just the surface. While there is currently a large plateau in cinemas of redone movies and TV shows, more and more creative works have been peaking through the cracks of purely cash-grab films. Even if the “young and pretty” clause is still in effect.
Maybe the solution to all of Hollywood’s issues could be just…letting people be ugly again. Yes! Let movie stars be ugly again! This should be a whole movement, complete with a petition, a GoFundMe, maybe a couple banners too. If someone asks Steve Buscemi really nicely, he might even agree to be a spokesperson! While this gains traction, maybe the over sexualization of teenagers can finally be addressed as well. Oh, wait, maybe they’re not ready for that conversation yet…
In the meantime, the world will continue to watch shows for their pretty people, and these pretty people will continue to play people they don’t represent, and the world will continue to suck a film down like it’s going out of style (a kind of depressing pun, actually, but they’re not ready for that conversation yet, either).
In the end, entertainment is entertainment. People will continue to find things, any things, to distract themselves from the trash fire nightmare that is the world. And, really, if hockey gets a couple more fans, or if a book’s sales increase by 529% just because a politician recommends it on live TV (thank you, Zohran Mamdani, you will always be a legend for that), then who’s going to complain? Not the NHL, or their largest propaganda machine, Rachel Reid.
Sometimes the well oiled capitalist machine can be worked in our favor.
