“Heated Rivalry,” “Pillion,” and the New Drama of the Closet

10:51Alexandra Schwartz:In a night. Yeah.

10:52Vinson Cunningham:What the the fact of this for hockey. I mean, suddenly I feel like the NHL is just doing a little head swivel like. People, guys, I'm going to a hockey game this Thursday. You are not. Rangers? Yeah.

11:04Alexandra Schwartz:Oh, my God. It's the best live sport.

11:06Vinson Cunningham:Well, I'm going with three straight women who are bewitched by this thing. It's hilarious. Here we go. This is crazy.

11:11Alexandra Schwartz:Well, we would be remiss if we didn't talk about the show itself. I mean, we can—it's easily synopsized. We see two great young hockey phenoms in the summer before they are both drafted into the professional hockey league that is supposed to—you know, it's obviously the NHL. They don't call it that. One is from Canada. The other is from Russia.

11:34Naomi Fry:And Shane and Ilya.

11:35Alexandra Schwartz:Shane and Ilya. Shane plays for the Montreal Metros. He is the Canadian one. He's a hometown kid in Canada. Ilya plays for the Boston Raiders. And it's kind of like the tougher, meaner of the two through a series of encounters. And it like fits around the schedule of their games, right? It's like when they're in the same town, they start to hook up. And, you know, spoiler alert, they kind of end up growing closer and closer and closer. What else? Do you guys like the show? Alex is like, let me count the ways.

12:12Vinson Cunningham:Well, I can only say what Mr. Darcy says to Lizzie Bennet, like, you've bewitched me body and soul. What the hell has happened? I feel like I've been possessed by this show. And that is fascinating to me. Like, just analytically looking at the experience of possession, what has happened? The last thing I remember like this was Ferrante Fever. Oh, interesting. That's really interesting.

12:34Naomi Fry:Another folia de.

12:36Vinson Cunningham:Exactly. But where you wanted to dissect it with people, where you wanted to talk about it with people, where you wanted to live in the world, I do feel that it has parasitically warmed its way into my brain. And I can, like on the rewatch, guys, believe me, I can laugh. Like, I'm laughing when I see Kip, the barista in the bottle episode three, show up with a hockey player's body even though we know he's applying to get a PhD in art history. I'm laughing. I'm laughing when I see Kip with a book that says art history on it even though he's applying to a PhD in art history. Like, he seems to be just discovering the subject.

13:10Guys, I'm embracing all of it.

13:12Vinson Cunningham:I'm embracing it. I want to hear what you guys think, obviously. And I have lots of thoughts and theories, but please.

13:17Naomi Fry:Alex, it's interesting that you brought up Ferrante Fever because I think, and I agree. I mean, I recall also throwing myself into the Neapolitan, not trilogy. Quartet. Quartet, yes. The Neapolitan Quartet at the time. A more sophisticated grouping.

13:35Alexandra Schwartz:Sounds like. Yes, yes. Sounds like there's a cello involved. Right.

13:39Naomi Fry:It's a quartet. But to me, there's something very teenage about it. And I'm not saying it as in a bad way. I'm saying it in a good way in the sense that when you're a teenager, you're discovering things for the first time, whether it's kind of sex or it's, you know, the mysteries of friendship or, you know, just you're experiencing the world fresh. And there is something about the depiction of these two characters because it's the meeting between them is something very new to both of them, the way they fit together, let's say. I think for the viewer, it's about the firstness. It's about the firstness of these encounters and the yearning that that firstness and freshness arises in you when you're experiencing them, when the characters are experiencing them, and when you're encountering it as a viewer or reader.

14:38Mm-hmm.

14:39Alexandra Schwartz:Yeah. What you said about it being teenage is so spot on because there's this weird maybe paradox at the heart of the show, which is that it is incredibly adult in terms of it's got the longest and most involved sex scenes. and like, you know.

14:56Naomi Fry:Yeah, we should definitely talk about that as well.

14:58Alexandra Schwartz:It's like one of the characteristics of the show is, you know, it's very graphic and it talks very much about kinds and ways of sex. So there's an early scene, I think in Ilya and Shane's perhaps second encounter together where, you know, Ilya's asking him, has he ever bottomed? Has he ever had anal sex? And he's like, you know. And it's a very tender, at least for Ilya, scene. He's asking him if he's okay. And he's doing it. But then it's like five minutes of it. And this recurs over and over. Attention to positions. and uh and so there's that on the one hand the way that the in in many ways the plot the coming of age happens you know often the complaint about sex scenes is that they are extraneous to plot it seems to me that these sex scenes are very plotty that they are really the they contain the engine of the story and therefore it's very adult but on the other hand it does feel like ya to me totally yes and like almost all of its particulars yeah um and so like this push and between it like feeling like a very like juvenile thing that sometimes you know the the lines you know often were like you know there are a lot of groans at least for me like in terms of like

16:19Vinson Cunningham:the things these people are saying you know can you give an example well um this the the episode

16:25Alexandra Schwartz:that i like which is nobody really talks about people talk about they don't like the beginning they really like the end my favorite episode is episode three where this other guy scott hunter comes in and your favorite and and we come to know that like everybody that's good like the best hockey players are all gay. It's like, oh, this guy too? You know, we've seen him before, but he's off to the side, and now he's coming into this smoothie place to get, you know, to get smoothies, and he keeps, you know, his way of flirting is like to keep saying the name of the smoothie barista. I don't even know.

16:51Alexandra Schwartz:He's like, Kip, hey. I mean, the best one's the blueberry one, but... Oh, you mean Blue Moon over Brooklyn? Yeah. Yeah, that's it. But what? Oh, nothing. Just when I make it for myself in the morning, I add a banana. Oh, so you're kind of wild. I mean, it wouldn't be the first time somebody's told me that. Yeah, that actually sounds pretty good. Blueberry with a banana. I take that. If it's okay to order off-menu. Yep. I mean, technically it was my idea, so I think we can get away with it this time. And then, whatever. He has a great game. He comes back the next morning. He says, you know, when I have a good game, I like to repeat whatever, you know, whatever happened.

17:34Alexandra Schwartz:and perfect my routine. So I'm back here. For your banana. Yeah, extra banana. So there's a lot of shit like that. And then he leaves, and then the fellow barista of Kip goes like, girl, it's like this whole thing of he's farting with you. It's funny, but it's definitely something that, it just feels very teenage in its texture. I don't know. It feels like if Harry Potter was about fucking, it would sound like this.

17:58Naomi Fry:I think that's really like, I think reading YA for me, and I was in my youth, I mean, I really wanted there to be like fucking, you know. Of course. And usually there wasn't. I mean, you know, Judy Blume had some, you know, her later, like forever, my, you know, my favorite Norma Cline, who not many people remember, had some sex. But I think that was always the place where it was almost going, the place where it was reaching, but mostly didn't because of like the restraints of the of the genre. So this is kind of like the the perfect, you know, what we wanted but couldn't get when we were kids.

18:42Vinson Cunningham:Yeah, I think I think you guys are touching on something really interesting. Vincent, I think what you're describing, I would say is that there's a kind of sincerity here and a kind of directness that absolutely not only risks, but kind of strides into the world of corniness. Yes. In being like open-hearted and sincere. I think a big part of it, you know, and I've seen this theory going around most obviously by the popular psychotherapist Esther Perel. I don't know if you saw her video on Instagram analyzing this, but I think she makes a good point that's worth repeating, which is something going on in this show is about a kind of wish fulfillment where all expectation of negative consequence, You live with the intensity of the expectation that something bad will happen, but it all gets resolved into something good.

19:29Vinson Cunningham:Yes. Yes. And I think, like, there are scenes in this show, and here's a little bit of a spoiler alert for everyone who hasn't seen it, but a coming out that is a terrifying prospect that goes really well.

19:42Alexandra Schwartz:It's kind of like the dream, you know.

19:44Vinson Cunningham:Another example is Shane has a kind of beard relationship with a hot female actress who, when he can't really have sex with her because he's not physically attracted to her, not only is she like, that's cool. Can I ask if you've ever been with another guy? She's like, hey, do you think you could be gay? Was it different with a guy?

20:12Of course.

20:14Vinson Cunningham:Is it better? She kind of helps him and embraces him. And I think there's something that people are finding very restorative about that fantasy, the fantasy of the soft landing. And I do want to say that I think the sex is a huge part of that in the show. The sex in this show, the first thing it reminded me of was sex in Sally Rooney novels, where two people are having a lot of communication difficulty. like their opposites attracting. They can't really talk to each other. They don't know how to work it out in real life, but their sexual chemistry is off the charts. I think why a large range of people are attracted to the show, including straight women, is about the fantasy of deeply fulfilling sex that isn't awkward, that isn't weird, that isn't a little bit uncomfortable, that doesn't leave you feeling like, what the hell just happened?

21:05Vinson Cunningham:I feel used and abused. I feel dirty. It's the opposite.

21:08Naomi Fry:Or just like, I'm not that fulfilled. Like, this is fine, but this is not what, you know, what's all the fuss about?

21:16Alexandra Schwartz:They're always, like, ripping each other's clothes off.

21:18Vinson Cunningham:And they're perfectly sexually compatible. So are Kip and Scott. This is, like, a theme that comes. I think it's a real fantasy. That's a fantasy. And it's an important fantasy. The show leads with the sex. Like, within 15 minutes, they're having hot, like, revelatory sex. and I think I know a lot of people like don't like the first two episodes and they like the more obviously complex emotional storytelling guys I loved the first two episodes because right away you know the fantasy is there these guys are getting something that's very important to them they're fucking and they're sucking that's correct Gomi I think we did it

21:55Alexandra Schwartz:I think we did we're going to take a quick break and when we're back the long drama of The Closet this is Critics at Large from The New Yorker

22:15Alexandra Schwartz:I'm Vincent Cunningham.

22:16Vinson Cunningham:I'm Nomi Fry. I'm Alex Schwartz, and we host Critics at Large from The New Yorker.

22:21Alexandra Schwartz:Each week, we pick a starting point. The new novel you can't stop thinking about, the movie everybody's seeing this weekend, and we kind of go galaxy-brand with it.

22:30Vinson Cunningham:Right. We take the ideas at the center of these things and trace them across history, across mediums, all to get to the bottom of why this particular text is important right now in politics and culture and also in your everyday life.

22:43Naomi Fry:We go highbrow, we go lowbrow, we go everything in between.

22:47Alexandra Schwartz:Food culture to meme culture, Charlie XCX to Toni Morrison.

22:52Naomi Fry:K-pop to the Kennedys. From horror movies to heated rivalry.

22:55Vinson Cunningham:From the Oscars to the Met Gala. The Golden Bachelor to Wuthering Heights, Great Expectations to Desperate Housewives.

23:01Alexandra Schwartz:That's what we're talking about over here. We're having fun. It's Critics at Large from The New Yorker.

23:06Naomi Fry:Every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.

23:15Hi, I'm Rebecca Ford. And I'm John Ross. And we're the hosts of Little Gold Men, Vanity Fair's podcast for film, TV, and awards lovers. And just because the Oscars are done, for now, doesn't mean we are. Join us every week for coverage of the biggest stories in Hollywood, interviews with today's brightest stars, and so much more. Listen to Little Gold Men every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.

23:43The Wired Newsroom is known for award-winning reporting on how technology shapes our world. On Wired's Uncanny Valley, we take that curiosity even further. Each week, journalists from Wired break down the biggest stories in tech while speaking directly with the people building, challenging, and reshaping the future. Is the AI boom sustainable? How do you protect your privacy in an age of constant surveillance? Uncanny Valley tackles the questions driving today's tech debates and lighting up your group chats. Listen to new episodes every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.

24:22Alexandra Schwartz:Before we get back to things, what do you guys think the overlap is between our listenership and fans of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights?

24:27Vinson Cunningham:I think the overlap is significant. And probably there are also a few like virulent haters who I love.

24:34Alexandra Schwartz:People with strong opinions about. I think there's a lot, right?

24:37Naomi Fry:There's a lot. Yeah. And so for all you Wuthering Heights enthusiasts, come see Critics at Large live. Yeah, we're going live again at the 92nd Street Y here in New York City on February 19th talking about all things Wuthering Heights.

24:54Vinson Cunningham:There's a new movie coming out. You may have seen a preview for it already. Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights starring Margot Robbie, Jacob Elordi, and a very, very loud Charlie XCX soundtrack. Yep.

25:06Naomi Fry:You know, we're going to be talking about gothic love stories, the Moors, doomed romances.

25:13Vinson Cunningham:Supernatural love. Yeah, of course, all of the stuff. All of that good stuff. I'm so excited for this. I hope you all are too. For anyone who buys a VIP ticket, there will also be, thrillingly, an after party. Can you believe it? A meet and greet with your favorite critics? It's true. The critical analysis will continue over drinks. And if you're not here in this city, good news. We have set this event up so that you can stream it from wherever you are. Head to 92ny.org for more info or check the link to the event in our show notes. And we hope to see you there on February 19th.

25:53Alexandra Schwartz:Nomi, you, if listeners don't know this yet, you wrote about heated rivalry for The New Yorker, and your piece is called The Delicious Anticipation and, yes, Release of Heated Rivalry. You can find it on newyorker.com. In that piece, you kind of take some time to throw back to several of the great stories of gay romance across various forms of literature. What was coming to mind for you when you were watching Heated Ravelry?

26:22Naomi Fry:Yeah, I mean, as I was watching the show, I was both struck by what felt like this kind of freshness and felt like falling in love for the first time, etc., etc. But I also thought about how it was part of a lineage of previous texts that have dealt with the problem of the closet. And one such text was the Ian Forrester novel Morris that was only published posthumously in the early 70s because, of course, the conditions for a text that deals with homosexual love and also happy homosexual love were not there during Forrester's lifetime. So I thought about Morris, which is kind of like similarly to heated rivalry about kind of two lovers coming from very different places.

27:18Naomi Fry:The protagonist is an upper class man. The other is a working class gamekeeper. And they are drawn to each other. They have sex. And then there is this mutual suspicion that comes from the great danger that would come to both of them if their union was revealed. and ultimately there is a realization that there is, despite the fears and dangers of the closet, a love and attraction that transcends it. And so I was thinking about that narrative of the obstacle of the closet, right? And how, of course, this is something that in real life, as well as in these actual texts in Morris and in a different way in Unit Rivalry, presents an actual very painful thing to contend with, but it also allows for a kind of like narrative conflict that is difficult, but also because of that difficulty, satisfying when it's resolved, which is kind of the conditions of an interesting narrative, right?

28:27Naomi Fry:And so I think this is something that happens in Morris. I also mentioned some other text in the piece, you know, Brokeback Mountain, also about two star-crossed lovers, two men whose love dare not speak its name. And we have Patricia Heisman's The Price of Salt, which is about, you know, these like challenged lesbian lovers later made into Todd Haynes' movie Carol. We have a movie I recently watched from, again, the early 90s, Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho, which is about two young men who actually are both gay hustlers. So they practice gay sex and in that sense they're out. But the problem is that one of them is in love with the other and wants to actually have a relationship with him.

29:17Naomi Fry:And that is impossible for a variety of reasons. So there's a whole slew of texts that came before our beloved heated rivalry that leads to the moment in which we find ourselves right now with it. There is something about the closet in.

29:34Vinson Cunningham:There's just something about the closet. In gay literature, in gay filmmaking, the closet is, in addition to being a realistic problem and feature of much of gay life through modern history, also has a very, very strong narrative appeal because it means secrecy and it means the possibility of revelation. And so when you're writing a story like that, and this happens in heated rivalry, immediately there's pressure and immediately there's narrative tension. And I think all the time when I think about this question about a passage in the great English writer Alan Hollinghurst's first novel called The Swimming Pool Library.

30:13Vinson Cunningham:Alan Hollinghurst is one of my favorite novelists. He's a gay novelist. He writes about gay life. We love you, Alan. Come on to the show, Alan. Love you, Alan. There is this fascinating passage in his first novel, The Swimming Pool Library. This is a book that was written in 1988. It was written in the midst of the AIDS crisis, and it takes place before. It takes place in the early 80s before AIDS is a thing. It's about a young man who is initiated into the history. He's gay. Initiated into the history of gay life in England by much older, quote-unquote, queer peer of an English lord. and meanwhile is having his own sexual initiation, having a lot of sex in the course of this one summer.

30:51Vinson Cunningham:Crazy sex in this book.

30:52Naomi Fry:Like crazy, crazy, crazy explicit.

30:54Vinson Cunningham:Yeah. If you like heated rivalry, please go right to the Swimming Pool Library by Alan Hollinghurst.

30:59Naomi Fry:But I will caution that it's much more raw, I would say, than heated rivalry. It's not kind of sanitized in the same way. No, it's certainly not.

31:10Vinson Cunningham:This is not a romance novel. Let's be clear about that. And it's not a YA novel. No. Yeah. But there is a passage that is very fascinating to me where this younger man, Will, says to the older one, I'm always forgetting how sexy the past must have been. And the Lord says this to him. He says, oh, it was unbelievably sexy, much more so than nowadays. I'm not against gay lib and all that, of course, William, but it has taken a lot of the fun out of it, a lot of the frisson. And he then goes on to say, I think the 1880s must have been an ideal time with brothels full of off-duty soldiers and luscious young dukes chasing after barrow boys.

31:46Vinson Cunningham:So what's so interesting to me about that passage, so many things are interesting to me. One is that the closet is a site of fantasy, and one is that the past is a site of fantasy also. Like, the 1880s were not an ideal time to be gay. Like, Oscar Wilde did not have a good go of it in the end. I think what's interesting is this attraction to the secretive, to the sense of, like, what gives something more stakes? What gives something more pressure? What gives something more intensity than needing to undergo an experience even though there's great social cost and secrecy and privacy? And I think that that's something that, you know, gay literature, I'm thinking of literature in particular, is reckoning with.

32:24Vinson Cunningham:Like I just read Edmund White, the wonderful novelist Edmund White, who died last year. I just read his last book, which is called The Loves of My Life. It's about it's a big sex memoir. You know, he says he's had sex with 3000 men over the course of his life. Here are some of them. And so it's a book full of sex. But he also says this really interesting thing in the book. He says about his own recent fiction. He says, my recent fiction is less autobiography and more thought experiment. And he says, often I want to lead the reader to a better, more compassionate, more forgiving, bolder, more loving world by picturing it as if it already existed.

32:58Vinson Cunningham:To me, that's heated rivalry. That is what heated rivalry does on a very real level. But I think there's a real question about how much literature like that we want. Yeah.

33:10Alexandra Schwartz:What it makes me think of is another feature of heated rivalry, which is that one of its preconditions because of its setting, the world of professional sport, is that everybody that we are made to care about is very rich. Yes. Narrative fiction is so often about the world of the bourgeoisie, a certain amount of assumed prosperity or sort of the normative world of the middle class and above. The closet is a space that intersects with that line but is not parallel with it. Like takes you off into the world of bohemia, takes you into other parts of society that middle class respectability cannot touch.

33:54Alexandra Schwartz:And so in a certain way, it's a kind of tourism. Right. And I think that's part of why it's so exotic and romantic and perhaps nostalgic as well, because the moment something becomes mainstreamed and you hear this, you know, there are certain, you know, radical gay men who are still like gay marriage should never have happened. The moment something becomes legal, it becomes commoditized, corporatized, smoothed over, kind of CGI'd, and loses much of its originary texture such that it can be simultaneously true that it was better and it was worse back in the day.

34:30Naomi Fry:Yeah, that's really interesting, Vincent. And I think this might be a bit of a spoiler for listeners who have not yet watched or haven't reached the end of the show yet. But I will say it anyway, that at the very end, after Elia and Shane go to Shane's cottage, it comes to pass that they are discovered by Shane's parents. And so there is this kind of like coming out scene where Shane has to discuss the fact of his gayness with his parents. What's interesting to me is that the mom is a momager. Shane's mom also manages him and is very savvy about kind of the landscape of professional sports. We need a statement prepared in case anything leaks.

35:22Something classy and simple. Mom. And I'm going to quietly reach out to the premium brands or maybe just Reebok and Rolex and Speedo. They're going to be thrilled, I think, once they wrap their minds around this. There's a world of opportunity here if they do it right. Mom, can we just take three steps back, please? I'm not going to come out or anything yet. We just want a future. I don't know.

35:48Naomi Fry:The moment of like, we're not coming out quite yet. Right. In some ways can be taken as like, OK, this is is this a little bit regressive? You know, are they not out and proud? Like, why are they hiding their true identity, et cetera, et cetera. But in another way, it's kind of like a little bit in the sense that you were talking about, Vincent, a little bit radical. It's like, no, we're keeping it to ourselves in order not to be kind of like used and commoditized as this entity in this like game of identity that these corporations are playing. Yeah.

36:25Alexandra Schwartz:I mean, this is totally a total side thing, but I think it applies here. I don't know if you guys have seen the show I Love L.A., but one of the characters in it is a sort of like Instagram model who also happens to be queer. I think she's bisexual or something, you know, but she has a girlfriend. And unfortunately, her marketing agency comes to know this. And then they do this like, you know, queer, like rainbow colored Ritz commercial with her. And she's like, it's like the saddest she's ever been. It's like, oh, my God, this is the worst thing in the world. It's the corniest, cheesiest thing that's ever happened.

36:57Alexandra Schwartz:I feel like this makes me feel homophobic how much my sexuality has been used. You know, there is a way that like, you know, pulling sexualities are like into the sort of, you know, latticework of things that are sort of like tolerated in mainstream society. it's hard to explain why it does feel like a kind of pyrrhic victory. But it does. In a minute, Yearning is back. If you really love us, you'll stick around.

37:32I wrote a little song to remind you, Choice Hotels gets you more of the experiences you value. The Cambria Hotel's got it all. A rooftop bar, have a ball. Cocktails up here feel just right. It's Cambria amazing, all right. Bring a date, your team, or even your mom. Book direct at choicehotels.com. See you on the roof. The Wired Newsroom is known for award-winning reporting on how technology shapes our world. On Wired's Uncanny Valley, we take that curiosity even further. Each week, journalists from Wired break down the biggest stories in tech while speaking directly with the people building, challenging, and reshaping the future.

38:20Is the AI boom sustainable? How do you protect your privacy in an age of constant surveillance? Uncanny Valley tackles the questions driving today's tech debates and lighting up your group chats. Listen to new episodes every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.

38:39Hi, I'm Rebecca Ford. And I'm John Ross. And we're the hosts of Little Gold Men, Vanity Fair's podcast for film, TV, and awards lovers. And just because the Oscars are done, for now, doesn't mean we are. Join us every week for coverage of the biggest stories in Hollywood, interviews with today's brightest stars, and so much more. Listen to Little Gold Men every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.

39:13Alexandra Schwartz:In this kind of mix, I think we should also just bring in something else, which is the movie Pillion, which is coming out next week. It's directed by Harry Leighton and stars Harry Melling and Alexander Skarsgård. Does anybody want to quickly synopsize?

39:32Vinson Cunningham:Yes.

39:33Alexandra Schwartz:Please.

39:34Vinson Cunningham:Pillion takes place in the present. We have, I think he's supposed to be 26 in the movie, I want to say. You know, just a real virgin. Sorry, but that's it. This is Colin, played by Harry Melling. And he does stuff like live at home with his mom and dad. He sings in a barbershop quartet with his dad, which is both adorable and like absolutely the most...

39:59Alexandra Schwartz:The symbol of his virginity.

40:01Vinson Cunningham:I mean, it's the hats they wear. He's a good boy. He's a good boy to a point of pathology. And his parents are, and this is a refreshing twist on the usual tropes of the genre, totally ecstatic that he's gay. They just want him to be with a nice man. They try to set him up on a date at the start of the movie. But that doesn't go well. Instead, he crosses paths with Ray, who is just a hot Nordic stud played by Alexander Skarsgård, who happens to ride a motorcycle. Who happens to be a hot Nordic stud. who happens to be a hot Nordic stud with a few words and, you know, just a large and handsome body.

40:36Vinson Cunningham:And whose first date, it's true, whose first date with Colin is to take him out back behind some trucks in a kind of quiet passageway on Christmas Day in London to remove his motorcycle leathers. And he proceeds to unzip. And Harry Melling, you know, attempts fellatio or whatever. doesn't do very well, I should actually just call him by his name, Colin, licks Ray's boot and is, at this point, the relationship between them is established. Basically, Ray is a major dom, and Colin, he susses out, has great potential as a sub, and this relationship is taken to an extreme when Colin goes to Ray's house and is treated just like a non-entity.

41:22Vinson Cunningham:He arrives at Ray's house, And instead of being greeted in as if you were on a date, he's immediately told by Ray, do you need me to show you around the kitchen so you can make dinner? He doesn't get to eat that dinner next to Ray. Instead, Ray's dog eats it. Ray goes upstairs, brushes his teeth, gets into bed and says, yep, you're sleeping on the floor. Gives him a shopping list in the morning and their relationship is established. And of course, the name of the movie Pillian has to do with the motorcycle gang that Ray is part of. He's part of a group of like gay motorcyclers who are all into BDSM.

41:52Vinson Cunningham:Many of them are in long-term relationships between the dogs and their pillions. Yeah, the guys who ride behind them on the bike. And the big question, the movie, I think, is, I think this is such an interesting movie because we see Colin coming into his own, discovering his sexuality, discovering who he really is as a sexual being and therefore as an adult through Ray. And we also see him start to chafe against the constraints that Ray has imposed. Actually, there was something. I was wondering if maybe you might want to come have dinner with my parents sometime.

42:37Dinner with your parents? Yeah.

42:44You'd like that? Yeah. I mean, you know, they would.

42:53I don't think that's a very good idea.

43:00Okay.

43:08No.

43:09Naomi Fry:Sorry. Yeah, I really, I love this movie. Because of this particular kink formation that they are part of, That comes to replace in some sense the role the closet has kind of like more traditionally played in the kind of like gay romance of the 20th century or also in heated rivalry, right? Like the very structure of this relationship has yearning established into it and has also the misunderstanding of the broader environment around the relationship. For instance, there's a scene where finally, after Colin asks him and wants him to do so, Ray somehow agrees to, he cracks a little bit and agrees to come with Colin to have a meal with Colin's parents who have been asking, why can't we meet Ray?

44:12Naomi Fry:You know, in a kind of very innocent, innocent, sweet way. And Ray finally agrees. they have this meal together and of course ray treats colin like shit and the the parents just

44:25Vinson Cunningham:parents just don't understand yeah when your son shows up with a chain around his neck yes you know locked up like a dog and the man with the key is sitting right next to him they didn't expect it they didn't expect that for their so how do you explain to your parents how do you explain to the

44:45Naomi Fry:world that the thing that you want is kind of conditioned by unsatisfied yearning, that the actual satisfaction is the unsatisfaction.

44:58Vinson Cunningham:And I would actually even add to that, does explaining it ruin a piece of it? Because here I think we have the narrative. I think what's going on in a way is the, as to go back to the Hollinghurst, the frisson of the closet. Yes. There is a sexiness, a frisson to the secrecy. And because of the extreme nature of the relationship, it needs to be shrouded in secrecy. They quite literally can't go out in public and act like a quote unquote regular couple because there is no framework in the relationship for that to happen. at a really interesting moment in the movie, Colin does ask for a break from this so that they can do that and, you know, see the movie to find out what happens.

45:38Vinson Cunningham:But the only other way they can really go out is in this very, very closed group of bikers who all know the codes. And it's both like a safe space and also a really, really kind of asphyxiating space. It's both. And that's what I think is really interesting about the movie, that it's both a total freedom and release and also a total prison.

45:58Alexandra Schwartz:Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting, this thing of like these contemporary stories where gay relationships are totally in the larger culture, totally accepted. And there are sort of like closets within closets. One thing is like the very supportive parents of Colin. I was thinking about this in Heated Ravelry because, of course, there is a very supportive father, the barista Kip. Oh, love that man. His father is like, what's up with you? I love you. Everything's going to be fine. Like, you're going to do great at this job. He's a great father. And yet, Kip, because he's entered a different world, a world that he didn't expect to be in, all of a sudden he's like in a different kind of closet.

46:38Alexandra Schwartz:Like, it's a hockey player and therefore he can't. All of a sudden there's a subcultural layer that makes even what is nominally or like sort of de jure accepted in the wider society. All of a sudden there's a deeper place that others cannot go. Right. And so it's like even is the closet even worse in liberal pluralistic society? Because it's like it's also like an added question of like why don't why am I in here again? And so does the sort of broader opening of the closet in the wider society force us to seek deeper closets?

47:13Vinson Cunningham:I think that's such a good question. I also, you know, what you're making me think of, Vincent, is also the way narratively, both in life and in fiction, that the closet is not just a phenomenon that operates around the people who directly interact with it. The closet is something that lets everyone else in the society also define themselves. So, like, the thing that happens in Pillion that is really fascinating is, you know, the working class salt of the earth parents of Colin who have made the cultural evolution towards acceptance actually aren't as accepting as they think and have to come up against that.

47:47Vinson Cunningham:It's a narrative device that everyone is implicated by.

47:52Alexandra Schwartz:It does seem, though, that the structure and the engine of both stories and of some of the others that you mentioned, Nomi, is this like just sort of overweening yearning. Is that dimension of the romance story or the story of sexual becoming, is that something that we're just kind of the culture is opening itself back up to? There's like the depths and possibilities of just frank yearning.

48:20Naomi Fry:Yeah, I mean, I think I was, and I texted you guys in our little critics chat. I saw that the Criterion channel for February, you know, they have these collections that they do every month of themed movies. And they have one in February that's centered on yearning. And I was like, okay, yeah, this is definitely in the air. And it's like, I'm wondering what you guys think, like, has it been kind of like a certain cynicism that has ruled the culture that has made us turn away from yearning? And is there kind of like a reintegration of yearning as we reach back towards earnestness?

49:12Vinson Cunningham:Is that part of it? Oh, that's interesting. I think, you know, what a good question. I mean, yearning is, I think we can just establish as a fact yearning is in. 2026 is the year of the yearn. Oh, wow. People are yearning. Already. They're writing about it. We're already saying it. We're saying it. We're calling it. It's the year of the yearn. Oh, yeah. The year of the yearn is good. We don't even need to discuss our end of the year episode.

49:35Naomi Fry:We've done it. And we are doing an event at the 92nd Street Y, February 19th, about Wuthering Heights and talk about a yearning text, right?

49:43Vinson Cunningham:The only reason I feel okay with us already being at the end of today's, close to the end of today's episode and just getting to yearning is I know that yearning with a capital Y is coming for us with Wuthering Heights. And we are going to get to engage so much more deeply in the yearn. So come see us for that. But Nomi, I think that's really interesting about sincerity because, yeah, yearning is predicated on sincerity for sure. And it's also predicated on lack of gratification. And one thing that I think if I can once again return to heated rivalry, one thing that's so interesting about heated rivalry is some of a little bit of a retro element.

50:19Vinson Cunningham:I don't mean in terms of its politics. I mean just in terms of technology. No one is on an app. No one is cruising for sex and getting it right away. There is a delayed gratification that is not so much, I think, part of the culture right now or part of how we see the culture. Like, we're living in, we're like deep in the Tinder era for gays and straights and everyone else. Like, it's, we're deep in the kind of like, you know, I can try to order sex like I order food situation. And so I think that something—

50:54Naomi Fry:Right, the span between like wanting and getting is ever, ever shortening.

50:58Vinson Cunningham:Exactly. Yeah. And has that actually counterintuitively led to a greater need for yearning? Quite possibly, yes. I love that. Yeah. What do you guys think about the yearning element?

51:09Naomi Fry:I'm wondering if there hasn't been a kind of like pathologizing of yearning, all of this talk about like breadcrumbing and orbiting. What is breadcrumbing? Well, it's like when you actually, I mean, it's kind of like a precondition for yearning in some senses, I think, because it's like when you yearn for someone and that person gives you kind of like little, you know, like shots of dopamine, you know, texts you out of the blue, but then doesn't follow up or is like says, oh, you you look good today. but doesn't want to make a date or maybe sleeps with you but then never follows, you know, whatever.

51:54Naomi Fry:And I think there's been a lot of discussion.

51:57Alexandra Schwartz:Billy is a little bit of a breadcrumber.

51:59Naomi Fry:He's a bit of a breadcrumber. We've been kind of like pathologizing the conditions of yearning a little bit maybe. And perhaps we're returning more to like, no, this is just this pathology is like what's called to desire, you know? In a way. Yeah.

52:17Alexandra Schwartz:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one thing that I kept thinking about vis-a-vis heated rivalry, and certainly at least the Colin figure in Pillian, which is like, there's something very ancient about it, which is like, oh, here is the young man whose whole life is romance. I mean, they don't think about any, I mean, these guys are multimillionaires in heated rivalry. They've got contracts to sign. They've got endorsement. It doesn't matter.

52:42Naomi Fry:Sentimental education.

52:44Alexandra Schwartz:There's one, yeah. In this world of sort of distracted and attenuated impulses where you feel one thing one second and another thing the other second and everything becomes this sort of gray slop. All of a sudden here are these people who like everything has to do with this. It's almost to say like I want to reconnect with with original impulses. Yeah. It's very like primordial. It's like I want to go back to the purposes of life or something like that.

53:13Vinson Cunningham:Yeah. And frankly, guys, the reason why I think people keep rewatching the show is to go back to that beginning, is to go back to the yearn, the yearn burn. They want the yearn to burn.

53:24Naomi Fry:They want the yearn to burn and they want the resolution of that burn. But what happens after the resolution? Exactly.

53:32Alexandra Schwartz:I mean, maybe that's what season two of The Heated Rival is all about. No, exactly. But will the magic be gone?

53:39Naomi Fry:You know, we'll just have to see.

53:45Alexandra Schwartz:So we wanted to set aside the last part of this episode to go through some of the responses that we got from you when we asked for your advice in last week's edition of I Need a Critic. So thank you so much. Many, many, many more people wrote in than we were expecting with such wonderful recommendations. And so we're just going to kind of skim our inboxes and give you a small selection. To recap, I wanted some advice on taking in culture while parenting a baby. Alex wanted some great texts about sports. And Nomi wanted art that is relaxing but also enriching at the same time. Who wants to go first?

54:26Naomi Fry:I can go first. Okay, yes. So I wanted art and culture that put me in a state of relaxation but not something stupid. Okay. So I got some great responses. God, I'm so excited. Okay. Danielle, she would recommend Bojack Horseman, which has been recommended to me many times and I haven't pulled the trigger. Yes, which people are always surprised about. Yes, I am surprised. Okay. Okay. And so maybe I'll finally do that. Thank you, Danielle. Mary, with a kind of experiential suggestion to throw a listening party of an album, any album that I used to love. Sit and quiet and see what it brings you. Love that.

55:11Naomi Fry:I love it. Okay.

55:16Naomi Fry:Gina, with the suggestion to watch Wim Vendors' Perfect Days, which I haven't. It's a beautiful meditation on the value of public spaces, showcasing Tokyo's many gorgeously designed public toilets. Did you see that, Alex? No, I haven't seen it. Did you?

55:30Alexandra Schwartz:I really liked it. I really admired that movie. It was great.

55:32Naomi Fry:Okay. I'll do that. I might even queue it up tonight. I love this suggestion from Elizabeth. Jeopardy. what middle brow heaven looks like you can feel good about yourself but also relax i love that uh lawrence is suggesting that i go to an art museum bring music get a little high like a gummy high if you like that sort of thing and then just wander the museum it's not a class you're not trying to learn anything, Lauren says. Just enjoy with your eyes. Guys, I love these suggestions. I want to do every single one of them. Incredible. Alex?

56:16Vinson Cunningham:Yes. Okay, so here we go. From DJH, three mysterious initials, says, I had a wonderful time watching 13 Days in France, which depicts the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble. That sounds fantastic. Oh my god, that does sound fantastic. Combines some of my interests, such as Grenoble and sport. And 1968. And 1968. A banner year. Exactly. Thank you, Nomi. For Monica, I just finished reading Bear Time by Frederick Blackman. Hockey is the sport. Okay, very relevant. And the all-encompassing devotion and connection of the people of a small town in Norway to it is the story. Perfect. From Andrea, the short story for The Love of Grass by W.P.

56:56Vinson Cunningham:Kinsella, a field of dreams source material fame. It's about grass. Okay. But also the weird, sometimes quiet and implicit community sports like baseball forge among longtime fans. Okay. Jonna recommends the documentary Hoop Dreams, an absolute classic. And from Elaine, Love and Basketball, another absolute classic. And Elaine has a very pertinent thing to say here, which is, you and Vincent can have more in common, and maybe I can even join the Knicks group text that David Remnick and Vincent have.

57:25Alexandra Schwartz:That's right.

57:26Vinson Cunningham:I mean, one can only aspire to such a thing.

57:28Alexandra Schwartz:That's right.

57:28Vinson Cunningham:From Sheena, sports as a whole were something I did not see as beautiful or noble until my sophomore year in college. A friend put on Tokyo Olympiad from 1965, a documentary about the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, and I came to the light. This experience brought me to the beauty, wrath, and meaning within sports and competition.

57:48Alexandra Schwartz:Great film.

57:48Vinson Cunningham:Okay, that sounds great. I think what I might do, guys, is I might do Olympiad, and then I might do the 13 Days in France. God, I love that. I love our listeners. That's where I'm starting. This is perfect. Love our listeners.

58:01Alexandra Schwartz:They're great.

58:02Vinson Cunningham:Okay, Vincent.

58:02Alexandra Schwartz:Okay, cool. Lots of great strategic advice from me in terms of cramming in my watching and reading and listening, which is much, much appreciated. From Lily. As a working mother with a daughter who sleeps around 10, I have this rule. Stop any kind of work at 8 p.m. and sleep at 11 p.m. These three hours are for chatting with the kid and my husband, nightly routines, and at least one hour of reading and one hour of watching something. Even if it's a great movie that I want to watch in its entirety, I will force myself to stop. That forcing, this discipline you speak of, executive function, some call it, this is my problem.

58:39Alexandra Schwartz:Thank you so much, Lily. And also her phone goes on airplane mode after 8 o 'clock.

58:43Vinson Cunningham:It's all about airplane mode.

58:45Alexandra Schwartz:Yeah. Sally, advice for Vincent about those three sacred hours is to, speaking of the, you know, these are the hours after your kid goes to sleep before you go to bed. This was the meat of my question. It's to first and foremost spend some time doing nothing, looking at nothing. Not meditating, just taking the day, see how you feel, where you're at. And then, she says, you have a much, much better idea of what you would like to do or how you want to spend the evening. Really, really smart. Fellow named Claudio says, commit to as many events outside of home as possible. Forcing oneself is the idea to get out there and sort of give yourself some time to deal with culture.

59:25Alexandra Schwartz:I like that. Zach says he has three kids, eight, seven, and three. Shout out to you. And maintain a strict schedule of reading novels on weeknights between 8 p.m. and 10 or whenever. And then he splurges and watches a movie with his wife on Friday or Saturday night. I like that. The sort of the rhythm of reading versus visual media. and then I love this sort of from DJH I suspect this is the same DJH that reached out to you Alex this is the kind of it's almost fatalistic but it's like merciful in its pragmatism which is like as I suspect you know he says you are in a kind of impossible situation I'm skimming now he used to see every Oscar film and know everything now he does it and he says I'm okay with that granted I'm not a professional critic but I did find that the world continued to spin without me, and all was well.

1:00:17Alexandra Schwartz:DJ H, I love the sentiment. The world spinning without me is literally my nightmare, and I refuse. Thank you. Listeners, thank you as always. We love to give you what we have for you, and we love, it turns out, to receive. Thank you. That was beautiful.

1:00:36Naomi Fry:Beautiful. Thank you, listeners.

1:00:41Alexandra Schwartz:This has been Critics at Large. Alex Barish is our consulting editor and Rhiannon Corby is our senior producer. Our executive producer is Stephen Valentino. Alexis Quadrato composed our theme music and we had engineering help today from Prenbandi with mixing by Mike Kutchman. You can find every episode of our show at newyorker.com slash critics. Thank you.

1:01:37On Thursdays, join Chloe Mao, head of editorial content at Vogue US, and Choma Nadi, British Vogue's head of editorial content, as they explore fashion through the lens of culture with guests like Doja Cat and Margot Robbie. Listen and watch the run-through with Vogue wherever you get your podcasts and Vogue's YouTube channel. Who is going to win control of Congress this November, and what is it going to mean for the final two years of Donald Trump's disruptive presidency? I'm Susan Glasser.

1:02:08Naomi Fry:I'm Jane Mayer. And I'm Evan Osnos. We host the Washington Roundtable on the New Yorker's Political Scene podcast. We're following what key races could tip the balance of power in Washington this fall. We're also going to go deep on the influence of dark money and tech billionaires. So join us in the run-up to the midterms in 2026. Subscribe to the Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts.

1:02:36Alexandra Schwartz:I'm Vincent Cunningham.

1:02:38Vinson Cunningham:I'm Nomi Fry. I'm Alex Schwartz, and we host Critics at Large from The New Yorker.

1:02:42Alexandra Schwartz:Each week, we pick a starting point. The new novel you can't stop thinking about, the movie everybody's seeing this weekend, and we kind of go galaxy brain with it.

1:02:52Vinson Cunningham:Right. We take the ideas at the center of these things and trace them across history, across mediums, all to get to the bottom of why this particular text is important right now in politics and culture and also in your everyday life.

1:03:04Naomi Fry:We go highbrow, we go lowbrow, we go everything in between.

1:03:08Alexandra Schwartz:Food culture to meme culture, Charlie XCX to Toni Morrison.

1:03:13Naomi Fry:K-pop to the Kennedys. From horror movies to heated rivalry.

1:03:17Vinson Cunningham:From the Oscars to the Met Gala. The Golden Bachelor to Wuthering Heights, Great Expectations to Desperate Housewives.

1:03:22Alexandra Schwartz:That's what we're talking about over here. We're having fun. It's Critics at Large from The New Yorker. Every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.