Labubu Lies &Mike Faist’s Thighs: On Challengers (2024), TikTok’s Performative Men, & Aesthetic Anxiety
Tashi Duncan would’ve had a Linkedin banner that says “Future #1.” Through obsessively meticulous sequences and (in my opinion) Oscar worthy (snubbed) soundtracks, Challengers gives us a scathing, sweaty critique of how we curate our identities like we’re running PR for ourselves. Yes, there is much more to take away from this film than mere tennis, threesomes and toxic ambition. What is it then? Labubus. You heard me. Specifically their owners. I mean quite literally the quote un quote performative men with matchas and a paperback copy of Infinite Jest that continue to show up on our feed and come off as a joke. But it really isn’t, is it. In Gudagnino’s and our real world, no one is comfortable enough with who they truly are, they’re who they perform themselves to be. On the court, in bed, in life. It’s not a love triangle.
It’s a three-way brand collab that’s been slowly collapsing under the pressure of its own optics.
Art, Patrick, and Tashi aren’t people so much as they are image constructs honed over years: the prodigy, the rebel, the coach-turned-orchestrator of a spectacle. So yes, you could be taking notes from the Tashi that Guadagnino has portrayed on how to manipulate two very attractive men to your liking but you could also go back and rewatch the film to realize that this is what happens when your sense of self becomes so entangled with performance that the only way to feel real is to manipulate the story so well that even you start believing it. The film is more than just an erotica or thriller. It is a tennis match that competes for authorship instead of points. And everyone’s losing.
Watch how the film is edited: the way the camera lingers. It’s never just a cut from Art to Patrick or Patrick to Art. The camera always detours through Tashi. Through her glance, her breath, and her reaction. The shots between Art and Pat always goes through a glance or shot of tashi before proceeding to the other. This isn’t just a triangle, it’s a power diagram. Even in scenes where the men argue or fight, their gazes don’t truly lock without her mediation. That’s how deeply their identities depend on her gaze of approval. And isn’t that just what we see all over TikTok? Men trying to perform sensitivity, perform depth, perform feminism, not for meaning, but for recognition. The “female” gaze, commodified.
Even the costuming , crafted with surgical precision by the one and only talented Jonathan Anderson, ironically adds to this hyper-curated, hyper-coded performance of self through mere beach shirts and short shorts. Every sweat-drenched, pastel-hued look on Art screams “softness,” even as he begs to be seen as a competitor. Patrick, meanwhile, gets darker, more disheveled tones: the faux-edgy, faux-effortless mess that reeks of trying too hard to not try too hard. But of course, Tashi the cool, symmetrical, clean, perfectly composed mediator of it all is the eye of the storm through her perosnally tailors and sculpting couture. Everyone’s wardrobe becomes a costume for someone else’s interpretation, never for the self. The outfits aren’t worn to express something inward, they’re worn to control perception.
Get film roll 00’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
And look, I say this as an artist myself. Fashion and art are performative. I don’t believe in authenticity as some pure thing outside of influence. But performance without purpose? Without truth? That’s not just empty, it’s corrosive. I wish I could remember who said it (maybe Pacino? maybe Day-Lewis?), but I once heard an actor say: “Great acting is not acting. It is truth being revealed.” And that is the point. When your performance isn’t rooted in something honest , some intention, some belief , it stops being communication and starts being a lie. And the first person it devours is you.
What Guadagnino shows us here is a closed-circuit system where nothing is done purely for the self, but always for the gaze of someone else, Art and Pat case, that gaze being Tashi’s. But what about us? A follower? Your parents? Your friends? The cute cashier down the street that you still don’t even know the name of? An algorithm? A perceived audience?
It’s not just about Tashi or TikTok boys anymore. It’s everything.
From the influencer who “soft launches” their breakup with a carefully lit photo carousel, to the corporate intern coordinating their outfits to match the trending ‘clean girl’ aesthetic, to the emerging musician shaping their sound not around personal taste, but around what might “perform well” on short-form platforms — it’s all performance strategy disguised as personality. Even subcultures, which once thrived on rebellious self-definition, are now consumed and regurgitated into microtrends: coquette-core, blokecore, dystopian-core. You’re not allowed to say ‘Creep’ by Radiohead is your favorite song anymore because your local kid who’s convinced they’re the next Thom Yorke will tell you “that doesn’t count because it’s their most famous song” while calling you a “poser”. Or they’ll tell you to “name three songs” to prove it. (Hey, totally not speaking frmo experience…) Every week, a new identity to try on like a seasonal Zara capsule. Not because it fits, but because it signals something desirable.
We’re living in an era of aesthetic anxiety , where originality is treated as risk, and replication is rewarded. Art is increasingly derivative because being first is scary, but being familiar is safe. Instagram reels are filled with people mimicking Wes Anderson’s symmetry or Greta Gerwig’s melancholia. (Again.. not saying I’m not a guilty of this phenomenon too…) Music loops the same synths and the same sad/angry girl chord progressions that all sound like some variation of Olivia Rodrigo or Sabrina Carpenter. Even activism gets stylized, flattened into palatable, monochrome infographics that blend into the feed like another moodboard. It’s not that people don’t care , it’s that we’ve forgotten how to express caring without tailoring it for public approval.
And when you start to feed into this, you lose the match (probably more than 600 love behind). Not because you weren’t good enough, but because you were never actually playing for yourself. Worse off, you’re not even sure who “yourself” was supposed to be anymore.
And that’s what makes the final frame of Tashi, so chilling. It’s not the absence of victory. It’s the absence of identity once there’s no one left to perform for. That’s the quiet horror Guadagnino leaves us with. Not the collapse of a relationship or a career, but the collapse of authentic subjectivity. When originality becomes suspicious, when vulnerability is aestheticized, when you don’t know where the performance ends, what kind of life are we really living? What does it mean to win, if it means nothing to you?
