Why an Unlikely Kind of Male Star Has Become the Internet’s Object of Desire

Following the massive success of Challengers this spring, the indie darling director Luca Guadagnino is back with his second film of the year, Queer. Ardent fans of the director’s filmography know what this means: It’s time for the internet to become obsessed with yet another newly minted addition to what I like to affectionately call “Luca’s Boys.”

You see, Guadagnino has a habit of collecting not-yet-famous young male stars like Pokémon, and turning them into bona fide heartthrobs. The trend started with the one and only Timothée Chalamet, who stars in Guadagnino’s Call Me by Your Name and Bones and All, then continued with Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist in Challengers. Now the fans are primed and ready to feast their eyes on Outer Banks actor Drew Starkey, one of the two stars of Queer, Guadagnino’s adaptation of the 1985 William S. Burroughs novella about a gay older American expat in Mexico City who becomes enchanted by a young man recently discharged from the Navy.

Luca’s Boys have made their mark in pop culture, cultivating their own particular strain of desire. Much of this is due to Guadagnino’s artistic vision, more than pure beefcake status or dramatic charisma. After all, talented, handsome guys are a dime a dozen in Hollywood, and besides which, these men aren’t even necessarily devilishly handsome in the most traditional sense. (In fact, most of them have been lovingly or not-so-lovingly compared to rodents.) So what makes a Luca’s Boy a Luca’s Boy, and what explains their appeal? Their characters all tend to fall into a specific archetype: an attractive (if unconventionally so), lithe young man who may or may not be gay (or, at least kinda gay). A twink, in other words. But it’s not just their physicality that unifies them as objects of desire to both gay men and to plenty of women. They yearn, a characterization that defines them and, combined with their physical traits and Guadagnino’s lavish, erotic aesthetic, paints a particular portrait of masculinity.

Luca’s Boys mostly play variations on the same beautiful young man who is nothing but a pitiful simp for his paramour, in need of guidance in the ways of love and the world. In Call Me by Your Name, the entire world of Chalamet’s character Elio revolves around his lover, Oliver, for the one Italian summer they spend together. In Bones and All, Chalamet’s Lee may consume flesh, but what he really wishes for is to be consumed whole by his lover. (I mean that figuratively and literally.) Challengers centers Patrick and Art’s (O’Connor and Faist, respectively) battle to win over the affections of the same woman with whom they’ve been obsessed for years, even while they circle each other and share a particular closeness. And, boy, do all these boys know how to pine! They crave all morning, afternoon, and night; they yen in Guadagnino’s sticky, golden vintage summers and on his high-resolution tennis court battlegrounds for love and opportunity. Their eyes track only their sensual targets and none of life’s other worldly offerings. What is money to one of Luca’s Boys, when the true prize is a person with whom you can commit to so fully your names become interchangeable?

Interestingly enough, this is where Starkey’s character in Queer, Eugene Allerton, differs slightly. In Queer, it isn’t the young man who comes off as outwardly pathetic and lustful—it’s the older gent, William Lee (yes, another Lee), played by Daniel Craig. The rather insecure Lee becomes obsessed with Allerton, who, in turn, clearly sees the older gay man as a resource to milk for knowledge, free meals, and funding. Every sexual encounter they have, whether Lee wants it this way or not, is transactional. But, still, even though it’s Lee who seems to follow the mysterious Allerton around like a puppy, at times Allerton is keenly aware of how useful Lee is as a mentor in the ways of hedonism (and absolution for the hedonism, which Lee struggles to attain). Allerton is brand new to Lee’s world, so it’s Lee who shows Allerton around Mexico City, who takes him to his first slew of gay bars, who gives him the agency to fully step into his own, “queer” expat life.

What makes Guadagnino so singular as a filmmaker is his interest in alternative depictions of love, where his characters take wanting seriously and are grounded in their capacity to desire. But what, you may ask, is so attractive about all this signature yearning that Luca’s Boys embody or provoke? After all, isn’t that kind of behavior typically seen as emasculating? Maybe according to traditional gender views, but as a heterosexual woman, let me assure you: Much of my cohort, myself included, is very into this. These characters’ obsessions with being loved and loving in a way that renders them useless or deeply uninterested in other aspects of life is more attractive than the machismo we’re used to seeing male characters display on-screen. Somehow, Guadagnino seems to cater to the female gaze while writing for the gay male one.

If you don’t believe me, just look at how, for example, Chalamet has become a household name since rising as a Guadagnino muse, a star so beloved that an infamous New York City lookalike contest for the actor birthed an international trend of celebrity doppelgänger competitions. Meanwhile, the fan obsession with the steamy tennis romp Challengers and its stars reached such a fever pitch that it has turned churro eating and tennis itself into erotically charged cultural shorthand. Expect the same treatment for Starkey, whose scene-stealing, mysterious aura as Allerton is not only enough to go toe-to-toe with his captivating co-star, Craig, but also enough to turn even the merely curious watcher into a rabid Starkey devotee.

For all this, we have to say: Thank you, Luca. Is it the mark of a genius to pluck delicate-featured white men from near obscurity and turn them into inspirations for cultural phenomena? Perhaps not, but it’s honest, necessary work. Guadagnino has become the tastemaker we needed by providing us a different image of man: lovable, lanky, void of aggression, and full of devotion—you know, what women actually want. If this has gotta be a man’s world, I’m so glad it’s Luca’s.