Mester

In a time when the aspiration to be a social media influencer has spread worldwide, cinema has timidly sought to explore the various characteristics of this popular role, which has two faces: one that is very visible, and another that is more obscure. This article focuses on two recent films that expose the complexity of this job, Magnus von Horn’s Sweat (2020), and Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness (2022), centering its analysis on their aspects related to labor. Using concepts such as immaterial work, material work, and sexualized work, this paper seeks to make a contribution describing what I call the fragile performance of the influencer, identifying many points of vulnerability explored by these movies, even in the cases of economic success: for example, the porousness of private and public life; the affective labor required to interact with the public; the risks of high exposure; and the extreme dependence on social media platforms and its algorithms.