Queering Refusals, Secrets and Deceit in Representations of Gay Male Grief When Facing the Sudden Death of a Loved One

I examine queer grief in personal, cultural, and historical terms. I explore the secrecy, avoidance, and sudden emotional outbursts found in representations of male queer grief both well before and long after the initial outbreak of the AIDS pandemic. I address these themes through an analysis of complex portrayals of gay grief in two Netflix television series – Tore (2023) and Good Grief (2023) – as well as the character of Larry in W. Somerset Maugham’s novel The Razor’s Edge (1944). What links these three cultural products is the queer (specifically gay male) experience of grappling with the sudden death of a significant person who is somehow deceitful or appears to have secret. The grief does not conform to normative expectations. My analysis suggests that when grief comes suddenly, contains deceit and refuses to follow expectations of normative grief, it could queer our understandings of grieving as non-productive time. The characters of Larry, Tore, and Marc compel the (queer) cultural and political imagination to both pause and move beyond the stagnant present to imagine a brighter grief. Across these three examples, grief is chattered, unmasking the normative theatricality but also the duality of existence: death is ever-present but the expectations surrounding grief are as normative as those of life itself. If grieving is too narrowly defined, it risks bursting out in unanticipated ways, temporarily or permanently severing the mourner from relational connectedness.