Queer Desire at the Intersection of Ontology, Normativity, and Sensation: A Comparative Analysis of Queer and Tropical Malady

A comparative analysis of Luca Guadagnino’s Queer (2024) and Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Tropical Malady (2004) was performed to investigate the ontological impossibility of queer desire and its sensory and cultural articulations. While existing scholarship often interprets queer desire as a universal condition or reduces it to tragic collapse, this study demonstrates how social and historical norms amplify this impossibility and how lack may paradoxically pave the way for solidarity and affective relations. Drawing upon Jacques Lacan’s theory of desire, Sara Ahmed’s queer phenomenology, and Laura U. Marks’s sensory film theory, the analysis reveals the divergent cinematic functions of the jungle. In Queer, the jungle becomes a pathological closed circuit where desire culminates in self-annihilation, emphasizing the catastrophic dimension of lack. Conversely, Tropical Malady configures the jungle as an open, affective space that transcends language and normative order, enabling ethical and transcendental connections. These findings suggest that queer cinema should not be understood solely as identity representation or tragic narrative but as a philosophical, aesthetic practice that interrogates impossibility while gesturing toward generativity.