In the near-decade since Barry Jenkin’s “Moonlight” was released, audiences have come to view the film as a landmark moment in the 2016 zeitgeist. Its record setting position as the first mass-market LGBTQ+ film with an all-Black cast, its viral Best Picture win at the 2017 Academy Awards and a timeless encapsulation of the Black artistic excellence of the era, à la Frank Ocean’s “Blonde” and Beyonce’s “Lemonade.”
Released after a summer of turbulence for marginalized communities, “Moonlight” explores what the American dream looks like for gay Black men trapped within the hypermasculine climate of the modern world.
Adapted from the unpublished play by Tarell Alvin McCraney, “In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue,” “Moonlight” shares the same three act structure that tracks a young Black child named Chiron throughout his early life. Between each act are gaps of time that help illustrate the main character’s life as he grows from a young boy called Little into a hardened drug dealer named Black.
In each act, Chiron is played by a different actor, each respectively illustrating Chiron’s coming of age. Little Chiron is played by Alex R. Hibbert, teenage Chiron by Ashton Sanders and adult Chiron, Black, by Trevante Rhodes.
Along with navigating life as a young Black man in urban Florida, Chiron also experiences the fallout of the war on drugs as his mother falls victim to the influx of crack cocaine during the Reagan administration.
A local drug dealer named Juan, who is played by Academy Award-winner Mahershala Ali, begins to mentor Chiron. Through this relationship, Chiron learns that the only dream men like him can believe in is one of survival. His teachings come in the form of functioning in a world that can only be traversed with a keen eye for danger.
Juan also gives Chiron his first experiences of tenderness and affection. In one scene, Juan teaches Chiron how to swim and holds Chiron fondly, treated with a care the world had yet to show him and this gives Chiron a sense of quiet hope.
Seeing a Black man with dark skin and an attitude like his found a way to make it in the world, shows Chiron that despite all the suffering and obstacles before him, he’ll find a place. From the moment Juan finishes teaching Little Chiron to swim, Chiron’s only goal is to keep his head above water.
A tender portrait of masculinity is painted through the intense cinematography of James Laxton, the film’s cinematographer, who uses striking close ups and rich colors to illustrate the isolation and coldness of life as a young pariah. Laxton has notably worked on Black visual media with director Barry Jenkins (“If Beale Street Could Talk” and “The Underground Railroad”), bringing expertise to illuminating Black skin on film.
In any given instance of Black skin in this film, the lighting becomes purposeful in its illumination of dark skin as saturated with color, a choice that directly reflects Juan’s explanation surrounding the importance of Black populations on Earth.
The shaky camera work follows Little Chiron as he is hunted through the impoverished blocks of Miami, and tracking shots illustrate his position within the food chain throughout his adolescence.
The invisible target on the back of Chiron is a telltale sign of fragility and queerness, one seen by everyone from his mother to his bullies. Chiron contains a shyness within him that directly disagrees with the overt masculinity of the men around him; his mother even asks Juan if he can explain why “the other boys kick his ass all the time?” Chiron’s persistence in nonconformity is the exact reason he fails to gain the respect of other men in a world that prioritizes virility above all else.
Masculinity becomes synonymous with violence within the film: to be a man is to fight and earn power through the culling of the weak. The choice made by every man in this film is to either remain docile and fall victim to the trouble others cause or repress the child of the soul and become what it takes to earn their keep in a climate that values the possession of power.
The complexity of Juan as a character is deepened through the revelation that he supplies the crack to Chiron’s mother Paula. This inability to take the moral road regarding making a living is yet another factor that teaches Chiron about survival: the capitalist system that allows a racial divide to trickle down from the administration of the time forces communities of oppressed families to turn against each other in a myriad of ways.
In Chiron’s teenage years, his awkwardness and flimsy confidence are put on full display through the wildly concentrated performance of Ashton Sanders: eyes that lie calm for mere seconds at a time, arms that hold each other in a desperate hunt for comfort and a distinct walk that furthers the conspicuousness of every aspect of himself. The quiet fury that rests behind his eyes cannot bring him to stand up to his manic mother, or his bully, Terrel, who is later the catalyst for Chiron’s transformation into a repressed and aggressive adult.
Audiences watch Chiron grow from a socially inept teenager into a hardened ex-convict. This new life as a drug-dealer directly reflects Juan: a calm and respected hustler distributing the same drugs that broke his mother in two as a means of survival. Through this choice to submit to the cycle of violent masculinity that has tortured him his entire life, Chiron agrees to allow his body and reputation to thrive, but his soul wilts as his authentic self-rots behind his new muscles and expensive grills.
A stranger to the audience, Chiron is finally brought back to his skittish and docile disposition as his past contacts him over the phone, through the voice of Kevin, the one man he let himself be vulnerable with during his teenage years. His past is reawakened further through visits to his mother’s recovery center, where a dialogue between them leaves Chiron in tears, tears that convince him he must go home to face his past. Knowing that the past can’t be ignored anymore, Chiron hits the road.
Viewers are finally allowed to unclench their jaws as Chiron and Kevin allow themselves to share truths that have devastated them since they shared a pivotal evening on the beach over a decade ago. The catharsis of the orange-soaked final moments of the film, where in which Kevin soothes the broken Chiron in his arms, is the happiest of endings for the most tortured of souls. Chiron, Little, and Black become amalgamated into one being, defined by a raw desire for belonging and a willingness to do what it takes to survive. The final shot finds Little facing the great wide forever of the blue ocean, turning towards the camera as if hearing the love of the future telling him not to give up just yet.
Through a surface-level analysis of America, the progression made by gay men of color to feel accepted by their country since 2016 has been powerful. However, in the current climate of America, particularly regarding the world in which young boys are exposed to, one will find an atmosphere of hate, toxicity, and aggressiveness harming the future men of the nation. Chiron’s meeting with Juan provides him an accepting support system when his mother abandons him and a strong mentor he can look up to, even when facing the flaws of his problematic occupation.
The connection made between Chiron and Juan is marked by their parallel lives and intimate knowledge of how it feels to fight against a world built to extinguish the flame of the soul: both admit to how trouble tails them through every moment of their lives, and both possess deeply complex relationships with their mothers.
The connections adolescent boys make with adult men now are marked by the opposite traits: deeply impersonal relationships with influencers, politicians and podcasters on the other side of a screen. Juan earns nothing from his mentorship of Chiron; he simply feels an obligation to take care of the boy whose mother he sells drugs to.
The men who approach young men on their for-you-pages and YouTube suggestions see teen boys not as proteges, but as viewers, currency or pawns. The path to success in the age of the internet is lined with the engagement of haters and fans alike. The most shocking content is most easily produced through hateful and derogatory speech towards men who don’t perform hypermasculinity, a formula that is concealed under the guise of the “alpha male” archetype.
The hateful role models thrust upon the televisions, tablets and phones of the future boys of our country forecast a bleak return to the hate-filled society in which Chiron fought to survive. At the behest of toxic influencers, the return to the antiquated homophobia, racism and misogyny of what this new wave of influencers considers a “traditional” America, the future of society’s treatment of men in Chiron’s shoes will undoubtedly spawn a wave of creatives affected by a return to the ideals of masculinity so powerfully criticized by “Moonlight.”
Jack Cona can be reached at [email protected].
