Moonlight: Growing up Queer & Vulnerable in a Harsh World

By: Agon Hoxha

Moonlight, Best Picture winner of 2016, is an odd coming-of-age film that shows the growth and (faux) transformation of a young black man facing societal pressures of presenting masculine. Director Barry Jenkins has some interesting decisions in store, both regarding the story he wrote and how he brings it to life. He splits the film into three parts, with his protagonist Chiron navigating his way through his identity (and masculinity) at ages ten, sixteen, and thirty-something. In each part, we see him struggle with abuse from his mother and peers, and his romantic feelings toward a friend called Kevin; and in each section, he gets from a caring other what he cannot find within himself. Toward the beginning of the movie, when bullies are seeking out young Chiron, a neighborhood drug dealer, Juan, takes him in and provides him with some comfort. Juan answers Chiron’s innocent questions on sexuality, but he cannot fix society’s rules on masculinity, or how children pick on outsiders. All he can do is give Chiron a shoulder to stand on and some fatherly advice on growing up, telling him that at some point he “gotta decide for [himself] who [he’s] gonna be” and that nobody can “make that decision for [him].” In the second part, when Chiron has ditched his nickname “Little” and grown into a skinny, vulnerable teenager, he makes a few such decisions that change his life. From his perspective, there are two paths forward regarding the abuse he suffers from his peers: giving in or fighting back. He learns that both are dead ends.

In the third part, Chiron has assumed a muscled, frightening looking appearance and deals drugs under the pseudonym Black. He now possesses this tough, masculine identity, but it remains a shell. On an aside, how Jenkins frames the story at this point is unconventional and cool: he lets the film get into these long pauses followed by tense conversations. Chiron’s talks with Kevin seem like an anxious negotiation, and Jenkins lets the talks stretch out completely, full of uncomfortable moments of silence. Anyhow, Moonlight really succeeds in showing the pain of growing up queer in a society that continues to stigmatize those people (and the struggle of opening up and showing vulnerability) by showing the breaking-in of Chiron by the hegemonic institutions of patriarchy and (compulsory) heterosexuality. There is much fighting in Moonlight – Chiron vs. his mother, Chiron vs. his classmates, etc. – but it is mostly about his battle vs. his queer self. When Juan finds him hiding from his bullies, Chiron wishes to stay silent and stay hard: it is an attitude that he and many men carry uncritically into adulthood, and the film (rightfully) displays that (and masculinity in general) as rigid and oppressive. Overall, the film is hypnotic as a coming-of-age story, showing the process of a someone queer (and more generally, just someone) finding out who they are, denying it, and the struggle in building and maintaining that façade.