Black Masculinity In The 70's

Franklin II argues that, “The major contribution made by authors writing about the male experience in America in the early 70’s was to alert us to the fact that the meaning of masculinity goes by beyond items on a checklist indicating power, privilege, and machoism” (2012, p. 4). During those periods, African American men were not able to perform certain masculine acts as it would give them the power to the black community. The harsh stereotypes in films, unfortunately, degraded the black man’s power to a lower self-esteem. Likewise, there had been many concerns and questions raised towards manhood in black masculinity ever since the freedom period. Their freedom experiences have significantly developed throughout the years, including the laws

“Moonlight represents Black males as people under construction and languishing under the oppressive forces of the colonial white male gaze” (Rajack-Talley and Brooms, 2018, p. 149). The main character named Chiron tends to have a rough childhood, as the film mostly narrates his life through three key periods. Firstly, he is presented as a child showing scenes of his innocent and naïve childhood, onto then his teenage phase of his anxious high school experience and finally, his life as a grown adult adopted the life of a thug. Throughout the first act, Chiron’s nickname was called ‘Little’. A scene shows Chiron being bullied for being soft. This term is known to be called to describe a black male that tends to be effeminate and gentle. This first sign of action begins to alienate ‘Little’ from the other black children. Chiron’s friend named Kevin manages to encourage and support Chiron to be tough and aggressive to create a stereotypical masculine persona to the other children. This became a code to use black masculinity in front of other children to feel tough and to play the part of what most people have expectations of the black male. This also shows that black boys are taught from a young age to act strong as a way of survival. The film outlines black masculinity as a mask to hide the real representation of Chiron. The main features of black masculinity shown to be accepted are being aggressive and emotionally ambiguous as they form the behaviours towards a black male. Kevin is represented as the traditional masculine guy by getting involved with women as a way of hiding his sexuality and avoiding feeling alienated like Chiron. As Chiron becomes older, he realises the only way to hide his sexuality is by masking it with black masculinity. Chiron develops a friendship with Juan, the guy who sells Chiron’s mother drugs. A scene in the film shows Juan and