Masculinity In Moonlight

A24’s 2016 film Moonlight, directed by Barry Jenkins, contributed to the coming of age film genre by offering a new perspective that had been excluded from film for too long. This Oscar award winning film was one of the first LGBTQ+ coming of age movies to be recognized by the academy, and it opened the doors for future inclusive films. Moonlight follows the struggle in personal identity through Chiron, a black gay man, through three distinct stages of his life. Chiron’s struggle with his identity is due to the complicated relationship between sexuality and masculinity- as Chiron represses his homosexuality in fear of not being masculine enough.

Moonlight begins with Chiron’s life as a child, which is when the people in his life (or the

The only interactions Kevin and Chiron have in school is Kevin bragging about his experiences with women, in which Chiron is inexperienced. Chiron is also isolated from the only friend he has, as Kevin’s boasting makes Chiron uncomfortable, and he is also naive about romantic relationships and sex. Chiron and Kevin’s relationship finally evolves into something more, “a nervous glance between two young men that know something is a little different about their relationship but society has given them no words to express it” (Tellerico). Chiron and Kevin become intimate on the beach Chiron swam in as a child, with the waves splashing up against the sand in the background. The water in the scene being a repeated theme through Moonlight, always displayed in transitions of Chiron’s life, representing the change he is experiencing. Following this act of intimacy, Kevin is peer pressured into beating Chiron up in front of a big crowd. Kevin's actions are representative of an even larger theme conveyed in Moonlight, that “young men believe that violence is the answer to what will make them feel better or allow them to fit in.” (Tellerico). Because Chiron and Kevin would not be accepted for openly caring about each other, both feel pressured to act in violent, stereotypically “masculine” ways, in order to feel

Chiron has “become unrecognizable in his last evolutionary stage of development: reinventing himself as Black” (Bradshaw). Chiron goes through physical change, no longer the small boy from the beginning of the film, and this drastic change is illustrated also through the three separate actors that play Chiron during these different stages of his life. All three actors seamlessly blend together, as though the actors are all very physically different, all carry the same withdrawn, observant quiet that Chiron carries throughout his life. Chiron hides his sadness, and confusion through “Black”, as he has become an ultra masculine drug dealer- taking after Juan, even down to the same car. This reflects the idea that men are taught and conditioned to hide their emotions, and to “cauterize sadness, to anesthetize it with rage”(Bradshaw). Chiron and Kevin reunite as adults, and Moonlight closes with Chiron’s revelation “ I so much sometimes I might turn to drops”. Chiron admits to Kevin the depth of the emotion he feels- loneliness, sadness, anger- and while he has physically changed to protect who he is, he is still the same Chiron underneath it