“Moonlight” — A Character Study on Toxic Masculinity and Queer Identity.
By: Micah Glidewell
Tags: BlackLivesMatter, Film, Moonlight, LGBTQ, Diversity

In my last article, I discussed Parasite’s Oscar win and the importance of supporting filmmakers of color, and stories centered on people of color. In that article, I specifically referenced Moonlight as one of the only other Best Picture winners not directed by a White person. This week, I decided to watch Moonlight.

Unlike Parasite, I began watching Moonlight knowing almost nothing about the film. I had heard of it before, knew that it centered around a queer narrative, and read the summary on Netflix. I didn’t really have specific expectations, other than I expected to enjoy it.

Young Chiron (source)

Moonlight managed to subvert my non-specific expectations by creating a narrative centered around the growth of a Black gay man named Chiron as he grows up in Miami. The film is slow-paced, with the normal three-act structure swapped for three segments covering key times in Chiron’s life: childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. While the film only runs for 111 minutes, it feels much longer due to the pacing.

Overall, the first thing I thought of when watching this film was the film Bless Their Little Hearts. Bless Their Little Hearts is another film about Black Americans focused primarily on the development and personal connections between individuals. While Bless Their Little Hearts is centered around a family of 5, Moonlight is centered around a single person and his relationship to the world around him. Bless Their Little Hearts also takes place over an extremely short period of time, rather than the decades shown in Moonlight.

At this point, I’m going to provide a spoiler warning and a trigger warning.

Trigger Warning: homophobia, the f-slur, violence against queer people, drug use, emotionally abusive parenting, mentions of death, implied sex, the n-word (both the reclaimed term and the “hard r”). In this article, I will also discuss trans identity, although that plays no part in the film.

Young Chiron (source)

If you are sensitive to hearing the f-slur, seeing violence against queer people, emotional abuse from family members I would urge you not to watch Moonlight. If you are queer and have experienced targeted violence, this film will be triggering, and take whatever measures you have to in order to be safe.

If you are not queer, I warn you that there are moments of violent action, but I would still encourage you to watch the film and understand that the actions shown in that film are frequent issues for queer people, even those growing up in 2020. The violence endured by Chiron is not uncommon, and I believe this film can help foster a deeper understanding of queer struggles, especially the pressures put onto Black queer men to conform to heteronormative standards of masculinity.

As a transmasculine person who was raised female, toxic masculinity is something I have had a much easier time dealing with than most cis men. I didn’t grow up thinking that I had to act a specific way because of my masculine identity, and have generally been an emotionally healthy person. By the time I was coming to terms with my masculinity, I had been through therapy, and as a trans person, I have been able to craft my own definition of masculinity. This means I haven’t been ingrained with toxic masculinity and can instead deal with these societal expectations in a more critical manner than someone who is raised with them in mind.

Chiron and Kevin

That being said, toxic masculinity deeply affects nearly all cisgender men, especially gay cisgender men. They are held to extremely strict standards of how to dress, behave and act, and all even remotely feminine cis men are subjected to public ridicule and shaming, including insults reserved for gay people. Historically, deviating from gender norms as a cis man has been extremely dangerous. In the modern era, the distinction between gender non-conformity in women and men is met with wildly different results.

Moonlight is about growing up as a queer man in a society that is extremely homophobic and toxically masculine. Chiron faces targeted harassment and violence, and is compared to women by his peers in order to dehumanize and emasculate him. This is motivated homophobia. Terrel repeatedly calls Chiron the f-slur, says that Chiron is dealing with “woman problems” in class, and regularly mocks him for his skinny body type and stature.

High School Chiron (source)

Throughout the first two parts of Moonlight: Little and Chiron, Chiron has a relatively anxious demeanor and personality. He is reserved, and generally unassertive. This is because he is criticized for every single aspect of his personality, and every decision he makes. The only person in his high school that seems to like him is Kevin, a childhood friend seen in the first part of the film. Kevin later kisses Chiron, giving him his first kiss and first romantic encounter.

When Terrel gets Kevin to punch Chiron by threatening and pressuring him, something changes in Chiron. A part of him snaps from being mistreated for so long, and in an extremely relatable scene for those who’ve been bullied or beaten, he beats Terrel over the head with a chair in the middle of a science class. Chiron is taken into a cop car, ending Part 2 before we see Chiron as an adult in Part 3: Black.

Adult Chiron (source)

Part of what happens to a lot of men who are criticized for being feminine is they double down on traditionally masculine gender roles. This can happen with trans people early in their transition as well. People who are shamed for their gender identity (cis or trans) and their gender presentation (from clothes to behavior) often start to adopt more severe gendered behavior in order to be accepted as valid by mainstream society.

For Chiron, he doubles down on masculine behavior, and creates a “hard” persona in order to ensure his own survival. This follows him outside of juvie, where he gets involved in dealing drugs, and eventually creates his own drug business. He lifts weights and makes money from drugs because those were two aspects he didn’t have control over in his youth, his physique and his finances. His mom stole money from him when he was young, so he keeps a tight control over his finances now.

Paula (source)

Up until this part of the film, I really didn’t like Paula. She is an emotionally abusive parent who also made fun of Chiron for being gay. She’s a drug addict in a way unique to marginalized communities, particularly Black Americans. For those unaware, the United States government sold crack to Black communities in order to create easier excuses to arrest them and fuel the slavery present in American prisons. Michelle Alexander’s book: The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness does an incredible job of explaining the “crack epidemic” and how it fueled disproportionate incarceration for Black Americans for non-violent crimes. I can’t fault Chiron’s mom (Paula) for being victimized by a system where other people in her hometown have to fuel drug use and addiction in order to survive. The socioeconomic reasons behind drug use and drug crime aren’t the focus of the film, but it is clear that while Paula is not to blame for her circumstances, she is still an emotionally abusive parent.

Director and writer Barry Jenkins communicates an incredible amount of nuance to communicate how people like Chiron come to terms with having abusive family members who are deeply flawed, but still love their children. Paula is in rehab and doing better. She apologizes to Chiron for how she treated him, and how she didn’t love him when he needed it the most, or loved him the way he needed. While she doesn’t specifically bring up his sexuality, this complicated relationship with family members is common among queer people, especially those who come out while still living with their parents. We are often shunned or bullied by our family for simply trying to be authentic. In this aspect alone, Moonlight is an incredibly nuanced and accurate representation of queer struggles.

Generally speaking, when discussing queer representation in film, one of the criticisms is how representation off-screen functions in the film industry. Queer people are often underrepresented behind the camera as well as in front of the camera, and part of pushing for more queer stories in media is also pushing for more career opportunities for queer filmmakers and actors. As a result of this, I am typically extremely critical of films about queer stories that weren’t created by queer people.

Moonlight is one of the only exceptions I have ever seen of a queer story created by straight people remains good representation. Both writer-directory Barry Jenkins and actor Trevante Rhodes (adult Chiron) are heterosexual, but still tell an incredibly positive and accurate story about gay men. This could be due to any number of things, but I think that part what makes Moonlight so good is the immense respect both Jenkins and Rhodes have for gay Black men and their unique struggles in America. In an interview with Out.com, Rhodes cited his reason for loving Moonlight as: “That’s why you do it — because you feel like you’re doing something that matters” (Out.com).

Moonlight Poster (source)

Moonlight absolutely matters. It matters for all Black Americans who rarely see themselves onscreen, let alone beautifully vulnerable. It matters for all gay men who have dealt with or are dealing with toxic masculinity. It matters for all queer Black people who are forced to only see characters with one aspect of their identities and struggles. It matters for people who want to know more about the struggles that queer people face, or that Black people face, or that queer Black people face. Moonlight matters not just because Black Lives Matter, but because Black queer stories deserve to be told and respected. Moonlight doesn’t just showcase Black queer lives, it celebrates them.