The Aesthetic of the Ecstatic: REIMAGINING BLACK MASCULINITY IN MOONLIGHT - Document (2024)

Author: Joanna Di Mattia

From: Screen Education(Issue 93)

Full Text:

Barry Jenkins opens Moonlight (2016) with a sequence thatimmediately declares his film's intentions. It is an unravelling ofsorts - a depiction of initially recognisable events that become stranger asthey progress. Juan (Mahershala Ali), a black Cuban man, stops his car on aMiami street corner bounded by dilapidated housing projects. He is a drugkingpin, checking in on business. As he talks to the younger man selling hisproduct, the camera circles their still bodies, creating a disorientingeffect. A group of black boys enters the eddy, stealing Juan'sattention. We hear them before we see them: running briefly in, then out, ofthe frame. But they soon become our focus, especially the boy being houndedby the pack - Chiron (Alex Hibbert), nicknamed 'Little' - in thisfirst part of his story.

The unscrambling of audience expectations commenced by thisswirling camera continues in the following scenes. We see a terrified Chironrunning and taking refuge in a 'dope hole': a boarded-up apartmentmessy with discarded crack pipes. Unseen to us, Juan has followed him. Thereis a momentary uncertainty when Juan enters Chiron's safe space - theboy takes a step back and away from the man. But Jenkins dismantles whataudiences-particularly those outside of working-class African-Americancommunities - might think they know about who black men dealing drugs in theso-called hood are. Juan intends no harm; he simply wants to remove Chironfrom danger and buy him a meal. 'Come on now. Can't be no worse outhere,' he coaxes, as the little boy looks on, assessing the risks, eyeswide and searching.

Moonlight is an independent film that was shot in twenty-five daysfor an estimated production budget of US$1.5 million. (1) It surprised manywhen it won three Academy Awards, including Best Picture, in a memorableenvelope mix-up that saw the Oscar bestowed first on Damien Chazelle'smusical La La Land (2016)/' Moonlight's win is, however,historically significant for reasons other than this controversy or itsfiscal modesty. Jenkins' second feature (released eight years after his2008 debut, Medicine for Melancholy) is both the first film comprising anentirely black cast and the first LGBTQIA+ focused story to win theAcademy's top prize.

But Moonlight's most significant legacy is its expansion ofthe narrative and visual paradigms for African-American stories on screen.From these first scenes to the film's last, Moonlight challenges whatmany viewers may think they know about black masculinity and how black menrelate to one another. Divided into three distinct chapters, it tracesChiron's life through childhood, adolescence and adulthood. In eachchapter, he has a different name - Little, Chiron and Black - and is playedby different actors: at age ten, by Hibbert; at age sixteen, by AshtonSanders; and as a twentysomething man, by Trevante Rhodes. Chiron'sidentity is fragmented; he struggles to wrest control of who he is from thelabels others attach to him, including 'Little' and'faggot'. As Juan later tells him, 'At some point you gottadecide for yourself who you gonna be. Can't let nobody make thatdecision for you.'

A similar process of naming and self-definition is at work inJenkins' film. Moonlight shatters the markers conventionally attached toblack men's bodies by taking an intimate approach focused onChiron's subjectivity. It is an approach that enables Jenkins tounstitch the narrow ideas that audiences have pieced together from Americanfilms like Boyz n the Hood (John Singleton, 1991) and television shows likeThe Wire about how stories of young black men living in disadvantagedenvironments will typically play out. With a focus on suffering andhopelessness, these texts conventionally feature struggle, exploitation andoften death, and tackle issues such as social inequality, injustice, policebrutality and systemic racism. (3) Of course, these narratives are allreflections of very real experiences of growing up black in America, andought not to be diminished; but they are also, as Chiron's trajectoryshows, not the whole story.

Jenkins gives Chiron's narrative a very different tenor.Here, being a black man in America also encompasses moments of great beautyand intimacy, fired by a hunger to give and receive love. Jenkins understandsthat, in the movies, as in life, the most joyful moments can be wrought fromthe most painful things. In films about African-American experiences, blackmasculinity and homosexuality are rarely explored concurrently. But Jenkinsis interested in expanding our understanding of who and what a black man canbe. He depicts black men's experiences and interactions, whetherfamilial or sexual, as vulnerable and tender. Here, black men cry and offercomfort; physical contact between them is potentially life-saving, notdeadly.

Moonlight fuses Jenkins' interest in the social and politicalconditions of black people's lives with his romantic, sensualinclinations as a filmmaker. Writing about his 2018 adaptation of JamesBaldwin's 1974 novel If Beale Street Could Talk, Jenkins explains: Wedon't expect to treat the lives and souls of black folks in theaesthetic of the ecstatic. It's assumed that the struggle to live, tosimply breathe and exist, weighs so heavily on black folks that our verybeings need [to] be shrouded in the pathos of pain and suffering. (4)

Jenkins has explained that Moonlight's mantra was 'tobring the arthouse to the hood', (5) using this style and technique tosuture viewers to Chiron's emotional experience: 'We wanted theaudience to feel what the character was feeling in that moment [...] the waythe camera moves is very attached to the way the character is moving or notmoving."'

Moonlight is a beautiful-looking film even when addressing bleakthemes. It employs fluid storytelling, ellipses and unconventional narrativecues. Rather than imagining growing up poor in a gritty or documentary-likestyle, Jenkins uses visuals and soundscapes that are dreamy, textural,sensual and immersive. His colour palette is bold, bright and surprising. Inaddition to Nicholas Britell's swelling, enveloping score, the musicalsoundtrack expands beyond hip-hop to soul (Aretha Franklin, Barbara Lewis)and Mozart's Vesperae solennes de confessore as boys play soccer with aball made from old newspapers. This kind of 'ecstatic' aestheticopens a space for bursts of euphoric feeling in stories that are often deniedthem.

In particular, Moonlight uses repeated visual and aural motifs tocreate a hypnotic rhythm across all three parts of the film. The sound of theocean (the first and last sound we hear) and images of two men travellingtogether in a car, one person's head resting in the hand of another anda black body in bed swathed in white sheets all add emotional texture.Jenkins has spoken explicitly of his adoration for the work of Asian andEuropean auteurs such as Wong Kar Wai, Hou Hsiao-hsien and Claire Denis, andof the direct influences - structurally, visually and tonally - ofWong's In the Mood for Love (2000), Hou's Three Times (2005) andDenis' Beau Travail (1999) on his work. (7)

It is important to note that Jenkins doesn't deny or disavowthe pain and suffering that Chiron experiences throughout his life. Moonlightis grounded in Jenkins' and writer Tarell Alvin McCraney's livedexperiences. Based on McCraney's unpublished, semi-autobiographical playIn Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue, Jenkins' adaptation draws on themen's similar personal histories. Both McCraney and Jenkins grew up inLiberty City (where the film is set and most of the filming took place) insingle-parent homes with mothers struggling with substance-abuse problems.While McCraney is openly gay and Jenkins identifies as heterosexual, themen's traumatic childhoods inform the film's social realism, senseof place and emotional authenticity. (8)

Chiron's loneliness is palpable from the start. Jenkinsfrequently frames him alone and from behind so we focus on the tension hecarries in his head and shoulders. Across all three of Moonlight'schapters, he struggles to express how he feels with words, so Jenkins showsus how he feels, assembling a tangible sense of who he is - his identity andpersonhood embedded in how he moves through the world. As a result, weunderstand not only that Chiron is suffering, but also how his trauma hasreshaped him physically so he can survive. In the film's final chapter,this is most profoundly visualised in the presentation of his adult body - astark contrast to the skinny, shrinking adolescent and boy. As played byRhodes (a former junior and college athletics champion (9)), Chiron lookslike a warrior, his body made hard as defensive armour against hisinsecurities and a world that has repeatedly tormented him.

In the film's second chapter, Chiron's burgeoningunderstanding that he is gay exacerbates his isolation. His friendship withKevin (Jharrel Jerome) develops into something else. In a key scene, Chironsits on the beach at night, where he unexpectedly runs into Kevin. In thecourse of conversation, he expresses something hidden and painful: 'Icry so much sometimes I feel like I'mma just turn into drops.'Chiron's vulnerability is a reminder of how invisible the figure of thevulnerable black man on screen is. (10) Jenkins lets us feel every punch hetakes - physical and psychological - as he struggles to live in a hostile,hyper-masculine world that wants to beat what it perceives as different andsoft out of him.

What we see and how we see it are of equal importance to howMoonlight creates meaning about black men's lives. Jenkins repeatedlyturns actions that might be described as ordinary into heightened moments ofrelease through a combination of sound, colour and editing. We see Chiron atschool, dancing in front of the mirror with the rest of his class. Revellingin the music, he moves freely for the first time. Moonlight's secondchapter opens with a close-up on lips. When the camera pulls back, we see wewere looking at the abstracted face of a classmate whom Chiron isdistractedly watching. His yearning is palpable, as is his fear of beingunmasked when the teacher calls him out for not paying attention. Jenkinsframes the exchange as a sensual act of discovery in the most mundane ofspaces.

By the time we arrive at Moonlight's second chapter, Juan isgone. We learn, through a conversation between secondary characters, that hehas been dead a number of months. Chiron's safety is frequently violatedby a bully, Terrel (Patrick Decile), who latches onto Chiron's softnessas an outlet to express his own exaggerated hyper-masculinity with crueljibes and physical violence. But Chiron's relationship with Kevin offerssome respite and comfort. In that scene on the beach, after Chiron makeshimself vulnerable, Kevin kisses him, and the young men share an intimatesexual encounter. As Kevin masturbates Chiron, Jenkins keeps the camerafocused on their backs, lit up by the moonlight, as Kevin's hand cradlesChiron's head on his shoulder. We see Chiron's hand, clutching athandfuls of sand. Jenkins captures the tactility of the environment,encapsulating a sense that the world is shifting beneath him. The scene isstriking for its absence of score, but the sound of the ocean andChiron's heavy breathing create a rapturous atmosphere.

In Moonlight's final chapter, we skip ahead some ten years toan adult Chiron, now a drug dealer known on the street as 'Black'.Although he is rebuilt 'hard', his vulnerability frequently leaksout, as revealed in two powerful sequences: when he visits Paula at adrug-rehabilitation facility and forgives her; and when he drives fromAtlanta to Miami to see Kevin.

Throughout Moonlight, characters look directly into the camera - ahumanising gesture that demands we look into their eyes and their souls.Faces seem to swell with feeling, as the gold- and blue-hued colour palettepops and bursts. This technique is most powerful when Chiron and Kevin seeeach other for the first time since high school. When Chiron arrives at thediner, he sits alone at the counter and sees Kevin before Kevin sees him. Butwhen Kevin appears, the camera catches his reaction in an extended close-up;he looks straight at the camera, with surprise but also with longing. Theshot holds its breath; time stands still. A reverse shot of Chiron inclose-up, also held a beat longer than feels natural, increases the tension,as we understand his pleasure in finally being seen once again by the onlyperson who really knows him.

In Moonlight's final sequence, Chiron's head rests onKevin's shoulder, held inside his hand once more. It is a gestureresonant with sensations, as the audible rhythms of the ocean recall theirteenage encounter and act as a prelude to something more erotic to come. Butit is also a gesture that magnifies the healing power of touch between blackmale bodies: a gesture we first saw Juan perform, cradling the head of alonely boy in the vastness of the ocean and reassuring him that hewouldn't let him go.

Joanna Di Mattia has a PhD in women's studies from MonashUniversity. She is an award-winning film critic living in Melbourne.

Endnotes

(2) In addition to Best Picture, Moonlight also won Best AdaptedScreenplay for Barry Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney, and Best SupportingActor for Mahershala Ali; see Garry Maddox, 'Oscars 2017: Biggest Fiascoin Academy Awards History as La La Land Wrongly Named Winner', TheSydney Morning Herald, 27 February 2017,<https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/oscars-2017-biggest-fiasco-in-academy-awards-history-as-la-la-land-wrongly-named-winner-20i70227-gumlfm.html >, accessed 6 December 2018.

(4) Barry Jenkins, 'Barry Jenkins Reflects on Bringing JamesBaldwin's Prophetic Words to the Screen', Esquire, 30 November2018, <https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a251338l8/barry-jenkins-if-beale-street-could-talk-movie-interview/>, accessed 6 December 2018.

(5) Barry Jenkins, liner notes, Moonlight original soundtrack,Lakeshore Records, 2016.

(6) Barry Jenkins, quoted in Gaylene Gould, 'Rhapsody inBlue', Sight & Sound, vol. 27, no. 3, March 2017, p. 20.

(8) See Gregg Kilday, 'How Moonlight Became a "PersonalMemoir" for Director Barry Jenkins: "I Knew the Story Like the Backof My Hand'", The Hollywood Reporter, 11 November 2016,<https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/how-moonlight-became-a-personal-memoir-director-barry-jenkins-i-knew-story-like-back-my-han>, accessed 6December 2018.

(9) See Kam Williams, Trevante Rhodes: A Spirited Tete-a-tete withthe Talented Athlete-tumed-thespian', The Aquarian Weekly, 24 January2018, <https://www.theaquarian.com/2018/Ol/24/trevante-rhodes-a-spirited-tete-a-tete-with-the-talented-athlete-tumed-thespian/>, accessed 6 December2018.

(10) According to Gould, 'perhaps the closest cinema has cometo creating a vulnerable young black male hero is the Pepto-Bismol-swillingStrike [Mekhi Phifer] in Spike Lee's dockers (1995)'; see Gould,op. cit, p. 18.

(12) The camera was actually in the water during this sequence;see ibid., p. 20.

(13) As Jenkins has noted, 'Usually a black drug dealer isjust a black drug dealer. He doesn't have the space to be anythingmore'; quoted in ibid., p. 20.