The Aesthetic of the Ecstatic REIMAGINING BLACK MASCULINITY IN MOONLIGHT
Barry Jenkins opens Moonlight (2016) with a sequence that immediately declares his film’s intentions. It is an unravelling of sorts – a depiction of initially recognisable events that become stranger as they progress. Juan (Mahershala Ali), a black Cuban man, stops his car on a Miami street corner bounded by dilapidated housing projects. He is a drug kingpin, checking in on business. As he talks to the younger man selling his product, the camera circles their still bodies, creating a disorienting effect. A group of black boys enters the eddy, stealing Juan’s attention. We hear them before we see them: running briefly in, then out, of the frame. But they soon become our focus, especially the boy being hounded by the pack – Chiron (Alex Hibbert), nicknamed ‘Little’ – in this first part of his story.
The unscrambling of audience expectations commenced by this swirling camera continues in the following scenes. We see a terrified Chiron running and taking refuge in a ‘dope hole’: a boarded-up apartment messy with discarded crack pipes. Unseen to us, Juan has followed him. There is a momentary uncertainty when Juan enters Chiron’s safe space – the boy takes a step back and away from the man. But Jenkins dismantles what audiences – particularly those outside of working-class African-American communities – might think they know about who black men dealing drugs in the so-called hood are. Juan intends no harm; he simply wants to remove Chiron from danger and buy him a meal. ‘Come on now. Can’t be no worse out here,’ he coaxes, as the little boy looks on, assessing the risks, eyes wide and searching.
is an independent film that was shot in twenty-five days for an estimated production budget of US$1.5 million. It surprised many when it won three Academy Awards, including Best Picture, in a memorable envelope mix-up that saw the Oscar bestowed first on Damien Chazelle’s musical (2016) win is, however, historically significant for reasons other than this controversy) is both the first film comprising an entirely black cast and the first LGBTQIA+ focused story to win the Academy’s top prize.
