Moonlight (Film) Essay Questions

Is Chiron's identity ultimately shaped by him or by others? How do his nicknames play into this idea?

Perhaps Chiron's control over his own identity is best mirrored in the way he chooses to either shed or grow into his given names. Just after teaching Little to swim, Juan explains that his former nickname, "Blue," was given to him by a stranger who remarked that black boys look blue in the moonlight, a touching and poignant anecdote. Little asks if Juan continued to go by that nickname, but Juan answers, "At some point, you gotta decide for yourself who you're going to be. Can't let nobody make that decision for you." In a way, then, Chiron's decision to shed the nickname Little—implied by the new chapter title, "Chiron"—seems like an indication that he has chosen to follow Juan's advice. Soon after this, however, we hear Kevin call Chiron "Black" even as we hear others address him as Chiron. Of course, Chiron directly addresses this when on the beach with Kevin, asking him, "what kind of dude goes around giving other dudes nicknames?" As we enter the final chapter of the film, entitled "Black" after the nickname that Kevin gave him, we understand that Chiron has chosen to keep the nickname even in the wake of Kevin's betrayal, growing into the tough guy image that Kevin has always encouraged Chiron to adopt; remember, Kevin wrestles Chiron so he doesn't come off as "soft" in front of their male peers.

Nicknames lend a call-and-answer structure to Chiron's control of his own character. The world calls him "Little," but he decides he likes his given name better. Kevin calls him "Black," and he decides he likes the hardness of such a name. In this way, it seems that Chiron is actually in control of his own destiny and identity, and it's clear entering the final chapter of the film that Black believes he's grown into the man he was supposed to be. This confidence is disrupted, however, when Kevin begins to question him about his transformation into "Black," clearly doubting the authenticity of his new persona. Throughout the film's final chapter, similarities between Black and Juan also continue to crop up; the crown on Black's dashboard was clearly inherited from Juan, for example. Thus, by the end of the film, it remains unclear whether Chiron was ever in control of his own identity, as naturalism would indeed suggest that at least a portion of his "Black" persona is inherited from his childhood father figure.

What do the colors blue and black represent for Chiron and for us, as viewers? Can we understand them literally in terms of race?

In some ways, blue and black embody the dichotomy of "soft" versus "hard" in which the characters struggle to place themselves throughout the film. Both Chiron and Juan ultimately seem to opt for a performance of toughness or "hardness," embodied by their gangster lifestyles. Visually, this takes shape not only in the color of their skin but also in their dress, particularly in Black's case, where black and gold shade everything he owns. In contrast, blue seems to serve as the film's visual expression of softness and vulnerability in men like Chiron. Of course, blue is discussed literally when Juan describes the night a woman told him that "in the moonlight, black boys look blue" and awarded him "Blue" as a nickname. At the same time, Juan rejects this nickname, implying that it felt untrue to his identity as a grown man, and reminds Little of the primacy of blackness, saying that black people were the first people on earth. From moonlight to the ocean, blue seems to embody the sensitivity and vulnerability of not only the black male body, but specifically of Chiron's body and identity in the face of a world that is constantly seeking to toughen him up, whereas the blackness of night or Black's car or Terrel's shirt embodies that toughness. As Chiron ages, his character seems to migrate from this vulnerability, expressed in the blue and Miami teal that dominate the film's beginnings, into a kind of hardness that is expressed by blackness, even as that feels somewhat untrue to the Little we watched at the start of the film. Even as Black, though, Chiron hears the sound of waves and is captivated by the blue shirt that Kevin changes into at home. In this way, black and blue serve both as visual and emotional expressions of performed, archetypal weakness and toughness, or even racial blackness.

How does the chaptered structure of the film support or disrupt Chiron's journey as a character?

We absorb Moonlight in three separate parts: Little, Chiron, and Black. Such a structure announces itself as a threat to the continuity of Chiron's journey as a character, letting the audience question whether it is watching one character or three separate ones. In some ways, there is a greater gap between the second and third chapter of the film, wherein we are led to believe that Chiron has undergone a radical transformation from bullied underdog to powerful drug lord. The chaptered structure is powerful here, as it allows the audience to be surprised when we learn that Chiron has finally morphed into the tough guy that everyone seemed to urge him to become; simultaneously, it asks whether Black may have lost some of Little's sensitivity and joie de vivre in the space between chapters. Director Barry Jenkins understood the power of such a structure and prevented the actors playing Chiron at various ages from meeting each other until after the film had wrapped. In a film wherein identity, and the ways in which that identity is informed or destroyed by others, is so central, the chaptered structure dares the viewer to ask whether a man is ever really the same person he was as a child.

What is the significance of moonlight in the film? How does it play into the film's existing theme of identity?

Moonlight functions not only as the film's namesake, but also as a dominant motif in the film. Even so, the only instance in which moonlight is directly addressed is during Juan's monologue about his childhood nickname. "'Running around, catching a lot of light,'" Juan narrates, describing the night a stranger saw him playing on the beach, "'In moonlight, black boys look blue. You're blue.'" Encapsulated in this story is the connection between moonlight and Juan's identity, which is itself intrinsically linked to Chiron's identity as he gradually chooses to take after Juan. Moonlight also provides a visual rhyme between the scene between Little and Juan on the beach and that between Chiron and Kevin later on. Both moments occur under the moonlight, and both are defining and intimate moments in Chiron's life. Under the moonlight, Chiron is repeatedly able to connect with another man in ways that transgress societal norms for ways in which two men are supposed to relate to each other. Thus, moonlight provides a safe space wherein Chiron is able to love and learn in ways that society doesn't normally afford him. "'In Moonlight, black boys look blue'" is a poignant encapsulation of this, since it assigns black bodies a softness and vulnerability that society, which forces black men to perform masculinity and toughness, does not normally allow.

How does the film's impressionistic bent inform its themes of vulnerability, masculinity, and interior versus exterior?

Although Moonlight functions within the genre of poetic realism, it also uses an intensely evocative, impressionistic editing style to do so. For example, the sound of characters speaking often plays over shots in which that character is not speaking at all, lending these moments a more subjective, rather than literal, feel. This is especially true of the scene in which Kevin looks directly into the camera, breaking the fourth wall in a way that feels intimate and subjective and forces the audience to look the character in the eye. Such a direct gaze between the characters and the audience enhances the film's inherent themes of fragile masculinity, because the characters are often unable to sustain this raw, human connection amongst themselves, instead performing toughness and masculinity for each other yet crumbling under the pressure of doing so. When we hear a character's words play over a shot of that character unable to speak, we feel the inherent disconnect between the performance that character (often Chiron) gives for his peers and his true self. Kevin and Chiron play at this reality during their talk on the beach, wherein both boys admit that they sometimes feel like crumpling under the pressure of their circumstances. Indeed, the film's impressionistic sequences seem to embody this sentiment, as they allow the audience to truly look into a character's eyes, which remain vulnerable even as that character's words tell a different story, professing toughness despite wanting to cry.