Movie Analysis of 'Moonlight'

Moonlight, Directed by Berry Jerkins in 2016. This film presents three stages in the life of the main character Chiron; his youth, adolescence, and burgeoning adulthood. It explores the difficulties he faces with his sexuality and identity, including the physical and emotional abuse he endures growing up.

Moonlight had a big night at the 2017 Oscars as the film took home three Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The team behind Moonlight took the stage to accept their award. The film also scored statues for Actor in a Supporting Role for Mahershala Ali and Writing (Adapted Screenplay) for Barry Jenkins (screenplay) and Tarell Alvin McCraney (story). Moonlight received a total of eight nominations, including Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role, Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role, Cinematography, Directing, Film Editing, Music (Original Score), Writing (Adapted Screenplay) and Best Picture. Alongside with winning the Academy Awards,especially the Best Picture award, that’s where the media hegemony begins through this film.

The film doesn’t shy away from the complexities of the real-world dystopia that traps denizens of urban neighborhoods in big cities across the nation. For this reason the film speaks to a more universal condition and social problem. For me, Moonlight was a triumph in the representation of black diversity in America. The combination of blackness and queerness onscreen.This film has rooted in contemporary and cultural blackness. This film portrayed both the perpetuation and annihilation of stereotypes.

Structured as a narrative triptych, we meet Chiron, nicknamed Little, as a child played with a mature intensity by the young Alex Hibbert. Little hates his mother Paula, a struggling crack addict (visceral Naomie Harris), who understands why the other boys beat him up at school and, at least partially, shares in their bigotry. Little finds refuge in the warm mentorship of a neighbourhood drug lord, Juan, a street drug dealer with a soft spot for the young pre-teen. When young Chiron refuses to tell him his name or where he lives, Juan pulls him under his wings and those of his girlfriend Teresa (Janelle Monae). When he finally earns Chiron’s trust, Juan returns the boy to his single mother, Paula (Naomi Harris, Pirates of the Caribbean, Mandela, Skyfall), who wants nothing to do with drug dealers. We soon discover, however, that Paula is sliding into the dark world of drug addiction and that Chiron is truly fending for himself. But Juan sticks with the young boy and becomes a surrogate parent with Teresa.

This reality, which Moonlight effectively conveys, is all the more grim for a kid struggling to come to terms with his sexuality as a young gay adolescent. “Moonlight” transpires as a piece of art to rightfully melt over. “Moonlight” supplies a wonderfully transformative experience not only for the LGBT community and the black community, but for all individuals of every culture. From the fact of the award winning of this film, we can realise how the most powerful award in the media wanted to demonstrate and to bring about inequalities. This process is where the media hegemony take place and how it serves as a crucial shaper of culture, values and ideology of society. Based on the definition of hegemony, media hegemony means the dominance of certain aspects of life and thought by the penetration of a dominant culture and its values into social life.

LGBT is the theme of this film. This can be seen in the film when Chiron has fallen into his first gay sexual experience with his close (and only) friend Kevin. The public acceptance of LGBT is still questioned, there are still a great number of people in opposition to LGBT, yet this film has become the standard of the society and it has set a criteria of how a normal human being should behave in order to maintain a harmonious society. In that sense, the freedom of how the public views LGBT is deprived. media hegemony took place when this film had received such a powerful award, this has also shown films that contain sensitive issues have been classified as the mainstream, unconsciously setting a rule that if there’s anyone who is against these sensitive issues should be the odd one. For instance, people who find LGBT does not belong to the society, will eventually be criticised by the public. As a matter of fact, society has lost the freedom of voicing out their own opinions due to the hegemony of film like Moonlight that has become a norm. This is the main influence that has been brought by Moonlight.

The whole concept felt very much like navigating America in a black body, all these signs woven into my skin, so many expectations of disgrace and failure. From how the film is portrayed, one of the social problems is the drug culture that play in these neighbourhood. Drug culture is strongly emphasised in this film, it’s complex, nuanced and unconventional. In the film, Juan at face value is a drug dealer and Chiron’s mother spirals into drug use and is anything but a reliable parental figure. When one traces back the history of what we now call the War on Drugs, one discovers it has a very specific origin: the United States. The global development of the drug war is inseparable from the development of US imperialism, and indeed, is a direct outgrowth of that imperialism. The result of this imperialism never come to an end since then and is continually evolving the Americans in drug trafficking, this explains why the drug culture is emphasised since the very beginning of this film when a young adolescent is trading drug with Juan, and till the end of the film where Chiron visited his mother in the drug rehabilitation center.

In the film’s second chapter, Chiron is in high school. Now he is tyrannized by Terrel (Patrick Decile), an up and coming gangbanger. But Terrel intimidates Kevin into an initiation rite where he is directed to physically attack Chiron. Chiron goes down, but definitely gets back up. Terrel directs Kevin to keep hitting Chiron until finally the rest of Terrel’s gang descends on him, kicking and punching. The next day, years of bullying combined with the injustice of the incident and ignite a rage that drives Chiron to attack Terrel in school. Chiron, not Terrel, is arrested and sent to prison. Cultural imperialism take place when Kevin used to be Chiron’s close acquaintance yet has decided to drifts along with Terrel’s gang just because Chiron’s personality and his queerness was not being accepted by peers and simultaneously Kevin chose to go against the flow and being influenced by the norm of the peers.

Moonlight’s third chapter opens up with an adult Chiron running his own gang in Atlanta, using the street name Black. After years in prison, he has gone “hard.” Cultural imperialism Is also portrayed when Chiron emulates Juan, his father figure and mentor in the third chapter. Black uses his clothes and bulky physique as armour to convey a particular image to the world, alongside with the typical gold chain and a solid gold grillz as he's frightened of letting people know who he really is. Heartbreaking within the context of the film, it also serves as a wider challenge to the stereotypical images of black masculinity that are often seen in popular culture. In Moonlight, Chiron’s biggest wish is to be recognized as a normal person and nothing else.

The movie could have ended on this dark note, but Chiron’s story isn’t over. Kevin contacts Chiron, finding his number from Teresa. The effort touches Chiron, reviving a softer part of life, touching his humanity. He travels to Miami, where Kevin works as a “chef,” in reality a short-order cook in a corner diner. Kevin is at peace, despite his imprisonment for an unspecified crime. Cultural imperialism is much portrayed by Kevin’s behaviour in this film, firstly, he was influenced by the values of Terrel’s gang, or the public, and secondly, what pursues Kevin to contacts Chiron is the changes mindset and beliefs In the wake of cultural changes of the society. Although Kevin and Chiron have reconnected, the film’s ending is ambiguous—much like real life for generations of kids growing up in neighborhoods where traditional families are rare, parents are young adults themselves, and the social structure is amorphous and tenuous.

There’s an open-endedness with which Moonlight prods masculinity that trails from the start to its warm final embrace at the end. It seems to argue that although it may be part of a man’s identity, but it’s not the totality of their existence.

In a speech given at Medgar Wiley Evers, author Zadie Smith has mentioned that “Many square measure brutalized however not all become brutal.” This wasn’t a direct reference to Moonlight, but it will mirror constant ideology, and why the film resonates so strongly.The black body is continually brutalized, in art as in life, that is why it’s cathartic for a black audience to check it fantastically rendered human and observation that pure humanity be acknowledged.

References

En.m.wikipedia.org. (2019). Moonlight (2016 film). [online] Available at: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonlight_(2016_film) [Accessed 26 Jul. 2019].

Medium. (2019). Moonlight Film Review and Analysis. [online] Available at: https://medium.com/@HunterAlbert/moonlight-film-review-and-analysis-86342d6a55cc [Accessed 26 Jul. 2019].

En.m.wikipedia.org. (2019). Cultural hegemony. [online] Available at: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_hegemony [Accessed 26 Jul. 2019].

En.m.wikipedia.org. (2019). Cultural imperialism. [online] Available at: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_imperialism [Accessed 28 Jul. 2019].

IMDb. (2019). Moonlight - IMDb. [online] Available at: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4975722/awards [Accessed 28 Jul. 2019].