Masculinity in Film- Moonlight

The acronym LGBT has been in use since 1990’s and stands for: Lesbian,Gay,and

Bisexual and Transgender. Lots of people being attracted to someone of the same sex is

common, normal and makes you who you are. Some may be sure about how they feel, and

others may take more time to make certain of their sexual orientation. Everyone is

different and there's no right or wrong age to understand you're lesbian, gay, or bisexual.

Sexual orientation doesn't got to be fixed forever-for some people it'll be,and for

others it'll be fluid and it'd change over time. According to Anthony Venn Brown "The

richness, beauty and depths of affection can only be fully experienced during a climate of

complete openness, honesty and vulnerability". At a time when lesbian, gay,bisexual, and

transgender (LGBT) individuals are an increasingly open,acknowledged and visual a part

of society, clinicians and researchers are faced with incomplete information about the

health status of this community. Although a modest body of data on LGBT health has been

developed over the last 20 years , much remains to be explored.

The LGBT community wishes to highlight the importance of recognizing that the

various population represented by" L","G","B" and "T" are distinct groups, each with its

own special health related concerns and needs. The community believes it is essential to

emphasize these differences at the outset of this report because in some contemporary

scientific discourse, and in the popular media, these groups are routinely treated

as one population under umbrella terms like LGBT.

The main commonality across these diverse groups is their members historically

marginalized social status relative to society's cultural norms of the exclusively

heterosexual individual who conform to traditional gender roles and expectations. And

these group share common status of "others" because of their members departure from
heterosexuality and gender norms. Their "otherness" is the basis for stigma and its

attendant prejudice, discrimination and violence, which underlies society's general lack of

attention to their health needs and many of the health disparities. For some, this

"otherness" could also be complicated by additional dimensions of inequality like race,

ethnicity, and socioeconomic status, leading to stigma at multiple levels.

In this world, membership in any of the groups encompassed by LGBT would carry

no social stigma, engender no disgrace or personal shame, and end in no discrimination. In

this world a number of issues would threaten the health of LGBT individuals: major

chronic diseases like cancer and heart condition , communicable diseases; mental

disorders;environmental hazards; the threat of violence and terrorism; and the many other

factors that jeopardize human "physical, mental and social well being". According

to Cather " where there's an excellent love there are always miracles".

Historically, lesbians, gay men, bisexual individuals, and transgender people have not

been understood and accepted as part of the normal spectrum of the human condition.

Instead, they need been stereotyped as deviants.Although LGBT people share with the

remainder of society the complete range of health risks, they also face a profound and

poorly understood set of additional health risks due largely to social stigma.

Bayard Rustin says that "we need in every community, a group of angelic trouble

makers". He fight for the LGBTQ community and urged the disenfranchised to engage in

civil disobedience to get their points across to the majority, encouraging those who wanted

to fight for their rights to be unafraid to speak up and act out to demand them.Not only are

lesbians,gay men,bisexual women and men, and transgender people distinct populations,

but each of these groups is itself a various population whose members vary widely in

age,race and ethnicity, geographic location, social background, religiosity and other

demographic characteristics. Since many of those variables are centrally associated

When discussing media representation of various groups, especially those we

considered marginalized, stereotypes are often a primary concern. But sometimes,

breaking a stereotype doesn't go quite far enough, and the issue can be a little more

complicated than merely determining whether or not a character is represented in a

positive or negative way.The section that follows explores different approaches to queer

content by analyzing various way that popular media have used characterized LGBTQ

people.

The LGBT community faces a lot of problems and fighting for rights and acceptance

and was considered other. Films are a medium reflect these modes of social oddities. "

Moonlight " is a 21st century American based movie directed by Barrey Jenkins which

explores this content and shows the difficulty of the main character, Chiron faces with his

sexuality and identity, including the physical and mental abuse he endures growing

up.Movies like Moonlight represent the generation dares to convey the problems faced by

Chiron based on his sexual identity as a gay his neglected childhood, and the self

realisation in adulthood.

Chiron being a homosexual within the black community faces social alienation and

this makes him not to accept his true identity. The homophobic judgement offered by his

peergroup made him humiliated. On the other hand,Kevin another character hides his

sexuality in order to avoid ridicules. The identity crisis faced by Chiron is the main theme

here. Even though Chiron is able to survive in his sexual identity, society doesn't favour,so

he adopts the mask of masculine black man.The powerlessness of such people who are not

able to live the life in the identity which they wish is shown through this Black gay in the

film Moonlight.
 Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight explores the life of Chiron – a black gay man in a rough

Miami neighbourhood – across three periods in his life. He’s taken in by a well-meaning

couple (played by Mahershala Ali and Janelle Monáe), but as he ages he becomes

increasingly isolated because of the way he moves and looks, facing bullying from

classmates and even his mother, who imply that his body language and style of dress

denote his sexuality. His response is to perform a version of masculinity that is expected of

a black male in order to fit in.

Moonlight‘s focus on the performance of gender is similar to Jennie Livingston’s 1990

documentary Paris Is Burning (currently on UK Netflix), which follows the underground

drag ball circuit in New York in the late 1980s. The participants of these ‘balls’ were often

gay black men who came along in order to express themselves and meet people living a

similar lifestyle. Paris Is Burning visualises the idea that gender roles are socially

constructed, giving rules to how a person must dress, act and talk depending on their sex.

Simone de Beauvoir famously quoted that “one is not born a woman, but becomes one”,

arguing that gender and sex are not related in the way that we assume they are.

Moonlight builds on this idea of gender being something that is performed as opposed

to inherent, but this time in a fictional setting. While Paris Is Burning examined black gay

men against the back drop of a ‘White America’, comparing how the mainstream media

rules over minorities of race and sexuality, Moonlight feels like more of an examination

into the fragility of black masculinity.

In much of Moonlight, masculinity is a rigid, unsliding scale – hard, aggressive and

emotionally ambiguous is the only acceptable form of behaviour amongst the black males

of Chiron’s teenage peer group. His friend Kevin is the one exception to this rule, with

scenes between the pair providing an outlet for the navigation of confusing and intense

emotions. Kevin presents himself as a traditionally masculine guy in his use of language
regarding women, perhaps in order to hide his sexuality and avoid being singled out in the

way that Chiron is.

As Chiron grows older, he recognises the need to conform to this heteronormative idea

of black masculinity. He has two choices: embrace his sexuality in the knowledge it will

open him up to abuse and hatred, or perform the identity of a straight black male and live a

quieter life. Paris is Burning shows how this kind of flexible identity is essential to survive

as a black gay man. The people it features perform as their real selves onstage, allowing

flamboyance and theatricality to take centre stage away from the social pressures of the

real world, but they also show that they can ‘fit in’ when needed, performing in ‘business’

outfits in a sly mockery of the mainstream. In the third act of the film, Chiron chooses to

embrace the stereotypical black male performance, suddenly becoming a muscular, grill-

wearing drug dealer, far from the vulnerable kid he was in the previous act. He may still be

the same person inside, but his external appearance now fits the code expected of him.

Moonlight takes time to study the shape and movements of the body and explore how

we’ve been conditioned to associate different movements with gender and sexuality.

Chiron is shown as a child enjoying a dance class at school, looking at himself in the

mirror and admiring his own movements. Jenkins also includes scenes where the actor

looks directly into the camera. These are reminiscent of scenes in Paris Is Burning, inviting

the audience to examine the body language and features of the subject. Whilst we are told

that Chiron is gay, the sexual orientations of other characters are not explicitly revealed,

and this makes our examinations of other characters, like Kevin, more intense, asking the

question: can we tell if someone is gay just from their appearance?

Throughout the film, Chiron is asked to consider who he is, and who he would like to

be known as. He acquires the nicknames ‘Little’ and ‘Black’, but Juan (Mahershala Ali),

the drug dealer who takes him under his wing, encourages Chiron to make his own name
and become his own person rather than the one people would like to see him as. Whilst

others in the film are sure of who they are, some even from a young age, Chiron reacts to

how people perceive him, following a similar path to those who try to blend in Paris Is

Burning. Almost 30 years after Livingston’s revolutionary documentary, Jenkins has

created a beautiful film that is both beautiful and a stepping off point for discussions on

how sexuality is linked to social expectations of masculinity.