Embedded Files
Broken up into three separate parts, Moonlight chronicles the life of Chiron, a young gay black man growing up in a rougher, lower-income neighborhood in Miami.
Moonlight beautifully covers diverse themes of masculinity, sexual identity, friendship, love, and chosen family. Through such a well-rounded and genuine story, Moonlight is able to touch on themes brought up in class such as: addiction, status anxiety, growing up low S.E.S, parentification, food and housing insecurity and much more.
THEMES THROUGHOUT THE MOVIE
STEREOTYPES
Paula and Teresa: Complicated motherhood
diametrically opposed people create a binary of the portrayal of black mothers
there is a common troupe of “bad” black mothers: unemotional, overbearing, “welfare queens”,
single mothers are vilified for not being able to be stay-at-home mothers, or for “depriving” a child of a father figure. Dehumanizes them and their experiences.
mixed feelings
Sensationalizing Black Poverty
traditional media disproportionately depicts black people as being poor
displays racial disparities in poverty and the effects of generational trauma while focusing on amplifying the storytelling of a queer black man’s life.
(19.5 % of Black Americans vs 8.2% of white Americans live below the poverty line)
Sensationalizing Queerness
Media has a tendency to glorify queer life with eroticism and suffering
queer movie for a queer audience
The inability to reach higher economic status
what surprised us?
what surprised us?
Left with questions about Chiron’s future:
if he continues to deal drugs
if he ends up with Kevin
if he opens up and continues to be vulnerable
what happened to Juan
has Chiron actually processed what happened
Surprised by the division of the three parts of the movie. Apart from one or two short dream sequences each section of the film stays within the time frame.
The story is told from three very different stages of Chiron’s life
accuracy of growing up low S.E.S and parenting
How the cinematography works to reflect Chiron’s feelings
The way the movie pictures Teresa
The representation of intersectionality of discrimination (race, lower class, sexuality)
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