 And moonlight, black boys look blue." Bell Hooks in her book, The Will to Change, recounted an experience that she heard from many men, albeit in different ways and she writes on their behalf. Again and again a man would tell me about early childhood feelings of emotional exuberance, of underpressed joy, and then a rupture happened. Somehow the test of manhood, man told me, was the willingness to accept this loss. This quote instantly made me think of Chiron or Little for moonlight, directed by Barry Jenkins and adapted from the screenplay in Moonlight, Black Boys Look Blue by Terrell Alvin McCraney. And I want to take a look at how masculinity exists in the black community, and masculinity a little in general, through the lens of 2016's best picture, Moonlight. From Bell Hooks' quote and attaching that to the perspective of Chiron, Moonlight's main character, this disconnect begins young, and in the very first act of the film, as the movie begins, we are taken to the lens of a ten-year-old Chiron. In the portrayal, he does the same thing. He begins to perform this version of hypermasculinity rather than be open about who he is. Once the world starts to assert itself, he does the same thing that everyone else is doing in that world. That was from an interview with Barry Jenkins himself. In these early years of his life, and in Black Boys' lives, they are told, don't be soft. They are taught that fighting, violence, domination, is the only way that other men will respect you. Words, feelings, emotions, aren't manly. But it doesn't only exist in the community, it exists at home as well. Chiron is called homophobic slurs by his absent mother even. So in addition to living a life where love doesn't exist, everywhere he goes he's being told and he's seeing who to be and how to be it. He's understanding that these things make a man. And that in his own skin he is not a man. With that pressure, he can't just exist. A pressure that a lot of Black Boys face in their formative years, just like Chiron. Black Boys aren't allowed to simply exist and to soak in the pleasures of youth, which includes discovery of oneself. And discovering one's own sexuality is a part of that as well. They are instead told what to be, who to be, and how to be it. And in order to survive, Chiron has to perform, as Jenkins mentions. He can't be soft, like the way Kevin challenges him to a wrestling match to prove that, because men aren't soft. Author and Professor of Psychology James Garborino asks, Where do boys learn what it means to be a man? They seem to learn it all too often from the media and from the most visible males in their community. Boys' friends are often the arbitrators of what is masculine and what is feminine. Adding to that, in Black communities, like Chiron's, where fathers aren't always present, all of the kids chasing him from Chiron's introduction in the film, they have become the arbitrators of masculinity. And they've decided based on what they've been taught and what they've seen that Chiron isn't a man, that Chiron's soft. And so that often leads to either isolation or violence. So proving his status as a quote unquote man is what Chiron has to do at every step in his life, but when he meets Juan, things are different. Played by Mahershala Ali, Juan is only in the film for the first chapter, but remains a poignant character in Chiron's life. Juan becomes a father figure to Chiron, and through his character represents a positive male influence, in a film that balances both positive and negative representations. Juan is kind and welcoming. He treats Chiron and his barriers with respect, patience, and he's gentle. Further, Juan deals with Chiron being called homophobic slurs with the respect that typically isn't shown in the black community, as it was his mom who called him that. But in these communities there are always people with Juan's heart. He specifically imposes his presence in one of Moonlight's most powerful and beautiful scenes, when Juan is teaching Chiron how to swim. And it's in this moment, in this scene, where we can truly see that Juan is everything a man should be, vulnerable, accepting, respectful, and tender, as he holds Chiron's head in the water alluding to a baptism. With actions and later with his words, Juan encourages Chiron to be whoever he wants to be, and that he has to make that decision for himself. Further he reassures him of what a man should be, and in one of the scenes that follow, it shows Chiron dancing in the mirror among his classmates. He's carefree, he isn't burdened by what he should or shouldn't be, and it's one of the rare moments in this film that shows Chiron simply existing, and really soaking in Juan's words and his example. But at the same time, it is also revealed to us that Juan sells drugs, dealing to Chiron's crack-addicted mother. There is a very human element to his character, a complexity to him, and it makes his time on screen feel precious and weighted even. And with that revelation, Juan's direction and his love leaves Chiron's life. In the second act of the movie titled Chiron, we see our teen-aged main character. He's awkward, a little shy, and at school he's still getting bullied because he isn't up to the male standards of black men, according to Tyrell, his bully. In this act we see that love is scarce once again. His mother, Paula, is still addicted to crack cocaine as she hounds her son for money. Juan is now dead, but Teresa will always have a place for him, and her love still exists, but his mother won't allow it. So again, love is scarce. Focusing a little on Paula, it's important to note the way she neglected and berated Chiron for being gay at such a young age, and how that affected him. The only mother's love he's felt has been from Teresa, who his mother resents. Look at the way Paula physically drags Chiron around, the way she handles him with aggression and rage when asking him for money. This is a mother who, along with her community, has pressured and forced her son into the confines of masculinity. And when she saw that Chiron was everything but a quote-unquote man, she became angry, she became abusive and violent. This is not a mother's love, and he carried that trauma all the way into adulthood. Moving forward in this act, Kevin becomes a pivotal part of Chiron's story, and when looking at masculinity, when performing means to survive, here is a person who has seemingly mastered it since they were kids. Kevin is bisexual, but he is the opposite of Chiron. He's seemingly confident in himself, he's comfortable, and when he sees Chiron in the hallway and talks to him about the sexual experience he's had with one of their classmates, he's there again performing, which is why he doesn't get treated like Chiron does. But where Kevin truly becomes important is when he stands as the one person who truly knows Chiron and who Chiron can confide in, as he does when he tells Kevin that sometimes all he ever wants to do is cry. And in a transformative scene of love, vulnerability, and intimacy, it's so clear how much Chiron has been so deprived of it. How badly he yearned for love, but that short moment is fleeting, as it's juxtaposed with Kevin punching him in the face the following day, again performing masculinity in order to survive, as he yells at Chiron to stay down. So disconnection severing himself from his true self, from his emotions, is the only way for Chiron to survive. Masculinity or patriarchal masculinity, as Bell Hooks puts it, is in all ways and forms destructive to both women and to men as well. That disconnect leads to anger and violence, and because males are unable to properly express their emotions, it leads them to anger, the only emotion that has been championed since they were children. A man needs to be angry, he needs to be violent. Chiron's anger and rage for having to constantly deny who he was kept on building from his youth, and the lack of love hurt him as well. It's why he cries so much. If all we want as humans is love and he had just felt it, why was he being punched in the face by the man who had just finally touched him? But again, this is what being a man is. This is the disconnect, this is the severance. Chiron at this point in his life wasn't fully disconnected from feeling freely, from emotion, not yet. Just as he told Kevin the day before, he cries a lot. He hasn't fully plunged into that traditional masculinity. But when he sees that he cannot be loved by a man and be a man at the same time, he washes the blood off his face and washes all of the emotion and his younger feeling self away. And he gives into the severance of his former self, because violence and anger, that is what men respect, and it's what Tyrell will respect as well. That's how he'll survive in this world. Builds up this literal musculature, this armature, to protect himself from having to deal with being vulnerable. In the final act of this film, we see Chiron built up. He looks like Juan if Juan was 10 years younger. They have the fronts, the rolled up dureg, the gold watch, the muscles, the attitude, the drug dealing. This is Chiron the Trapper. This is Black. He became what Juan was trying to steer him away from. And this is the peak of Black masculinity. All of the aforementioned things are what is expected of Black males. This is the standard. This is long term survival for Black men in the hood. A performance. Further, to survive and to survive as a trapper, you need to look and perform the part. As he does. Like this, no Tyrell will ever lay a hand on him again. It's clear that everything that has happened in the past, he's fully distanced himself from it. Physically and mentally more specifically. He's given into everything the world has told him to be. This tragic because he did it because he had to. Love, sensitivity, that Chiron dancing in the mirror freely. That vulnerable kid doesn't exist anymore in that world. But it does when Kevin calls. And he's reverted back to that awkward kid who can barely speak. Film critic Joanna DeMattia writes in her report, throughout moonlight, characters look directly into the camera. A humanizing gesture that demands we look into their eyes and into their souls. And when Chiron looks up at the camera, and we see him from Kevin's perspective, Kevin's gaze is able to penetrate Chiron's armor with ease. As always. Kevin sees him for who he truly is and will forever see him as that 16 year old kid who just wanted to be loved and held and touched. The fleeting love he received from Juan and Teresa just wasn't enough. And that fleeting love from Kevin was something he remembered so vividly. Chiron has had to live these two lives and black has had no choice but to rear its head out of necessity. Chiron hasn't truly been Chiron in a decade. But what I loved about moonlight was that even in his armor, Chiron still allows himself to be vulnerable. When he's listening to his mother declare her love for him, apologizing and telling him to be better, it triggered something in him. For how much she heard him when she was the root of his pain and suffering, Chiron still stayed and listened. When he really didn't need to, he showed a sense of forgiveness. It showed that Chiron was willing to heal. And finally admitting to Kevin that he hasn't been touched since that day and later allowing himself to be in Kevin's arms, to be held, despite everything he went through, illustrates Chiron's resiliency. And most of all it shows his courage. We are seldomly given movies that don't end with black men in death, whether that be physical death or the death of one's true spirit or mind. But moonlight tells a hopeful tale that as a black man, as black men, we are still worthy of tenderness and love. You can still be blue even if you spent all of this time denying it. You can exist without having to fit any mold. But like Chiron, you have to be willing. When Bell Hooks uses the term patriarchal masculinity, she hammers away at the idea that the impacts of this masculinity towards men are at the forefront of what's wrong and is what's creating a cycle that is so violent, abusive, and destructive. Moreover that we have to understand the difficulty in changing this, but we also have to understand how necessary it is. From her own experiences with men in her life, and from anecdotes of other men, she talks about the pressures that we go through to suppress, to conform, to disconnect, and how ingrained it is that masculinity is taught as domination, as chaos, anger, and how our society has normalized this. This obsession with domination leads to a quest for it everywhere. In the workplace, at home, in intimate relationships, in sex, and it often leads to violence. Hooks writes, The power of patriarchy has been to make maleness feared and to make men feel that it is better to be feared than to be loved. But that's not what masculinity should be. It should be about being strong enough to be vulnerable, to be tender, to be compassionate. When society has told you being those things makes you less of a man, being strong enough to feel and to love properly, that's what makes a true man. But when you've been taught your whole life, and black men specifically, when you've had to survive by not being those things, and by denying your true self and your needs, like Chiron, these things can't just be expected of you. But again, like Chiron, you have to have the volition, you have to have the want and the will to change. You simply existing, feeling and loving, owning up to your failures or mistakes, your shortcomings and wanting to be better, that is what makes you a man. Even before I read this book, I've always felt and I've always said that everyone, no matter who you are, yearns for companionship, to be recognized and to be loved. You yearn for love, but you have to be brave enough to let yourself receive it, and you have to be able to give it in a healthy way. Love is not only the feeling but the action, ultimately you have to be vulnerable to be and to do all of these things, and you have to be vulnerable to be a man. That is the story that Moonlight succeeds in poetically telling. At some point you've got to decide for yourself who you want to be, you can't let nobody make that decision for you.