Newsletter 2

Traditionally in black culture the  narratives about black men in the media seem to be very rigid. Strength is seen as being silent, while being masculine is seen as being tough. Being vulnerable, especially emotionally, is seen as a weakness and is often discouraged or penalized. Such narratives are common, and because of their commonality, they seem to be natural and inevitable. However, such narratives are not often representative of the complexities of reality, especially for Black men who are not heterosexual. This is why I think "Moonlight" is such a culturally important movie, especially for the black community. This movie portrays the life journey of Chiron, a black boy growing up in the impoverished black community of Miami, at three different stages of his life: childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. The movie is quiet, intimate, and visually poetic. I like the way the movie displays all the lenses of Chiron's life, like when he got swimming lessons, they also show what he was going through at home, being neglected, and all the bullying he dealt with at school, to give us context for the buildup of emotional intimacy he had with Kevin. I thought it was a beautiful display of vulnerability. These are the moments that are central to the movie’s meaning. What makes Moonlight particularly noteworthy, however, is that it depicts Black masculinity as something learned, imposed, and often weaponized against vulnerability.  Chiron lives in a world that does not tolerate expressions of emotion and queer identity, both socially and physically. Masculinity is enforced through bullying and demonstrated through the tough survivalism that allows one to get by. Chiron’s queer identity, therefore, cannot be separated from his struggle to feel safe, seen, and whole within that world. Moonlight does not depict Chiron’s queer identity as an internalized personal struggle, but rather as one that has been influenced by the poverty, racism, addiction, and expectations that Black men must conform to.My investment in Moonlight is personal due to its lack of justification and explanation of Black queer existence to an outside world. Moonlight doesn't use trauma as spectacle, nor does it offer easy paths to redemption. Instead, it asks you to engage with discomfort, ambiguity, and emotional restraint. As a viewer, I find that I am drawn not just to the emotion that the movie brings out, but the way they showed the real complexities of a black man in society. The pauses, the silences, and the glances that say more than words ever could are all about the ways in which emotional vulnerability is suppressed when survival depends on hardness.In a media context  that often reduces Black men to stereotypes or sidelines Black queer stories altogether, Moonlight matters because it challenges the symbolic power of those narratives. This analysis argues that Moonlight disrupts dominant constructions of Black cultural masculinity by centering emotional vulnerability and queerness as essential, rather than deviant, aspects of Black male identity showing how masculinity is not innate, but socially enforced, and how reclaiming vulnerability becomes an act of resistance.