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Moonlight Reaction Paper

Moonlight tells the story of Chiron, a young black boy growing up gay in Miami with a mother addicted to drugs. He faces bullying throughout his childhood for his sexuality. As an adult, he lives a life of crime after being sent to juvenile detention for attacking his high school bully. The film explores how Chiron's harsh upbringing and the betrayals by his mother and only friend impacted his life. It ultimately conveys the message that one's actions can profoundly affect others in ways one may not foresee.

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50 views2 pages

Moonlight Reaction Paper

Moonlight tells the story of Chiron, a young black boy growing up gay in Miami with a mother addicted to drugs. He faces bullying throughout his childhood for his sexuality. As an adult, he lives a life of crime after being sent to juvenile detention for attacking his high school bully. The film explores how Chiron's harsh upbringing and the betrayals by his mother and only friend impacted his life. It ultimately conveys the message that one's actions can profoundly affect others in ways one may not foresee.

Uploaded by

Xpertz Printing
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Moonlight

Moonlight is a 2016 Academy Award-winning film directed by Barry


Jenkins. It portrays the hard life of a young black boy growing up gay with a
mother who is addicted to drugs.

The main character, Chiron, faces many challenges that change him as
a person and he ends up changing from a quiet skinny black boy who lets
people step all over him into a gangster who makes all his money from Illegal
doing. These challenges that he faced in this movie are same what we face in
today’s world.

One of the first cultural anxieties that Barry Jenkins touched upon in this
film were sexuality and bullying. Chiron’s sexuality was proven to be a
problem for him the entire movie. Because of the fact that Chiron was gay, he
got mistreated and bullied for it for a large portion of the movie. Even at the
very start of the movie when Chiron was just a little boy other little boys would
chase him around, throw things at him and beat him up. Because of this
mistreatment, he grew up as an introvert, he was quiet and had only one
friend. His only friend was a boy named Kevin or Kev.

Kev looked out for Chiron & tried to help ever since they were little kids
& they stayed close at the start of high school. Chiron’s sexuality was still a
proven problem in high school because the bullying continued with new
characters like Terrell.

At one point in the film, Chiron & Kev are on the beach talking to one
another and at one point Chiron reveals to Kev that there are a lot of things
that he wants to do that doesn’t make sense, he goes on to kiss him as the
scene goes on. So this statement alone reveals to the audience that Chiron’s
sexuality is a constant mental battle for him because he has these feelings
that he believes don’t make sense because the society around him treats him
as if it’s unacceptable.

Society treated him not good and he suffer from bullying because of his
sexuality. This bullying eventually caused Chiron to snap and attack Terrell
with a chair after another bullying incident. This led to Chiron being sent to
Juvenile detention and moving to Atlanta and becoming a gangster when he
got out.

Chiron’s mother betrayed him through her drug addiction. As a boy, she
was a horrible mother to him because she was always on drugs. At one point
in the film, she actually stole all the money from out of his pockets and
backpack to go buy more drugs. Because of her drug addiction, she was a
horrible mother, and as her son, he wasn’t able to trust, rely on or confide in
her for anything and that in itself is a form of betrayal. All kids should be able
to have a good parent or guardian that treats them right but she just didn’t.
However, later on in the movie both of these characters are reintroduced in
Chiron’s adult life. Due to her actions, while raising him, Chiron & his mother
don’t really have a good relationship in his adult life. He still takes time out of
some days to visit her and talk to her but the respect and love don’t seem to
be there. In one scene in the movie, he visits his mother and she is feel sorry
about how she raised him and it is clear that she is a changed woman and
knows she messed up. In this conversation, she reveals that she loves him
and understands if he doesn’t love her back because she didn’t love him when
he needed her the most but because of the love she has for him she doesn’t
want him to go down the “wrong path” as she did. And in another scene from
Chiron’s adulthood, Kevin calls him and is apologetic about how things went
down between them and they began to catch up a little bit.

This conversation led to Chiron driving to Miami to visit Kev at his


restaurant, where they truly caught up and talked. Kevin concerned about
where Chiron was in life and was finally acting like a friend again. These
scenes proved that no matter what the cause of the betrayal, it can really
damage both sides. Both Chiron’s mother and Kev have been riddled with
guilt ever since they betrayed Chiron and Chiron will never be the same
because of it. No matter what context you watch this film in the underlying
topic is definitely what is known as the “Golden Rule”, you treat people how
you want to be treated. If society would have been more open to
homosexuality maybe Chiron wouldn’t have had that internal battle of thinking
his feelings were wrong or senseless. Or if Chiron wasn’t bullied in school he
wouldn’t have snapped and gotten arrested and maybe his whole story
would’ve been better. Or if Chiron’s mother acted as the mother figure she
should’ve been, he would have someone in his own home to go to in his times
of need. Or if Kevin acted as a real friend and stood up for Chiron instead of
jumping him maybe Chiron wouldn’t have felt so alone and isolated before
committing the crime that started his life of crime.

What happened, happened and we can’t change that. It’s the same
thing in life. You can’t change your actions after you do them and you never
know how much your actions can affect another person’s life.

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