Moonlight is a powerful affirmation for gay black men: we’re supposed to exist

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/21/moonlight-affirmation-gay-black-men-exist

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I was around 10 when I stumbled across the music video for George Michael’s Outside. It was the first time I’d seen anything that was gay. I didn’t really understand what two men kissing meant, but I believed in it more than the heterosexual world I’d seen on TV. I’d known that I was in some way different to the rest of my family from as far back as I could remember, and that music video helped me understand what was different before I could articulate it for myself. It gave me something to identify with – even if it wasn’t age-appropriate material.

As I got older, LGBTQ+ representation became more commonplace. While the people I saw on soaps and in newspapers had the same orientation as me, they never looked like me. Media was white, and gay media whiter still. For a long time I thought being gay was a white thing, and I was an anomaly. George Michael’s music had helped me come to terms with a part of who I was, but it wasn’t until my late teens that I could reconcile my sexual and racial identities.

Watching Moonlight, I reflected on the years I’d spent not understanding myself and the time I’d wasted being too scared to ask questions, and how one film could lay all the answers I’d needed during my childhood at my feet. When you strip away all the messages of hope and reconciliation and fear and love that Moonlight contains, what’s left is a simple, powerful affirmation for queer black men. We exist. We’re supposed to exist. That’s not something we can always learn from the whitewashed, heterocentric media we’re brought up with.

With newly published research linking the introduction of same-sex marriage in America to a 14% drop in LGBTQ youth suicide, it’s impossible to deny the positive effect that representation in society and culture has on wellbeing and mental health. In the UK, LGBTQ people are living more authentically than ever and choosing to do so at an earlier age, which Stonewall boss Ruth Hunt put down to “an explosion of role models and people talking about being gay”. Meanwhile, the runaway success of RuPaul’s Drag Race is helping to destabilise the cult of masculinity that has historically left feminine gay and bi men being seen as an embarrassment to the community. The more we see of ourselves, the faster we can understand ourselves.

Unlike marriage – which, for all its importance, reflects a simplified happy-ever-after without acknowledging the complicated journey LGBTQ+ people make from self-discovery to self-acceptance – Moonlight basks in the messiness of queerness: the bullying, the solitude, the awkwardness; and it refuses to gloss over the impact that race has on gay black kids.

Some of this is specific to the poor black American experience, but issues of hypermasculinity, poverty and the experience of being made to feel like a second-class citizen are found in black communities all over the world. The weight of being a minority within a marginalised community presses heavily on every frame in Moonlight, providing the most complete reflection for black gay youth that the mainstream has ever offered.

One of Moonlight’s most quietly potent scenes, where “Little” Chiron sits in a rickety bath he’s had to fill by hand, epitomises how beautifully Moonlight articulates the complicatedness of queer black childhood. Typically, black people rely on one another to make sense of a world that is hostile to us. When you can’t be your authentic self around your family and community, that safety net is less effective. As a result, it’s often only in isolation that closeted black kids can truly be at peace, and watching Chiron retreat from everyone and everything for a moment of respite holds a mirror up to that unique sense of isolation that black queer childhood thrusts on us. By reflecting the ways we as black gay people navigate the world, Moonlight offers us a chance to make peace with the sacrifices we made as youngsters, and heal. For younger audiences it may provide something even more profound – confirmation that you’re not alone.

Audiences of all backgrounds will take something away from Moonlight. It muses on reconciliation, forgiveness and authenticity – ideas that we could all stand to think more deeply about. But for black queer audiences, Moonlight is the first time a mainstream film has spoken directly to us, to voice our unique perspective on the world. And for black gay kids who stumble across Moonlight, as I did George Michael’s music all those years ago, that representation will answer questions that took some of us years to understand.