Moonlight, Me (the past and present), and Identity Politics
2016 is an Election Year and with this catastrophic, surreal, overlong, spectacle of doom and dread known as our American Presidential election, that possibly endangers the American Experiment itself, it has brought out a part of me that I have rarely put forth: My identity politics. Â Identity politics are something that I rarely engage with publicly, in fact, it was just recently did I come out as a transgender man. Â But there was something I had to finally say to the world, to contextualize my state of unease, my incredible depression stemming from the Pulse Night Club shooting, my volatile temper during political discussions, and why exactly did I seem to place an inordinate amount of weight into one candidateâs positions on LGBT protections when it so happens that those discussions of such protections never made it onto the floors of the presidential debates. Â It is not that I went into identity politics willingly, but that I was starting to feel caved in from what surrounded me. Â Expression and living just as I am along with millions of others becomes a political statement to the very people who want to cut us down to size, push us back in the closet, or either pretend we do not exist or turn us into threatening monsters of society seeking to disrupt, harm, and pervert the norms. Â That last part always makes me chuckle, as though I and the rest of the trans community are made out to be like the exiles of Mortville in John Watersâ Desperate Living, who willfully achieve all of those things. Â But that was a beautiful, dark, twisted fantasy of the queer cinema and the current reality that I am living is making me want to stay indoors. Â
Staying indoors or at least concentrating on indoor activities is relatively easy for me to do my favorite activity: watch movies. Â Now if there is something where I was even less willing to engage in identity politics in electoral and legislative politics, it would be that I have been less willing to engage with identity politics in art. Â I like to think of myself open-minded enough that to see other perspectives that are not my own or cannot relate to can be the great discovery and pleasure of it all. Â Admittedly, this could date back to the fact that one time that I did see a transgender man played in a film, it was when I was about ten or eleven years old, late at night, channel-surfing and seeing the scene of Boys Donât Cry when Hillary Swankâs Brandon Teena is outed, after previously âpassingâ. Â Swankâs Teena is stripped down to reveal not having cisgender male sexual organs and is subsequently raped as punishment by those men. Â It was a rough scene when I revisited that in college after coming to terms with my gender identity but my memory of it goes back to that striking, uneasy first viewing. Â This was how people like me were shown. Â I may never really hold Boys Donât Cry the film with great regard, because it always felt like being shown my worst nightmare. Â Nonetheless, looking back, I got why people can be hung up on audience identification and relating to characters. Â It can be a hunger to want it but also a cross to bear when it can feel foisted upon you. Whether I liked it or not, relating and knowing who Brandon Teena was made me have a type of connection that was unshakable. Â
Barry Jenkinsâ 2016 film Moonlight, a three-part story on a young black man slowly coming to terms with his queer identity, while being confronted with homophobia, toxic masculinity, and machismo was something I anticipated a good deal. Â I was expecting something of a coming of age meets coming out story film in the mold of Blue is The Warmest Color or Carol, but with the caveat of it being a black male, something I have to admit I do not see the perspective of in a queer lens enough (I am copping to the fact that I have not seen a lot beyond Tongues Untied and Portrait of Jason in this regard, but I am sure there are more films out there than I considered, as there will always be films out there). Â The film is like those two other films in addition to a few others queer stories but also offering something that feels completely fresh and thoughtful. Â
When seeing Moonlight at the Toronto International Film Festival this past September, I have to admit it took some time to get drawn in, and not that there was anything wrong with the first section. This film, a film that is so empathetic and open toward its protagonist of Chiron, naturally builds from his adolescence to adulthood. Â It is the bridge between that in the middle-section that, frankly, shattered me when viewing it and has haunted me ever since watching it. Â
I bring up Blue is the Warmest Color with Moonlight as a comparison not just because it features queer protagonists and that their structures lent to a passage of time (one has just one actress as its protagonist through these stages and the other has three actors in three stages of life of one protagonist), some of that focus primarily being in the school setting. Â Blueâs Adele is a typical teenage life that is interior even amid expressing passions and intimations to her closest friends but there is a radical shift in her school life trajectory after doing a double-take on the street in seeing the blue-haired, older Emma. Her desires and urges take shape in the form of another person of the same sex and she is shocked by the turn of events, even if things start to make sense. Â She explores further by going to a gay bar with her gay male friend from school. She reunites with Emma again and continues on the path toward self-discovery. Â The immediate aftermath of Adele going on that path comes with a confrontation among a circle of friends that doubles as an outing on the grounds of her suburban French high school. Â Adele denies the accusations, even as evidence builds toward her being at least curious and those associations are enough for her friends to reveal their homophobia, one even so much as accusing her of being predatory toward them. Â
To me, itâs the strongest scene of Blue is the Warmest Color, for the fact itâs an entirely accurate portrait of that age-groupâs gay panic when something remotely non-conforming is queered and confronted as a negative thing. Â Adele isnât a political person but her coming of age is built partially on worlds closing in on her and being confronted with her sexuality and love for another woman. Â Moonlight builds more on the foundation of this section of adolescence, identity, and sexuality, and with that, becomes one of the most unshakable and true to life feelings of isolation and disassociation. Â
If Blue is The Warmest Color is about the unexplored territory in both the passion and pitfalls of love from that moment in the film of Adeleâs journey beginning in her school days, Moonlight works as an, âAnatomy of The Closetâ piece in showing how the pervasive, casual, and banal homophobia and bullying from the playgrounds to the classroom slowly becomes a hollowing armor around its protagonist of Chiron. Â Forget the difference of race, class, or geography, as much as I love both films, this fellow closet case is a Chiron than an Adele. Â
Confrontation in Moonlight is what Chiron faces a lot from the very start. He knows heâs different and is dealt with being called a âfaggotâ before the concept of sex even takes form of image, shape, and desire in his mind. Â There is a defeat in his mind when he is called a âfaggotâ because the persistence of it is so present in his everyday at school and at home. Â With home, he can escape his mother and find comfort in his parental figures, Paula and Juan, but there is only so much he can divulge as who he is without feeling like he is giving away too much of himself. Â Chironâs desires are interior and consciously so, even while his exterior as a skinny kid with bad, ill-fitting clothes makes him enough of a target. But there is something about feeling different and knowing that you are different from others that, for whatever reason, gives off a smell to all of the worst people. I should know- I had that smell. Â Homophobia at that age can be so casual that anybody can be called a âfaggotâ and yet, upon being on the receiving end of these words (and other terrible words), personally, you feel at a loss. Â It feels more of a branding that you take in with resignation and hope the person who called you that at least can expand their dictionary the next day to at least feel like it is just a word and not a call-out. Â
The middle section of the film, âChironâ, is where Chironâs ultimate realization of his sexuality identity meets breakdown and a turning point. Â Chironâs breakdown and turning point take violent turns that I have never experienced nor unleashed on anyone in my life, but it is the breakdown that reminded me of one of the darkest periods in my life. Â
Even when seeing Boys Donât Cry as a young kid, I somehow managed to divert my mind, in retrospect a built-in denial, to the idea of any gender dysphoria just being something that would erode over time.  These urges were âjust a phaseâ, after all- despite the fact even at the earliest stages of my life, looking back, I was rebelling and even intimating aloud before the concept of transgender was even in my orbit.  With the exception of seeing the late Alexis Arquette on the VH1 Reality Series The Surreal Life and the even then incredibly outrageous, transphobic exposĂ© in Rolling Stone Magazine on film director Lana Wachowskiâs transition that prominently featured trans male porn actor, Buck Angel, my ins to the trans community were limited in real life and even more in art.  When I saw that my gender dysphoria felt most represented in the period scene in Brain DePalmaâs Carrie, I am not kidding whatsoever.  My body had betrayed me and my middle school environs were pretty much pushing me into isolation psychologically. I could not relate to anybody and nobody seemed to relate to me.  It was at a point in middle school that suddenly my equal balance of girl and guy friends soon eradicated into virtually no guy friends and girl friends whom I grew up with had their own angst and concerns that I never paid much attention to, and suddenly they were gone (which is part of my own failing and still is to this day).  I was isolated and alone, but I figured if I were nice enough, friendly enough, and took more of a spot on the periphery than in the center at school, I could survive. To a degree this worked, teachers never had a problem with me and some kids just shrugged me off as a weirdo, or better yet, never had a thought of me.  My disassociation was strong but had been getting difficult to control. When I say I spent most of the latter half of my public school education in a fugue state, I am being completely serious.  It nearly caused me to fail classes because I was present but absent-minded in class, would not remember a single class lesson, or that there was a project or homework to do, or I was able to negotiate ways to cut classes that were not English, Art, or History.  I do not have many memories from that time in my life because I tuned it all out and I wanted to be anywhere else from where I was, because I also did not want to be who I was in the eyes of others.  But I had not achieved my ultimate goal: invisibility.
Which brings to mind an incident- an incident that felt the result of a lot of build up and persistence over a period of time. Â I was bullied but in ways that were ignorable and not really scarring, as I again seriously do not remember a lot from this period. Â But I remember one group, one clique who had set their sights on me. Â They were all in my 8th grade homeroom, a mix of boys and girls who seemed to be interested in attacking me from everything from what I wore, spit balling into my hair (to the point I had to request my assigned seat to be moved after dealing with the embarrassment of a teacher assisting me of getting the spitballs removed from my head), and me being a âstrangeâ introvert with tastes in old movies, old television, and random historical anecdotes. Â Three girls in that clique were especially ruthless; they knew I had worked to tune them out after knowing what they thought of me. Â But my effective tool with previous bullying instances backfired, they double-downed. Â They knew that my isolation left me vulnerable to friendship or any relationship with a fellow student, so why not try to embarrass me with a trick? Â Their consumption and self-satisfaction with their own cleverness, however, was transparent. Â Their plan was simple: Forge a letter written by a boy and in that boyâs voice, say that he liked me and then convince me to talk to him, and revel in the disastrous results. Â What a fucking dumb plan. Â But they also enlisted a mutual friend, somebody I knew since I was six-years old, to attempt to deliver their forgery, as though to give the illusion it was real. Â One fellow classmate warned me because this particular cruelty was too far for her, and also how nonsensical this was from her perspective, because I was nice. I was good. Â It was ridiculous and hurtful. Â But the worst part was, even amid people knowing they were lying to my face, even with people calling them out on their bullshit explicitly, and even with me trying to ignore them, they kept trying to egg me with doe-eyed innocence that I had to respond to this letter. Â These three girls, plus my childhood friend turned accessory of my emotional terror, were in my homeroom. They started this in second period, perhaps hatching the plan in first period if not a day earlier. Â This continued to third period, into gym class, the fourth period, to fifth period, and just when I thought I could make it to seventh period lunch, I broke down in class. Â A student alerted a teacher and I was told to go to the school guidance counselor. Â
This brings me back to Moonlight. Â It is the âChironâ section that shattered me above all because of the bullying that doubles with the sense of betrayal. Â I may not have had a relationship in the way Chiron has with Kevin with this childhood friend, but seeing somebody that I knew for then, more than half my life, my mother and her mother being friends, and her agreeing to take part in this may not be akin to the physical violence brought onto Chiron, but I still carries scars from it and have trust issues to this very day. Â The scene where Chiron is breaking down in front of a school official after his public humiliation was me having to recollect every step of the event that I just endured with my guidance counselor. In displaying this vulnerability, even in the empathy presented by my guidance counselor and the filmâs school official, there is this sense of exasperation, a simultaneous shock and anger that puts more shame in our victimhood, their feeling of impotence for letting this happen but also wishing weâd say something, as though we ever felt like we could say anything on the matter. Â
From that moment, I remember so little after that. Â Of course it was my childhood friend who actually face to face tearfully plead for my forgiveness, which I accepted, well-aware that she was not the first nor last person who faced peer pressure from that clique and especially those three girls. Â The other girls, I seriously do not remember if there was even a formal apology. I remember they got disciplined and I often wonder if the school district made a conscious effort to separate me from them, because I seriously was never in a class with any of those three ever again. Â Thank God. In my senior year of high school, in the final week, there was a public speaking class that I was in where we had to do some type of âperformanceâ in front of everyone. Â Other classes by this instructor were the audience, including two of those three girls. Â They were in the back of the classroom and quite loudly doing commentary of everybodyâs performance, to the annoyance of people who were not just myself. They had not fucking changed. Â I did some dry attempt at stand-up and noticed they were suddenly not looking directly at me or talking. Â I only saw one since I graduated high school. Â I wish none of them well. Â
I did not react violently and, yet, my urges were pretty much Chironâs id, wanting to break things, specifically over my bullies.  Portraying Chironâs reaction as just a violent outburst, however, is too simple given it is so consequential.  He was readapting in that moment, for self-preservation, to make sure he was never to be fucked with again.  He was reshaping his whole image physically and psychologically over people, not wanting to be a victim anymore.  Everything after that moment with the school official is him putting armor and a barrier around himself.  If he was going to be isolated, he could at least make sure there would never be that type of encroachment from others.  For him it meant building an exterior, to become âBlackâ, breaking from Chiron.  You can note that there is nothing we see in Moonlight that points to Chiron having interests in things and escapes that could be read as him finding some type of indulgence and release in his sexuality. There is a reason for that.  He repressed it, he ignored things because he knew how people would react.  He never allowed pleasures to make it through the armor and barriers that he set up.  I also put an armor and barrier around me, to isolate myself for self-preservation and self-care, and I often wonder how much pleasure I ignored because it felt too exposing of myself.  I was getting better at disassociating, as to not effect my schoolwork, and to focus in on my obsessions, listening to music and watching films; things I still do.  That period in my life, in seeking to obtain invisibility, is a period that cannot be recollected by any type of high school event, any high school dance, any school concert, or any big game. My only recollections come from images what I was watching and a paper trail of what I was writing at the time.  I may not remember a single lesson plan in high school, even as I was an Honors Student, but I do remember watching Donnie Darko and Heathers religiously, as they so happened to always be on certain satellite stations at the time.  I did not have had a trans or queer film hero to turn to, and, frankly, due to the environment that still preferred its queer characters dead, I had no real drive to seek them out.  With Donnie Darko and Heathers, there was something about those films and their outsider protagonists, also increasingly disassociated with their worlds and they observe every horrible instance of human behavior that spoke to me.  For those of you that have seen Heathers, yes, the fact that what happened to me with that clique was eerily similar to what happened to Martha Dunnstock in the film as far as being tricked to be humiliated by a former friend turned monster, Heather Duke, was something I was very cognizant of and I do wonder if those three girls watched Heathers.  I wince at that scene still today, but mostly in empathy toward Martha and her naivetĂ© in that moment.  But I gave up those girls being the type of people to have watched Heathers let alone using it as a training guide. They were too stupid for Heathers. I will just chalk that up as a coincidence and at best, Daniel Waters being a clairvoyant. Â
Ever since then, in coming to terms with my gender identity in college, I had to reconcile the fact of who I was and what I am. Â In a way, it is breaking down any armor (or for me, you could call it a cloak of invisibility) and barriers that I did set up- but I admit it is difficult to do. Â You may find this a ridiculous sentence to read, if you are still reading this, but I do not like talking about myself at all. Â I especially do not like talking about gender in the fact that any conversation feels like being on the defensive, being put into a position to justify myself. Â I do not think I can ever change the fact that I am incredibly private and reserved, but as far as my identity is concerned, external elements have played just as much as role as it has for me internally. Â
I am not sure in this America that I could have stayed in the closet any longer.  I was out to a considerable amount of people before I saw Moonlight but in a way, it was the perfect companion film to coming out in the way me seeing Todd Haynesâ Carol in the previous fall was the perfect companion film to my increasing realization that I could not be in the closet anymore.  It was facing the screen and seeing somebody who I understood and empathized with realizing who he was and building armor for himself and a façade to survive.  But surviving can only go so far.  To live is to not bury your desires and disassociate from the world.  I felt confronted by the film in a way that I wish I had when I was younger.  Not because I needed a warning of what I was doing was not healthy, as I still feel like I needed that time for self-realization.  It was because I felt like at even a certain intersection of differences, Chiron is the perfect imperfect queer hero for me then as much now.
