In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue

The Drama “In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue”

The drama ”In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue” by Barry Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney depicts a person who has had many hardships that were not his fault but rather were brought on by the social, economic, and political unrest that his poor life has experienced since birth. This essay focuses on how the protagonist’s personality changes over his life. It discusses the character’s flaws, issues, attitudes, and acts from the film and uses language and movie scenes from those scenes to demonstrate them. The play portrays the life of Little - a PROTAGONIST, whose given name follows him in three distinct stages of life: period of a young boy, a teenager and a fully grown up individual. Alex Hibbert, as he is formally known, has WEAKNESSES: he cannot cope with the difficulties of feeling different by virtue of race and gender in a society that discriminated him. Moreover, he is an economically disadvantaged person living in a fast moving world where each of the misfortunes can take a heavy toll on an individual’s life. His personality combines all features of a person reluctant to sustain one’s moral grounds and ready to step up for oneself by using violence. These weakness make ‘Little’ develop bad BEHAVIOR. He becomes an introvert in all aspects, making fellow students underrate him and inflict physical and psychological pain to him through massive bullying he witnesses. His gold teeth are a living exhibit of the various trappings he received.

“I cry so much I could turn into drops,” laments Little (Jenkins and McCraney 85).

Non-existent father and a drug addicted mother create an atmosphere of loneliness and defenselessness, a major INCITING INCIDENT, which sets the stage for the misfortunes befalling Little/Chiron/Black in his childhood, youth and adulthood. Even worse, he gets into hands of a ‘guardian’ Juan, a perennial drug cartel owner, who in one way or the other takes Little through worse tactics of survival in the drug-ruled world, leading Little to becoming involved in the drug trafficking after being released from prison.

Kevin is the protagonist’s mentor and a gay ANTAGONIST, which was demonstrated when he was caught in the act with a fellow student that warranted his detention and a consequent punishment.

“What you doing here still?” asked Chiron (Jenkins and McCraney 36)

“Detention. Aimes caught me with this trick in the stairway,” answered Kevin (36)

At the FIRST ACT BREAK, he hopes to be independent and never to bother any other person including his mother. He strives to portray that he is equal to the rest of people through aggressive behavior, although with a lot of timidity, making Little a laughing stock of his peers. Kevin, however, builds the protagonist’s ego through endless wrestling and frequent appreciation.

‘See, you’ve got to show them that your Niggas ain’t soft’.

‘Forever and always a hothead, this one,’ replied Little (15)

All these phrases are a contraindication of the protagonist’s feeble, defenseless portrayal of his personality. Due to the Antagonist, the protagonist, Little, has been undergoing emotional maturity as he becoming to talk freely with Juan, his ‘caretaker’ father (an improvement from non-talkative past).

In the second stage of Little life’s endeavors, he develops another identity. He becomes called Chiron. Due to his biological mother’s drug addiction, the home still seems to him as a hateful, loveless place. He enters the high school which is much worse to him than the junior school. The fellow children make fun of Chiron and propagate his suffering further. The life strain is too hard to bear, and Chiron’s innocence hits the MID POINT crisis. He moves in with Juan’s welcoming family as one of them abandons his beloved drug addict mother. Chiron and Kevin isolate themselves as friends and as adherents to homosexuality orientations, with the protagonist being motivated by Kevin’s brevity GHOST to pick up his real personality at the SECOND ACT BREAK. In the final act, we see a re-energized, muscular ‘Black’ cruel drug dealer, a metamorphosis of the cruelty of life, a consequence of his self-hatred, rage, and experience of imprisonment. He becomes more cruel and strong, reinventing himself as Trevante Rhodes (Black), an actual RESOLUTION. He decides to pick his life from the gutters by moving away from his home in Miami to a new settlement in order to prevent frequent memories. There he shifts focus on the drug trade and earns a living by that means. Although the trade is behind the law, it enables him to be positive and set some objectives in life. In the ensuing CLIMAX CHOICE, the film presents the traces of romanticism, as the protagonist wagea in the world in search of any trace of companionship and finds Kevin; a fellow released convict.

The protagonist suffers from all sorts of social dogmas. His world moves faster than his perceived incapacitation to move along. Besides, he is confined in the perception of a violent non-accommodative society and there, in solitude, he finds drug trafficking as the only source of solace which sinks him further into the abuse. Nevertheless, the ghost of the antagonist and classmate Kevin comes to his rescue, continuously urging him get his broken life pieces together and reinvent himself. As a consequence of this bitterness, rage and long time confinement, he bulks up and enter a period of transformation, which cancels his niche of a person he wants to become. He moves out of his Miami home and settles in Atlanta, Georgia, applying the earlier learned tricks from the foster father, Juan.

Examples of Actions and Dialogues

The screen writer introduces the sexuality through the lenses of a naïve Little. To him, sexuality is a foreign concept that he must evaluate under a lot of duress.

‘What’s a faggot?’ asked Little (Jenkins and McCraney 31).

Perplexed by the question that gets Juan flat foot, he initially fumbles up words as he sips his juice, wondering what the child meant by asking such a question.

‘Faggot refers to …a word used to tease gay people’ fumbled Juan (Jenkins and McCraney 31)

Through such a dialogue the writer intends to gradually introduce sexuality to a young individual, especially homosexual people to make them digest it in bits. The writer also sets the topic for discussion of socially stigmatized orientations leading the youths to turn into social misfits.

Through the dialogue, we come to realize how Juan earns his living when Little directly asks whether he sells drugs, the question answered in affirmative by Juan.

‘You sell drugs?’ (32).

The whole enterprise is undertaken through a lot of secrecy and has the language that no stranger can easily comprehend.

‘Business good?’ inquired Juan.

“Business is good. Everybody cleaned out, it’s in the cut if you want it” replied Terrence (2).

Another example is the use of touch or haptic behavior which portrays a character in various ways. Romantic touch depicts the protagonist and the antagonist as homosexuals, when they are on watch for any intruders that might spot their illegal ordeals (62).

Role of Supporting Characters

They appear in the script as bullies to isolate the protagonist’s weakness, as well as contribute to his deviant behaviors. Three young boys, possibly in the adolescent ages, chase Little where the protagonist gets bruises from the sharp glasses from broken windows in the isolated house he sought refuge from (2).

A supportive character, in addition, helps the protagonist in character development. They achieve that through physical and emotional provocation. Kevin, for instance, wrestles Little as a remedy of boosting his ego; to make the protagonist defensive in case of any aggression. He says;

‘Come on man; you want these damn Niggas to pick on you frequently? Show them you ain’t soft’ (Jenkins and McCraney 14).

He is also looked down upon portrayed as an object of amusement in the high school the protagonist attended. Portable boy 3, for instance, mockingly asks ‘Why you think they call him Little’ with teasing laughs from the kids around (19).

On the other hand, Little’s solitude is depicted through the irresponsible drug-addicted mother and a non-existent father, whose place is occupied by Juan, a ‘guardian’, who teaches him major survival techniques: drug dealings. His mother is a professional nurse yet a drug-addicted, not caring about the whereabouts of her child (5).

Conclusion

The Moonlight presents a protagonist, Little, who is followed by the antagonist Kevin in his adulthood. The movie describes how a personality of Little evolved and adjusted to social surroundings and adopted his way of dealing with his problems with the help of other characters.

Works Cited

Jenkins, Barry, and Tarell Alvin McCraney. Moonlight. 2013. Retrieved http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/MOONLIGHT.pdf