Oscar Buzz: ‘Moonlight’: To Be a Black Gay Man in America

[Dr. Narcisse]

Indeed. For one, I'm curious what Coates' definition of masculinity is.

Second, even if you remove the LGBT factor in it, I'm not sure--based strictly on the trailer, not the movie--how a coming of age/love story can result in "the best take on black masculinity ever." I haven't seen the movie, but the angle from which Moonlight goes about addressing its themes isn't necessarily unique, imho. But I haven't seen the movie though, so I could be off on my initial observation.

Add the LGBT factor and I can understand why several people may be about that statement. Especially considering the other movies that are out there.

Jenkins, director, isn't gay, but included a lot of his own story in it a bit.

Like the protagonist of Moonlight, Jenkins grew up poor and emotionally dislocated in the housing projects of Liberty City. The youngest by a decade of three siblings, all of whom had different fathers they didn’t know, he was born in 1979 to a mother who was, by the time he turned 3, addicted to crack. The man he understood to be his own father, his namesake, left his mother when she was pregnant with Jenkins because he believed himself not to be the biological father. “The man passed away when I was 12, taking to his grave the knowledge I was not his son,” Jenkins once wrote in a blog post about his childhood. “In the few times his eyes met mine, I never saw anything in them but anger and hurt.”

Barry Jenkins Slow-Cooks His Masterpiece
Jenkins was taken in as a toddler by an older woman named Minerva, who had also looked after his mother when she was 15 and first pregnant. He spent much of his childhood in Minerva’s care, living in a two-bedroom apartment filled beyond capacity with eight tenants. He describes an adolescence spent largely in his own head. “In those apartment complexes there’s all this open space and grass and big skies,” he says. “Miami is the b*stard stepchild of the whole country. It’s so far away from everything, the rules don’t apply there. You’re sort of cast adrift.” Wandering the neighborhood, he would often cross paths with his mother. “I wasn’t sure where I fit in, but I didn’t really care to fit in,” he says.

Again sounds like its going to be a great story. . Its probably the "Boyhood" for black films. Which is cool, but yea I'm not sure I see where Coates is going with that comment...

I haven't seen the film. Although judging from where the adult version of the character is headed .....Maybe its like watching Omar from The Wire growing up

I doubt he'll comment publicly about it anytime soon, even if he saw it. Coates rolls with a lot of those feminists and blerds who had beef with Nate Parker and the film.

I'm sure he saw the movie months back as well. He should be able to separate the art from the artist..

 

[Dr. Narcisse]

Homie this place is hardly progressive as someone pointed out to me a year or two ago. We are when it comes to race which is great but when it comes to women and sexual orientation it's like the Stone Age. I'm not saying it's wrong because everyone is entitled to their opinion and feminism and sexual orientation are hot topics that we all won't agree on but this place gets very very conservative when those topics are brought up. Not everyone but just in general. When this guy killed his baby's mother and his baby no less than 15 min from my house, there were people in the thread actually sticking up for the dude and saying maybe he had a point.

Can't let a few people represent all of us though..

 

[MartyMcFly]

Can't let a few people represent all of us though..

Well it's the attitude that's prevalent on here tho homie. Maybe not in our little section lol but in general if you go to a lot of sections on here that's the prevailing attitude. Now grant it, it's hard to dissent so maybe the people who feel differently don't speak up because they don't want to be ganged up on and I feel that. Shyt none of us want that. But still

 

[MartyMcFly]

Son he shot her and his baby while they were in a car. There were dudes in that thread saying "well the judicial system is wrong in how it makes men handle child support so maybe he was right" or "she probably had it coming" etc etc

 

[Birnin Zana]

Jenkins, director, isn't gay, but included a lot of his own story in it a bit.



Again sounds like its going to be a great story. . Its probably the "Boyhood" for black films. Which is cool, but yea I'm not sure I see where Coates is going with that comment...

I haven't seen the film. Although judging from where the adult version of the character is headed .....Maybe its like watching Omar from The Wire growing up

I was thinking about Omar as well lol.

Movie def looks good and I see it as a good approach of a perspective we don't often see, but the best take on black masculinity?

Really bold of him to say that...

I'm sure he saw the movie months back as well. He should be able to separate the art from the artist..

He probably can, but the people he rolls with can't do that, even though Nate was acquitted. Thus, I don't expect Coates to comment on it (at least not soon), at the very least because he doesn't want push back from them.

 

[steadyrighteous]

Well it's the attitude that's prevalent on here tho homie. Maybe not in our little section lol but in general if you go to a lot of sections on here that's the prevailing attitude. Now grant it, it's hard to dissent so maybe the people who feel differently don't speak up because they don't want to be ganged up on and I feel that. Shyt none of us want that. But still

Back in the day before the Coli when it was SOHH, I literally visited this site daily in school, but never posted. Full time lurker. I took the opportunity of the move from SOHH to The Coli to start posting.

That being said, I treat TLR the way I treated SOHH.

I'm there every day, but I'm almost completely silent in there save for my daps of level-headed rhetoric and the odd post.

Some of the people in there (and on this board in general) are too set in their ways to even bother with dissent unless you're prepared to go back and forth ad infinitum.

I don't know if I'm progressive, sometimes in my real life I can sometimes feel like I'm not, and then I go to TLR and by the time I'm done reading I feel like I'm Lena Dunham

If you appraised this site as a whole, the views on race, gender, relationships and sexuality are appalling.

 

[Dr. Narcisse]

I was thinking about Omar as well lol.

Movie def looks good and I see it as a good approach of a perspective we don't often see, but the best take on black masculinity?

Really bold of him to say that...




He probably can, but the people he rolls with can't do that, even though Nate was acquitted. Thus, I don't expect Coates to comment on it (at least not soon), at the very least because he doesn't want push back from them.

The way this movie is shot reminds me of Girlhood


Really good movie on Netlfix

True. I guess if he didn't like it he would have said something. So if he did like it he's probably just going to keep that to himself.

 

[MartyMcFly]

Back in the day before the Coli when it was SOHH, I literally visited this site daily in school, but never posted. Full time lurker. I took the opportunity of the move from SOHH to The Coli to start posting.

That being said, I treat TLR the way I treated SOHH.

I'm there every day, but I'm almost completely silent in there save for my daps of level-headed rhetoric and the odd post.

Some of the people in there (and on this board in general) are too set in their ways to even bother with dissent unless you're prepared to go back and forth ad infinitum.

I don't know if I'm progressive, sometimes in my real life I can sometimes feel like I'm not, and then I go to TLR and by the time I'm done reading I feel like I'm Lena Dunham

If you appraised this site as a whole, the views on race, gender, relationships and sexuality are appalling.

That's me word for word. And I know I'm progressive but yeah coming here makes me feel like Gore Vidal. I'm just always shocked that cats my age have the views of someone my dads age.

 

[Dr. Narcisse]

Not saying its a major influence, but I figured he'd be a fan of the movie Girlhood.

And then there’s Rihanna. I will never forgive Céline Sciamma for making Rihanna sound so beautiful. That’s not a slight to RiRi so much as an indictment of my own envy and a testament to the power of cinema. You should see this entire film, unquestionably. But if you can’t for financial reasons or are on the fence, find this sequence and marvel at its clarity. There are filmmakers with decades of material who’ve never achieved a sequence as crystalized as this. In the pantheon of imagery chronicling the lives of black girls, I’m hard pressed to think of anything that sublimates the lived experience as evocatively as Ms. Sciamma and her team of bad-ass women do here. And while other examples of such artistry surely exist, this one will be in a theater near you on January 30th. Again, I implore you.

Barry Jenkins (Medicine for Melancholy) Talks Céline Sciamma's Girlhood - The Talkhouse

 

[Mr. Somebody]

Demonic trash. Be man

 

[Family Lives Matter]

You can't write this shyt

 

[Apollo Creed]

Malcolm X is the greatest film regarding the display of Black masculinity i have ever seen

 

[PlainSight]

Might check for this, although I'm not sure I'm quite "woke" enough to sit through an entire film centered around homosexuality . It would be a first and somewhat educational no doubt .

 

[pete clemenza]

Malcolm X is the greatest film regarding the display of Black masculinity i have ever seen

I love the Malcolm X film just like the next guy but supposedly he performed some grey area gay sh*t before he got locked up and joined The Nation

 

[Apollo Creed]

I love the Malcolm X film just like the next guy but supposedly he performed some grey area gay sh*t before he got locked up and joined The Nation

Elijah Muhmmad rasied Black people from the dead. What Malcolm did tonmake money when he was mentally dead only makes his resurection even greater.