Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian, lists "love, sex, survival, mothers and father figures" among its themes, particularly the lack of a nurturing father.[52] However, A. O. Scott of The New York Times cites the character Juan as an example of how the film "evokes clichés of African-American masculinity in order to shatter them."[53] In his review in Variety, Peter Debruge suggests that the film demonstrates that the African American identity is more complex than has been portrayed in films of the past.[54] For example, while Juan plays the role of Little's defender and protector, he is also part of the root cause of at least some of the hardship the young boy endures.[55]
A major theme of Moonlight is the black male identity and its interactions with sexual identity. The film takes a form similar to a triptych in order to explore the path of a man from a neglected childhood, through an angry adolescence, to self-realization and fulfillment in adulthood.[52]
This particular story of Chiron's sexuality is also seen as a story of race in a 'post-Obama' era. The film amalgamates art film with hood film in its portrayal of African-American characters on-screen. Many technical film techniques are employed to juxtapose the characters and action on scene, including the use of an orchestral score done in the melody of popular R&B and hip-hop motifs. This specifically deals with the theme of recuperating identity, especially in terms of blackness. The characters operate in an urban working-class city in Florida but are portrayed through art house conventions to create a new space for black characters in cinema. This mirrors Chiron's own odyssey to learning who he is, as he constantly struggles with trying to find some essentialism to his identity, yet consistently fails in doing so. The triptych structure helps to reiterate the fragmented personality to the film and Chiron.[56]
Black masculinity
The film's co-writer, Tarell Alvin McCraney, speaks on the topic of black masculinity in the film, explaining why Chiron went to such lengths to alter his persona. He argues that communities without privilege or power seek to gain it in other ways. He says one way in which males in such communities do this is by trying to enhance their masculine identity, knowing that it often provides a means to more social control in a patriarchal society.[57]
In Moonlight, masculinity is portrayed as rigid and aggressive, amongst the behavior of young black males in Chiron's teenage peer group.[58] The expression of hyper-masculinity among black men has been associated with peer acceptance and community.[59] Being a homosexual within the black community, on the other hand, has been associated with social alienation and homophobic judgement by peers because black gay men are seen as weak or effeminate. In the film, Chiron is placed in this divide as a black gay man and alters his presentation of masculinity as a strategy to avoid ridicule because homosexuality is viewed as incompatible with black masculine expectations. As young kids, Kevin hides his sexuality in order to avoid being singled out like Chiron is. As Chiron grows older, he recognizes the need to conform to a heteronormative ideal of black masculinity in order to avoid abuse and homophobia. As an adult, Chiron chooses to embrace the stereotypical black male gender performance by becoming muscular and a drug-dealer.[58]
Moonlight explores the effects of this felt powerlessness in black males. As McCraney explains, coping with this feeling often coincides with attempts to overstate one's masculinity, in a way that can easily become toxic. He says one unfortunate side effect of leaning into masculinity too much is that men no longer want to be "caressed, or nurtured, or gentle", which is why a character like Juan may be puzzling to some audiences.[57]
Intersection of blackness, masculinity, and vulnerability
Blackness, masculinity, and vulnerability are major focuses of this film.[60] In the beach scene with Chiron, Juan, his father figure in the film, emphasizes the importance of black identity. Juan says, "There are black people everywhere. Remember that, okay? No place you can go in the world ain't got no black people. We was the first on this planet." As Juan speaks about the relevance and importance of the black experience, he also thinks about a time in his youth when a stranger told him "in moonlight, black boys look blue." This is an image that the audience gets to see as the director, Barry Jenkins, supplies numerous shots of Chiron in the moonlight. It seems that Juan seems to associate this image with vulnerability, given that he tells Chiron that he eventually shed the nickname "Blue" in order to foster his own identity. The scenes depicting Chiron in the moonlight are almost always the ones in which he's vulnerable, his intimate night on the beach with Kevin included. Throughout the film, this dichotomy between black and blue stands in for that between tough and vulnerable, with the black body often hovering between the two.[61] In Chiron's situation, the black body, which can be seen as inherently vulnerable in American society, must be tough in order to survive, as seen by Chiron's final, very masculine and dominant identity.
Water
Water is often seen as cleansing and transformative and this is apparent in the film as well. Whether it be him swimming in the ocean or simply splashing water on his face, Chiron is constantly interacting with water. However, it is most notable that water is most often seen in the film in times of immense transition for Chiron. Throughout his life, Chiron resorts to water to bring him comfort e.g. taking baths when his mother is not home or swimming in the ocean with Juan. In the scene where Juan taught Little to swim, he explained to him the duality of water in relation to black existence, a concept addressed in Omise'eke Natasha Tinsley's "Black Atlantic, Queer Atlantic." The ocean is like a crosscurrent as Tinsley says, that can simultaneously be a place of inequality and exploitation as well as beauty and resistance. Tinsley describes how, "black queerness itself becomes a crosscurrent through which to view hybrid, resistant subjectivities and perhaps, black queers really have no ancestry except the black water."[62] The water is either an environment that can destroy Chiron or allow him to triumph, and throughout the movie we see Chiron using the water to cope and find himself.
Food
The film features three scenes in each of the three chapters that show someone preparing a meal or giving Chiron food to eat. Jenkins has said this was done to display a sense of trust and intimacy between the characters, or to emphasize the lack thereof. In Jenkins words, "When you cook for someone, this is a deliberate act of nurturing, [and] this very simple thing is the currency of genuine intimacy." Chiron's reactions to each of the meal scenes are to display where he is emotionally and psychologically at each chapter in the story. The scene in the diner where Kevin is shown preparing the "Chef Special" in great detail was to accentuate his affection for Chiron in the care he displays as he prepares the meal. This is also the only scene where the food someone gives Chiron is shown being assembled. Jenkins further explained "Something special was happening: Kevin was deliberately preparing this thing out of love. Plus, I've never seen a black man cook for another black man in a film or television or any kind of media."[63]
