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How can we compare the film Moonlight and the genre of gangster film?

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How can we compare the film Moonlight and the genre of gangster film?

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A gangster film is a movie that fixates on gangs and belongs to a genre that envelopes conventions surrounding organized crime. Materialistic, street-smart, morally corrupt, sociopathic, and self-destructive are all terms that define the gangster genre . Rivalry in gangster warfare with other criminals is often a significant plot characteristic.

Moonlight would not be my first choice of examples for the genre for "gangster" is not the main theme, but just as it proved to deny the archetype society deemed definition of a black man, it provided examples of the gangster film.

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The Father figure, The Mother figure, and The Child

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The Father figure, The Mother figure, and The Child

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It's common identity of the genre. Moonlight has all of these figures in one scene and it shifts the narrative from identity and coming of age to the gangster film themes. We know that Juan is a caring individual who is unafraid to show his love for others. We learn that Paula has a drug addiction that can be prioritized over her son. This scene contests those truthes through stereotypes and gives the feeling of a genre film.

Paula rushes home in scrubs, giving the impression that she is a put together individual who puts her son's needs first. She sees Juan's attire (and recognizes him a deug dealer) and assumes she is the better caregiver. Little witnesses the stereotypes placed on these adults.

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Moonlight (2016)  - Official Movie Clip "Juan Brings little Home" (HD)

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What are the seeds being planted in our main character?

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What are the seeds being planted in our main character?

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By separating the story into three segments, we avoid confusion and prolonged life stories while maintaining a progression of stereotypes harping on Chiron. As Little, he is shy and sensitive. He never loses this quality, but as Chiron grows older, he learns to mask it. Little comes from a broken home. The unloved child of a drug addicted mother found camaraderie in his appointed father figure, Juan. While Juan was in touch with his emotions and was capable of extending care for people without shame, he was a drug dealer. Little is able to learn of love but coming from a controversial character adds to the perpetuated stereotype of black men.

As Chiron grows into his teenage years, he continues to see other black boys around him uphold a façade a toughness. They give one another the impression that to define their masculinity, they have to be “hard”. To be a man, they have to be capable of fighting and hide their emotions. As Little grows to be Chiron, he is not privy to the perpetuated tropes. He is still quiet and will admit his feelings, but we witness him succumb to the archetypes as he smashes a chair over his bully’s head in the middle of the classroom. He knows the seeds that were planted. He gives into the inevitable growth. This was the transformation into adulthood. This was the moment Chiron became Black.

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Moonlight - Chiron loses it ('Becoming Black')

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He was beaten down, looked at his reflection in the mirror, and faced a reality of erasing the true man he is. He denied his homosexuality and sensitivity and hid it beneath layers of man. The new macho, gym-built guy with golden teeth is still a man of few words. He got out of prison and to start a new life far from his hometown of Miami, he turned to dealing on the street corners in Atlanta, Georgia. This reset to his life does not erase the secret he keeps hidden from other people, and perhaps even himself. He's a homosexual.

Awoken by a call late at night from lifelong friend, Kevin-- he immediately peels back the layers and confronts his feelings for him. Finally he reveals his loyalty to Kevin and the deep sacrifice and isolation that that his loyalty entails. Black is essentially the same scrawny, impoverished, insecure, and unloved child that we saw at the beginning of the film, a boy desperately reaching for love of some sort, be it paternal, fraternal, or romantic, despite the tough drug dealer persona he has adopted.

The psychic and sexual longing that defines Black 's life is encompassed in the last line of Moonlight. His hollow adulthood, the burdens of his homosexuality, the vindictiveness of his mother, the death of Juan, and the separation from Kevin all unify. Black's final line lays bare the true nature of his existence, confronting the audience with his mind , body, and soul's bleak marginalization and inequality. He spent his whole life avoiding his identity and giving into the tropes that society uses to define a black man. He hadn’t given in to his true self until that moment. The film went beyond the typecasts of being black as Black rested his head into Kevin’s chest.