Artfully Mindful

Mindful 'Moonlight'

• D. R. Thompson • Season 2 • Episode 25

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As I taught an art history course related to movies, captivated by Barry Jenkins' "Moonlight," a realization washed over me: the profound layers of African-American and LGBTQ experiences portrayed on screen echo universal themes of identity and vulnerability. Let's navigate together through the nuanced depictions of identity and masculinity in this Oscar-winning film, as I draw parallels between the protagonist's struggles and my personal path to embracing sensitivity over competition. We'll also tackle the societal entrapments and cycles within communities of color, and how competiveness shapes our personal and collective narratives.

The embrace of compassion and empathy often goes unspoken, yet "Moonlight" articulates these virtues with grace, urging us to extend kindness to ourselves and those around us. Join me as I reflect on the echoes of a close friend's tribulations within the film's storyline and celebrate the journey from Tarell Alvin McCraney's autobiographical piece to the movie's climactic triumph at the Academy Awards. This episode is a recommendation, a beacon for anyone searching for powerful storytelling and the impactful life lessons that "Moonlight" so vividly imparts.

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Speaker 1:

Hi Don Thompson, here, a podcast for you today. Hi, don Thompson, here, a podcast for you today, and what I'd like to talk about a little bit on this podcast is a film that was released relatively recently, in the past few years, I think it was 2016. A film called Moonlight, directed by Barry Jenkins, and I wanted to reflect a little bit about that film. I'm teaching a course in art history and Moonlight was a film that we're discussing, or is a film that we're discussing, and it was actually quite an interesting movie. So I wanted to talk a little bit about that and talk a little bit about that, and talk a little bit about the implications of some of the ideas behind the film. The movie, because I think that you know it's categorized more or less as a type of film. I guess you'd call it an LGBTQ movie. So I found it to be an interesting film that dealt with that subject matter. Of course, also, it's known as a film related to African-Americans or black Americans, which is true. I mean the film. Interestingly enough, as I observed it, I noticed that there was not really a single Caucasian in the film, except for at the very end in the diner where the protagonist goes to meet with his former friend from high school and he meets with him and there's a few Caucasians in the diner, but otherwise than that there wasn't really too many or any Caucasians, so it was very interesting from that perspective as well. It was really an African-American or black American film, directed by an African-American, about an African-American story and about the LGBTQ community on paper, but in reality I didn't find it to be really so much about that, even though it was, of course and I'm not trying to denigrate that or downplay that at all, I'm a big supporter of LGBTQ rights and all of that but I found it really to be more about identity and I found it to be much more relatable to really men in general.

Speaker 1:

Then you might think, you know, just at first glance, looking at the film, you'd think, well, this really applies to African-American males. But I know that in my life I had similar experiences to what was portrayed. That happened to the young man Little in Chiron as he grew up and then eventually Black, which was his final persona. There was really sort of a triptych, a trilogy you might say, trilogy you might say of the evolution of this African-American male through his life and really to a certain extent it it really related to or dealt with identity and what it means to be a man and what it means to be masculine. And I know that when I was a child in school, particularly before high school, I confronted similar kinds of issues that the young Little did in the movie.

Speaker 1:

He was a very sensitive kid and, for whatever reason he identifies with being gay, there was obviously internal feelings happening within his psyche that made him feel that way, that he was gay, or that was what his conclusion was. For me when I was young, it wasn't so much that I was gay, but that I was sensitive, and so the sensitivity arose for me around not really wanting to compete and I've talked about this in other podcasts, but this whole notion of competition and that really came out in the film Moonlight as well the young boy little didn't really want to compete, he didn't want to play sports and he wasn't as aggressive as the other children. He was more sensitive, he was more quiet. He was more quiet, he was more shy, he was more inward, you might say, than the other kids. The other kids sort of gauged their masculinity by how aggressive they were and how they could fight or how they could compete in sports and that type of thing or how tough they were. And Little, the young boy, really didn't identify with that at all. He didn't really relate to it and all he saw was a very aggressive sort of cruel world really I mean, that was my take on it and his mother, who was really a drug addict, a crackhead I guess she was getting her drugs from the man who became really the mentor to Little, which was an ironic thing to occur but also very tragic in that Little eventually, because he really didn't have any male role models to associate with, he latched on to this man and eventually, even though this man drifted away, this drug dealer drifted away out of his life. He eventually became like him and his ultimate persona, known as Black, became really reflecting the persona, or certainly the trade, of his quasi-mentor and he became a drug dealer himself.

Speaker 1:

To me it was a comment upon the trap of some African-American people that they find themselves in this trap of this cycle of unable to break free or break out of this sort of cycle of well, are unable to break free or break out of this sort of cycle of well. There's a lack of influence, a positive male influence, you might say, and they take on the personas and the demeanor of the people that they know, their community that they have, because it does create a sense of community, regardless of whether or not you like the sense of community if you believe in it, regardless of whether or not you like the sense of community if you believe in it Really. You know, the whole thing was a microcosm to me of capitalism, even though capitalism wasn't really discussed. But the whole notion of competition, of needing to make your way in the world, of being dependent upon money, I mean money was everything or is everything. Do you have the money? Can you give me the money? Grabbing and grasping for the money, I mean money was everything or is everything. Do you have the money? Can you give me the money? Grabbing and grasping for the money, the money is the way to get what you want, it's the way to fulfill your desires. Certainly, and that's the way that the modern world is. The money system, the capitalist system, the competitive capitalist system, creates these sort of skewed realities. You know, in the world, it's not only in the African-American community, it's in the wider community, in the Caucasian community, in the competitive community, in business, whether you're African-American competing in business, or you're just a Caucasian or whatever race, whatever ethnicity, competing, and this is the way that the US is set up. It's a competitive place and the net result of that competition can be, or has the potential for, a real downside, and I'm not sure what to do about it.

Speaker 1:

I think that there are a lot of people thinking about a lot of different ideas about what to do about this. It isn't getting any better. Artificial intelligence could perhaps even replace more jobs, even within the so-called stable Caucasian or stable economy of whoever you know, whatever ethnicity, in terms of you know office work or writing, or you know working as a consultant or working in computer science, that type of thing. Artificial intelligence can really replace a lot of people, a lot of people, and I know that Sam Altman has come up with this idea of using a world coin as sort of a universal basic income. A universal basic income would have solved a lot of the problems that were seen in moonlight. You know it would have. You could say, well, they just spend it on drugs. I mean, you could say that.

Speaker 1:

But if you combined it with other, a sort of holistic approach of education, universal basic income and really trying to create a culture of a different kind of culture in the world, in the United States. That isn't so emphasizing competition, that's emphasizing perhaps something else. It's all culture. Really, you know, you have to say so. Uh, you know, people will will say, on the competitive side, on the supporting side of competition, well, this is the way nature is. Nature is competitive. If you, if you try to create some kind of a socialistic, quasi-socialistic or whatever type of society, you're moving against nature, you're not really adhering to the laws of nature, which are inherently competitive. That's the argument. It's survival of the fittest, it's Darwinism, it's social Darwinism and that's really what most people believe. And so I think that Moonlight was emblematic of that kind of social Darwinism.

Speaker 1:

And there was no kindness, there was no gentleness. The young man really only sought to have some kind of affection. Really that was what he really sought. He wasn't really looking to. You know, you could say he was gay, I guess. Sure, I mean, you know that's the way the story is set up. But it's also to me it was just about human connection, desiring to have some kind of a gentleness, some kind of a human connection.

Speaker 1:

And people typically find that within a family You'll find that with a man and a woman sometimes, even though Moonlight interestingly depicted the relationship between men and women to be very aggressive and very negative and I don't know if that was a comment of Jenkins and company on what they perceived to be sort of a prevailing theme in the African-American community related to how men relate to women, but I would say it's a general theme about how men relate to women. But I would say it's a general theme about how men relate to women. You know, men oftentimes relate to women in a kind of a way, that's, I would say, afraid. You know they're afraid of vulnerability, they're afraid of being hurt, and so men mask that fear, that vulnerability, and that's really a lot of what Moonlight was about as well.

Speaker 1:

It was about the fear of being vulnerable, and so the main character, as a child child had a sexual encounter with his friend, who himself was somewhat of an interesting sort of morally ambiguous person, but also in a way a sympathetic person, a compassionate person, an empathetic person, and when he went back to him when he was older and that was the way the film ended he basically reconnected with him and his friends showed him compassion. What else are you going to do? At a certain point he's not going to sleep with him again or he's not going to have a sexual encounter with him again. It didn't seem like that was in the works. The man had a child, child and he had a life and he was, I don't think, really interested in doing that, but he was interested in showing his friend compassion. And his friend Chiron, a black little you know the three stages of our protagonist. He ended up confessing that he never really connected with anybody on that level in his entire life, only once with his friend when he was a young man.

Speaker 1:

So it was a tragedy really of human connection. You know the film Moonlight? That's what it was about, this tragedy of human connection and a feeling we have to mask our personas with these masks of masculinity, with these masks of competition, with these masks of aggression. It's sort of a sad comment and all you can do really is have compassion, and I think that's what mindfulness tells us, that's what the Buddha tells us, that's what mindfulness tells us. You can only really, at the end of the day, feel compassion for yourself and for others as our world hurls into whatever it's going to hurl into. We don't know really In this day and age. It's rather uncertain. We have an uncertain election coming up, we have uncertain environmental issues that are coming into play, a hurricane season that's supposed to be the worst on record coming down the pike.

Speaker 1:

Again, I don't laugh, I laugh in an ironic way. I think it's all pretty sad and really a testament to the bike. Again, I don't laugh, I laugh in an ironic way. I think it's all pretty sad and really a testament to the situation of humanity. What do we do? Maybe just having compassion for each other is a start. You know, to try and help each other. What can we do to ease our pain?

Speaker 1:

And I think that's what the message of Moonlight was. You know, to have compassion at the end of the day, to ease the pain of your friends, of a friend, to try to help them, to get through the day, to feel for them, to feel compassion for yourself and for them. So I'll leave the podcast at that. It was just a little reflection of my own on the film Moonlight, which I found to be a very fascinating film, won Best Picture, won the Academy Award and I think well-deserved. Barry Jenkins wrote the screenplay based upon a story that was a true story or more or less an autobiographical story, but a beautiful film. I highly recommend you check it out. Thanks a lot, bye-bye, thank you, you.