Stephanie Chuang

CMS 301

Sudhir Mahadevan

8 December 2020

Race as a Visual and Stylistic Tool in Moonlight and Get Out (Prompt #2)

Barry Jenkins’ 2016 coming of age film, Moonlight, and Jordan Peele’s 2017 horror film,

Get Out, were both released to critical and commercial acclaim. More importantly, both featured

pioneering stories involving race- specifically that of each film’s protagonist. Despite this, the

film’s narratives could not be more different; Moonlight follows a queer black boy through

different stages of life, and Get Out featured the harrowing experiences of a black man meeting

his white girlfriend’s family for the first time. When it comes down to the visual and stylistic

depictions of race, Moonlight and Get Out differ in that Moonlight is a self exploration of race

and identity across time, while Get Out involves larger, direct comparisons between racism in

American history and the present. Moonlight’s depiction of race in its story is heavily interwoven

with the evolution of its three chapters and specifically how being black and queer impacts its

protagonist as he gets older; It also draws questions about aestheticism and blackness in film. Get

Out’s depiction of race is based on underlying antagonisms drawn from the self-congratulatory

racial liberalism of the Obama-era America and its similarities with the racism of the pre-Civil

War era, with far more obvious dialogue and symbolism as to how its characters treat race. While

both films have some basis in real life stereotypes and discussions about race, they take the

discussions in different directions.

Moonlight follows a young black boy, Chiron (Played by Alex Hibbert, Ashton Sanders,

and Trevante Rhodes), through his youth, adolescence, and adulthood in three aptly named
chapters: Little, Chiron, and Black. Chiron is queer and softspoken, making him an easy target

for bullies. Already, Chiron is the antithesis of the stereotypical mean, scary, black man. Chiron’s

friend, Kevin, tells Chiron that he has to let the bullies know he’s not soft. Chiron finds no solace

in this, and his only relief is the support and mentorship of Juan, a drug dealer, and Teresa, his

girlfriend. However, even with their positive influence in his life, Chiron cannot escape his

abusive mother and the bullies he sees at school. Gillespie argues in his article, “One Step

Ahead: A Conversation with Barry Jenkins,” “ Moonlight’s cruel story of youth suggests

performative strategies of black masculinity as its narrative is animated along an axis of silence

and quiet.” I would agree with Gillespie’s argument, particularly in the frame of Chiron’s growth

against a gorgeous aesthetic. Chiron’s softness and vulnerability are treated as defections when

he is a child, despite the reality that those are just part of who he is. This culminates when after a

night where Kevin and Chiron become intimate with each other, Kevin beats up Chiron in order

to please one of Chiron’s bullies. In a violent outburst, Chiron attacks his bully and is sent to

Juvenile Hall. Chiron let down all of his walls as a queer, black, boy, and he ultimately pays the

price for his vulnerability. This occurs at the end of the second chapter, and at the start of the

third, aptly named chapter, Black, Chiron has changed. He is an adult, a drug dealer, and alone.

Chiron has morphed into that stereotypical black man who is menacing and detached in what can

be described as one of the performative strategies of black masculinity that Gillespie mentions.

In his conversation with the now adult Kevin, he admits that he’s never been intimate with

anyone since that night. In truth, why would he? That one night of softness got him beat up and

thrown in jail. What it shows is that Chiron, over time, learned what the costs of his vulnerability

were, and hid them in a performative act of self preservation. He can’t afford to be himself

anymore, so he takes on the persona of the hypermasculine black man. This is also reflected in
the visuals of the film. The first two chapters are composed of brighter contrasts, which in turn

emphasize Chrion’s dark skin. The school, Juan and Teresa’s house, Chiron’s house, are all

brightly lit, and Chiron himself often wears lightly colored and patterned clothing, all to draw

attention to his blackness, an opposing metaphor to his soft spokenness. By the third chapter,

Chiron is literally named, “Black,” in regards to his newfound identity. He’s embraced the

stereotypical drugs, hardness, and loud music associated with his demographic, and his blackness

is no longer something that contrasts with his personality. The screen is dark and Chiron shows

no vulnerability, not until he and Kevin discuss that one fateful night. In short, Moonlight both

visually and symbolically depict how Chiron’s blackness and the stereotype of the black man

cause Chiron to change over time.

Get Out follows Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) as he and his girlfriend Rose (Allison Williams)

travel to visit Rose’s family for the first time together. What unravels is a horrifying scheme of

Rose’s family selling black bodies to elderly, white bidders to reuse. Peele makes very obvious a

series of dialogues that construct a tense cordiality between Chris and Rose’s parents; Rose’s

family is the epitome of self satisfied racial liberalism, a phenomenon that became more relevant

during Obama’s administration. Later when the wealthy bidders, unbeknownst to Chris, come by,

they also make a series of comments commodifying Chris’s body as trendy and fashionable. He

doesn’t know it yet, but he’s being physically appraised. Throughout the film, many parallels are

drawn between history, race, and class. There is the Armitage house’s eerie similarity to that of a

plantation, the parallel of blacks to the pesky deers despised by Mr. Armitage, the unsettling

similarity of the bidding scene to that of a slave auction, the animalistic equating of Chris’ race

to that of a “beast,” and much, much more. In Anthony Carew’s article “American Horror Genre

and The Post-Racial Myth in Get Out” he also highlights these parallels, “The movie’s central
location, the Armitage house, is itself a grand symbol of racism… With its imposing white

columns, the family home looks like a plantation house, thus evoking the horrors of slavery.”

Again, Get Out is littered with subtle references to slavery and the dehumanization of black

people. Carew also mentions that at the end of the film, it’s through cotton, yet another symbol of

slavery, weaponized against its priviledged benefactors, that Chris is able to overcome his

hypnosis. By drawing all of these parallels, Peele uncovers the truth that the self congratulatory

racial liberalism is not so much different from the blatant racism of slavery-era America.

Visually, there are also several elements that capitalize on this separation. There are, for example,

the black cars that the wealthy bidders arrive in, a reflection of the black bodies they will leave in

and the literal separation of colors from whites when Rose is eating her fruit loops and milk

separately. On top of that, there are the multiple disturbing closeups of Walter and Georgina, the

groundskeeper and housekeeper who are actually Rose’s grandparents implanted into Rose’s

previous exes that she brought home. In particular, in one scene where Chris is paranoid about

Georgina purposefully unplugging his phone, she apologizes to him with a wide smile, but tears

roll down her face. This startling image clearly reflects that something is wrong, but Chris can’t

yet figure out what exactly it is. Carew also mentions how Chris’ paranoia fits into racism,

particularly how sometimes it can be hard to distinguish if something is inherently racist, much

like the majority of the characters in this movie, or if it’s just your own irrational fear. This

aspect is also reflected in Chris’ narrative throughout the film; he repeatedly tells Rose that

something doesn’t feel right despite her reassurances, which of course only adds to his own

discomfort. Thus, Peele utilizes race both visually and symbolically to draw parallels between

the Obama era parallel racism and slavery era America.

 All in all, both Moonlight and Get Out utilize the idea of the black race both visually and

symbolically to make different, even opposite at times, points. Moonlight largely examines its

protagonist as he copes with bullying by growing into the hypermasculine black man, both

stylistically in the progression of the film’s story over time and visually through the different

contrasts across the chapters. This isn’t the case in Get Out, where we even see the protagonist,

Chris, demurely comply with a police officer’s unjust command in an effort to make himself the

opposite of the hypermasculine black man. Additionally, unlike Moonlight, Get Out also draws

many eerie parallels between its self righteous liberalism and slavery era United States, through

both clever dialogue and visual elements of the film’s production design. All in all, both make

for excellent films with narratives centered on race, albeit in different directions.
 Works Cited

Carew, Anthony. “American Horror Genre and the Post Racial Myth in Get Out.” Screen

Education, 2019, pp. 14–22.

Gillespie, Michael Boyce. “ONE STEP AHEAD: A CONVERSATION WITH BARRY

JENKINS.” Film Quarterly, 2017, pp. 52–62.