Moonlight : screening black queer youth /
Maria Flood.
- Abingdon, Oxon ; New York : Routledge, 2022.
- 1 online resource.
- Cinema youth cultures .
'A film we've been waiting for': the social and cultural contexts of Moonlight -- Moonlight and black masculinity -- Moonlight as queer cinema -- Watching Moonlight: narrative, setting and symbolism -- Empathy, universality, and black boyhood.
"This book helps readers understand Moonlight's profound political and social importance, the innovative technical choices adopted by director Barry Jenkins, and the film's adoption and disruption of traditional coming-of-age themes through the specific prism of Chiron's childhood and youth. Moonlight (2016) is an intensely moving and poetically rendered coming-of-age story about a young gay Black boy, Chiron. Highly praised by both critics and audiences internationally, it garnered a surprise Best Picture win at the 2017 Academy Awards, enshrining its significance within a global cinematic canon. This book provides an account of how Moonlight can be situated in relation to African American youth films, contemporary queer cinema and its appeal to youth market and representations of non-normative childhood and adolescence. It analyses the reception of Moonlight in terms of its form and profound emotional impact on spectators offering new visions of African American boyhoods, while also contributing an extended exploration of the social and political context of the film in relation to Obama, Trump, and diversity in filmmaking. Highlighting to students and scholars the powerful emotional pull of Moonlight and why it is a highly significant film, this book is ideal for those interested in critical race studies, queer theory, youth cinema, African American cinema, and LGBTQ cinema"--