Jenkins and the actor who plays “Little” Chiron, Alex R Hibbert, are extraordinarily effective at melting your heart. In Moonlight, we also see a boy, Chiron, turn into a young man over many years, though we only see him at three stages, each time played by a different actor. Photograph: David Bornfriend/film company handout Jharrel Jerome as Kevin and Ashton Sanders as Chiron in Moonlight’s second act. And why wouldn’t they? As consumers of non-fiction media in America, we are always being told that black boys are suspicious and that violence against them is justifiable. Lately, I have been thinking a lot about a Yale study where pre-school teachers were asked to watch videos of very young children to look for signs of trouble, and eye-tracking software revealed their eyes went for the black boys first and watched them the most. Mason and his friend engage in petty vandalism, and also drink and drive – and yet, Mason, “no angel”, was excused and held dear in a way a black child never would be. In the 2014 movie Boyhood, director Richard Linklater encouraged the audience to hold as precious and unique Mason, a banal and totally average white American child who existed in an imaginary nearly all-white Texas.
It is not especially difficult to make white boyhood precious. Another gift Jenkins gives not just to American cinema, but to American culture, is that he depicts black boyhood as something worthy of rooting for to succeed.
