Modern Masterpiece: Moonlight

I love movies.  I think film as a medium is one of our greatest art forms; nothing else quite captures all the senses together the way it does.  Over a century after its birth, there are enough impact-making movies that people around the world spend lifetimes studying and dissecting them.  It's right up there with music as one of the most popular art forms that bring people together across the globe.

When it comes to movies made during the 21st Century, one stands above the rest to me: Moonlight.  Written and directed by Barry Jenkins, it tells the story of Chiron, a gay black kid in Miami.  That story is told in three segments, following Chiron as a child, teenager, and adult.  It received rave reviews, and even won the Oscar for best picture- only the second movie with a black director to ever do so.  To me, the hype is fully worth it.

One thing I love about this movie is how many layers it has.  You could watch it from tons of different vantage points, with different ideas about what it's supposed to be about, and come away each time with something a little different to chew on by movie's end.  To me, there are three main ways to see this movie: as a movie about a queer, black protagonist; as a movie about a protagonist with a drug addicted parent; and as a movie about a quiet, gentle boy in an often ugly world that forces him to close himself off to it.

Queer, Black Protagonist

The most immediate, and arguably most meaningful, layer of Moonlight is, of course, as a story of a queer black boy/man.  As someone who is neither queer nor black, I won't spend too much time here, as there isn't much I can say that a queer black writer couldn't say with more more perspective and insight.  In fact, here is a write up by just such a writer.  I will leave you with a great excerpt from the piece, though I'd urge everyone to check out the whole thing:

"Growing up in North Philadelphia, I was like Chiron. I did not exude traditional masculinity or fit into black male cliques. Although I existed on the margins, I was never alone. My childhood was filled with people like the movie’s Juan and Theresa, people who saw me as I was, offered protection, and guided me into adulthood. I have known my own versions of the character Kevin, who befriended me even though I was not the archetype of masculine bravado. “Moonlight” revealed to me how my coming out was not an individual act, but one that was supported and facilitated in part by my community.

“Moonlight” captures the beauty of blackness. The movie forces us to interrogate and expand our conceptions of black masculinity, but it also presents a new image of the black community for us to consume. It locates queerness, compassion, and love throughout the black community, shining an intersectional spotlight on queer lives.

Through the transitions of Chiron’s life, it explores the bonds that endure. In the moonlight, we see black, queer life at the center of the black community. In the moonlight, I can more clearly see myself and those who have stood next to me all my life."

Protagonist with a Drug Addicted Parent

I grew up with a father addicted to crack-cocaine.  To say it wasn't easy is an understatement, but what matters more in this case is how deeply it affects someone who grows up that way.  To have a parental figure, who is supposed to be the embodiment of care, responsibility, and safety, end up being the opposite of those things most of the time.  Of course, there are good moments and bad moments, especially when your addicted parent is a good person underneath who just doesn't have their life together- but ultimately, it's an experience that leaves a deep impact.

One thing that Chiron develops in this movie is a quiet independence that many children of addicted people develop because they've subconsciously learned that vocalizing their needs and wants won't necessarily work for them.  This isn't a rugged independence, but a withdrawn one.  Combined with Chiron's queerness, which already makes him a target of exclusion, the quiet independence one can develop in these circumstances can cause us to drift apart from people.  Because if we can't trust our own parents to be there for us, how can we trust other people?  How can we know we'll be safe and cared for by someone else if it's not that way at home?  This is a big part of what Chiron has to struggle with.

The third act of this movie begins with Chiron's mother in recovery.  When a parent starts to recover from addiction, it's a beautiful thing.  It's also a complicated thing.  In the hands of a lesser filmmaker, this recovery scene would end with a big apology and Chrion either accepting it with a dramatic embrace of his mom, marking that period of his life as "closed" because of the healing power of forgiveness, or he rejects it, launching into a self-righteous tirade where she's put in her place.  Instead he quietly listens.  It's implied he accepts, but we also see through his inability to articulate his feelings how deeply the damage is already done.  This isn't the end of anything.  It's just the beginning.

I cry every once in a while at movies.  But this is the only movie scene that can make me bawl.

Having a parent recovering from addiction means you become their cheerleader, the way they should've been for you when you were younger.  It's a weird role reversal.  You're relieved the chaos of their addiction no longer has power over your family; you're proud of your parent for the progress they've made; you're sad about the lost time; you're angry about all the pain you've been through; you're uncertain, perhaps even uncomfortable, about needing to be a responsible pillar of support for your own parent.  But, whichever reaction you feel strongest, the effects of what you went through in childhood are still there.  Nothing your parent does can undo that.  It will always be a part of both of you; you just have to learn to make peace with it.

Quiet Boi Protagonist

In 1963, beloved heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson, nicknamed "The Gentleman of Boxing", was set to defend his title against the "thug" Sonny Liston.  It was the ultimate showdown between a "good" black man vs a "bad" black man.  The writer James Baldwin went to interview each of them before the fight.  This is part of what Baldwin said of Liston, the "bad" black man:

"While there is a great deal of violence in him, I sensed no cruelty at all. On the contrary, he reminded me of big, black men I have known who acquired the reputation of being tough in order to conceal the fact that they weren't hard. Anyone who cared to could turn them into taffy."

To throw out maybe the understatement of the century, the world can be a cruel place.  It can be especially hard for boys who are sensitive and gentle.  Particularly when, after these boys don't react to hardships and injustices with posturing or violence, the world reacts with discomfort and bewilderment.  Boys are supposed to respond with, as the writer I quoted earlier put it, "masculine bravado" to their problems.  A sad, melancholy first grade boy with damp eyes often makes people far more uncomfortable than an angry, aggressive first grade boy trying to take his rage out on the world.  This creates an incentive for boys to- as Baldwin masterfully puts it- act tough in order to conceal the fact they aren't hard. 

Chiron isn't hard.  He simply wants some tenderness in his life, and retreats within himself when the world doesn't allow him the vulnerability enough to signal for it.  In the first act, he has two mentors who allow him to be comfortable with himself, but one of them dies.  In the second act, we see his gentleness often taken advantage of until he is driven to his breaking point.  By the start of the third act, what Baldwin says of Liston also applies to Chiron.  He has became a drug dealer who takes shit from no one.  There's such a deep tragedy to it because we know exactly how he got there.  We might also ask how many young black drug dealers just like Chiron end up in prison after the world has closed off so many other doors to them, but that's a subject for a different post.

As we get to know this life Chiron has created, we see just how deep his toughness goes- but also his loneliness, his isolation from others.  But hope is not lost.  Kevin, a bisexual friend from high school who played a painful role pushing Chiron to his breaking point as a teen, contacts Chiron.  Chiron goes to visit Kevin at his job.  Kevin cooks for him: a symbol of healing and nourishment after everything Chiron has been through.  Chiron still doesn't break the tough, stoic exterior he's been forced to cultivate his entire adult life, but there are at least cracks.  When they go back to Kevin's place, the inarticulate Chiron finally confides to Kevin that he hasn't even been held since their days together as teenagers.  The movie ends not with a Hallmark confession of love and romantic kissing, but with Kevin holding Chiron.

It's a perfect ending that seems understated, but for Chiron is an explosion.  It's a knocking down of walls.  It's the proof that behind that tough man is still that gentle boy.  It's him taking a moment to be vulnerable and human no matter how much he has been made to suffer for it.  As someone who himself was quite gentle and sensitive as a boy, who grew up in a working class Latino neighborhood that sometimes pushed me to be tough to avoid going through some of what we see Chiron go through in this movie, that ending always hits me like a ton of bricks.  It's a real triumph, precisely because it's so understated and poetic.

Closing Thoughts

Of course, all of these layers I just discussed are intertwined.  Each affects the other, because as human beings we are everything- our social identities, our individual personalities, our greater human longings and aspirations.  Barry Jenkins reminds me of James Baldwin in that way- while some artists can hone in on exploring the individual depth of a person, and others can explore how their social identities affect them, Baldwin and Jenkins showcase an ability to explore both.  Which is why Jenkins was such an inspired choice to direct the movie adaption of his novel If Beale Street Could Talk after this movie.

I work two jobs.  One is at an after-school program at an elementary school.  One thing I try to do is be a supportive, nurturing person for all my students.  This includes boys like young Chiron, like young me, who don't respond to problems and hardships with masculine bravado.  Some of these boys I work with, even the younger ones, have already started to internalize the idea that there is something wrong with their lack of aggression.  That there is something wrong with them.  I do what I can to teach them that it's okay, that they don't have to worry about being vulnerable or sad.

I think of this movie a lot when I deal with those boys.  It's a real testament to what good art can do.  That's why, to me, it's a modern masterpiece.

Final Fantasy VII: Everything Connected

One of the weirder parts of growing up is seeing which entertainment you loved as a kid holds up to scrutiny as an adult and which doesn't. We've all scrolled by a show or movie we loved as kids on Netflix and clicked it, only to realize halfway through that it's a corny, horrible mess (sorry, Power Rangers).  It's quite a bummer when something that captivated you as a kid loses that spell it used to be able to cast on you.
 
On the other hand, it's pretty cool when  you discover something you used to love as a kid can still work its magic on you as an adult, even when you have your ~critical thinking about storytelling~ hat on.

A couple weeks ago I started replaying Final Fantasy VII, which I call my favorite videogame of all time despite not having played it for almost a decade.  A few days ago I finally beat it.  Fortunately, it held up in every area other than graphics.  I thought the story in particular was well-executed, even if there is the occasional hiccup (why is Cait Sith sacrificing himself at the Temple of the Ancients played like a tragic, heroic redemption when we know he's just a puppet and a new one comes immediately after anyway?).

If it was an attempt to make him seem less useless

or obnoxious, then boy howdy did they fail.

There's a lot I could write about where I think FF VII succeeds, but in order to avoid making this post a novella, I'm gonna narrow it down.  The focus today will be on how well the story connects everything in a well-realized way.  Before I get into that, though, I have a disclaimer of sorts: yes, I believe quality is in the eye of the beholder.  I don't believe there's a such thing as an objective authority on how good any given story is, and even if there were, it certainly wouldn't be me.

However, if all we ever did was shrug and simply say "well, everyone has their own opinion" whenever talking about stories, we'd never be able to talk about what makes them work or not work.  We'd never have interesting dialogue about what different stories do well and don't do well.  We'd never be challenged to articulate why we have the responses we do to stories.  Ultimately, we'd never be able to enrich our understanding of the stories we consume.

Sooo, I'm writing this post not because I think everyone needs to agree FF VII is awesome, but because I think articulating specific things a story does well can help improve our understanding of it.  When multiple people do that, whether they agree or disagree, they can then have a conversation that can help improve everyone's understanding of how storytelling works.

Cool?  Cool.

So, with all of that out of the way, I'll be talking about how well Final Fantasy VII ties all of its main elements, from gameplay to story to characters, together so damn well.  Everything, and I mean everything, ties back to the Lifestream and Shinra's attempt to harvest it for profit even at the expense of the planet.

Luckily, megacorporations that exert an alarming amount of influence over world affairs

and drain the planet of resources are pure works of fiction. I mean, could you imagine?

First, we'll start with how it ties to the technical side of the game.  In may other Final Fantasy games, the gameplay mechanics are not tied to the story of the game.  In Final Fantasy VI, for instance, characters learn skills as they level up.  In Final Fantasy IX, characters learn skills through their equipment.  Both are great games, but their way of learning new skills isn't creatively tied to the world their games inhabit.

Not with VII, though.  Here we have the materia system, which is crystallized energy from the planet's Lifestream.  This energy calls upon the wisdom of the Cetra/Ancients to manipulate nature, which is what this universe refers to as magic.  In the events of the game, most of the materia you use is actually manufactured by Shinra, further illustrating Shinra's willingness to exploit the Lifestream for profit.

In other words, the mechanics of the game are directly connected to its world and story.

Random thought: it would've been nice if the characters wrestled with the fact that

most of the materia they're using is the product of planetary exploitation

This is also the case with the characters.  Every character's story connects to Shinra in one way or another.  Cloud is a former Shinra infantry member.  Both his and Tifa's hometown of Nibelheim were destroyed by Shinra, while Barret's hometown was reduced to a shadow of its former self.  Aerith never knew her parents because of the experiments Shinra conducted on them, and ultimately becomes a target of Shinra herself.  Red XIII is experimented on by Shinra before the group saves him, and his honorary grandfather Bugenhagen helps them understand how the planet works and just what Shinra's exploitation is doing to it.  Cait Sith... well, he's useless trash, but he's useless Shinra trash.

Even our two optional characters are connected to Shinra.  Vincent has his tragic backstory with Lucrecia, who is Sephiroth's mom, which also connects to the Turks and Hojo (honestly, given his backstory, it's a little odd he's just an optional character).  Yuffie, meanwhile, chooses to become a materia thief in the first place to help Wutai after it lost the war to Shinra a few years before the start of the game.  Since then it has become a shell of its former self.  She wants to help it regain some of its former glory.

Compare these to Final Fantasy VI (note: I bring up other games like VI because they are also very good; I don't bring them up to shit on them, but because they offer a handier comparison than a shitty game does).  Many of the best characters of VI's cast have backstories directly tied to the Gestahl Empire, including my two favorite characters, Sabin and Celes.  However, almost as many characters have absolutely nothing to do with the events of the game, such as Shadow and Gau, who just sorta stumble into the party and don't have backstories at all tied into the greater narrative.

Luckily, we have Sabin supplexing a ghost train to make up for the lesser characters.

Finally, we have the big bad of Final Fantasy VII himself, Sephiroth.  We don't need to get into how his story connects to Shinra, as it'd almost be easier to list ways Sephiroth isn't connected to Shinra than ways he is.

However, I do wanna quickly address a complaint some people have given about VII, even from fans of the series, that I think shows a misunderstanding of the game's story.  The complaint is that the beginning quarter or so of the game where your main enemy is Shinra "feels like a waste of time" after it's revealed that Sephiroth is the big bad.  Quite honestly, this is silly.

The Shinra stuff had to happen because Shinra is still the root cause for everything that happens in the game, and even near the end of it, are still a major threat.  Yes, Jenova came well before Shinra to wreck havoc on the planet, but it is Shinra's actions that not only revive her, but use her to create Sephiroth in the first place.

All of the destruction that occurs thereafter, then, is a result of Shinra's exploitation of the planet.

Plus, with hair that luxurious, it's hard to stay mad at Sephiroth.

The events of the plot, then, are caused almost entirely by Shinra.  This is a hallmark of good writing because, ultimately, the plot's connection to Shinra comes from the characters' connections to Shinra.  Good fiction writing places the characters as the drivers of the plot.  Shinra has greatly affected the people of VII's world, including the main cast of characters, and it is their responses to Shinra's effect on the world that drive both their own individual character journey and the plot as a whole.

To speak in more concrete terms, I'll use the model presented in "Creating Character Arcs" by KM Weiland (which is a great book that everyone interested in storytelling should totally read).  Basically, Weiland says that every character begins a story believing a lie.  Their goal is to unlearn and overcome the lie to embrace a new truth.  In doing so, they grow as a character while both driving the plot and reinforcing the theme (which is the truth they learn at the end).  In this way, character, plot, and theme are all intertwined.

Let's take Cloud.  We might be tempted to say that the lie he believes is that he used to be a First Class member of SOLDIER, but really the Weland-type lie Cloud believes is actually deeper than that.  The belief he begins the game with is that nothing and no one, not even himself, truly matter.  So what if the planet is dying?  So what if his childhood friend needs his help?  So what if he can't remember most of his life?  So what if he's living without any sense of his past, present, or future?

According to Weiland, a well-written character also needs a good reason to believe their lie.  Weiland calls this a character's "ghost," which is whatever happened in their past that to lead them to their lie.  In Cloud's case, his ghost is the Nibelheim incident and its aftermath.  Not just the fact that it happened, but also his response to it.  After all, Cloud both (1)was too weak to resist the Jenova cells the way Zack did and (2)later created his persona based on a misunderstanding of Zack, whom he looked up to and wanted to emulate.  In other words, Cloud's response to the Jenova cells was specifically his response to the Jenova cells, as Zack responded differently than he did, and any other number of people would've each had their own unique response.

Now, let's dig a little deeper on that second point of Cloud's response to the cells for a moment.

 I swear this isn't just an excuse to talk about my favorite fictional character of all time.

...okay, maybe it is just a bit.

Cloud spends Crisis Core, the prequel to VII, looking up to Zack.  It makes sense as to why: he's brave, charismatic, and strong enough to make it not only into SOLDIER, but into First Class.  What Cloud ultimately misses, however, is that part of what makes Zack strong is how he cares for other people.  Prequel Cloud doesn't grasp that for whatever reason (honestly, this is another part they could've explored way better in the series).  So, when the mako-poisoning from Shinra's experiments and his own inferiority complex combine to give him partial amnesia and make him adapt Zack's personality, he adapts the persona we see in the early part of VII: a weak person's understanding of what makes a strong person.

The game, then, can be seen as Cloud going from believing the lie that nothing/no one matters, which is something he believes strong people think, to embracing the truth that we're all connected and everyone matters.  This is not only shown in the ending VII, but also explicitly stated in the movie sequel, Advent Children, right before he defeats Sephiroth.  "I pity you, you just don't get it at all.  There's not a thing I don't cherish!"

In learning this new truth, he not only grows as a character and person, but also becomes the true living legacy of Zack.  Zack not only lived his life by this truth, but even died for it.  After all, as a First Class SOLDIER, he could've easily continued evading capture from Shinra if he'd just abandon the comatose Cloud.  But Zack knew better than that.  He understood that abandoning Cloud wasn't the right thing to do.  He chose to keep Cloud safe while fighting the entire Shinra military in order to stand by that truth.

Is someone chopping onions?  What's that?  No one is, and also

it's okay to cry instead of making excuses to avoid expressing genuine emotion?

The game, then, ends with Cloud doing quite a bit: fulfilling a personal arc that sees his growth, becoming the living legacy of Zack, and, as the plot requires, saving the world from both Shinra and Sephiroth.  What makes this an example of good writing, even in the face of all the imperfections one can point out, is that all of these are linked: Cloud's personal journey and the plot requirement of saving the world are interlinked.  Because of the way things have been set up, you can't have one without the other.

And, of course, it all ties back to Shinra's actions.

The same happens with all the other characters, though that's not to say they're on the same character journey that Cloud is.  Tifa, for example, already knows that we're all connected and everyone matters.  However, she is passive to the point of letting bad things fester instead of bringing them into the open.  She is a people-pleaser to a fault.  We can see this with her keeping her trouble with Cloud's recollections of the Nibelhiem incident to herself (though, upon replay, it is very clear she is uncomfortable whenever he talks about it).

Her truth that she learns to embrace over the course of the game is that there's a difference between being facilitating/considerate and being overly passive. We see her become more bold and outspoken throughout the course of the game, but without losing the kindness and diplomatic traits that make her Tifa in the first place.  The pinnacle of this arc comes when she finally speaks up to Cloud about the inconsistencies of his story, launching into a long series of complicated events that ends up with Tifa helping him through his struggle to find out exactly who he is.

Most of the other main characters also go through some form of their own journeys, except for Yuffie and Vincent, since they're optional and therefore can't be too important to the plot, and Cait Sith, who just sucks.

Ugh, just look at this dipshit.

So, in closing, Final Fantasy VII does a great job of connecting everything together.  Despite the occasional odd plot choice or the room for improvement on how certain things are handled, VII does a great job of connecting everything from character arcs to story to gameplay mechanics back to Shinra and its exploitation of the planet.

Again, in writing this, I don't wanna say that this is the only way to look at VII, or say that any criticisms are invalid (I've injected my own critiques throughout the piece, and could bring up plenty more).  I just hope that by posting something like this it can be part of a greater dialogue that helps people think about stories beyond "this part was cool!" and "this part sucked!"  There's nothing wrong with those statements, but for those of us who take stories seriously, I think we can do better.

Thanks for reading!