Note: The following transcript is a recreation of the verbal narration in the video essay, and has not been edited for MLA citation purposes, nor have any grammatical or other errors that might be in the text been corrected.
My eyes are immediately drawn to the image of a man with half of his body painted white and the other black on the front cover of Harper’s Magazine’s July issue.1 His eyes are resting shut while he sits with his back upright; he looks tired, as if he’s been told to sit still without saying a word—like what a young girl would say to her doll before leaving the room. His face is compliant, and yet it seems as if he’s holding something back.
Intrigued by the image’s power in ambiguity and silence, I indulge further, until I am met with the bold words of Zadie Smith: “Who owns black pain?”—a question I have often asked myself as a mixed woman. Smith’s article, “Getting In and Out,” analyzes the way in which Jordan Peele’s Get Out intentionally unsettles viewers with its nuanced take on the American fear of the Black man by presenting a world that paints the opposite reality: the Black man fearing the white man. Smith goes on to make a distinction between the way in which Black and white audiences view the Black experience. Her work comments on the influence racial biases in American culture has had on the Black community and entices readers to consider whether Black individuals are hated or “obscenely loved” by white Americans—two polarizing meanings to which she uses interchangeably. In contrast to Peele’s critically acclaimed film, Smith references Dana Schutz’s abstract painting of Emmett Till in her controversial art piece titled Open Casket to challenge viewers yet again with the same question: “Who owns black pain?” Smith brings truth to this debate by factoring in her own biracial identity to the conversation—a factor that, she makes a point to recognize, grants her power to not only evaluate Black suffering in her work but also retell it as it is her pain to share, too. However, she speaks to the individuals whose heavily mixed identity make this ownership over Black pain more unclear as they are neither entirely Black or white, such as her children who are a quarter Black or more technically defined as “quadroons.”2
This question of Black ownership and mutability amongst Black individuals rings in my head as I view Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight—a film that illustrates Black pain and internal struggle through the story of a young Black boy, Chiron, nicknamed “Little,” coming to terms with his sexuality throughout adulthood. There’s a moment in the film that strikes me in particular, where mutability and discomfort in one’s body correlate. The strings to an intense classical instrumental fade in as we move into a wide shot of Little eyeing his mad, drug-consumed mother, backlit by the neon pink lights from the next door room. Stillness fills the deep space between them. We move in closer to see Little, this time more clearly: his face is pained by the looks of his decaying mother. The instrumentals grow louder now, vocalizing Little’s internal desperation that is screaming for help, but is unable to do so. Motionless, Little views his mother before being met with an inaudible “Don’t look at me!” Without breaking a gaze with Little, his mother backs up into the door behind her, consumed by the neon pink lights.
This moment visually demonstrates the Black struggle between our true selves and our external front that has been pressured to be put on, similar to Peele’s artistic portrayal of Black voicelessness. In “Getting In and Out,” Smith calls back to moments in the film where “[r]emnants of the black ‘host’ remain” after being consumed by white bodies and its allusion to the conditioning of Black individuals to move through life hiding who they really are for acceptance. I asked myself: Why is it that we, as a Black collective, feel silenced by both those from within and beyond our community?
After analyzing both works side-by-side, I begin to make sense of the reasoning behind this pattern of black mutability. In Moonlight, Chiron feels trapped—by his Black classmates and his own insecurities with his sexuality to fit into his gender normative environment—which speaks volumes to the emotional confinement and labelism Black people are subject to. Both Smith and Jenkins examine the root to Black silence through visual symbolism—whether it be “a single tear or a dribble of blood” that “runs down [their] masks” in Get Out or the cue of classical music in moments of intensity to highlight Chiron’s muteness in Moonlight, we are invited to understand up-close what it feels to be labeled and overlooked as a Black American. We, as a Black community, move through life essentially invisible to our Black and white peers as we learn to take comfort in this silence that has been forced upon us. And yet, eventually we must all learn to break this silence. Jenkins reassures viewers that stepping into our true voice is scary and uncomfortable, but we all must do so in our own time. Smith, too, recognizes this pattern of Black suppression and urges us to assume power in making others uncomfortable with our voices, as they are worthy of being heard. But perhaps the silence speaks for us. It is what Chiron does not vocalize in Moonlight that makes viewers desperate to hear Black voices and identify the forces that keep us silent. By the third act of Moonlight, we see Chiron’s hardened persona, nicknamed “Black,” come to surface as an example of allowing expectations within our community, such as Black masculinity, to consume us.
Silenced because of our unique qualities—whether it be our mixed race or gender fluidity— Black and white expectations make it nearly impossible to step into one’s true identity. Perhaps if both white and Black communities expel the pressure they’ve forced upon Black people for decades, we can feel safe enough to assume our true voices. After all, our voices, whether masked under our own insecurities or external influences, are our own and deserve to be heard.
1 The cover image described here is from Harper’s Magazine’s July 2017 issue.
2 Zadie Smith notes that, according to “the old racial classifications of America,” her children—whose father is white and whose mother, Smith, is biracial—would be called “quadroons.”
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