Gender Roles In Moonlight

1269 Words3 Pages

Even before the moment we are born, models of gender and sexual expression are pressed into us. The colors "pink" and "blue" identify what gender a newborn baby will be, placing these two genders into a type of "box" or "category". The idea that young girls should stay inside to play will dolls and young boys should go outside to be adventurous, also puts these two genders under limitations. Society places these gender roles upon us, in hopes of us acting a particular way to display our gender in the "correct" manner. Society makes us act, speak, dress, groom, and love in a specific way. However, in today's day and age, we are thankfully straying away from these defined roles, and are allowing ourselves to fully express our own view on our …show more content…

Chiron, the protagonist of the film, is shown throughout three important stages of his life; youth, adolescence, and early adult life. In his youth stage, titled "Little", Chiron questions Juan on what the word "faggot" means and if Chiron himself is one. Juan described the term as "a word used to make gay people feel bad". We later find out, after an intimate moment with Kevin on the beach, that Chiron is in fact gay. This sets the scene for the film. The film shows the fragility of black …show more content…

Bound is an erotic film that uses "heterosexual soft-core porn sexual displays in the context of thriller or film noir-type plots" (Bound, Class PowerPoint). Before Bound most American films featured lesbians as criminals, vampires, ashamed lesbians, and "now I am, now I am not" lesbians. "Very few films, prior to the 1990s, contained a lesbian love story in which the relationship was overt and intact at the end of the film" (Kelly Kessler). Bound, does feature the typical theme of lesbian violence, for both the butch woman and the femme fatale. However, Kessler says, "it is different in that it appeals to a wide audience without selling out lesbians" (Kessler, Class

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