Featured Song: 'Classic Man' by Jidenna
This is the first of a five-part series I will be calling 'Tracking the Themes'. In each part, I will be looking at a song and its usage in any given film. We start off this journey with one of my favorite movies, and arguably one of the top three movies in the 2010s (in my opinion).
The Film:
Moonlight tells the story of a boy named Chiron, a Miami native, through his life at three different stages as he deals with masculinity and his sexuality. Chiron is without a father figure until he meets Juan (Mahershala Ali), a local drug dealer. His mother, Paula (Naomie Harris), fails to be a positive influence in his life during his formative years as a teenager and there is a sort of tragic aspect of Juan at one point in the film selling Paula drugs. Over the three stages of life, Chiron has three different names and three different actors, culminating in his adulthood. He (played by Trevante Rhodes as an adult) has since moved to Atlanta but returns to Miami to make up with his mother who is in a drug treatment center while also seeing his teenage love interest -- Kevin (Andre Holland).The Scene:
The song appears when Chiron and Kevin are driving back from the restaurant Kevin cooks at. The song plays in a 'chopped and screwed' version as they drive. Kevin asks where Chiron plans on staying in Miami. Chiron simply turns the volume up.The Usage:
First and foremost, the song itself is, at its essence, represents our lead character. Chiron is attempting to cover up his own sexuality in a world of drug dealing by presenting an exceedingly heteronormative presentation of black masculinity. Chiron has a grill, he has a crown ornament on the dashboard of his car, and he is very muscular. This is a far cry from the skinny and shy kid and teenager we meet at the start of this film. He is attempting to become a 'classic man' in the mold of what the world around him demands. And yet, the song is 'chopped and screwed' just like his own presentation. This idea of masculinity is not who Chiron actually is, just as how the song is not actually in the form it was originally made (in fact, this is a version of the song created specifically for the film).
The lyrics of this song are key as well. You can find the lyrics here. We hear the fourth verse of the song in this clip. While the song is talked over for the most part, there is a silence for the lyric "The ladies on my elbow ain't for the show" which is a very ironic lyric given the situation we are currently in, but also calling back into a prior scene in the movie. One of Chiron's underlings is hyping up a girl that he has been seeing and Chiron is playing into it to continue to present his persona of masculinity. Quite literally, the ladies on the elbow are for the show in the case of Chiron. Again, this also ties into the idea that he is not the 'classic man' in terms of what is expected from someone dominating the drugs of a neighborhood.
The song as a whole is braggadocious. Featuring lyrics like "Why can't every woman end up being my wife?" and "Chief be like a don", there is an idea within the song that the singer (Jidenna) is an absolute boss in his world. The usage of Jidenna is also interesting, I feel. Jidenna graduated from Stanford, rejected Harvard, was friends with the family of ex-Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick, and worked as a teacher before making it full-time in the rap industry. Jidenna's background is atypical of a 'stereotypical' rapper and by succeeding in the rap industry he is showing that typecasting men -- whether in hip-hop or in life as is the case with Chiron -- is improper. This song is the perfect encapsulation of the life that Chiron presents for himself. At the surface level, he is that 'classic man', but dig deeper and you will find how that is not the case.
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