“You're in the Middle of the World”

Abstract

Abstract Despite Barry Jenkins's pronounced and intentional allusions to the work of Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar Wai, film scholars have generally made little of the pervasive Asian elements in Moonlight (2016). This essay, however, offers a sustained study of the film's aesthetic and political engagement with Wong's cinema. It highlights how the distinct Asian femininity, or ornamentalism, of Days of Being Wild (1990) and In the Mood for Love (2001) are translated into Moonlight and reinforce the film's key themes on Black queerness, especially its ontological implications for Black (non)being and its material implications for Black embodiment. Furthermore, this essay claims that by borrowing from films in which Wong visually explores postcolonial loss—especially Happy Together (1997), about a pair of queer male Hong Kong migrants who work and live in Buenos Aires—Jenkins emphasizes the historic and global magnitude of queer Black diasporic dislocation and humanlessness. Ultimately, this essay outlines how the convergence of Black and Asian forms in Moonlight disrupts white, liberal, humanist scripts on racial, gendered, and sexual formation.