“Every Nigga Is a Star”: A Critical Reflection on the Fifth Anniversary of Moonlight

Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight opens with this refrain from the 1973 Boris Gardiner hit “Every Nigger Is a Star,”1 as Juan (played by AcademyAwardwinning Mahershala Ali) rolls up in a 1973 Chevrolet Impala Custom coupe. He is immediately met by two other Black men, one a drugdealing colleague and the other who is searching for a drug fix. The man asking for the drug hookup turns to Juan and compliments with conviction: “you know you my man, right Juan.” To which Juan replies, “this nigga.” (Every nigga is a star.) And this 1973 refrain and homage is not a coincidence, as 1973 marks a watershed moment where a record breaking four mayors in major cities were Black. And I highlight this moment not to romanticize the nature of politics as some space of administering Black people a “way in” or a way out of anti-Blackness, but rather to speak to the affective character of the moment of heightened Black ascendency. To envelope the story of Moonlight in this symbolic register is to position Juan, Paula, Little/ Black/Chiron, and every character as being as much stars in the rigorous living as Black, as those who live as stars in the spectacular sense. Jenkins’s coloring of this Floridian landscape of stars, and McCraney’s incorporation of “nigga” paints I N T R O D U C T I O N