White people think they want the truth, but they don't. They just want to be absolved. — Arthur
American Fiction is really funny. It’s packed with terrific performances - especially Jeffrey Wright and Sterling K. Brown (both nominated for Best/Supporting Actor respectively). It’s one of those very sharp satires that is so on point you don’t have to wonder what it was trying to say. Writer and first-time director Cord Jefferson (a writer for the Watchmen series and The Good Place among others) created a masterful adaptation of Percival Everett’s 2001 novel Erasure. I’m not surprised it’s up for Best Picture (it was my #3 film of last year, after all!).
The film follows Thelonious ‘Monk’ Ellison, an English professor who writes obscure but critically beloved reimaginings of classical mythology. He can’t find a publisher for his latest book because they’re looking for something ‘blacker’. (Monk points out to his agent that, because he is black, all of his books are black books.)
Professionally, Monk has taken a sabbatical to care for his mother, whose dementia is advancing. His sister has just been killed and his brother - a wealthy plastic surgeon - is no help because his wife left him after she caught him with a man. Meanwhile, black suburbanite Sintara Golden (Issa Rae) has a brand-new best-seller climbing the charts. It’s called We’s Lives in da Ghetto and the suburbanite Golden wrote it after spending a weekend with a cousin in Harlem. It’s as cringworthy as you think.
In a fit of rage, Monk pens a hackey ‘black book’ he calls "My Pafology”. He demands his editor send it out - under a penname, to prove a point. But Monk’s plan backfires when publishers love it, sparking a bidding war, a national press tour, literary awards and a Hollywood adaptation.
American Fiction is hilarious. It’s a razor-sharp, biting satire that is extremely on the nose. It satirizes the racism prevalent in liberal spaces (in particular here, Hollywood and the publishing industry). But there’s something troubling as the film ends… that feeling that creeps in of “so what?”
Precisely because its critique of systemic racism is clear and thoughtful, American Fiction may do as much to reinforce that racism as it does to create any real change.
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