good.film
a year ago
You won’t find sharper writing than this pinpoint cultural satire, but it’s the poignant themes of ambition, frustration and family stress that give American Fiction its relatable heart.
American Fiction explores social causes like Racial Equity and Arts & Culture
Okay. Let’s begin.
They’re the first words we hear in American Fiction. Then, we see a college whiteboard with the N-word spelled out in full. If we’re startled, that’s immediately called out - by a white student (with bright green hair, for added bite) who claims she’s offended. Her Black writing lecturer, Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, growls back, “I got over it. I’m pretty sure you can too.”
It’s an intro that perfectly nutshells both the plot and our hero. Monk is erudite; accomplished. He drinks fine wine. He calls his Mum "Mother." Think of a Black Frasier, and you’re mostly there. He’s also agonised by white saviours: woke warriors who task themselves to sympathise with the Black experience; ready to swing into online battle to inject the discourse with their empty platitudes. The kind of people who would’ve voted for Obama for a third term if they could.
As a highbrow published author, Monk looks down his nose at his colleagues’ “airport novels”. Privately, though, he’s self aware enough to admit that he doesn’t think anyone really wants to buy what he writes. But that all changes when, in a fit of professional jealousy, Monk bangs out a deliberately baity racial screed: a cheap and angsty new novel dripping with drugs, guns, MF-bombs and every other Black “street” cliché he can imagine.
CUT TO: Monk’s shock and disgust, when it becomes the biggest hit of his career.
American Fiction is adapted from Percival Everett’s 2001 novel Erasure, and both the book and film are two things at once: a poignant story of a frustrated writer navigating the minefield of his changing family, and a biting satire about Black culture and identity as a “product”.
Monk (played pitch-perfectly by Jeffrey Wright) sighs when white boomers leap to their feet and applaud the same old tired tropes and stereotypical street dialogue from Black woman author, Sintara Golden (Issa Rae). Her new work “We’s Lives in Da Ghetto” has been hailed as "urgent", "raw" and similarly coded language by pandering white critics. But to Monk, books like hers flatten real Black lives and real Black experiences. “They reduce us. Too many white people devour this slop like pigs at a dumpster.”
Publishers keep passing on his new novel, asking his agent for work that’s “more Black”. But as Monk points out, “They have a Black book. I’m Black, and it’s my book.” We can feel Monk’s frustration at his perception as an artist. They’re really telling him, what feels authentic to you doesn’t reflect who we see you as. It doesn’t fit our box.
When Monk bangs out “My Pafology” - his middle-finger to the publishers - director Cord Jefferson shows us what’s hitting the page. Monk’s characters manifest for us, complete with eyepatch, singlets, handguns and booze in a brown paper bag. We even hear sirens in the background - usually absent in Monk’s upper-class neighbourhood. It’s a sharp (and fun) skewering of broad BIPOC tropes and their weary overuse in wider culture.
“When I wrote that scene, I wrote the language to be very silly. It had to be ridiculous, so that everybody could see how stupid this book is and what a sham it is.”
~ Cord Jefferson
Using Everett’s novel as his template, Jefferson essentially lays bare an entire industry that salivates over stereotypes. Not because they deepen our awareness, but because they equal sales. As Erroll McDonald, a VP at Knopf (and one of the few Black editors atop the publishing world) told The New York Times, “The marketing and selling of books by Black people remains as problematic as it ever was. Publishing remains an industry informed by apartheid.”
When a big publisher goes gaga for “My Pafology” (promising a release on Juneteenth, when "white people will be feeling, let's be honest, a little conscience stricken”), juicy questions arise. Monk wrote it as a fuck you, but is it any different from the other clichéd Black stories sold by white-owned publishers, bought by white saviours and hailed as “brave” by white critics? How does this manufactured Black prose actually satisfy the tastes of guilt ridden white people anyway?
Monk’s agent answers that with a line that’s pretty much the crux of the film: "White people think they want the truth, but they don't. They just want to feel absolved." If a reader’s white guilt complex can be eased at $25 a pop by paying a Black author for the kind of book the critics call “important” and “necessary”... hey, it’s a small price to pay. Perhaps they feel that the amplification of underprivileged voices is always a good thing, even if the reasoning behind it is mired in virtue signalling and profits.
Like any writer, Monk craves a bestseller. But he can’t live with knowing that white people in the Hamptons will delight in words that he wrote as a mockery. We can almost see his sense of Black pride curl up and die at the idea of adding more slop to the dumpster. He tries to tank the deal, telling the publishers that he’s out unless they change the title… to just “FUCK”. Monk knows he’s in too deep when the (all white) marketing department praise this ludicrous demand: “It’s so brave, actually.”
It’s fun to watch Monk’s increasing discomfort as FUCK unleashes a frenzy of sales and a bidding war for the movie rights. But when Monk finds himself on a dubious literary award judging panel alongside Sintara Golden - the same writer whose work he likened to “Black trauma porn” - it opens up a more thoughtful debate.
Golden ventures that, despite its wokeness, the prize “might actually give someone a real chance at a career in this industry”. Monk’s surprised to agree with the insight. The more Golden says, the more Monk finds his viewpoint being (rightfully) challenged. In real time, he’s forced to reconcile his disgust at Golden’s writing with his respect for her judgement.
Monk loves her take on FUCK - she calls it pandering, simplistic and soulless, a spot-on assessment. But how is it all that different, he gently asks, to her own novel? Black characters living in poverty, toiling as slaves, being murdered by police... aren’t both books just pouring more stereotypical swill into the trough, feeding people's base desires to turn a profit?
Golden confidently points out that she did plenty of research for her book. It’s based on real Black people’s lives. And furthermore, she’s comfortable giving audiences what they want. She’s written a bestseller. She’s got the receipts. Monk argues that white people could read a book like “We’s Lives in Da Ghetto” and confine Black people to that box. Golden’s swift reply? "Then it sounds like your issue is with white people, not me."
It’s a great scene that reminds us art and commerce aren’t binary quests, no matter what race you belong to. Golden’s book sales don’t cancel out their merit, just as Monk’s stubborn resistance to Black cultural tropes doesn’t enhance his own. His “Black Frasier” bubble might be authentic to him, but it’s popped when he realises voices like Golden’s are more in touch with the culture he claims to defend.
Monk’s family is a surprising source of conflict (hey, whose isn’t?). His siblings are distant, and there’s hints that he feels “less than” compared to their careers as doctors. He’s also burdened by his ageing mother’s slide into dementia, and his thorny, unpredictable brother Cliff (an outstanding Sterling K. Brown) who’s just come out as gay. When their sister Lisa (Tracee Ellis Ross) suddenly passes away, the family is drawn together and old tensions reemerge.
Sounds like a lot, but these complex family ties are critical to American Fiction’s success - and not only because they drive the plot (like how Monk’s mother’s expensive aged care is a prime motivator for him to take the publishing deal). It’s because the film gives the audience what Monk has been crying out for all along: an authentic Black family story with depth, told by real Black characters with flaws; free of the overt clichés that Monk would roll his eyes over.
Cord Jefferson’s point (and Percival Everett’s before him) is that, regardless of audience appetites, the so-called Black experience can’t be labelled; can’t be “flattened and reduced”, as Monk would say, down to a single box fed by demand. American Fiction pulls that “Black experience” needle back to the middle. The Black experience is simply life - with its first kisses, divorces, rageful fathers, ageing mothers, sexual awakenings and new beginnings - and Jefferson serves us a slice of it, rich and real, painful and hilarious.
“Elegantly walking a line between absurdist satire and family drama, this is a clever send-up of how the broadness of Black culture gets reduced to cliché.”
- Kambole Campbell, Empire Magazine
“Jefferson’s slashingly funny satire of Black literary stereotyping is one of the best and boldest American comedies in years. You won't look at race on screen in the same way again.”
- Peter Travers, ABC
“An excellent debut feature film… this is satire at its best, a film full of tremendous laughs and salient observations on racial stereotyping.”
- Kaleem Aftab, BBC.com
Seen the film? What’s your take - fully on board, or disagree big time? We’d love to hear it. Leave a review to share your thoughts with the good.film community!
American Fiction has plenty to say about the commodification of culture: how it’s packaged, sold and critiqued. It’s also a fascinating look at who buys it, and what that means (like when Monk is appalled that his girlfriend is reading FUCK with great interest). We’re left to ponder if, when a Black reader enjoys a book that others regard as exploitative, does it absolve the work of that label? Or does it just grease the wheels for further exploitative work?
This all sounds heavy, but one of American Fiction’s greatest feats is how lightly it stays on its feet. Every performance is bang on. The story whips along. And even in moments of deep sadness - like Monk’s mother’s decline, or his sister’s beachside memorial, early in the film - there’s genuine humour that feels earned (“Do you have a permit to scatter those?”).
Former TV writer Cord Jefferson has walked a tightrope adapting Erasure (which, incidentally, is still as current now as when it was published in 2001). But it’s a tightrope with barely a wobble. With his succinct and engaging debut feature, Jefferson’s added not only a writing Oscar to his shelf, but a new classic to the “social satire” sub-genre.
Our parting praise? We’re sure white people in the Hamptons will delight in it : )