There’s a version of American Fiction that could have come off as incredibly condescending, perhaps even classist, towards a subset of African-American literature. It is after all a movie about an educated black author and lecturer from a privileged background constantly lambasting books by or about lower-class or impoverished black figures as dishonest and culturally draining. He has several strong points to make and solid principles to stand by, but he clearly has blinders of his own on. Yet in the hands of writer-director Cord Jefferson, and especially star Jeffrey Wright, it never feels unconscious of this, and thus never crosses over into mean-spiritedness, even as it does get its shots in. Jefferson, adapting a novel Erasure by Percival Everett, cares a lot about keeping his protagonist grounded, offsetting his cultural vendetta with human drama in a relationship that once in a while exhibits tonal discordance, but more often than not is complimentary.
It’s a very rich subject though, that many people paying attention to the world of popular literature, have no doubt observed. The rise in a particular kind of ‘black book’ that opines to comment with authenticity on race in America, dealing in popular -arguably stereotypical- subjects of black cultural identity, with a title deriving in some black slang, yet read perhaps disproportionately by well-meaning white liberals. It’s a trend that Wright’s Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, a critically-respected but largely unsuccessful novelist finds both dispiriting and frustrating. While on a sabbatical from his Los Angeles university in his home of Boston and struggling financially to care for his Alzheimers-stricken mother (Leslie Uggams), he churns out a manuscript of a satirical black novel (My Pafology, later simply Fuck) meant just to be a statement to publishers that unexpectedly catches on, goes to print, and becomes a huge success, with Monk having to take on the persona of a fictional fugitive author in the process.
More than just about anything else, American Fiction is a showcase for Jeffrey Wright of a kind he shockingly hasn’t had a lot of opportunities for; a rare leading role for one of the most respected actors of his generation. Jefferson wrote specifically with Wright in mind though, and it is explicitly apparent, as the script plays to many of his most celebrated strengths as a performer -and yet it asks more of him too. Monk is a figure who on initial glance appears to be the sardonic, righteous voice of reason, a surrogate for the audience and the screenwriter alike in his clever, annoyed, and highly opinionated relationship to an issue of public interest. Indeed, he very much does fulfil this role through stretches of the movie. But Jefferson makes clear he is also simply a guy, with his own pretensions and biases in how he approaches just about anything in either his career or personal life. In this latter world his flaws hang around in the background, as he tries to mend his dysfunctional family and embark on a new relationship. And his professional grievances inevitably run up against these more delicate strands of his life.
They are somewhat competing tones, allowing Wright a great degree of versatility -playing some scenes with wry, even broad comedy (any scene where Monk has to play "Stagg R. Leigh" for instance) as well as incredibly grounded family drama. And Wright is of course impeccable on both fronts, however a certain degree of tonal whiplash is felt -especially in just how satirical some of the scenes dealing with the success of Monk's book can be, a couple even broaching an almost Boots Riley sensibility. And the points of commentary are made very strongly here -the way the more Monk attempts to expose the joke the less anyone is fooled by it. But then there will be a moment where he rushes out of an interview whilst pretending to be the hardened criminal author out of a fear something has gone wrong with his mother's care. It's a false alarm, but the movie's parallel thread already primed the audience to take such things with great seriousness.
This kind of drastic incongruity doesn't come often though, segregated as these trains of the movie are for virtually the whole runtime. And the strengths of storytelling and character do a lot to ease such tensions. In fact it’s admirable that Jefferson is so interested in Monk’s family: his mother, his sister Lisa (Tracee Ellis Ross), the long-time housekeeper Lorraine (Myra Lucretia Taylor), and especially estranged brother Cliff (Sterling K. Brown), a recently out gay man rejected by his parents who lives a life of hedonism in Tucson, Arizona. The relationship between the brothers is quite a compelling facet of the film, as is the romance between Monk and neighbour Coraline (Erika Alexander) -who makes for a fitting partner and contrast for Monk in some fundamental ways to his cultural ideology. In the other realm of the story, the film features Jon Ortiz as Monk’s publisher and compatriot in the ruse, Adam Brody as a smug Hollywood producer trying to option the book for a movie, and Issa Rae as Sintara Golden, author of We’s Lives in Da Ghetto, and something of a personal nemesis for Monk -who nonetheless astounds his expectations.
She is critical to where the movie’s thesis ultimately goes, in her capacity as a judge for a Literary Festival alongside Monk. American Fiction spends a decent chunk of time mocking stereotypes of black American culture and critiquing the ways they are regurgitated in art as symbols of “black experience”. And Monk is right to call out a lot of this as shallow and patronizing -but he very much is as well, as he is dismissive and de-legitimizing towards the kinds of black experiences those works come out of. In conversation with Golden near the end -a superb scene that exposes Monk’s deeper, modestly uglier sides, to himself as much as to us- the movie engages with surprising openness, with the rebuttal to Monk’s heretofore unquestioned position. Low-brow though he may find the books and movies of this ilk, he is confronted with the facts they do resonate with people, come from a place of some truth, and most crucially are not the fault of the black writers he has more tendency to resent than the white audiences and white systems within the publishing industry that exploit them as a trend. It’s fair to want more from black American literature, and that very much is what Jefferson’s position appears to be, but recognizing how vast and multi-faceted the ‘African-American experience’ is does not negate certain works that just happen to be embraced by a white mainstream. The idea of the black experience as a monolith is as much an American Fiction as the cynical parody that Monk writes.
It is more nuance than I expected, both from the film’s conceit and from the character himself. And ultimately Jefferson ends it in a place of deliberately unfulfilling compromise, albeit coloured by some amusing meta-textual irony. American Fiction may be a subtly brilliant movie, as it contrasts a fairly unmarketable black story with a send-up of creating a marketable one. Shrewd in its cynicism yet emotionally grounded. A black movie to be sure.
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