American Fiction, 2023.
Directed by Cord Jefferson.
Starring Jeffrey Wright, Tracee Ellis Ross, John Ortiz, Erika Alexander, Leslie Uggams, Adam Brody, Issa Rae, and Sterling K. Brown.
SYNOPSIS:
Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction, based on Percival Everett’s novel Erasure, arrives on Blu-ray bereft of bonus features, which is kind of crazy for a movie this good and thought-provoking. Hopefully that oversight will be corrected in the near future. In the meantime, though, you do get a code for a digital copy too.
This is a hard review for me to write, simply because my experience in life has been pretty much the 180-degree opposite of the issues explored in American Fiction. In fact, at a work event once, we did an icebreaker where people explained the origins of their names, and I simply said, “I’m pretty sure my name means ‘regular white guy.’”
I got a lot of laughs, but it’s true. Aside from growing up with an abusive, mentally ill mother, my life has pretty much resided in the middle of a bell curve. I went to college, got married and had a couple kids, and have consistently earned well above the median income in the United States for a while now.
I can’t relate to the experiences of Thelonius “Monk” Ellison (Jeffrey Wright), who is told by his agent that he’s having trouble selling his latest novel because it’s not “black enough,” although I was happy to go along for the ride in American Fiction. After all, there were other aspects of his life I could relate too, especially since I’m an aspiring novelist myself.
Directed by first-timer Cord Jefferson, who also wrote the script based on Percival Everett’s novel Erasure, this film charts a pivotal sequence of events in Monk’s life. Along with the less-than-satisfying news from his agent, his sister dies, forcing him into a caretaker role for his mother who’s been slipping into Alzheimer’s disease while his newly-out-of-the-closet brother decides he needs to make up for lost time.
Frustrated by the major success of a novel called We’s Lives in Da Ghetto, by Sintara Golden (Issa Rae), he writes My Pafology under the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh. It’s riddled with the same kind of stereotypical tropes as Sintara’s book, but Monk’s agent is able to sell it to a publisher who offers $750,000. A movie deal quickly follows.
Monk is reluctant to agree to the book’s publication, but, feeling pressured by the mounting costs of his mother’s care, he goes along with his agent’s recommendation to embrace the Stagg R. Leigh persona. Not only that, but he pushes his alter ego to its limits, concocting an escaped convict on the run.
The media loves the story, of course, and the book becomes a big hit. He gets around the possibility of being recognized by having his face obscured and voice altered during interviews. Soon he begins embracing the character more than he should, which causes a large amount of self-loathing and has a negative impact on his nascent relationship with Coraline (Erika Rose Alexander).
The situation starts becoming untenable when Monk is recruited to join the panel of judges, including Sintara, for a major literary award. His book, now simply called Fuck, makes the short list for the prize despite his vehement opposition (none of them know he really wrote it), and he sees first-hand how people like me might embrace a book that traffics in stereotypes in its pursuit of “authenticity.”
I say “people like me” because I could see myself falling for the ruse, like movie producer Wiley Valdespino, played by Adam Brody (his treatment of others on a movie set is abhorrent, however), and his fellow literary judges who are white.
I hope I wouldn’t, though. One of my characters in the novel I’m writing is Black, but she doesn’t adhere to any of the tired tropes that Monk rails against. That doesn’t mean that I, Mr. Regular White Guy, really understand the Black experience in America, but I hope it means that I can create Black characters who are people who happen to be Black.
In Monk’s case, he’s simply a writer. He doesn’t view himself as a purveyor of “Black authenticity” or anything like that. As he points out to a bookstore clerk when seeing that his novels have been shelved under African-American Studies: “The print is the blackest thing in this book!”
In the end, as with all great movies, American Fiction simply leaves us to ponder these ideas. No film or book or incident will ever truly erase racism, but hopefully the arc of history truly does bend toward justice, as Martin Luther King, Jr. said.
Incredibly, such a thought-provoking movie has zero bonus features on the Blu-ray disc. Not even the trailer. I hope that’s because Criterion has nabbed the rights and is preparing a feature-laden edition that will do this movie justice.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★★★★ / Movie: ★★★★
Brad Cook
