American Fiction: Film Review
Cord Jefferson has been nominated for the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for American Fiction and it truly deserves it.
The film, based on the novel Erasure by Percival Everett, stars Jeffrey Wright as Thelonious ‘Monk’ Ellison, an author shopping around his next novel without much success. To make a point, he writes My Pafology, a ‘memoir’ about a convict, under the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh. His manuscript becomes the subject of a bidding war and he is offered millions for the movie rights.
Monk becomes conflicted when his “trash” novel brings him the prospect of big bucks. If he takes the money, he is perpetuating Black stereotypes and no better than authors like Sintara Golden (Issa Rae). Naturally, he’s not proud of what he’s done and he keeps it a secret, causing him to live a double life. When he has to talk or meet people as Stagg, he dumbs himself down and develops a street persona to help sell the convict’s story.
This sharp satire explores what ‘Black stories’ are allowed to find mass market success and what types of stories Black authors are expected to write. According to the film, it’s the ones that pander to and satisfy the tastes of self-conscious white people (or words to that effect). The ones that reinforce racial stereotypes by telling stories about gangsters, drugs, poverty, police brutality and slavery (“Black trauma porn”). This film cleverly challenges the box Black storytellers have been placed in for years. If white people can write about anything, why can’t Black people? They have more to offer than those stories but there is less interest in them.
The smart script is the highlight but it is brought to life wonderfully by Wright, Rae and Tracee Ellis Ross and Sterling K. Brown as Monk’s siblings. Wright deserves his Oscar for his nuanced and subtle portrayal of the conflicted Monk but I was most thrilled by Brown’s supporting actor nomination. He plays a character so far removed from what we’ve seen from him before. Cliff is a plastic surgeon who is fresh out of the closet following the end of his marriage and he is living it up. We see a whole new side to Brown and he is both hilarious and moving.
American Fiction is a frank and amusing satire about the Black stories white people are willing to consume. As a white person, it really gave me food for thought and made me reckon with what stories I choose to engage with.
In cinemas from Friday 2nd February