Films like American Fiction are born out of frustration. It’s no secret that many Black narratives at the forefront of American culture, both in literature and film, are based around themes of trauma, poverty and crime. Also problematic: much of the audience for these narratives are white. There’s even a term for it: “Black trauma porn.” For every Get Out, there are dozens of ill-advised copycats like 2020’s Antebellum or Amazon’s Them that evoke traumatic imagery without the same level of complexity or tact. And then there’s mid- ‘00s fare like Get Rich or Die Tryin’, projects so stereotypical in their content that they approach self-parody. For whom are these narratives, ostensibly meant as entertainment? And how do they shape our expectations of what “Black art” should be? These are some of the questions writer-director Cord Jefferson attempts to tackle in his ambitious debut, American Fiction, a biting – if imperfect – satire, that emphasizes the frustration of being a Black artist, especially when your own story doesn’t align with the narrative others expect from you.
Based on the 2001 novel Erasure by Percival Everett, American Fiction follows Thelonious “Monk” Ellison (Jeffrey Wright), a persnickety novelist struggling to publish his latest book, a complicated reworking of Aeschylus’s The Persians which most publishers regard as not “Black enough.” Monk, whose reasonably privileged childhood distances him from what others see as the prototypical “African-American experience,” feels increasingly like a man standing alone in a crowd. Why, for instance, are his novels in the “African-American Literature” section, if there’s nothing explicitly Black about them?
Early on, Monk walks in on a reading by Sinatra Golden (Issa Rae), whose novel We’s Lives in Da Ghetto has quickly become a literary sensation. He finds Golden’s book, with its forced vernacular and stereotypical storylines, to be completely phony, but it clearly strikes a lucrative chord with its largely white audience. Listless and dealing with the financial pressure of caring for his dementia-stricken mother, Agnes (Leslie Uggams), Monk vents his frustrations one night into crafting the worst book possible. He titles it My Pafology, and crafts an overwrought crime saga about mobsters and deadbeat fathers that contains every cliché he can think of (this inspired sequence features Keith David as the novel’s patriarch, Willy the Wonker, who appears in his room and talks to him as he’s writing). Though intended solely as a spiteful joke, the book is instantly acquired for publishing.
Things only get more complicated from here. Monk’s pseudonym, “Stagger Leigh,” is an ostensible fugitive from the law, which garners the attention of the FBI. An increasingly wary Monk must pantomime as Stagger for his prospective publishers, an already difficult balancing act worsened when Hollywood comes calling in the form of an obnoxious film producer named Wiley (the perpetually underrated Adam Brody). Meanwhile, Monk’s personal life is also in shambles. Apart from his mother’s worsening illness, he shares a strained relationship with his recently out-of-the-closet brother, Cliff (Sterling K. Brown), and initiates a gentle, almost timid courtship with a new romantic interest, Coraline (Erika Alexander). Jefferson’s intention in contrasting these two narratives is clear. The more absurd Stagger’s story becomes, the more “raw” and “authentic” it appears to book buyers. Meanwhile, Monk’s real life is essentially a nuanced character drama, but which would audiences see as more genuine?
Unfortunately, this narrative juggling act yields uneven results. The domestic drama is played much straighter than the film’s overtly satirical elements, and it feels like neither get the proper amount of development to truly mesh. At 117 minutes, the film struggles to find a consistent pacing and tone, picking up during its funnier moments but drastically slowing when things get serious. It doesn’t help that the drama borders on trite. A few specific narrative decisions feel completely unearned, and Jefferson’s depiction of dementia is far too tame to be convincing.
Nevertheless, Jeffrey Wright sells every bit of it on-screen. Ceaselessly glum yet weirdly lovable all the same, Monk is compelling because he’s never placed on an ideological pedestal. It’s easy to understand and agree with most of his frustrations, but he can be quite stubborn and indignant, to the point where he struggles to see obvious truths lying right in front of him. Monk engages in his own sort of compartmentalization, a notion explored excellently in his interactions with Rae’s Golden. Golden may profit from what Monk sees as a disingenuous narrative, but the stories she tells come from real experiences, and his own perspective comes with limits. Wonderfully layered, this is a career-defining role for Wright and certainly one of the year’s finest performances.
Apart from Wright’s work, the other reason to recommend American Fiction is that it’s simply quite funny. Jefferson’s script fields an impressive joke-to-laugh ratio that most modern studio comedies fail to achieve, and it does so by prodding incisively at some genuinely thought-provoking ideas. While lacking the sheer, unhinged inventiveness of something like Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You, or even the daring quality of its closest cinematic forebearer, Spike Lee’s Bamboozled, there’s enough substance here to look forward to whatever Jefferson does next. One hopes that the next project will have a bit more personality behind the camera, but he’s not lacking for ideas or talent. Cynicism can only take you to a certain point, and it’s difficult to know your stance in a world that grows more absurd every day. American Fiction offers no clean takeaways to the questions it poses, but that self-admitted uncertainty isn’t cheap, it’s freeing.
Photo courtesy of MGM
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