Some of the past decade’s best racial satires have explored the politics of sounding Black or, conversely, sounding white. In the 2018 Boots Riley film Sorry to Bother You, a Black telemarketer (Lakeith Stanfield) finds success at his workplace—if only to discover the pitfalls of capitalism—when he adopts a stereotypically “white” voice. There’s also the FX show Atlanta, which devoted much of its comedy to this idea of race as performance. In a particularly funny scene from Season 2, a white radio DJ implores Al (a.ka. Paper Boi, played by Brian Tyree Henry) to sound more “cool” while recording an advertisement. On his second take, the vexed rapper reads the script the exact same way but adds a forceful “n---a” at the end, to the DJ’s approval.
Five years later, this phenomenon, broadly referred to as code-switching, takes center stage in the new Oscar-buzzy film American Fiction. Directed and written by Emmy-winning TV creator Cord Jefferson, the film is a sendup of the Black trauma-porn industrial complex and the stereotypical images of Black people (criminal, downtrodden, inarticulate, etc.)
American Fiction (now in select theaters) has already won many prizes, including the People’s Choice Award at this year’s Toronto Film Festival where it premiered. Critics have called it “scathing,” “searing,” “biting,” and “sharp,” as they have with many recent films indicting white liberals. However, I failed to understand what was so supposedly brilliant about this movie, or how it moves a decades-long conversation about racial commodification forward. Is American Fiction really a revelatory work about being pigeon-holed as a Black artist, or is it an apologetic statement aimed at the ignorant, white consumers it attempts to lambast?
Sterling K. Brown, Jeffrey Wright, and Erika Alexander.
Claire FolgerAdapted from Everett Percival’s 2001 novel Erasure, the film stars Jeffrey Wright as a cranky English professor/author named Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, who struggles to carve out a space for himself in the white literary establishment. Despite his aversion to the concept of race, he finds himself in an odd conundrum based on his racial status. As Monk observes in Erasure, “I was a victim of racism by failing to acknowledge racial difference and by failing to have my art be defined as an exercise in racial self-expression.”
If only the film were willing to sit with that irony and the complexity of Monk as a difficult protagonist. Instead, Jefferson, who’s discussed how his struggles in the entertainment industry mirror Monk’s, turns a compelling character study into a heavy-handed satire about the expectations placed upon Black creators. Imagine Robert Townsend’s Hollywood Shuffle focused on the book industry, but with none of the outrageousness and half the bite.
Monk is a peculiar, occasionally charming fellow—although, in the novel, he’s a lot more off-putting. As an author, he writes about obscure topics that even his family members can’t be bothered to consume. When publishers reject his latest esoteric novel, demanding he pitch something “more Black,” Monk writes a parody of the sort of “gritty,” “raw” depictions of Black life white readers dubiously eat up out of rage. (Everett’s novel was largely seen as a response to the popularity of Sapphire’s Push.)
Monk has his agent pitch his draft under the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh, only for a top-tier publishing house to eagerly extend an offer. At the same, Monk’s family is hit with multiple tragedies, including the arbitrary death of his sister Lisa (Tracee Ellis Ross) and his mother’s (Leslie Uggams) Alzheimer’s diagnosis. Now financially responsible for her, Monk goes through with this Faustian deal, selling the book under a fake identity. Thus begins the big fat lie that drives the plot and makes up the film’s repetitive humor.
Monk begrudgingly performs the character of Stagg, a tough convict, for various industry folks over the phone and in-person as his book—first titled My Pafology, then Fuck—becomes increasingly popular. This is really where American Fiction’s satirical elements start and end. I’d also argue that it’s the least dynamic part of Wright’s performance. (People really seemed to get a kick out of Felix Leiter saying “n---a,” though.) Throughout the film, Stagg impresses various white (and, occasionally, Black) people with this sense of danger and “authenticity.” It’s the sort of mocking (albeit hackneyed) depiction of cringe-y white people featured in Kenya Barris’ work. However, I kept waiting for that same ridicule to be applied to Monk’s character, whose hang-ups about race and depictions of poor Black people seem equally ripe for critique.
While this film makes some valid points about white people’s monolithic view of the so-called “Black experience,” it’s hard not to question Monk’s discomfort in consuming stories that don’t mirror his own. In Erasure, Everett makes a point to highlight Monk’s privileged socioeconomic status and, as a result, his occasional anti-Blackness. American Fiction doesn’t shy from showing his upper-class roots, either; both of Monk’s siblings and deceased father are doctors with their own practices. Their family has a beach house in Boston and a longtime housekeeper, whose portrayal feels… antiquated. There’s also a running joke about how Monk exclusively dates white women until his newest girlfriend, Coraline (Erika Alexander), enters the picture. Yet none of this really factors into his characterization in the film.
Issa Rae and Nicole Kempskie.
Orion PicturesThat said, it’s hard to digest the film’s critiques through Monk’s lens. While some of his complaints–like having his book of Greek mythology categorized under African American Studies by virtue of his having authored it—are reasonable, how much of his frustration is driven by respectability politics and his struggles with his own identity? The film doesn’t really care to decide.
Likewise, there’s a scene of him cringing while consuming the profane dialogue in the 2005 50 Cent film Get Rich or Die Tryin’. (Watching along with him, I did not.) In another, he pops into a Q&A for author Sintara Golden (Issa Rae), who’s promoting her newly acclaimed book We’s Lives In Da Ghetto, and leaves in frustration. Golden’s book is arguably the closest thing Monk has to an antagonist in the film: While it admittedly sounds poorly written, Monk, who admits to only reading excerpts, solely rejects it based on the class of Black people it presents—as if great Black art hasn’t explored criminality, family dysfunction, or economic struggle.
To that point, it’s inaccurate to say the film doesn’t attempt to challenge Monk’s point of view at all, even if it’s in a hurried, unsatisfying manner. Toward the end of the film, Monk finally has a confrontation with Golden—who Jefferson renders a confounding character—about her work. The two go back and forth, reciting what sounds like Twitter discourse after a trailer for a slavery movie comes out. At one point, Monk actually says the phrase “Black trauma porn.”
Golden sufficiently checks him on his condescending attitude and reminds him that his problem with her work seems to be about white people’s reaction to it. Nevertheless, her words feel meaningless by the end of the film and completely irrelevant to Monk’s arc. Instead of taking a beat with this conversation, the film zooms back out to its broad take on “the industry” and Monk’s decision to become a sellout. Thus, the film proceeds to attempt a trollish, “experimental” ending that’s both underwhelming and further muddles its sentiment.
If this film has any redeeming elements, they’re the performances, which elevate the film’s generic family drama. Tracee Ellis Ross is dazzling in the brief moments she’s on screen. And Sterling K. Brown, who’s already receiving awards buzz and nominations for his role as Monk’s spiraling gay brother Cliff, is typically irresistible—even if his character feels like the broadest depiction of gay man.
Overall, American Fiction feels primarily suited for the liberal white audiences it makes fun of, those who are as susceptible to misunderstanding Black people and willing to take some (soft) lashings for it. As a Black viewer, though, I couldn’t relate to the sense of shame about mainstream Black art running through the film, even if certain recent projects (like almost every Get Out knockoff) have made me shudder. Maybe this is because Jefferson doesn’t acknowledge the abundance of compelling Black literature and art that exists, including his own. Maybe that’s because this film paints a cultural landscape that solely consists of white opinions and tastemakers. That seems like the film’s most grandiose lie.
