Last night, in a rare moment of intersection with the Zeitgeist, I watched American Fiction, a film of shockingly recent vintage (2023, for heaven's sake). I'm happy to say the I enjoyed it greatly, it gave me many a laugh, and impressed me with its cleverness and with the sharpness and boldness of its satire. As all the world probably knows, American Fiction tells the story of Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison, a black academic and frustrated writer, who loses his job (after a student objects to his writing the name of a certain Flannery O'Connor short story* on the whiteboard) and who finds himself facing big problems in his life – notably his mother's Alzheimer's – and with no money. Out of despair and cynicism, and as a kind of dark joke, he decides to pose as a stereotypical blaaack badass and write a grisly, foul-mouthed, clichéd blaaack memoir of the kind that is likely to attract the interest of an increasingly deranged publishing industry, making big money off condescending stereotypes of black life. To his amazement it works, and our hero is soon passing himself off as fugitive criminal 'Stagg R. Leigh' and trousering a huge advance, as well as attracting the interest of a hot-shot Hollywood producer. His memoir is initially called My Pafology, but in one of the funniest scenes in the film 'Stagg' forces the publishers to give it the even 'blacker', even more 'authentic' title Fuck.
It might seem improbable that an obscure academic could convincingly pretend to be 'Stagg R. Leigh', but happily he is played by the excellent Jeffrey Wright, who makes it all seem perfectly believable (the rest of the cast are spot-on too). Events move to a climax, with an awards ceremony at which Monk, one of the judges, finds Stagg R. Leigh's book winning. How will it play out? In several different ways, as it turns out: what begins as a straight satire ends as metafiction, with alternative endings tried out by the hot-shot Hollywood producer, who finally, inevitably opts for the bloodiest and most stereotyped, the most 'black'. American Fiction (which is based on a novel, Erasure by Percival Everett) is the debut movie of director Cord Jefferson. He is clearly going to be one to watch.
* 'The Artificial Nigger', one of her best.
Yes really good film N, gloriously defying the woke zeitgheist, as was Monk. I felt he wrote his "authentic" black satire out of profound frustration and anger rather than cynicism, and wanted people to get the angry joke. When they didn't he made a fortune (which he desperately needed) but he was appalled by that outcome.
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