Film Review: American Fiction

9/10. Excellent. Because my partner managed to snatch tickets to the free showings of the Toronto International Film Festival’s People’s Choice awards.

American Fiction, directed by Cord Jefferson, is a dark postmodern comedy. But not the highbrow comedy of Wes Anderson or Woody Allen, that results in a little snort, and the rest of the audience staring at you if you snort too loudly. American Fiction is more of the rolling laughter at an uneasy joke, the type that escalates as the movie progresses and the viewer becomes aware that it is in fact intended to be funny. Or maybe it’s because I watched it with an equally pretentious yet somehow irreverent film festival audience. The question at the heart of the movie asks if stories created for popular consumption have any aesthetic value, specifically if they portray certain disenfranchised groups in tired and flat stereotypes. All wrapped up in an excellent movie about the modern black experience in America.

American Fiction is Cord Jefferson’s feature directorial debut, a long-time writer on prestige television shows. It’s an adaptation of an early aughts novel, Erasure, by Percival Everett, which I haven’t read, but now intend to. It stars Jeffrey Wright as Thelonius “Monk” Ellison, a black professor and writer who, in his crusade against what he considers pulp fiction that reduces black people to caricatures, writes a satirical novel of the same nature, only to have it taken as a genuine attempt at literature. Throughout the film, we are introduced to his dysfunctional family: a stern sister and capricious brother, both doctors struggling with their love lives, his mother, whose dementia worsens as the film progresses, and his girlfriend who has to deal with his stress. Spoilers ahead.

There is very little sign of inexperience, in part thanks to the strength of the leading and supporting cast, as well as the directing and writing. The humour is on the mark, the jokes delivered with relish and pathos. Whether it’s the opening scene of a white student offended by Monk’s quoting of the n-word, his sister’s will which references passing while in congress with Idris Elba, Monk’s attempts to self-sabotage his novel by insisting that it be renamed Fuck, only for the publisher to come back in agreement, or a panel of three white jurors advocating Monk’s satirical novel while saying “we need to listen to black voices”, to the shocked of the two black jurors, all of the humour in American Fiction is on the nose. The first joke of the movie is perhaps that Thelonious is nicknamed Monk: It’s a definite reference to the Jazz great Thelonious Monk, but a bit nonsensical all the same.

There were also jokes that I didn’t quite get: at one point, his brother complains that he was mistaken for Tyler Perry in a bar, which is then referenced again later. Embarrassingly, I had to search it up afterwards, but Tyler Perry wasn’t a particularly poor-looking actor. It was through a few clicks that I found the kicker: his most famous role was one where he plays a heavyset woman with exaggerated mannerisms. Funny for sure, but only more appropriate because this sort of satirical comedy is what Monk rails against: black actors, or people with creative direction, continuing to portray black people as bereft of education, culture, and wealth.

American Fiction itself is also self-referential in nature: a movie written by a black man, directed by a black man, and starring mostly black actors, would certainly be a black movie. The movie would fall into a category of black art that Monk deems significant, one that has nuance more than gangs and violence. Simultaneously, it addresses many of the subjects broached in those works with a certain degree of nuance: intergenerational trauma and violence, homophobia, male anger, drug use, stereotyping, money issues, and of course, interactions with corny white people. That this fictional piece exploring the place of trauma porn provides a perfect alternative movie makes Jefferson’s view quite clear.

Part of the reason I found this movie so interesting is because I’ve spent a long time meditating on this subject, within the Asian American context of course. Is it still worth celebrating movies like Crazy Rich Asians or Shang-Chi? Movies that tell the same old stories, portray Asians as flat boba liberals who were traumatized when their lunch smelled different? For the longest time, I was of Monk and Jefferson’s camp, that these works were tired and reductionist. Of course, a comparison of the lowest common denominators of Asian American stories to African American stories is unfair: only a few works involving Yellow Peril themes are strictly offensive to Asian Americans, whereas black stories consistently consist of drugs, gangs, and crime. So, to say that Kim’s Convenience and Fresh Off the Boat are comparable to The Wire is wrong; The Wire is a much superior television show of course, but the idea that they reinforce worn tropes is indubitable.

And is this a sin? As Sintara, the writer of supposedly bad novels in American Fiction asks, is it so bad to give the people what they want? To give white people, and even people of colour, the blockbuster, the summer beach read? Monk argues that it is so inexcusable precisely because they know what they’re doing, and it has no value. Sintara argues that her books are someone’s stories, and even if it might not sit well with Monk, the problem isn’t hers. The issue with writing a review of a film that’s still in theatres, or even worse, not in theatres yet, is that I can’t easily rewatch it or find the screenplay, so I don’t remember what the rest of the argument entailed.

But I think that both sides of this debate have reason. To me, there is no doubt that whatever the culture factory pumps out, no matter what minority the characters, will be unimpressive. It’s not the fault of the individual actors, but society as a whole. But for those who are capable of this line of reasoning, it is perhaps important that they don’t contribute to these productions. If they think they can do better, they should! They should tell their complex rich stories. And that is why Monk is so angry in the second half of the movie: his novel, originally a practical joke on the industry, has been taken at face value. Instead of creating an important black story, he’s further polluted the space with the material he deems worthless. And that is inexcusable.

I’ve watched two TIFF movies this year, and though the other was great as well, American Fiction takes the cake. Whatever your cup of tea, it’s worth your time. I’m happy it won the People’s Choice Awards, and I’ll be cheering for it this awards season.

Between the initial composition of this piece and its publishing, I have finished reading Erasure, by Percival Everett. Wonderful book, and the film was a great adaptation. To my surprise and great entertainment, there was a seven-chapter excerpt of the satirical book that Monk wrote.