American Fiction Is Bad And I’m Tired Of Pretending It Isn’t
With the New Year well upon us and awards season kicking off it is almost cliché to say that 2023 was a very good year for movies. While articles bemoaning the supposed year of the “flopbuster” are in no short-supply, it is undeniable that the dramatic calibre of popular film-making is stronger than it has been in years. The highest grossing films of the year remain a sharp comedy about feminism, capitalism, and identity and a three hour biopic partially in black and white. Smaller character dramas took centre-stage like never before, with the likes of Past Lives and The Holdovers dominating awards discussion, and a borderline art film retelling of the story of Frankenstein has captivated audiences upon the year’s end.
Yet, one of the films included in these discussions is Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction, and I can’t for the life of me understand why.
American Fiction, like many films tilting at awards, came late on the scene in the year 2023. After premiering at TIFF it opened to quieter fanfare than most of the other top contenders, but has proven something of a sleeper hit. Discourse surrounding the film has only grown with time — a rather remarkable feat considering just how little the film offers in way of conversation.
Before I voice my critiques, I want to contextualize my negative reaction to the film with its positive traits. It is, by all accounts, incredibly well acted — Jeffrey Wright has yet to disappoint in any role. The supporting cast too, from Tracee Ellis Ross to Sterling K. Brown, turn in commendable performances. This is all the more praise-worthy considering just how little these actors were given to work with.
Now, with all the positives addressed, let’s get on to the actual review.
American Fiction adapts Percival Everett’s 2001 novel Erasure. Having not read the book, I can’t comment on its quality, but from what I have been able to gather the overall narratives are very similar, albeit with a key difference being the experimental structure Everett employs to tell his story. Given the vast differences between novels and films as media, it is unsurprising that Jefferson or anyone else involved in production opted to drop the experimental style and embedded narratives of Erasure — there are just some things novels do that films can’t, and vice versa. That being said, watching the film I couldn’t help but feel that something was lost in translation — perhaps a stylistic argument, perhaps a character nuance, or perhaps a point.
As it stands, American Fiction is many things, but experimental it is not. On the contrary — it is the most by-the-numbers family drama I have seen all year. The phrase “family drama” might surprise a reader who hasn’t seen the film; indeed, it surprised me as it unfolded. How could it be that this film — which proudly touts itself as a blunt “no bullshit” takedown of White America’s faux-attempts at diversity — seemed more interested in the mundane relationships of the protagonist’s upper-middle-class family and their upper-middle-class problems than its central premise? Not having access to any data as of writing, I wouldn’t be surprised if the majority of the film’s script was dedicated to its side-plots than its main draw.
The central premise of the film is that Thelonious “Monk” Ellison (Jeffrey Wright), a struggling novelist and literature professor, writes an intentionally trashy and exploitative book supposedly about the “black experience”, when in reality it is little more than trauma porn that caters to white audience’s desire to feel bad for struggling black people. The reason he does this is because his mother is rapidly developing Alzheimer’s and needs to be placed in an expensive home.
Setting aside the absurdity of a man desperately in need of fast cash turning to novel-writing of all hustles, the film itself doesn’t seem sold on its own problem. The Ellisons are shown to be incredibly wealthy, owning a large beachfront house which the mother will soon vacate, and seemingly employing a live-in housekeeper (I say “seemingly” as this character’s relationship to the family is so vaguely defined I had to Google the character to figure out what she was). This wealth is justified by Monk pointing out that everyone in his family save him are doctors. Given the combined income of three-to-four doctors and one established professor could easily cover the costs of a care home, the film has to justify Monk’s writing by declaring that all three Ellison siblings (Wright, Ross, and Brown) have recently divorced and their respective spouses took everything from them.
The bizarre choice to include three off-screen and narratively unimportant divorces comes across less as genuine character work or development and more as an uninspired way to force Monk to write his book. Rather than justify his writing through, say, a character flaw, of which he has many, the film feels the need to contrive a scenario where he has no choice but to write a shitty book. ‘It wasn’t my fault, you see, I had to do it! Capitalism made me write uninspired work!’ (A sentence which should be the film’s official tagline).
On a simple dramatic level, American Fiction is just not that interesting. It devotes most of its screentime to an overtold story of a middle class family coming to terms with the deaths of several of its members and the ageing of others. It offers nothing new or noticeable to this tired formula, and yet deems this interesting enough to warrant the bulk of its 117 minute runtime. Presumably because the filmmakers realized that their main plot wasn’t thick enough to pad out a feature length film on its own.
Despite the captivating premise and title of American Fiction, it has surprisingly little to say about either America or Fiction. It’s a satire with all the punch, wit, and insight of a Twitter thread.
The film opens with Monk debating a white student in one of his classes who objects to the fact that he’s written the title of the text they’re discussing on the whiteboard due to the title containing the N-word. Monk halfheartedly tries to sidestep the discussion, but the student does not give in and all but begs for the N-word to be completely removed from discussion. Monk decides to remind the student that he is black and she is not, and she promptly storms out of the classroom in a weepy huff.
This feels like less of a dramatic thesis statement and more like an old man complaining about how soft kids these days are getting. The argument put forth by the white student is a caricature of an argument someone like her would actually make, and she provides no convincing reason to even entertain her worldview. Of course, one could argue that this is precisely because her worldview is logically facile. The person who would argue such a thing would be a bore.
For a film which touts itself as an intellectual exploration, American Fiction displays an almost comical lack of intellectual curiosity. It brings up real issues in white literary culture, but seems to want to do nothing more than say “this is a problem”. There’s no desire to identify the root of the problem, or how/why it comes about other than a handful of platitudes thrown out by side characters. ‘It’s because white people just want to feel good’ argues Monk’s agent at one point. That paraphrased line is the extent of the film’s interrogation of its central problem; ‘white people are just like that’.
After his mental duel with his snowflake student, Monk decides to see what the current black literary darling is. He discovers, to his horror, that it is a book called We’s Lives in Da Ghetto by Sintara Golden (Issa Rae) — a novel wherein black people talk like cartoon characters from the 80’s. It is this book which inspires him to write his own pandering novel, setting into motion a chain of events which will lead him to directly question Sintara as to why she writes that way.
Sintara proceeds to give Monk a decent defense. Despite his objections to her book’s portrayal of black culture, she argues that poor black people still live and talk this way, and just because his experience is upper-middle-class doesn’t mean that the stereotypical black experience isn’t true anymore. This is one of the few moments where the film feels genuinely interested in interrogating opposing points of view, which makes the film’s previous boredom with exploring his student’s point of view even more baffling. Why make a strong argument to one worldview the film seemingly does not fully agree with and not the other? Even on its own, it’s an odd apology as it doesn’t actually respond to the central critique leveled by Monk — that these narratives pander to white audiences.
There’s a certain irony to the one time the film feels interested in entertaining an opposing point of view. The defense is so half-hearted and basic that it almost comes across as pandering itself. Despite American Fiction’s implicit promise to speak the uncomfortable truth, there’s very little actual uncomfortable truths to it. The film starts with a viewpoint — white people patronize black people and pandering black stories — which it expects its audience to already agree with. The film isn’t remotely didactic or polemic, despite the fact that it clearly wants to be. It never challenges its central argument because it doesn’t want its central argument to be challenged — it just wants to be right and feel superior for being smarter than the dumb-dumbs who disagree with it. And lest any member of the audience feel challenged, don’t worry. You, dear viewer, could never be one of those dumb-dumbs. You’re actually one of the smart ones, because you agree with this movie and chose to watch it because of that.
For all the film’s criticism of white people being pandered to by black writers, I couldn’t help but notice the blizzardingly white audience in the theatre with me roaring with laughter at the token “white people are dumb” jokes thrown at them. In a cruel twist of fate, American Fiction is the exact type of story it aims to critique — a pandering story about black experiences that white people can feel good watching.
After walking out of the movie theatre, however, I couldn’t shake the awkward thought, a vestige of self-doubt, gnawing away at the back of my mind. Is American Fiction meant to be dumb?
When Monk first writes his book, he anonymously sends it in to publishers believing that they’ll realize it’s a joke mocking white people’s sensibilities. Instead, the publishers love it, and want to publish immediately. Monk proceeds to spend the next hour pulling various faces which all boil down to “how could this person possibly be this stupid?”
The central conflict comes to a head when his pseudonymously-published book — which he renames to “Fuck” in a last-ditch attempt to make people understand it’s a joke — is put in the running for a literary competition he’s been appointed to judge. In classic American Fiction fashion, rather than interrogate the obvious and interesting dilemma of an author judging a competition that one of his books is in the running for, it instead treats this as a chance to hear other people’s view of the book. When ‘Fuck’ inevitably wins the competition, we see Monk walk up to the stage ready to come clean.
Rather than see Monk’s come-to-Jesus moment, we instead hard-cut to him in talks with a Hollywood screenwriter discussing this very scene in the film adaptation of ‘Fuck’. Monk pitches several possible versions of this scene to the screenwriter — including one where he’s shot to death by trigger-happy cops (Get it? Get it? Because he’s black?) — before walking off-set, giving The Nod to a black actor in a blaxploitation flick, and triumphantly driving away in his expensive car.
It is this scene, more than any, which raises the ultimate question: is American Fiction just ‘Fuck’? Is the film itself meant to be a recreation of ‘Fuck’ — a black film pandering to white audiences where the point is to notice that it’s a joke? Simply put, is disliking American Fiction the point?
As the film cycles through endings proffered by Monk, it becomes clear that the film version of ‘Fuck’ is just the story that we’ve seen unfold. This, of course, brings forth the possibility that the film is intentionally dumb and pandering to white audiences as part of a grand jab at that very same audience.
I cannot understate just how much I have thought about this question in the days following my leaving the theatre. It might just be the most devastating question any black film could direct at a white audience — “are you cool enough to get the point?”
And ultimately, I’m not sure whether this is the point. It might be the point the film wants to make. It intends to be a dumb film that panders to white audiences, but at the same time so much of the film doesn’t reinforce that point. Why spend an inordinate amount of time focusing on thematically empty depictions of a boring upper-middle-class family? Why would the pandering depiction still take the time to remind the audience that white college students are dumb — a view the filmmakers genuinely appear to hold? Why give such a half-hearted defense of Sintara’s book if the film ultimately still believes it’s pandering?
But at the same time, how else could one explain the ending? Monk is clearly meant to be a writer stand-in, triumphantly making money off the stupidity of white people. Why else would the film dabble in metafiction wherein the pandering work has been turned into the script for the very film the audience is watching? Why else would the film present itself as speaking truth to power —as ‘Fuck’ does — without saying anything actually challenging?
Of course, the knee-jerk reaction to this argument is to claim that American Fiction doesn’t understand how empty it is. Even if it is meant to be intentionally dumb, that doesn’t explain the total lack of interest the film has in discussing the topic it supposedly satirizes. Of course, that could be the point of the satire, but then that raises the question of what the point of the film is. Is it simply to feel smart because you understood the joke, unlike the dumb white masses? That is still functionally identical to feeling smart because you saw a caricature of beliefs you disagree with get taken down a notch in the cinematic equivalent of a shower argument.
But again, the ending throws a wrench in this. Why end the film like that? Was it simply a ‘fuck you, I got mine’ take by Cord Jefferson congratulating himself on becoming successful in such an overwhelmingly white industry? I would say that would make the film worth little more than a Jay-Z lyric, but even Jay-Z songs usually make an interesting point about the black struggle in America.
Even if the point of American Fiction was to simply be a bad film that only part of the audience would understand, that would be such a hollow and self-satisfying reason to make a film. No matter how you slice it, the film carries an aura of unearned smugness that has clearly resonated with many audiences. Even if the film is a satirical joke, it’s a joke with shockingly little to say other than “white people are stupid”.
But still, the doubt remains, and I’m more than willing to accept American Fiction as an intentionally bad film. Either way, the only appropriate response to the film is still going to be “it’s a bad movie”. And I will continue to shout this fact from the rooftops, even if everyone else disagrees with me. You could argue that that’s a very condescending and self-congratulatory attitude to confer upon myself, to which I would agree. I really am just like Monk.