Rating: R | Runtime: 117 minutes
Release Date: December 15th, 2023 (USA)
Studio: Amazon MGM Studios
Director(s): Cord Jefferson
Writer(s): Cord Jefferson / Percival Everett (novel Erasure)

White people think they want the truth, but they don’t. They want to feel absolved.

It’s the dejection that allows Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction (adapted from Percival Everett’s novel Erasure) to work. This satire isn’t educating us. It’s not calling something out and then presenting a solution. No, it’s simply giving life to the fatigue of our unfortunate reality. It’s making sure that while we laugh at the crazies, we must also cry with those who have no escape. Because that which reduces Black America into the base stereotypes white America’s money deems palatable is increasingly the only choice Black America has for success.

That’s not an easy tone to maneuver through. It’s why John Ortiz’s Arthur is crucial to the whole despite superficially just being the middleman that bridges the gap between lead Thelonious ‘Monk’ Ellison’s (Jeffrey Wright) depressing reality and the even more depressing nightmare spawned by his unlikely triumph. Arthur is the facilitator. He understands what Monk stands for and agrees with those sentiments to the point of overtly mocking those who aren’t “in” on the joke when Monk writes the very drivel he rails against as a serious “race-blind” novelist. But he also understands money and is willing to laugh his way to the bank.

Monk, however, is not. He’ll debase his integrity to take the paycheck and be done with the charade, but he’s ready to pull the plug the moment that charade snowballs out of control. Unfortunately, the momentum is no longer dictated by his wants and desires. Public consciousness takes the wheel and the market drives, rendering him nothing but a footnote to the commodity machine of what it has decided to exploit. So, now it’s either go with the current or watch it pass. Because it won’t stop. And anything he might say to try pumping the brakes will only light a different fire. The machine will make money off him regardless. The question is whether he’ll take a cut.

Add the familial drama of disease, death, new beginnings, and tragic endings and it becomes difficult to excuse the allure of selling out. It’s a question we ask ourselves each day: Why do the stupidest people seem to have all the wealth? The answer: Because they are stupid. Well, not stupid. Amoral. Yes, there’s something to the film’s message about “relating to people” too, but I think that is as much a satirical wink as the reduction of Black experience to salacious violence for white entertainment. Because Monk is correct in his thinking. He’s right to be frustrated and against everything he finds himself doing. That shouldn’t be swept under the rug as “being difficult.”

I’d have liked the film to engage with that a little more because there is a bit of mixed messaging in that regard, but I don’t think it ruins what otherwise works so well. Because most of the people who Monk “doesn’t relate to” aren’t amoral idiots. They simply want to be heard and not judged for enjoying something that might be problematic without context. It’s why Issa Rae’s Sintara Golden is as crucial as Arthur. She’s another mirror for Monk, one that points back at him in the opposite way. Because where Monk is “better than” Arthur for knowing when to stop, he only thinks he’s better than Sintara.

That dynamic is where we really see the complexity of the situation and how people like Monk can be as reductive as the lemmings who buy what Sintara admittedly wrote as a means to cater to their desires. That confusion is where the truth lies. That slippery slope where intelligence devolves into hollow sanctimony because Monk has stopped doing the work to see that some cultural changes in the relationship between art and commerce aren’t as black and white as he believes. There needs to be a middle ground. It might not be ideal, but it can become the only avenue towards fixing the problem from the inside.

I could have done without the ending(s) even if it drives home the point. It’s because it drives home that point so blatantly that I found it pandering. Except, of course, that the pandering is also the point. Those are the levels Jefferson and company are working on, though. You must embrace the clichés to challenge them, and, because of that inherent dejection, you must also center those clichés to reveal how tiring they are to those they harm. The annoyance is therefore the joke. Eradicating it is a futile endeavor. Minorities must instead evolve their mindsets to work within the racist system in ways that make its racism work for them.

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Jeffrey Wright stars as Thelonious “Monk” Ellison and Sterling K. Brown as Cliff Ellison in writer/director Cord Jefferson’s AMERICAN FICTION. Courtesy of Orion Pictures © 2023 Orion Releasing LLC. All Rights Reserved.