STREAMING REVIEW: American Fiction (2023)

Jason Rogers reviews Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction starring Jeffrey Wright.

A literary writer, Monk, writes a novel that panders to his audience as a piece of social commentary, but it becomes a commercial success and heralded as a great piece of writing for the times. This stresses Monk out more as he sees the book rise in its success.

I was recommended to watch this movie by some friends. I usually avoid movies around writers, because I have to experience being a writer everyday, so why would I want to see it on the big screen. It’s like when people recommend that I watch a movie about a teacher. No. I am a teacher and I see all that stuff everyday in real life. Why would I want to see some fictionalized version of a teacher’s story?

Anyway, I watched it and it was very good. Thelonious ‘Monk’ Ellison (played by Jeffrey Wright) is a professor and author of Literature style writing – the kind of writing you would read your junior and senior year of university if you studied Literature. But, you would probably only read him in an African American Literature class. I have a BA and three MA’s in Literature. Reading books like Ellison’s The Invisible Man, The Autobiography of Frederick Douglas, DuBois’s The Souls of Black Folk, and Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God only happened because of an African American Literature class I took during my BA studies. I haven’t met many lay readers who have picked up those books, even though they are amazing. Even though Toni Morrison won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993, I haven’t met many people who have read her outside of an assignment for university. But, my students have constantly suggested reading The Rose That Grew From Concrete by Tupac and Gone ‘Til November by Lil Wayne. Jason Reynolds has started to gain popularity among the youth with his book A Long Way Down (which revolves around gang violence and the aftermath of a shooting). Some students commented that they were surprised Reynolds was Black after they saw his picture.

I say all that because it reflects what Monk was dealing with when he wrote Fuck as a bitter satire aimed at how boxed-in white people want their Black experience and Black stories to be. I was teaching high school English near where I live. We were talking about Black Panther (2018) and why it was so popular. One of my Black students raised his hand and said, “Too much of Black literature is ‘my master whipped me’ and about inner city life. Sometimes, I just want to read a story about a n* in space fighting dragons.” That comment made a lot of sense to me. I replied, “So, you must really love Blade?” The class hadn’t heard of this movie series about a vampire that could walk in the daylight and had an old white guy make all his weapons. We discussed Independence Day (1996) and how the two heroes of the story were a Black guy and a Jew, and how this made a lot of Middle Eastern countries angry. We talked about J in Men In Black (1997), and how these fit with the idea of just wanting to see a ‘n* in space fighting dragons.’

I’m not going to say that I understand what Monk was feeling or stressed about, but I have come across similar sentiments from students I’ve taught over the years. American Fiction is a great movie to watch, but I don’t think the point is really going to hit home with many people like it should. However, there’s a lot to discuss and learn from American Fiction. It got me hooked and made me remember my university days and teaching. It seems to me like American Fiction could have easily also been about how LGBT are portrayed in Literature, how women are portrayed in film, etc.

As a screenwriter, I wish I could write about social commentary like this, but the market these days is geared towards movies that entertain. People want to zone out for a few hours and not have to think about life. Hopefully, the times will change and we will see a lot of movies about social ills and films suggesting valid solutions to social problems.

Jason Rogers reviews Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction starring Jeffrey Wright.