Thelonious Ellison, known as “Monk”, is a frustrated man. Indeed, the most recent manuscript of this professor of literature did not find a buyer among the publishers: “Write about the black experience,” they scolded him – white, obviously. Tired of seeing published and celebrated stories of misery, of “ trauma porn » according to him, Monk wrote a parody of this popular genre under a pseudonym. But here is theintelligentsia, still white, is enthusiastic, with increased income to boot. In dire need of money for family reasons, Monk continues the mystification. Cord Jefferson’s first film, American Fiction (American fiction) won the Audience Award at the Toronto International Film Festival.
First observation: Jeffrey Wright, alias Felix Leiter in recent James Bondis sublime as a grumpy intellectual caught in his own game. Second observation: Cord Jefferson, who collaborated as a screenwriter on series like The Good Place And Watchmen (he was also a consultant on Succession), perfectly masters the codes of satire.
What is American Fiction.
Loosely inspired by the novel Erasure, by Percival Everett, published in 2001, the film vervely criticizes the erasure of a diversity of African-American experiences in favor of an artificial current – this is Monk’s thesis – perpetuated by white literary authorities. So Monk got the idea for his parodic fiction (far from the wealthy environment in which he grew up) while attending the public reading of an author whose book, We’s Lives in Da Ghettobrings together, according to him, all the clichés he denounces.
An imperfect hero
Here, a clarification is necessary. Certainly, the film, like its source, is scathing as much towards the complacency of certain authors as towards the hypocrisy of the monks of the book industry. However, and this is what ensures thatAmerican Fiction never becomes a simplistic lampoon, the protagonist is not spared, far from it.
Like Nicolas Cage’s character in the recent Dream Scenario (Dream scenario), another university professor who takes for granted that publications and especially fame are things that are due to him, Monk sometimes displays a staggering blindness, even crass bad faith.
While his judgments may be well-founded, they are often the result of jealousy or unconscious male privilege. In this regard, a debate with the author of the famous We’s Lives in Da Ghetto proves enlightening.
Monk’s sister, played by the always wonderful Tracee Ellis Ross, also sets the record straight: the word “condescension” is used. When it’s his turn, their gay brother, played with panache by Sterling K. Brown, identifies Monk’s other blind spots.
Moreover, and Cord Jefferson trusts the public enough not to highlight the matter, these family tribulations constitute exactly the kind of “stories” that Monk is sorry not to find in bookstores.
Insidious racism
Basically, there is a clear relationship between American Fiction And bamboozled, by Spike Lee. Released in 2000, this film has as its protagonist a black employee of a TV station who, no longer able to tolerate the prevailing racism, wishes to see his contract terminated. To this end, he created a hyper-racist show, with black actors sporting blackface : we will have no choice but to send him back, he believes.
Only now, his white boss, the media and a large public, also white, make a triumph of the abomination in question.
Apart from the element of the “perfect plan which backfires”, the two films ferociously mock a segment of the white population who, while liking to believe themselves to be allies of black people, simply practice more insidious racism: “White people think they want to read the truth, but that’s not really the case. They want to be absolved,” Monk’s agent told his client.
Featuring biting humor and brilliant dialogue, American Fiction could easily have descended into cynicism (like, for a time, its protagonist), but quite the opposite happens. Through the sharp but caring gaze he casts on his characters, Cord Jefferson chooses humanism. Which further nuances a film that makes you laugh as much as it makes you think.