Amer­i­can Fic­tion review – wry lit­er­ary satire is a mixed bag

As the old say­ing goes, there are real­ly no great movies whose title con­sists of two words, the first of which is ​“Amer­i­can”. There are some decent ones. There are, in fact, some very decent ones. But there’s some­thing about this oft-employed title struc­ture which is des­tined to pre­vent any film upon which it is adorned from attain­ing true, untram­melled greatness.

There’s no sci­ence behind it, but one might haz­ard that it denotes an attempt by the mak­ers of the film to offer a grand ges­ture aimed not just at a small pock­et of Amer­i­can soci­ety, but one that applies to every­one. Maybe the for­mu­la­tion doesn’t work because it sug­gests scup­pered hubris – a lofty ambi­tion that’s not met. When you’re stat­ing that the lessons in the film you’ve made apply to every­one, you’re set­ting your­self up for a fall.

Amer­i­can Fic­tion is Cord Jefferson’s plucky entry into this cursed canon, and it is based on the 2001 satir­i­cal nov­el Era­sure by the great author and aca­d­e­m­ic, Per­ci­val Everett. One of the issues as to why it doesn’t quite work as a cohe­sive sto­ry is because, as above, it is too hap­py to gen­er­alise about sub­jects such as art, busi­ness and human behav­iour, lack­ing either a pre­ci­sion that links it to real­i­ty or a sur­re­al edge that links it to guns-blaz­ing satire. There are some great things in this film, yet its inten­tions are swept up in a mire of tonal inde­ci­sion and cyn­i­cism mas­querad­ing as irony.

And yet, Jef­frey Wright deserves his Acad­e­my Award nom­i­na­tion (and more!) for his louche, wit­ty turn as mis­an­throp­ic cre­ative writ­ing instruc­tor Thelo­nious Monk. His name sad­dles him with over­sized cre­ative boots that he strug­gles to fill, the result of his desire to foist eso­teric lit­er­ary fic­tion (‘The Haas Conun­drum’ any­one?) on his bemused agent Arthur (John Ortiz) who would rather his client pro­duce more saleable mate­r­i­al, per­haps inspired by his per­son­al expe­ri­ences as a Black American.

After draw­ing a woe­ful­ly small crowd at a book fes­ti­val, he saun­ters into a packed room to see the cur­rent gold­en girl of the Black lit­er­ary scene Sina­tra Gold­en (Issa Rae) read­ing a pas­sage from her new nov­el, ​‘We’s Lives in Da Ghet­to’, which Monk dis­miss­es as a smash-and-grab com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion of Black cul­tur­al clichés and milk­ing Black trau­ma for the sole con­sump­tion of mid­dle-class white liberals.

When the invoic­es start rolling in for his mother’s care home, Monk decides to throw in the tow­el of per­son­al respectabil­i­ty and punch out a mis­ery porn knock-off named ​‘My Pafol­o­gy’ under the pseu­do­nym of illu­sive jail­bird, Stagg R. Leigh. In one of the film’s most inven­tive scenes, we see Monk tap­ping away at his lap­top, cack­ling at his sick genius, the phys­i­cal char­ac­ters play­ing out a vio­lent alter­ca­tion in front of him. Of course, his attempt to prove a moral point back­fires when bid­ding wars start and a dan­ger­ous new lit­er­ary celebri­ty (who doesn’t actu­al­ly exist) is born.

The idea of an audi­ence embrac­ing art that has been cal­cu­lat­ed to be bad has been doing the rounds since Mel Brooks’ The Pro­duc­ers, and was updat­ed for the dig­i­tal era with a focus on mod­ern min­strel­sy by Spike Lee’s Bam­boo­zled. And Amer­i­can Fic­tion doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly add much new to the mix, includ­ing the fact that the indus­try nabobs gen­uine­ly love ​‘My Pafol­o­gy’ rather than, say, accept­ing it as a work that ticks a lot of diver­si­ty box­es and thus reflects their own ally­ship, per­for­ma­tive or otherwise.

All of which is to say, the film’s satire is framed as broad­ly com­ic rather than real­ist and authen­tic, with Jef­fer­son more inter­est­ed in guf­faw­ing at what dumb white edi­tors and movie direc­tors will swal­low than delve into some­thing more nuanced regard­ing racial inequal­i­ty in the arts. But it’s still a fun­ny film, and where it some­times refus­es to get its hands dirty, it fills in the gaps with a script that’s full of mem­o­rable and bril­liant­ly deliv­ered one-liners.

Anoth­er strange aspect of this film is that it is, in fact, two films, as along­side the screw­ball Stagg R. Leigh shenani­gans there’s a dole­ful fam­i­ly melo­dra­ma run­ning in tan­dem, chart­ing Monk’s var­i­ous famil­ial and roman­tic woes. It’s under­stand­able that Jef­fer­son would want to use this oth­er sto­ry to shade his can­tan­ker­ous lead with some added emo­tion­al nuance, as well as show that he has the tri­fling logis­tics of every­day life to con­tend with, but it often plays too much like anoth­er, sep­a­rate sto­ry that only has a super­fi­cial con­nec­tion to the one about his wacky pro­fes­sion­al tribulations.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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