American Fiction‘s Satire Takes on the Expectations and Realities of Black Creatives

Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction is a wry comedy that reflects the world we live in and the literature and film it produces. 

Journalist-turned-filmmaker Jefferson recruits a shining cast led by Jeffrey Wright’s Monk, who is possibly outshone (but at least complemented) by Sterling K. Brown as his somewhat estranged brother, Cliff. Monk is a writer of literature, frustrated by the lack of success he is finding in the market for stories true to his artistic vision and worldview. His foil is Sintara Golden (Issa Rae), an author who has found success by crafting the sort of narrative perspective that disgusts and disappoints Monk: A vulgar caricature of the African American experience; a minimizing, reductive, tokenizing idea of Blackness that limits our existence in the minds of reading and watching audiences, in turn helping to squander our potential in the material world. Golden is profiting from the self-congratulatory/self-flagellating promise of commercial white guilt. Monk’s intention to satirize the practice, turning the screws on the people and systems that promote it, leads to a character he creates under a pseudonym being offered riches beyond his wildest dreams, causing him to reflect on his own complicated relationship with himself and the people he loves.

American Fiction is a satire about how far up our own asses writers can fit our heads, confronting and interrogating the concepts of genius, self-regard and good taste. It is about individual estrangement from family, about misanthropy and elitism. All of these are drawn through the interpersonal and professional struggles of the hot-tempered and lonely Monk. His sister Lisa (Tracee Ellis Ross), an ER physician, takes him to task for not helping out enough with their ailing mother. Cliff is a plastic surgeon whose marriage and finances fell apart after he came out as gay late in life, and he and Monk have longstanding conflicts based on their respective relationships with their parents. Monk’s midlife romance with booklover and beach house neighbor Coraline (Erika Alexander), from its incidental spark to its frustrating fizzle, is authentically adult.

Jefferson’s mise-en-scene—with occasional product placement and nods to relevant artists—and character blocking tell this story beyond dialogue. Effective visual symbolism (some more subtle than others) is intentionally humorous in its most blatant usages, such as the never-unfamiliar vision of white people dismissing the opinions of Black people with whom they disagree…all while stressing how important it is to listen to Black voices. The script intentionally avoids didactic moralism, rather reflecting the shortcomings of the logistical shortcuts through which we frame works of art and craft—the flaws of skimming and the failures of assumption. Unfortunately, American Fiction’s most affectionate and comforting scene requires some leaps of imagination about character growth, but not an incomprehensible level.

My biggest formal issue with American Fiction was that the early dialogue between the siblings didn’t quite feel like the finished article. Their conversations are not just clinically cold but like outlines, conversational notes that the screenwriter would put down as keys to the relationships. Perhaps it is an expression of the middle-agedness of these characters, their bluntness born from the combination of astuteness, tiredness and the festering nature distance can provide when it doesn’t offer calm; a familiar yearning turned to resentment.

Monk coming from a comfortably upper-middle class family of medical doctors underscores how distinct his background is from what he usually sees in popular media (and makes his own anger seem shallow). This, in combination with a familiar pseudo-aggressive relationship with a white neighbor at the beach house implies a tradition of generational New England wealth, at least a moderate version of the concept if not parallel to the likes of the Kennedys. The greatest status symbol is live-in housekeeper Lorraine (Myra Lucertia Taylor), the laborer they call family. This isn’t to say that bonds of affection can’t overcome economic relations, but there is an implicit boundary, underlined by her insistence on calling Monk “Mr. Monk” when he asks that she just call him “Monk.”

Textually, this boundary is invoked early, but later dismissed. The idea of a maid as family is often interrogated as an out-of-touch assumption by the rich in art that centers the downtrodden, underclasses or social stratification writ large. In American Fiction the set-up and pay-off about this relationship accentuate a few personal arcs and this framing holds as an accurate read on the relationship, helping underscore Monk’s emotional self-investigation while he can sidestep confronting his material privilege, despite the class assumptions which are implicit in and confronted by the satirical plot’s exploration of race.

While American Fiction’s limited critique of liberal antiracism remains focused on representation rather than anything reparative, it is explicitly interested in the limited imagination Americans often have of who we all are, and the boxes minorities are often put in within the collective imagination of popular culture. It therefore reflects and skewers the absurd assumed wisdom of the marketplace and the way literature as an expression of human experience must confront profit motive, even if it isn’t a manifesto on how to rewire them or render them obsolete. American Fiction’s depiction of stereotypical movie roles ever so briefly echoes the portrayals in Hollywood Shuffle, Robert Townsend’s 1987 film about pigeonholed Black actors. Depending on who you read, these concerns can feel like old hat (because of how they have been subsumed by the market) until you see a major studio pat themselves on the back for hiring a Black director and then throwing her under the bus when their return on investment is inadequate to shareholder demand. Comfortably intelligent, occasionally warm and increasingly funny, American Fiction is a movie about artists making do with societal constraints to make art. While primarily focused on the Black middle class, it also entertains an underlying critique of capitalism and, more blatantly, anti-intellectualism, while painting realistic portraits of flawed people.

Director: Cord Jefferson
Writer: Cord Jefferson
Starring: Jeffrey Wright, Tracee Ellis Ross, Issa Rae, Sterling K. Brown, John Ortiz, Erika Alexander, Adam Brody, Leslie Uggams, Myra Lucretia Taylor
Release Date: December 15, 2023

Kevin Fox, Jr. is a freelance writer with an MA in history, who loves videogames, film, TV, and sports, and dreams of liberation. He can be found on Twitter @kevinfoxjr.