By Joanne Sargent
Contributor
American Fiction, a very funny satire on race and hypocrisy in the literary world and winner of the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, is our next Film Society movie.
Thelonious “Monk” Ellison is an English literature professor and author who longs to present characters that reflect his upbringing—a high-achieving upper-middle class Black family. His latest novel is rejected by publishers who claim his writing isn’t “Black enough”. He gets infuriated at successful authors who he thinks pander to readers seeking stereotypical stories of Black misery.
Out of spite, Monk writes an edgy novel under the pseudonym Stagg R Leigh, filled with every Black cliche he can imagine—deadbeat fathers, gang members, drugs and rappers—as a joke to hit back at the whole publishing world. He’s horrified when publishers clamour to buy the book and it becomes a huge hit. As the novel is rushed to printers and Hollywood comes courting, Monk scrambles for ways to promote a novel from a convicted felon who doesn’t exist, and must navigate a series of escalating lies.
With a powerhouse ensemble cast, American Fiction is a wildly entertaining portrait of an author forced to re-examine his integrity, while challenging viewers to question and possibly re-evaluate their perceptions on Blackness.
American Fiction plays at 5:00 Saturday March 23 at the Classic.