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movie, American Fiction

The summer of 2020 reignited the promotion and consumption of antiracist readings. It was a year when the public deemed it “especially important” to read the work of Black authors, especially, the work of Black authors discussing Black plight. Director Cord Jefferson, in his feature debut, “American Fiction” (based on Percival Everett’s novel, Erasure), unpacks the qualifying characteristics and limitations of mass market white interest in Black stories.

Thelonious “Monk” Ellison (Jeffrey Wright) is an author and college professor. He is published but not famous, struggling to sell his latest work to a publisher. Prompted by his uphill climb to publish, instigated by the media attention granted to Sintara Golden (Issa Rae), a Black author with a middle-class upbringing whose novel centers on inner city Black women, Monk decides to build a fantasy. He writes a joke novel, My Pafology (later indignantly renamed to Fuck) under the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh, a faceless persona of a wanted fugitive. Thrown together without care for craft or attention to detail, and rife with Black stereotypes, Monk intends his book as more of a cathartic release of frustration and a middle finger to the publishing world. The manuscript, however, is met with exuberant attention by a publishing house’s insatiable desire to elevate this “genius" and an overzealous movie producer's desire to win acclaim.

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https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/american-fiction-film-review-2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_4RlHpqVWM

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