I finally saw American Fiction tonight. It is a mildly amusing, and all too accurate, satire about a black fiction writer who, in a fit of pique, submits to an intellectual marketplace that puts a premium on minstrelsy by writing a novel that trades in racial stereotypes. The movie ridicules the liberal white reading public for thinking “they want the truth” but really want to “feel absolved.” So trapped in their virtuous imaginations, so thoroughly cleansed of sin, these readers look to minorities to provide them with “authentic” and “raw” stories to make them feel alive, or at least a little unsafe. And so the marketplace demands stories that draw on the ancient trope of the savage, both noble and not-so-noble, victim and victimizer. Plus, these days, it’s just so important to “listen to black voices” and “center diversity,” even if the desired product is mere “trauma porn.”
The movie mocks the publishing world for indulging in racial fads–or “reckonings” as the journalists call them–in an effort to remain current and to not get canceled. For reasons I suspect are calculated, the movie holds its fire at minority writers who play this demeaning game for the accolades and compensation. I mean, they, too, have to get paid.
The bigger message of American Fiction, however, may be that fighting against white expectations can sometimes twist your own identity into knots. Unfortunately, there’s no resolution in the end, which was disappointing. Maybe the director saw the problem so clearly that he just figured it was insurmountable. Or maybe, like his lead character, he was trying too hard not to give us the ending he feared his white audience wanted. Still, the movie is a worthwhile critique of the freshly inclusive creative marketplace that needs members of every group to play their assigned roles now more than ever.
