“American Fiction”: a smart satire on political correctness
[ad_1]
American Fiction, the directorial debut of screenwriter Cord Jefferson, was released on digital platforms and received five Oscar nominations. A film about a black writer who does not want to write “black literature” is a rare example of a statement about a racial issue that is unlikely to anger anyone, but may amuse both Black Lives Matter activists and haters of political correctness.
“With all due respect, I can handle this, so can you,” sneers black American literature professor Thelonious Ellison (Jeffrey Wright) in response to a remark from the audience that his white student is “uncomfortable” seeing the so-called “n-word” on the board. ” in the title of Flannery O’Connor’s story. Thelonious (to his family and friends he is Monk – an inevitable nickname in honor of the only famous namesake) is irritated by excessive attention and sensitivity to the racial issue. His own novel has not been sold out for several years: it is intellectual prose with references to ancient Greek mythology, but the literary market expects something else from an author of such skin color. Arriving at a conference in Boston, Thelonious listens in envious irritation to the presentation of a new bestseller dedicated to impoverished life in the ghetto. And a couple of days later he sends his literary agent a manuscript under a pseudonym – the story “My Pathology” (that’s right, with an error in the title), concocted from the most tragic and pathetic clichés about African-American life – with the goal of trolling the publishers.
The main character of the novel Annihilation, on which Cord Jefferson’s film is based, is based on himself by its author, Percival Everett. Everett teaches at a university in California (and in the nineties wrote a postmodern reworking of Euripides’ Medea), so the realities of the publishing business are depicted with knowledge, and in some places, certainly not without vindictiveness. “American Fiction”, like the original novel, is a satire: accordingly, the people with whom Thelonious has to deal are caricatured types and most of them are quite stupid. Of course, white publishers take “My Pathology” at face value and with a bang, they want to turn it into a book hit of the season and an Oscar hit (from the gallery of colorful fools presented in the film, we especially note Adam Brody in the role of a pompous Hollywood director). Now Thelonius faces a difficult choice: on the one hand, the joke has gone too far, on the other hand, they are offering a lot of money and it will not be superfluous.
The fact is that the plot of “American Fiction” is divided into two parts, and in addition to the satirical line about the paradoxes of so-called political correctness, a melodramatic one also develops: in it, the main character, having arrived at the family home in Boston, is looking for money to care for his sick mother, trying to find a common language with his brother and begins an affair with a neighbor – one of the few readers of Thelonious’s books. It is clear that the story about Monk’s family illustrates the thesis of the hero himself: the lives of black Americans can be different. The Everett family has a luxurious house in a good area and a summer cottage on the seashore, they are very far from the realities of the ghetto, and Thelonious’s life difficulties are usually described by the expression “white people’s problems.”
But dramaturgically these two lines are very little connected, their events simply run parallel to each other. The film falls rather awkwardly into two, especially since the intonation of its subplots is completely different – in the domestic scenes there is nothing similar to, for example, the cartoonish meeting of the literary jury in which Thelonious works. This duality does not interfere in the first half of “Fiction”, but turns into some kind of problem towards the end: the farce about “My Pathology” retains its cheerful cynicism, but in the family drama sugary notes appear, and Laura Karpman’s piano soundtrack sounds all the time against the background of the dialogues. more sentimental.
Luckily, Cord Jefferson has Jeffrey Wright, who gives the best performance of his career in American Fiction. The director is generous to his artist: Wright has many close-ups in which he conveys bubbling emotions through micro-movements of facial expressions. There is an object lesson in acting transformation – when the plot requires Thelonious to portray an escaped criminal (the fictional author of “My Pathology”), he changes not only his voice and accent, but also his plasticity and gaze. This is quite an Oscar role, although experts predict that Wright will lose the award to Paul Giamatti, who coincidentally also played a middle-aged professor in Alexander Payne’s The Leftovers. In addition to the “leading male role,” Jefferson’s film was nominated in four more categories, including best film, and has excellent press in America: the film adaptation of a novel written more than 20 years ago clearly resonates with the current era.
“I don’t believe in races at all!” Thelonious complains to his agent early in the film. “The problem is that everyone else believes,” he says in response, with deadly accuracy. Jefferson moved the action to the present day, but the situation has not changed: everyone knows that biological races do not exist, but they continue to divide people into white and black, even with the best intentions. It’s unlikely that any of Thelonious’s colleagues in the film, respectable white intellectuals, harbor ideas of racial superiority, and certainly they are all eager to talk about the importance of “hearing black voices.” But in Monk, the cultural industry sees primarily skin color: Thelonius discovers his old novel – in which, as the author puts it, “only the letters are black” – in the store in the “African-American literature” section.
Unfortunately, it was not possible to completely modernize the plot. Following the 2001 novel, the film parodies the conjuncture of the heyday of gangsta rap (a film with Fifty Cent flashes on the TV screen), the most recent of the direct references is to the film Precious, which competed for the Oscars back in 2010. It would be interesting to see American Fiction commentary on films like Jordan Peele’s Get Out. Or find out what reaction “My Pathology,” sonorously renamed for publication, caused on the social network formerly known as Twitter. But such shortcomings of this undoubtedly successful film can be forgiven following the example of the American public and Oscar academicians. Four years after the Black Lives Matter protests, they really wanted to “hear a black voice” that would say that they could relax a little. Even if whites continue to see stereotypes in blacks: in the end, as the hero of “American Fiction” guesses, you can benefit from this and follow the advice of Pushkin’s bookseller – if they give money for a manuscript, then why not sell it.
Subscribe to Weekend channel in Telegram
[ad_2]
Source link
