Get all your news in one place.
100’s of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
The Conversation
The Conversation
Lifestyle
Vinita Srivastava, Host + Producer, Don't Call Me Resilient

'American Fiction' is a scathing satire that challenges pop-culture stereotypes of Blackness

Erika Alexander is Coraline and Jeffrey Wright is Monk in 'American Fiction.' (Claire Folger/Orion)

In this episode, Vinita sits down with two experts to break down the many layers — and Black stereotypes — in the much anticipated new film, American Fiction.

The lead character of the new movie American Fiction is Monk. He’s a Black man but never feels ‘Black’ enough: he graduated from Harvard, his siblings are doctors, he doesn’t play basketball and he writes literary novels.

Directed and written by former journalist Cord Jefferson, American Fiction won this year’s People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival, and it has its much anticipated North American release in theatres this month. It’s been called an “incisive literary satire” by the Guardian.

The film, starring Jeffrey Wright, is an adaption of the 2001 novel Erasure by Percival Everett. The book and the film are centred on Monk, a novelist who’s fed up with a white-led publishing industry that profits from Black entertainment and tired tropes. As a Black man who thinks about race but also rages against having to talk about it, Monk gets so frustrated that he decides to poke fun of those who uncritically consume what they are sold as “Black culture.”

He uses a pen name to write an outlandish “Black” book of his own. It’s about “thug life” and is called “My Pafology.” But plot twist: his attempt at satire is lost on his audience and the book ends up becoming wildly successful. Suddenly, Monk is among those profiting off the stereotypes he so despises. The rest of the story explores “the unfairness of asking individual artists to represent the entire Black experience.”

In this episode of Don’t Call Me Resilient, Prof. Vershawn Ashanti Young of University of Waterloo and Prof. Anthony Stewart of Bucknell University join forces to break down the many layers of Monk’s story and why Black stereotypes remain so persistent in pop culture.

Read more in The Conversation


Read more: How stories about alternate worlds can help us imagine a better future: Don't Call Me Resilient EP 7



Read more: Cultural appropriation and the whiteness of book publishing



Read more: 'BlacKkKlansman' -- a deadly serious comedy



Read more: Harriet Tubman film does not deserve the Twitter hate



Read more: 'American Fiction' asks who gets to decide Blackness


Resources

Approximate Gestures: Infinite Spaces in the Fiction of Percival Everett by Anthony Stewart

First Look: American Fiction Challenges Hollywood’s “Poverty of Imagination” About Black People (Vanity Fair)

How Amos ’n’ Andy paved the way for Black Stars on TV” (Slate)

Native Son by Richard Wright

Listen and follow

You can listen to or follow Don’t Call Me Resilient on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen to your favourite podcasts.

We’d love to hear from you, including any ideas for future episodes. Join The Conversation on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok and use #DontCallMeResilient.

Trailer for ‘American Fiction’ (Orion)
The Conversation

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100’s of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.