3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): American Fiction

2023, Cord Jefferson (feature debut) -- download

Kent's post. Timing is weird.

Was weird. I started the post soon after Kent posted his... post. But that got swallowed, as it is wont to do, by time.

"The Black Experience".

Even to write this makes me cringe internally. How can I even offer a thought on the subject, let alone discuss it an context? As a guy who is prone to saying The Absolute Wrong Thing (which gets replayed in my head for the rest of my life) but who always strives to Be Better, I try to be forthright about my place in all these things, but I am self-aware enough that no matter what I say, it can be misconstrued. But I will continue to try and say it.

What the fuck are you even talking about?

I am basically trying to say, I want to not come off as the (white) student in the movie's opening sequence, who feels she has to define the (black) teacher's outrage for him. She is not comfortable with the N word being written on a white board. He says it is the context in which the word is used that matters and does not diminish the vitriol in his opinion of her reaction. It gets him suspended. And that suspension gives him no choice but to spend time with family in Boston.

I always like a comedy where people laugh at the funny things they say. Lisa (Tracee Ellis Ross, [really? she's HER daughter?], Black-ish) picks up her brother Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison (Jeffrey Wright, Westworld) after his empty-seated seminar. She picks on him for not being around much, not keeping in touch, for basically being a stand-offish prick. They laugh at his expense. Its funny. But there is love in the teasing. Then, at lunch, she dies of a heart attack.

Fuck. 

Not only does the movie begin with a death, but it also brings to light how prevalent their mother's dementia is. Fuck. Their mother will need "taking care of" and that costs money, and its money Monk is not making, as his books are not selling, because they are intellectual novels by a stand-offish prick. BUT We's Lives in Da Ghetto, by an author he met at the seminar, is making tons of critical acclaim and money, much to Monk's chagrin. He doesn't believe black authors should have to pander to white people just to make money. Not every black American comes from a ghetto nor lives the "gangsta" life. Buuuut money is money.

So, in a drunken haze, he writes My Pafology under a pseudonym. As a joke, he has his agent submit it. White Publisher loves it. And thus the premise of the movie gets under way. It makes him the money he needs, and more. But in a lot of ways, as all good movies should, it is not really the premise that carries the rest of the movie. It wins hearts with the family drama, that while extremely heavy (grief on many levels), it is carries the plot along lightly, and not without small moments of joy. 

I am always so terrible at saying what I think was Good about a truly Good Movie.

There were two things that stood out for me. That I saw much of myself in Monk, his distance from his family, even if I don't come with the intellectual excuse. I just know well what it is like to be an irascible aging man with identity issues. But also the setting. To drive home the point, this is not a "typical black family", as they are very much Upper Middle Class, with a massive, lovely, family home AND a (not just summer) home on the beach. And a live-in nanny/house keeper who likely helped raise the kids and has lived much of her life in that home. It plays its part, when compared to the fiction that Monk has to create, which had to come from his knowledge of pop-culture depictions, for there is no way he knows this life, but from peripheral exposure. Of course, that charade has to come back to haunt him, and the movie's "LP scratch" moment really felt like the only way to end it all.