American Fiction

American Fiction

For most of my life as a mixed-race man, race is part of my conversation. While not a person of colour, people ‘forget’ well like anyone who passes; when people say they forget, the tendency to go is good for you. The world will remind me of it within a few strokes of interaction. Pile on the issues of class and education, and I think it’s no surprise that the moment I saw the trailer, I was already invested in American Fiction.

We have far more than the media satire that the trailer promises. Yes, there are the staples of dealing with and navigating white media. The realities have not changed much since ‘Hollywood Shuffle’, but as a Man in middle age, Thelonius can have the same lassie faire in 2024 if shrugging his shoulder to his industry and going, ‘There is always a job at the post office’. While the role of authenticity and pay vs novelty is something anyone who talks about themselves in commerce pulls through, the draw is why. With the authentic dramas that are seen in some reframes as ‘white people problems’ in regards to care homes, bereavement, sudden duties, sibling estrangement and Alzheimer’s, by putting them at the heart of the motive, Monk is given the heart he seems to have tried to shut down throughout the first half of the film.

I’m a soon-to-be 48-year-old man. I’ve thrown my way in entertainment several things, being too ethnic when I started to not being the correct type of Asian at other more recent points, so while not one to appropriate the african american experience, I can’t help but suck into Monks’ circumstance. The film, however, does not throw angst at the screen; it the muted tone of white-collar lives from a black-informed perspective while Monk tries to if anything, conflate his life with that of ‘ghetto culture.’

On the other hand, the role of Sintara is key in Thai exploration, reminding us all that all experiences are valid, even the ones that Monk parodies. It’s a question of proportion and focus. Are we looking at a form of Povvo porn? White absolvement. And when you have care bills mounting, is it so much as selling out as, frankly, providing for one’s own, which so many put at the heart of the black experience?

It’s wry, warm, and, yes, at times, maudlin, and there was one moment where I did exceptionally well at the screening.  While there are odd moments where the exposition is a bit clunky for a film that hopes not to spoon-feed white audiences, it is broader. When we look at regression in social mobility, it was also lovely to see a movie where the vast majority were over 35 and, as such, felt more like me than an infantilised diatribe from a studio.

I can’t deny there have been black films at this point in my viewing where they start, and I think, ‘if any fucker pulls a knife in the next ten minutes, I’m leaving,’ but to watch one where that knife was too helping,, cut an avocado was a breath of fresh air and grown-up food for thought hold the fragility.

If you want mature films in the cinema, make the effort and go as soon as possible. I am looking forward to reading the book, too. And tell Hanif Jureshi he’s bloody dated and ruined my 90s while you are at it.