American Fiction (2023)

What I want to say first an foremost is that this movie is way way better than the synopsis of it would lead you to believe. I practically had to twist my spouse's arm to get him to agree to watch it, and we were both very pleasantly surprised that we very much enjoyed us--it makes you think, it is multi-layered, and it was well acted and well written--three of the categories it is nominated for an Academy Award in. Thelonious “Monk” Ellison is an author and college professor. He is published but not famous, struggling to sell his latest work to a publisher. Prompted by his uphill climb to publish, instigated by the media attention granted to Sintara Golden, a Black author with a middle-class upbringing whose novel centers on inner city Black women, Monk decides to build a fantasy. He writes a joke novel, My Pafology (later indignantly renamed to Fuck) under the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh, a faceless persona of a wanted fugitive. Thrown together without care for craft or attention to detail, and rife with Black stereotypes, Monk intends his book as more of a cathartic release of frustration and a middle finger to the publishing world. The manuscript, however, is met with exuberant attention by a publishing house’s insatiable desire to elevate this “genius" and an overzealous movie producer's desire to win acclaim. The more he gets irritable and obstreperous, which is kind of his baseline anyway, the more popular he is, up until he blows it up altogether.