419 - American Fiction

Writer-director Cord Jefferson's debut feature, American Fiction, combines satire with family dynamics to fairly charming, if visually uninspiring, effect. Jeffrey Wright's Thelonius is a novelist forced into a leave of absence from his teaching position, whereupon he returns to Boston and reconnects with his family, from whom he's distant. He's also furious that his latest manuscript has been rejected for not being black enough, and that what "black enough" means involves every negative stereotype of black people and culture imaginable. But when he sarcastically writes such a novel to shove society's attitude in its face, it's taken seriously by the white literary elite, who shower it with praise. From the trailer, Mike was expecting more focus on the satire, and more energy à la Boots Riley's Sorry to Bother You. It's a surprise, then, that American Fiction spends so much time developing the family drama, but not an unpleasant one, and José finds that aspect the film's most interesting. We consider the idea that the film uses the family story to practice what it preaches, offering a story about black people that doesn't require them to be black in order to justify its existence - it's a universal story about distanced siblings, a mother with failing health, and broken marriages. And we discuss the film's ending, or lack thereof, in which the inescapability of the culture that demands stereotype is emphasised at the expense of a satisfying, earned conclusion to the story we've been told. American Fiction doesn't create a single artful image, and that ending is disappointing, but the film is also interesting, absorbing, and funny. Worth a look. Recorded on 2nd February 2024.

Om Podcasten

"I have this romantic idea of the movies as a conjunction of place, people and experiences, all different for each of us, a context in which individual and separate beings try to commune, where the individual experience overlaps with the communal and where that overlapping is demarcated by how we measure the differing responses between ourselves and the rest of the audience: do they laugh when we don’t (and what does that mean?); are they moved when we feel like laughing (and what does that say about me or the others) etc. The idea behind this podcast is to satiate the urge I sometimes have when I see a movie alone – to eavesdrop on what others say. What do they think? How does their experience compare to mine? Snippets are overhead as one leaves the cinema and are often food for thought. A longer snippet of such an experience is what I hope to provide: it’s two friends chatting immediately after a movie. It’s unrehearsed, meandering, slightly convoluted, certainly enthusiastic, and well informed, if not necessarily on all aspects a particular work gives rise to, certainly in terms of knowledge of cinema in general and considerable experience of watching different types of movies and watching movies in different types of ways. It’s not a review. It’s a conversation." - José Arroyo. "I just like the sound of my own voice." - Michael Glass.