Abstract
In American Fiction (2023), written for the screen and directed by Cord Jefferson, satire, drama and comedy frame a knife-sharp examination of America’s cultural reproductions of stereotype and caricature. The film, based on Percival Everett’s novel Erasure, explores the fraught professional position of Thelonious “Monk” Ellison (Jeffrey Wright), a professor-author pressed to write a bestseller amid family upheaval and financial strain. Monk’s resulting novel, a gritty send-up of urban tropism drafted in a fit of fury and frustration, exploits America’s fixation on commodifying and flattening Blackness—and becomes an instant hit. This review explores the film’s interrogations of race, class and identity, of commerce and art, and its insistence on expanded, nuanced visions of Black life and varied representational forms asserting complex humanity.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Bowles, Terri
(2023)
"Beneath the Mask: The Performance of Blackness and Economies of Caricature in American Fiction,"
Markets, Globalization & Development Review:
Vol. 8:
No.
4, Article 3.
DOI: 10.23860/MGDR-2023-08-04-03
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/mgdr/vol8/iss4/3
Included in
Anthropology Commons, Economics Commons, Film and Media Studies Commons, Marketing Commons, Other Business Commons, Sociology Commons
Author Bio
Terri P. Bowles is a part-time professor of Media Studies at The New School, with a focus on diverse identities in film and TV. She is a former magazine editor at The History Channel, Vibe and other publications. She is a cofounder, panel curator and moderator at Daughters of Eve Media, which highlights the contributions of film scholars and groundbreaking innovators in cinema and has partnered with the American Black Film Festival for more than a dozen years. She also is the founder of Stage Flight Productions, which supports diverse theatrical productions in London and on Broadway. Additionally, she serves as an arts consultant for Mosaic Genius, a social impact venture creating wealth in underrepresented communities.