American Fiction

In American Fiction, an embittered black author, who is sick of having his highbrow material rejected by publishers and neglected by readers, writes a lurid pastiche of urban black life called My Pafology. He submits the new manuscript under a pseudonym. His object is to needle the industry with its own bad taste. And so, following the logic of The Producers, it sells.

This much is made clear in the trailer, which features a pull quote calling the film a “cinematic stick of dynamite.” The advertising emphasizes jokes at the expense of gullible white people whose self-righteous endorsement of representation masks deeply ingrained feelings of racial prejudice.

In a way, the trailer is as lurid as My Pafology, and more perceptive than the satirical elements in American Fiction. White liberals in 2024 are quick to reject negative stereotypes about people of color—but they are extremely credulous when it comes to negative stereotypes about themselves. White self-mortification is used as bait. But the switch is worth the swindle.

BlacKkKlansman

In BlacKkKlansman, Spike Lee attempts too much; fails at most of it; and is better off for having tried. First off, there’s the police procedural “based on a true story”: the original case files were destroyed, perhaps to protect the targets of the sting, or maybe just to cover up the overweening ineptitude. It seems like a reckless idea to have the one black cop in Colorado Springs infiltrate the K.K.K. over the phone—granted, he was the one who took the initiative—and then have the one Jewish cop in Colorado Springs assume the role when he goes undercover. And the poor schmuck, even after vocal coaching, does not even try to mimic the other officer’s honky voice from the phone—which Lee has set up as the comedic centerpiece! Obviously, it takes a long time for the dupes on the other end to catch on; I suppose you don’t need to pass an intelligence test to gain admission into the Klan.

John David Washington has great droll eyes and physical swagger, but he does not have enough urgency and he’s paired with the temperamentally similar Adam Driver. Apart from one scene, when Washington challenges Driver to carry on, there’s a dearth of material clarifying the bond between these two men. Ryan Eggold, as one of the Klansmen, gets to show a little sweat, and Topher Grace is something of a miracle in the role of the Grand Wizard, David Duke. He conjures up an unholy mixture of the fatuous and seductive that the eminently pale original couldn’t hold a candle to.

I didn’t come out believing the story, but I admired its feel and flourishes: the blaxploitation whine on the soundtrack; Washington venting his stress with jiu-jitsu pantomime; an effulgent early-’70s dance hall sequence, “Too Late to Turn Back Now” on the turntable, knitting the black revolutionaries together in a beneficent fro—both social binder and courtship ritual. Above all, I admired Lee’s quixotic jives between Hollywood movie and essay film: his juxtaposition of éminence grise Harry Belafonte as a witness recounting a lynching from 1914 with Klansmen cheering on The Birth of a Nation as if they were at a midnight screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.