Line #56 Film/AmericanFiction


1	[[quoteright:731:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/img_6941_1.jpeg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:731:The dumber I behave, the richer I get.]]
3
4	->'''Arthur:''' You wrote it.\
5	'''Monk:''' As a joke.\
6	'''Arthur:''' Well, now it's the most lucrative joke you've ever told.
7
8	''American Fiction'' is a 2023 dramedy film written and directed by Cord Jefferson, starring Creator/JeffreyWright, Creator/SterlingKBrown, Creator/TraceeEllisRoss, Creator/AdamBrody, and Creator/IssaRae. It is based on the novel ''Erasure'' by Percival Everett.
9
10	Thelonious "Monk" Ellison is a black author and academic. Though his works are respected by critics and his peers, he struggles to sell books because audiences only want to read books from black writers if they wrote about "black things." As family financial troubles start mounting up, he writes a stereotypical "black" novel on a whim in one night to prove his agent wrong. Only problem is...[[SpringtimeForHitler publishers love it, and so do audiences]].
11
12	It won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay out of its total five nominations.
13
14	----
15	!!''American Fiction'' provides examples of:
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17	* ActorAllusion: Adorably, Coraline is a lawyer slash public defender, which is a CallBack to the actress, Erika Alexander, from her famous role on ''Series/LivingSingle'' where she played [[RhymesOnADime Maxine Shaw, Attorney At Law.]]
18	* AdaptationalNameChange: Juanita Mae Jenkins from the novel becomes Sintara Golden in the film.
19	* AdvertisedExtra: Creator/TraceeEllisRoss [[spoiler:because her character dies fifteen minutes into the film]]. Creator/IssaRae is in around ten minutes overall, but is still on the poster with the other more important characters. Even Creator/KeithDavid's name was thrown around a lot in the film's press despite him only appearing in one short scene.
20	* AllGaysArePromiscuous: Cliff is [[LateComingOut newly gay]] and gets around a ''lot'' as a result of it, as do all his partners.
21	-->'''Cliff''': I've only been gay for like, five minutes.
22	* AluminumChristmasTrees: An in-universe example. Monk harshly criticizes Sintara's urban fiction for tapping into what he believes are black stereotypes meant to play on WhiteGuilt, but it turns out that her novels are based off of actual research and interviews she conducted within impoverished and crime-ridden communities.
23	* AmbiguousEnding: Monk steps up to the award show microphone to admit the truth and the film cuts to black. He says to the director he didn't say anything at the awards regarding being the true author of ''Fuck''/''My Pafology''. The director knows this--he addresses Monk as "Monk", and the film they're making is about Monk's experience in writing the book--but it's not clear who else does (though the last scene implies that Monk has let Cliff in on the secret).
24	* AntiHero: Monk isn't a bad person, but he's grumpy, cantankerous, and snobbish even at the best of times.
25	* AteHisGun: It's heavily implied this is how Monk's father died. Coraline accidentally blurts out that she thought the house was haunted because there was a rumor that "an old man blew his brains out in there" and then she realizes it's the old man's son she's talking to and she profusely apologizes and offers him a drink to make up for it. They hit it off after that.
26	* BerserkButton: Monk has little tolerance for WhiteGuilt pandering and the [[invoked]] MinorityShowGhetto.
27	* BigDamnHug: Lorraine gives Cliff a big hug after telling him that he can't impose on her because "he's family." Cliff, who at that point feels rejected by his mother and Monk, is clearly deeply moved.
28	* BigScrewedUpFamily: The Ellison family has so many issues that it's readily apparent why Monk avoids them. His mother is a judgmental homophobe. She means well, but she says cruel things to her children at times like calling Monk fat when he's pretty much the average weight for a man his age and later telling the recently outed Cliff, during one of her Alzheimer moments, "I always knew you weren't a queer." His sister has been divorced since her husband cheated on her and is back to smoking again, which [[spoiler:is possibly what kills her in the first act.]] His father committed suicide and was cheating on his mother the entire time he was a kid, but since Monk loved him so much, he never caught on and had to be told by his siblings later. Then there's Monk himself, who is a brilliant writer, but he is also judgmental and sharp-tongued, often insulting anyone who angers him to the Nth degree, and it ends up [[spoiler:costing him a loving relationship with a woman he truly liked.]]
29	* BlackAndNerdy: Monk [[TheGlassesGottaGo actually has to lose the glasses]] and try to dress more casual when he's forced to do a face to face meeting with the executive who wants to buy the movie rights, so he lowers his voice and tries to use more slang to sell that he's an ex-con fugitive. He does fumble with the persona, though, and asks for a Sauvignon when the waiter comes by, which is not something your average ex-con would order.
30	* BlackJezebelStereotype: A large part of ''My Pafology/Fuck'', and Sinatra's novel, involves women that fit this stereotype.
31	* BothSidesHaveAPoint: During the award committee meeting, Monk and Sintara get to discuss their views on black literature and it gets pretty heated. Monk hates that her book (and his own, in secret) pander to white audiences by exploiting black trauma and wonders how she can write it while knowing she's perpetuating negative stereotypes that keep their people down instead of acknowledging their potential. Sintara counters that it sounds like he's more mad at the white audiences that read her book than he is at her, that her book was actually thoroughly-researched to the point of containing direct quotes, and that his views about their people's "potential" imply that he doesn't believe black people are currently capable of being successful on their own. The film doesn't call either of them right or wrong, allowing the viewer to draw their own conclusions.
32	* BrickJoke: Early in the film, Cliff talks about a college student at a gay bar mistaking him for Creator/TylerPerry. [[spoiler:Later on, after it's revealed that the whole movie is a screenplay of Monk's experiences in writing "Fuck", he tells Cliff that Tyler Perry will be playing him]].
33	* BrokenPedestal: What happens to Monk when he finds out his father cheated on his mother the entire time he was alive. Monk loved and idolized his father, so of course he never noticed, but his brother and sister knew the whole time, which is why they bonded with one another and not Monk nor their father. His sister even saw his father kiss a white woman, which they all felt was just not okay.
34	* CharacterNameAlias: Monk writes his terrible book under the pseudonym "Stagg R. Leigh." Apparently ''no one'' picks up the reference to the famous song "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stagger_Lee Stagger Lee]]".
35	* CigaretteOfAnxiety: Lisa says she started smoking again "right after the divorce."
36	* ComicallyMissingThePoint: [[spoiler:After reading Monk's movie script about his experiences, Wiley thinks it needs a better ending. When Monk jokingly pitches one where he is gunned down by the police when they raid the awards ceremony to arrest Stagg R. Leigh, he loves it, showing that he completely missed the script's message about how the media silos black characters into specific stories like police brutality.]]
37	* CondescendingCompassion: This is the attitude of most of the white characters Monk comes across. While they continually espouse the need for more black stories and their desire to make their voices heard, they only want to do so through what they consider the best stories and on their own terms. It's most obvious when the white Literary Award judges decide to give "Fuck" the top prize and completely ignore Monk and Sintara Golden's objections to the novel's "merits".
38	* ContrivedCoincidence: It is a bit contrived that Monk returns home [[spoiler:just before his sister dies, leaving him needing to step up and take care of his mother and form a bond with his very troubled brother Cliff as well. He initially doesn't want to sell the book despite the truly insane advance that's offered to him--$750,000--but after his sister dies and he finds out his mother has early onset Alzheimer's, he reluctantly takes the deal.]]
39	* CrusadingLawyer: Coraline works for the city as a public defender. Monk asks what it's like defending people who are likely guilty; she says she believes that people are more than their worst deed.
40	* DeadHandShot: Monk can see [[spoiler:Lisa's]] feet moving as the ER team tries to revive her, when they stop, he realizes that she's died.
41	* DecemberDecemberRomance: Monk's mother's housekeeper rekindles a romance with a cop from the town where they have a beach house and she has a FourthDateMarriage with him, but it's portrayed as a good thing and not something irrational. They obviously had a prior thing for each other and decide to waste no time since both of them are probably in their sixties, if not older.
42	* DidNotGetTheGirl: [[spoiler:Sadly, Coraline doesn't return his calls after their big fight. It's possible over time, maybe she forgives him and reaches out, but the ending is with him alone again and it was a hard lesson for him to learn.]]
43	* DiesDifferentlyInAdaptation: ''Erasure'' has Lisa killed by an anti-abortion extremist, rather than a heart attack.
44	* DifferingPrioritiesBreakUp: [[spoiler:Monk was already on edge because of the stress of his mother's failing health and the book blowing up when he hates it, so when he finds a copy in Coraline's bag, it makes him snap at her rather nastily. Coraline, however, does not take his judgmental abuse and breaks up with him over it, sadly not returning his calls and texts when he eventually realizes his folly and wants to apologize.]]
45	* DisappearedDad: Monk's father was mentioned to be a chronic cheater who traveled around under the pretense of "going to conferences" but instead, he was cheating on their mother for years. His mother later reveals that she knew, and he cheated because he was a genius, and she points out that geniuses are notoriously lonely because they can't connect to the average person, and that's why she stayed with him in spite of all the infidelity. Sadly, this rocks Monk to the core, as he loved his father and had no idea about the affairs, but his siblings did. Cliff points out that he was his father's favorite, so he didn't bond with his siblings, which made them all distant and slightly resentful of each other. He does end up mending fences with Cliff, though.
46	* EstablishingCharacterMoment: The film opens with a scene of Monk happily beginning one of his classes, ready to discuss their reading of ''The Artificial Nigger'', only to be interrupted by a white student who's offended by the book's title. The resulting debate between him and the student gets so heated that the student outright leaves the room crying and Monk is ''still'' yelling about it after she's gone. Immediately, we know that Monk has genuine literature experience and loves to discuss it, but his convictions on the matter are so strong that he alienates himself from others.
47	* EveryoneHasStandards: Sintara Golden may have become successful by writing urban fiction that taps into negative stereotypes about black people, but even she finds "Fuck" to be a soulless story full of UncleTomfoolery pandering.
48	* {{Fauxshadowing}}: There's a brief scene of Monk taking off metals to put through a scanner before he sees Lisa, and she talks about a metal detector. In the book, this is foreshadowing for [[spoiler:Lisa's murder by an anti-abortion activist.]] In the film, [[spoiler:she dies of a heart attack.]]
49	* FiveSecondForeshadowing: When Lisa and Monk are talking about their mother, Lisa says it will "hurt", and then winces in obvious pain. [[spoiler:Five minutes later, she has a heart attack and dies.]]
50	* {{Foil}}: Sintara and Monk are foils to one another. Both are black authors who write urban fiction, but Sintara has accepted this particular type of black culture while Monk soundly rejects it, stating that it causes white people to think they can't be anything more than people who struggle. Sintara argues that he is instead mad at ''white people'' for believing black people are stereotypical struggling thugs and hoes, not at her and not at the black community. This causes Monk to have a bit of an epiphany, even though he disagrees with her.
51	* {{Foreshadowing}}:
52	** In contrast to the {{Fauxshadowing}} above, shortly after their conversation about the metal detector, Lisa tells Monk that [[spoiler:she's started smoking again since getting divorced. This is presumably foreshadowing Lisa's heart attack, since that's how she dies in the film instead of being murdered by an anti-abortion activist.]]
53	** After the very tough scene where his mother tells him "I always knew you weren't a queer," Cliff decides to fly back and candidly tells Coraline, "This family will break your heart." [[spoiler:Sadly, he's right. Monk snaps at Coraline when he finds a copy of "Fuck" in her bag and she defends the book to him, so she breaks up with him over his rude comments.]]
54	* FourthDateMarriage: We do know that time is passing throughout the film, but we don't know quite how much, so we have to assume that Lorraine and the cop have gone out a few times in years prior and they are rekindling their romance in their golden years, resulting in a sweet beach wedding that Monk attends.
55	* FourthWallPsych: The novel's opening line is Monk's voice over a black screen saying "Let's begin." When the picture comes in, it's revealed that he is speaking to his class.
56	* FreudianTrio: The three siblings. Lisa is the superego, as the rational and wise sibling, and [[WomenAreWiser the only daughter.]] Monk is the ego; he steps up for his mother but ''My Pafology/Fuck'' shows a more reckless side. Cliff is the id, as a newly divorced gay man who does a lot of drugs.
57	* FugitiveArc: Monk pretends that his pen name, "Stagg R. Leigh", is a wanted fugitive as an excuse not to show up in person when he can.
58	* FunetikAksent: As in the book (''Erasure'' shows the whole thing), ''[=Fuck/My Pafology=]'' is shown to be exclusively written in an exaggerated "black" vernacular.
59	* TheFunInFuneral: Monk spreading [[spoiler: Lisa's]] ashes into the beach is interrupted by a nosy complaining neighbor that Cliff has to chase off.
60	* GallowsHumor: [[spoiler:His sister's final letter for her surviving family members is exactly this and it's fitting given what we see of her before she unfortunately passes away. It visibly makes Monk and his family chuckle as they cry before dispersing her ashes in the ocean per her wishes.]]
61	* GoneHorriblyRight: Frustrated Monk writes an intentionally bad urban fiction book to highlight the publishing world's hypocrisy, only for it to blow up as a best seller and beloved.
62	* HeadDesk: Monk's response when some businesspeople approve of his ironic proposal to rename ''My Pafology'' to ''Fuck'' is to slam his head on the desk.
63	* HealthcareMotivation: A major factor that pushes Monk into writing ''My Pafology'' is the need to provide high-quality nursing home care for his mother’s worsening dementia and the $750,000 advance and the later incredibly lucrative movie deals then help him out. He lies about it to his brother, though, until the very end.
64	* TheHedonist: Cliff has recently come out, spending most of his free time indulging in casual sex, drinking and taking drugs.
65	* TheHeroDies: The StoryWithinAStory ''My Pafology/Fuck'' apparently ends with the protagonist getting killed by a police officer. [[spoiler:The movie Wiley and Monk make about the events of the publication of ''Fuck'' also ends with Monk being killed by the police, since that is the only ending Wiley feels will be good and profitable (despite Monk's objections).]]
66	* HiddenDepths:
67	** Monk regards Sintara Golden as a pandering phony, but is discomfited when she turns out to be very intelligent and has a nuanced understanding of her own genre and does a lot of research for her own work and is able to spot ''Fuck'' as a piece of crap.
68	** Despite Cliff's mostly negative feelings towards his father, he reveals to Monk that one of his regrets is not coming out before he died. Even though Monk points out that there was a chance their father wouldn't have taken it well, Cliff says he actually would rather have that closure of his father hating the ''real'' him instead of his father only loving a version of himself that doesn't actually exist.
69	* HollywoodPudgy: [[invoked]] Discussed in-universe. His mother tells Monk YouAreFat (which he agrees with). Lorraine tells him that in Arkansas, he would be a "beauty queen."
70	* HopeSpot: Monk sends Coraline a text message apologizing and asking her to be his date for the awards ceremony. The dots in front of her name indicate that she's typing a response, only to abruptly stop, showing that she's changed her mind and decided to ignore him. [[spoiler:At the end of the film, Monk confirms that she's still not returning his calls or texts]].
71	* {{Hypocrite}}: The inherent hypocrisy of Monk's actions is the driving conflict of the film. Monk decries books like ''We's Lives In Da Ghetto'' for pandering to white audiences with black stereotypes, but when his book that does the same thing ends up becoming a success, he goes along with it (however reluctantly) for the financial gain. He has several sympathetic reasons for it (he's on a leave of absence from his job, his sister just died, and his mother is being moved into a long-term care facility for early onset Alzheimer's), but his internal frustration and self-loathing over the situation ends up causing several problems for his personal life once he starts taking it out on others.
72	* HypocriticalHumor:
73	** Judges for the Literary Award talk about how ''Fuck'' is important as a sign that people are listening to black voices, when three of the five judges present are ignoring the black man and black woman actually rejecting the idea that ''Fuck'' is worthy of an award. The camera shot even drives home the point, with the three white judges sitting across from the two black ones.
74	** Cliff teases Monk about having once brought home a white woman, even though he himself was married to one, as Monk points out. He denies being a hypocrite about this, because according to him, "[[TheBeard Beards don't count]]".
75	* IAmOneOfThoseToo: When Monk is interviewing the movie director Wiley and pretending to be a fugitive who was once in prison as part of his persona, Wiley reveals that he has been in prison for a month for something related to interstate commerce. Monk has to be vague and secretive about his experience to avoid tipping Wiley off that he was never actually in prison.
76	* InsufferableGenius: Monk is clearly an intelligent man and talented writer, but many characters point out his pride and temper tends to get in his way.
77	* KickTheDog: When Coraline innocently asks Monk where he got the money to afford a long-term care center, Monk, angry about the money coming from his successful and horrible book, angrily tells her that she's his girlfriend, not his bookkeeper. [[spoiler:This incident is just the first in a string of incidents that break them up near the end of the film]].
78	* MasculineFeminineGayCouple: Cliff and his many boyfriends are portrayed this way. He doesn't behave in any stereotypical manner, but the brief interactions with his lovers show he prefers effeminate men.
79	* TheMasqueradeWillKillYourDatingLife: A type 1 version. Monk becomes increasingly hounded by the stress of ''My Pafology/Fuck'', which results in him becoming more irritated and irritable. He becomes increasingly offhand with Coraline, and eventually snaps at her after finding a copy of ''Fuck'' in her bag. When she says she liked it, he calls her stupid, prompting her to break up with him.
80	* MeaningfulReleaseDate: Invoked. The publishers suggest releasing Monk's novel full of urban black tropes and stereotypes on Juneteenth, as black people will be celebrating and white people will be feeling guilty.
81	* MeetCute: Monk bumps into Coraline when he's about to go inside and she drops some tomatoes out of her bag, so he goes over to help her and then strikes up a conversation and a friendship that later leads to romance.
82	* MinorityShowGhetto: [[invoked]] In-universe. Monk is a talented writer, but his manuscripts keep getting rejected by publishers that want him to write more "Black" stories and his books are even put into African American studies section of the bookstore despite having nothing to do with it. He writes ''My Pafology/Fuck'' as a parody of the tropes in this.
83	* MultipleEndings: Monk pitches Wiley multiple ways to end [[spoiler:the movie based on his recent experiences;]]
84	** [[spoiler:The story ends [[NoEnding just as Monk gets on stage and is about to confess something]].]] Wiley rejects this for being too {{ambiguous\|ending}}.
85	** [[spoiler: Monk abruptly [[RaceForYourLove runs out of the award ceremony to Coraline's house]].]] Wiley rejects this one for being too cheesy.
86	** [[spoiler:An annoyed Monk pitches an ending where the police raid the awards ceremony after Monk's confession that he is Stagg R. Leigh, [[ShootHimHeHasAWallet mistake his trophy for a weapon]], and [[MultipleGunshotDeath gun him down in a hail of bullets]].]] [[SpringtimeForHitler Wiley approves of this one.]]
87	* NamedAfterSomebodyFamous: Thelonious "Monk" Ellison is obviously named after Thelonious Monk given his nickname. The family is named after writer Ralph Ellison (writer of Invisible Man). Wiley is a huge international publishing company. Van Go = Van Gogh. Willy the Wonker = Willy Wonka.
88	* NiceToTheWaiter: While Wiley is polite and pandering to Monk, he later browbeats an intern for bringing him a beverage can moist from condensation.
89	* NoodleIncident: The family doesn't elaborate on when Monk went out with a white woman, but it's a RunningGag that they did not approve when he brought her around at some point. It apparently runs in the family since his sister said she saw their cheating father kiss a white woman once.
90	* NotSoSimilar: While Monk initially believes that Sintara Golden’s book ''We's Lives In Da Ghetto'' is the type of pandering UncleTomFoolery book that ''Fuck'' is satirizing, a conversation with her shows that despite her background she did [[ShownTheirWork do actual research and interviews with actual people and even put in direct quotes]] while Monk made everything up and thus she recognizes ''Fuck'' as the lie that it is.
91	* NotThatKindOfDoctor: Monk's sister, Lisa, is an OB/GYN and his brother, Cliff, is a plastic surgeon. When Monk says that Lisa is a doctor, she says "so are you", and he has to point out that he's not a ''medical'' doctor (presumably a doctorate holder as a college professor). It gets reversed on him when Monk expresses worry that Cliff gave Oxycontin to Lorraine, only for Cliff to tell him that Monk's doctorate only helps "if [they] need to revive a sentence."
92	* OldRetainer: Lorraine. When Cliff suggests firing Lorraine, their housekeeper, Monk replies that Lorraine is family.
93	* OnlyKnownByTheirNickname: Monk is only referred to as "Thelonious" by their family friend Murray, not even by his mother or siblings.
94	* OpinionOverride: The film opens with Monk teaching a college literature class where a white SoapboxSadie objects to the class having to learn about ''[[Creator/FlanneryOConnor The Artificial Nigger]]'' because she finds the title offensive. Monk tells her that if a black man like him can accept the title, a white woman like her should be able to too. Her refusal to do so leads to him shouting at her, causing her to leave the class in tears and Monk subsequently being disciplined by the college.
95	* OscarBait: InUniverse, Wiley is a producer of what Arthur calls "Oscar-baity issue movies" which is why he's very interested in adapting Monk's novel. Arthur mentions he had recently done a film about the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Passage Middle Passage]].
96	* ParentalFavoritism: Lisa says to Monk that their father always favored Monk, leading to Lisa and Cliff becoming closer to each other to compensate.
97	* ParentsAsPeople: Monk, Lisa, and Cliff's parents are a very mixed bag. On the one hand, Monk's father encouraged his intellectualism and taught him to love reading; on the other hand, he cheated on his wife for years (which everyone but Monk knew) and favored Monk so much that Lisa and Cliff became closer due to their resentment of both of them. Monk's mother clearly loves her children and even stayed with her husband despite his affairs because she viewed it as an expression of his loneliness, but she's incredibly homophobic and insensitive as a person.
98	--> '''Cliff''': Why are you looking at the best [facilities]? She wasn't the best mother.
99	* {{Parody}}: Monk writes "My Pafology" / "Fuck" as a parody of the urban fiction books he despises so much, so of course it immediately blows up and nets him an advance of freaking ''$750,000''. When he hears this, he is absolutely speechless.
100	* PetTheDog: It's not entirely within her control due to Alzheimer's, but Monk's mother, like a lot of black boomers, seems intolerant of gay men...until the wedding reception. She is seen dancing with Cliff's two gay lovers and seems perfectly content doing so, which is nice considering earlier when she just destroys Cliff's spirit by saying, in a spell of her condition, "I always knew you weren't a queer" while slow dancing with her.
101	* PlayingUpTheStereotype: Monk is a black professor from a well-off background, and resents how the white-dominated publishing industry only wants to sell stereotypically black stories (i.e. about racism, urban crime, etcetera). As a joke, he writes a "hood" novel filled with stereotypes like deadbeat dads and drug addiction, and passes himself off as a thuggy ex-con (even affecting a ghetto accent). It gets rave reviews.
102	* RageAgainstTheAuthor: When Monk is initially writing ''My Pafology'', he imagines the scene of the two characters he's writing. When one shoots the other, the shot character calls Monk out in annoyance.
103	* RefugeInAudacity: This trope fuels the entire film. Monk writes an intentionally bad urban fiction book, and so of course, it blows up and becomes a bestseller, netting him a $750k advance and not one but TWO movie deals. He is absolutely mortified at all of it, which is the conflict of the film.
104	* TheReveal: Parodied. When "Fuck" wins the Literary Award, we see Monk go up and take it from the host, about to reveal himself to the world...and then it cuts to black and we find out Monk wrote a screenplay about his life and experiences and is pitching it to the executive who's making "Plantation Annihilation." He also mentions two other endings before the real film ends shortly after.
105	* ReversePsychologyBackfire: As a last ditch effort to cancel his publishing deal, Monk (in his Stagg R. Leigh persona) demands that the publishers change the title of the book from ''My Pafology'' to ''Fuck'', saying that if they don't he'll cancel the whole book. Despite their initial horror, the publishers decide to go through with the change, and the book is called ''Fuck'' for the rest of the film.
106	* RuleOfPool: When Monk and Coraline find Cliff swimming at night, Cliff pulls Monk into the pool.
107	* RuleOfSymbolism: During Sintara's reading of ''We's Lives In Da Ghetto'', the camera focuses on Monk's dismayed reaction...before he's blocked (in the shot) by an applauding white woman. This shot neatly summarizes the film's theme -- white audiences eating up the type of "black" content Monk hates, while steamrolling over his own objections.
108	* RunningGag: Monk's family teasing him about bringing a white woman home one time.
109	* ScaryBlackMan: In-universe. ''Fuck'' revolves entirely around black stereotypes, including two black men, who are [[WhosYourDaddy secretly father and son]] who are also hardened career criminals. They recite cliched lines about being like "apes."
110	* ShowWithinAShow: There's the fake talk show that has his fake persona Stagg on briefly, but the movie also transitions into showing us that Monk wrote a screenplay of his life and experiences and then pitches it to the douche who's making "Plantation Annhiliation" in a fairly smooth and creative cut.
111	* SmashToBlack: {{Discussed\|Trope}}. The film seems to end on a SmashToBlack just as Monk gets up at the awards dinner--but no, it's just the first ending Monk pitches to Wiley the director. Wiley hates the ending because it's too ambiguous and demands he come up with another.
112	* SpringtimeForHitler: Monk wrote ''My Pafology'' to spite itself and prove audiences that WhiteGuilt books are not good literature and when publishers and audiences love it, he doubles down trying to make it worse, only for them to love it more. Even renaming it ''Fuck'' doesn’t stop its success with the novel eventually becoming a best seller, getting a movie deal, and winning a prestigious award, becoming Monk's most successful work, much to his chagrin.
113	* StraightGay: [[spoiler:Cliff is portrayed this way, so much so that Monk either didn't notice or didn't care to notice. Cliff also is a very late bloomer for coming out, as he didn't do so until well into adulthood ''and after having a wife and kids.'' It's not fair, but it is understandable that his wife and kids hate his guts since as soon as the news got out, the whole family was humiliated by their own community. That being said, he doesn't display many of the gay stereotypical behavior except for having a lot of sexual partners and they're quite a bit younger than him. Despite this, it's not a negative portrayal of a gay man.]]
114	* TakeThat:
115	** Understandably, there are a few shots taken at Creator/TylerPerry, given that his empire is built upon pretty much nothing but films about UncleTomfoolery and other negative black stereotypes.
116	** The entire film itself is a HUGE Take That at the publishing industry and the movie industry for being majority white and only caring about works depicting black pain that appeal to their own sense of WhiteGuilt, never black joy or black success.
117	** Wiley's film ''Plantation Annihilation'' is one towards "black trauma horror" films that exploit racism as a device to tell horror stories.
118	* TruthInTelevision:
119	** Most of what's portrayed about the publishing world is spot on in accuracy. The American publishing industry still remains between 80-90% white and is 74% female.
120	** Traditionally published authors (and some indie/self-published/hybrid authors) ''do'' actually randomly visit big box bookstores to see if their books are being stocked and what section they're in, so Monk isn't just being neurotic here--it's accurate to what plenty of authors can't help but do. Some of them ask for permission to sign their books as well and depending on the store, sometimes they're allowed to do so to add value to the purchase.
121	* TokenMinority: Cliff is the film's sole gay character, which colors how he interacts with his family (who largely disapprove of his life choices).
122	* UncleTomfoolery: Monk writes this type of book, featuring black thugs in a crime-ridden community, to spite white audiences who only want to read about black stereotypes, but it becomes a success.
123	* WhamLine: To highlight just how far her Alzheimer's has progressed, [[spoiler:after a talk about how she knew her husband was cheating on her for most of their marriage, Monk's mother calls him Cliff, showing she can't even tell her children apart anymore]].
124	* WhereTheWhiteWomenAt:
125	** Monk's father once kissed a white woman while still married to his mother, which his sister saw. It's a RunningGag.
126	** Monk also gets made fun of by his siblings and mother for having brought a white woman home at some point, while his brother Cliff was also married to a white woman, though he declares that "[[TheBeard Beards don't count]]."
127	* WhiteGuilt: Wiley is a movie producer that specializes in these types of films with his latest one being a horror flick, ''Plantation Annihilation.''

Context Film / AmericanFiction