YMMV / American Fiction

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Is Sintara's criticism of "My Pafology"/"Fuck" solely due to her recognizing that it wasn't drawing from actual lived experiences like "We's Lives In Da Ghetto" was, or is she also something of a Green-Eyed Monster who doesn't like that this novel, merited or not, is drastically overshadowing her own with its rapid rise to fame and impending movie deal? While Monk is the only one who emerges from their discussion about the two books with a changed mindset, his "Not So Different" Remark (namely how "Fuck" doesn't really portray black people in a more stereotypical light than WLIDG does) isn't necessarily proven wrong by the end, so Sintara consequently comes off less as a moral victor and more a black writer with a different mindset about society who might be Innocently Insensitive to what her book looks like to some black readers. Or alternatively, did she write the book primarily for the money and is simply too prideful to admit it? Both her dialogue and some of Cord Jefferson's statements hint at this interpretation.
  • Despite how intentionally awful and stereotypical "My Pafology"/"Fuck" is, some fragments are suggested to be parts of Monk's psyche. More specifically, Van Go returning home to discover the despicable "Willy the Wonker" is his father directly parallels Monk discovering his own father's cheating behavior. While white audiences clearly didn't understand the satire or meaning, Monk's initial catharsis writing "My Pafology" could be read not only as him getting revenge on the publishing industry, but also skewering his own complicated feelings on his family.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Like you wouldn't believe.
  • The scene introducing Sintara's novel is so deliberately offensive that it's almost impossible not to laugh: the book's title being "We's Lives In Da Ghetto", the cover being a pair of shoes hanging from a telephone wire (a common way to memorialize someone killed in the city), and of course the passage Sintara reads being full of ebonics and black stereotypes like baby mammas. You'd almost expect Sintara herself to be white, going by how tone-deaf it is.
  • The funeral for Lisa is appropriately somber...right up until Monk reads her last will and testament, where he (and his family) start cracking up at Lisa hoping that she died "under the heaving thrusts of Idris Elba" (or, failing that, Russell Crowe). Then, as Monk is sadly scattering his sister's ashes in the ocean, a neighbor named Phillip that the family has clearly been putting up with bullshit from for a long time walks by and starts aggrandizing them for not having a permit to scatter human remains here, leading to this iconic exchange:
    Cliff: I will eat your sweater vest for dinner. Bitch. Go.
    Monk (in the distance): Get the fuck out of here, Phillip! Always been a fuckin' douche!
  • And of course, the scene from Monk's own stereotypical novel, acted out as if the characters are in the room with him, is screamingly hilarious as we see him come up with the lowest-effort and most profane dialogue imaginable.
  • The proposed ending of Monk getting gunned down by the police at the award ceremony is so over-the-top and melodramatic that it's impossible to take seriously. (Needless to say, the director loves it.)
• Jerkass Woobie: For a lot of the movie, Cliff comes across as a sullen, irresponsible asshole—but his behavior is clearly rooted in his growing up as The Unfavorite, partly due to his parents' homophobia.

---