Indian Time - A Voice from the Eastern Door

By Isaac White.

I’ve been being quite the Nighthawk lately. I guess patterns change and are usually related to life changes. No, I’m not telling you I’m going through the male equivalent of “the big change” that women go through. This is just my preamble to get to my point. The revelation is that I’m writing this at 4 in the morning.

We share things between us, so I’m trying to set the scene for you. Yeah, I’m laying it on pretty thick, and let’s hope you don’t think I’ve gone round the bend. Or worse, you’re fed up when we’re only 100 words into this week’s edition. We’ll get back to the life events and patterns that changed, routines that were upended, and other existence alterations we all go through, and how great it is to see those related through media.

Before we get there, though, I have another anecdote about my boss. No, I’m not trying to curry favor with my editor by mentioning her every few weeks. I’m recounting this tale because it’s funny and, more than anything else, is evidence I can give you that my movie takes are impeccable.

Last week I talked about Saltburn and how I didn’t enjoy the film. That in and of itself isn’t a headline-worthy revelation. What brings me to share this with you is the content of our texts. As I said last week, Saltburn is quite odd, and I don’t understand why critics went so wild for it. It’s about spoiled, entitled, and self-involved people of serious wealth, infiltrated by a young man seeking to enter their world.

I said I didn’t hate the movie and that is true. It didn’t pull feelings of true hate out of me.

Certainly, it would be fair to say that I disliked it quite a lot. So why bring it up? I got a text from my editor saying she was watching the movie, and the sentiment from that end of the phone aligned with my view that it wasn’t good.

What made me laugh was our mutual agreement that this particular breed of English folks was out of whack and that the movie didn’t survive genuine scrutiny of the plot and its believability.

What was better for me was that the conversation ended abruptly because the film put her off; further discussion on the movie was off-limits. Now, whether you agree with me, I think it’s a chuckle when you tell a friend (you’re all my friend for reading, yes, I’m that shameless and pandering) something is terrible, but they must see for themselves and then let you know precisely what it is they hate about it.

I laughed for quite a while because, after a couple of exchanges, the abrupt halt on the topic made me belly laugh. Plus, I like to make the people in my life part of this shared experience.

Perhaps I should devise a different way to say that because it’s somewhat semi-shared. You get to hear what I think, but unless one of you approaches me and tells me you like the series, thus boosting my ego, you will not find yourself here one week. So yes, I’m urging you to approach me when you see me around to tell me I’m absorbing and a great writer. I have insights and humorous anecdotes without which your life would be a dreary gray rain landscape scribbled on a paper napkin.

Yikes. I didn’t mean to sound so melancholic. Trust me, I’m having fun here, not being Eeyore.

Let’s get to the show. Well, it’s actually a movie, and while I have more than one thing I want to talk about, this particular movie is so great that I’m not sure I’ll have room. I’m upfront with you; this week may be solely focused on one piece of work. To be fair, though, it truly is fantastic. Plus, I took six pages of notes while I was watching this movie with my wife, who, by the way, fell asleep halfway through. Guess what? I kept watching. She doesn’t read these, so I have no fear of retaliation. That’s a joke, folks. I’m not afraid of my wife. Not a lot, anyway.

That’s also a joke.

American Fiction is a 2023 film directed by Cord Jefferson, who also wrote the screenplay. The movie stars Jeffrey Wright as Thelonious ‘Monk’ Ellison, a novelist and professor who is a brilliant man and writer whose work doesn’t fit the best-seller list. We see that Monk is a man going through some things. Internal struggles, family estrangement, and professional challenges come out in the wash through the film.

From the start, we see Monk is a man with deep-seated anger. Touchiness is an excellent way to describe his interactions with his students from the first scene. Monk is dragged into a meeting where he is essentially forced to take time off from teaching because some of his students expressed an inability to handle his curmudgeonly nature.

With his time off, Monk travels to Boston for a writer’s conference. Beantown also happens to be where his family originates, and he reunites with his sister, Lisa (Tracee Ellis Ross), where they discuss the declining mental faculties of their mother and the difficulties of handling that for Lisa.

Lisa is a beautiful character, and while she is upset that her brother has estranged himself from them, she loves him and wants him to be part of them again. While Monk is working his way through his family issues, he receives news that his latest book has been refused for publication by every agency to which his representation has submitted it.

Understandably upset, Monk is more enraged when, at the conference, he hears a fellow author, Sintara Golden (Issa Rae), reading from her renowned bestseller. Monk listens to her reading and is aghast that people are so intrigued with what he sees as a book that is an insulting characterization of black people. A black novelist himself, he leaves with a new sense of outrage.

In his upset, and with the help of some wine, he decides to write his stereotype of black people he knows that white society wants to read. He intentionally writes characters who use incorrect grammar, are violent, and loud. Essentially, what he saw Sintara offering in her book was that white folks ate up enough to get her on the New York Times best-sellers list.

He creates a pen name, Stagg R. Leigh, to hide his identity and expose the world’s hypocrisy.

Monk knows that works such as his are just what society wants. Let’s be honest here. The movie is poking at white folks. Don’t take this as me poking at white people. It’s simply one of the main points of the film.

I had to laugh at his nom de guerre because most white people would have no idea that Stagger Lee is an incredibly famous blues song. There is a story behind the song, but let’s not get into that. The pseudonym is a giant neon sign to the audience: “You pretend to care about black people, but you don’t know anything, and it’s clear from your patronizing ways.”

That’s what this movie is. A commentary from a black filmmaker who made this film based on a black novelist’s book, essentially telling white Americans that they know exactly what they are up to. Despite all the politically correct, “woke” nonsense that white people say, far too often, it’s just lip service with no meaning behind it.

I got the impression that they were telling the audience that white society is insincere when it comes to genuinely understanding black people and saying to us that there’s no real effort behind those flashy shows of diversity and inclusivity. That at the end of the day, they’ll go home and forget all about the crap they said at the office or in front of a camera about how much they embrace black people and other people of color.

I have to tell you why this movie connected with me so profoundly. While I’m not black (I think that’s quite obvious, but I had to throw that caveat in case of any confusion), I am Mohawk, and I saw parallels throughout the film. We all know that Natives are often portrayed in a caricaturish manner in movies and TV. Yes, things have been improving in the last 5-10 years regarding how we’re shown.

But there are common themes between what the filmmakers are saying about black people in this movie and what WE could say about how we’ve been portrayed since there have been movies and television. I think that most Akwesasronon who watch this film will come to the same conclusion as I did.

The constant reduction of black people to stupid, ignorant stereotypes to satisfy a consumer experience is precisely what they’ve done to us for decades in the media. And no, I’m not saying it doesn’t still happen. I mean, come on, we just watched my Niners lose in the Superbowl, and the Kansas City Chiefs fans do that incredibly racist chant and chop constantly. By the way, if I ever see one of their fans do that in front of me, someone will have to bail me out, and I’ll need my trusty attorney.

Messaging is very deep in this film. The writing is impeccable. Characters are so deep and rich, filled with realness, that they connect across the screen. Jeffrey Wright is a treasure and it’s crazy to me that he didn’t win a Golden Globes. This movie puts so many things together in a rare way. Social commentary that isn’t pablum, commentary that is genius. Writing that is off the charts is excellent. Acting that you will be hard-pressed to match in any other movie. Most of all…Connection.

Most who read this are also Native. I dare you to watch American Fiction as an Onkwehonwe and not feel the pull of a deep connection to Monk and his frustration with how the world sees you. You will. Presumptuous of me? Perhaps. But I think you’ll find I’m correct, just as my boss agreed, that Saltburn is gross and weird.

Do yourself a favor and watch American Fiction. It’s one of the best recently released films, and I’m not overexaggerating when I tell you this movie may be one of my all-time favorites.

That’s all I have this week.

Thanks for reading, and until next week…