“American Fiction”..Do erasure and stereotyping determine the price of public success?

The writer listens to the directions of the film publisher and producer, but refuses to submit to their artistic directions in a film that won an Oscar in 2024 for best adapted screenplay. (American Fiction, directed by Cord Jefferson).

The film is based on the novel “Erasure” by Percival Everett

Erased in front of what?

The writer’s personality and style are erased (an outstanding performance by Jeffrey Wright) in the face of what Gérard Genette calls “the sum of general or transcendent characteristics to which each individual text belongs,” which are characteristics that predate the writer’s birth (Gérard Genette, “Introduction to the Text Collective,” translated by Abdul Rahman Ayoub, Toubkal Publishing House, 2nd edition, 1986, Casablanca, p. 5).

The writer refuses to be erased in front of the text collector. He refuses to write according to general, transcendent characteristics enshrined as clichés and wants to leave his literary mark, so his novels are not received with open arms.

From here, the drama was born in the film “Yajdal Dhafrati.” There are facts on the personal and artistic levels in the life of a black writer who is angry because his books are classified in libraries under the category of the race of black writers and are not classified on the basis of literary genre or topics.

On a personal level, it is clear, according to the film, that half of the American population suffers from insomnia. In search of peace and isolation, the hero fled from his family to devote himself to writing. It coexists with severe family disintegration and a dramatic deterioration of the family’s position in the individual’s life. Married couples have become extinct in American movies. Divorced children remain who incite their mother against their dead father. To save the mother from grief, they told her that he was cheating on her. She replied that she knew. They were shocked.

In the artistic introduction, the writer feels anxious in front of the blank page. He imagines his characters speaking in front of him so that he can understand them. He wants to break away from the mainstream, dictate his topic and style to readers, and gain acceptance and success, but the publishing market forces him to erase himself in order to conform to the market law. The writer was determined to resist erasure, and was preoccupied with literary and stylistic questions to express himself…. Suddenly he found himself involved in the never-ending demands of life, which changed his outlook on his family life and art.

From that dilemma, the solution was born. The writer discovers that a little patience with his family members is better for his health than severing his relationship with them.

The film is a cinematic comedy about an infected university environment that experiences a pathological competition between those who write and dig in search of depth and those who publish a book every six months and run to shine and float… like rotten eggs. The university professor advises his colleague, “Stop spying on my life and focus on writing.”

This film is an artistic injection of self-sterilization against everything that threatens good taste.

The ruling preceded the description, so the explanation will follow the ruling.

Frames follow each other in the film like paintings. The director is careful to make the details of events clear. Scenes are moved with an economy of frames, in a film about the standards of writing and marketing novels in America.

At the Boston Book Fair, there is an empty hall and a crowded hall. The first hall symposium is canceled due to the lack of an audience. Then

The writer turns to the full hall and notices the crowd crowding towards the model writer. He compares her style to his own.

The film is a parody of the desired genre: a black novelist would do well to write about Negroes to get his book published. The best novel is the one that tells of a white policeman shooting a black young man. Thus the publisher imposes the characteristics of the subject and perspective to ensure profit.

However, if a white writer writes about this incident, the probability of his novel being published is weak, and the probability of publication is greatly reduced if the white writer is living a story of divorce.

At the Boston Book Fair, the camera follows a novelist who follows the publisher’s instructions and writes a novel similar to the “Game of Thrones” series, preferably for each writer to write about his or her race. The publisher and producer are looking for an ex-con. Publisher and producer criteria matched. The best advertisement for any novel is to announce its purchase in order to adapt it into a series or cinema. Cinema has become a standard for literature.

The situation that prevailed in the twentieth century has been reversed.

The film presents a theory of writing, a theory based on the empirical knowledge necessary for the writer. The publishers explain to him that what is needed is a novel about a young black man who is shot by a white policeman. Publishers ask to write a novel that exploits clichés familiar to the recipient. A novel written by a black writer who lives in the ghetto and fools around in order to get his books sold. Demand determines the form of supply. So there is no point in resisting stereotyping in the name of individuality and artistic independence (Toni Morrison seems to have succumbed to the set of generic or transcendent characteristics required in her 1970 novel “The Bluest Eye,” in which a black girl dreams of Barbie eyes).

When the writer meets a film producer, he checks the conditions:

The writer must narrate facts and avoid making judgments. He must write from experience and observation, not inspiration. A consistent narration is required in short, clear sentences and behavioral descriptions. There is no place for structural writing in a cinematic scenario.

A raw text is required, writing extracted from real-world tragedy, writing that is like staring into an open wound, a narrative of the catastrophes of black life in the language of the street is required. It is good that the writer has been released from prison so that his narrative is realistic and convincing, based on experience and observation.

The producer concludes, “There must be a resonant, clear title. The ambiguity of novels does not fill cinema halls, so the quote needs great clarity.” The ending of the novel is not suitable for a movie. Movies need big endings.”

These are the stylistic characteristics of best-selling books. Writers whose books do not sell claim that erasure and stereotyping are the price of popular success.

Writer, no one cares about your story until you win. In order to win, there is a literary and artistic recipe in which the characteristics of cows are similar, and the publisher and producer support and follow it.