Movies we love that just ain’t right: Coming To America

by guest contributor Andre Banks, originally published at WRITE WHAT I LIKE

Though hilarious, creative and often insightful, in hindsight sometimes the things we love just ain’t right. This series is my attempt to unearth the glories and woes of iconic moments in Black popular culture.

If you haven’t seen Coming to America, open a new tab on that browser, go to netflix and get involved. This iconic Eddie Murphy film, directed by John Landis premiered when I was the tender and impressionable age of 10 and remains one of my favorites…. even though it just ain’t right.

The first paragraph of the wikipedia synopsis says a lot in itself:

Akeem Joffer (Eddie Murphy), the prince and heir to the throne of the fictitious African country Zamunda, is discontented with being pampered all his life. The final straw is when his parents (James Earl Jones and Madge Sinclair) present him with a bride-to-be he has never met before, trained to desire mindlessly obeying his every command.

To make short work of the summary, Prince Akeem comes to New York looking for a bride he can both “love and respect,” chooses Queens as an obvious destination and takes a job at the Black-owned fast restaurant, notably named “McDowells”.

So, um, this film is hilarious. There are moments of absolutely mind-numbing Black camp humor that are truly amazing. I’m waiting for a film that can deliver a moment half as transcendent as this one:

But beyond the jheri curls and other tragic tackiness of the 80s, this film introduced another powerful image to its audience. And that joke, it seems, was on Africa.

In the Africa of Coming to America, kings rule and servants serve, but the primitive truly reigns. Even as a bookish and curious kid, the image of Africa in this film that I loved and watched too many times to count was, for a time, the most vivid painted for me of modern Africa.

And friends, that just ain’t right.

Bu as I re-viewed this movie as a grown-ass man, something else stood out for me. Nude “bathers” servicing the king and prince each morning? A bride so subservient she barks like a dog on command? There’s a thread of “afro-patriarchy” that manifests strongly here and, oddly, makes Black American patriarchy seem normal by connecting it to a wholly mythologized and sexualized vision of primordial African civilization.

Oh yes I went there, but I’m prepared to stop (though I could go on). I trust that you’ll get down in the comments section and tell us all about the parts you loved or they thought just weren’t right with reverence and revulsion for this complex comedic masterpiece.