WRITE WHAT I LIKE

Movies we Love That Just Ain't Right: Coming To America

This is the first in a series I like to call "Love Just Ain't Right".

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. 

The Price of the Ticket

Old, But Good.  This piece was originally published on 01 May 2006.

In the 1920s my great-grandmother Isabella migrated with her parents to Cleveland, Ohio seeking a more prosperous life. At an early age she went to work at her family's store, a smoke shop and grocers, to support her parents and brothers during the Depression. As a young woman, she spent her days scrubbing the cold floors of Cleveland's elite. By night she felt the heat of the press as she laid creases in their tailored shirts and expensive dresses. Isabella worked hard to do the jobs that others would not - the jobs that built America.

Her story represents that of millions of people in the U.S., but don't be fooled; it is no immigrant narrative. Isabella was black, like me, and her story, rendered invisible by the current deliberation on immigrant civil rights, is that of many Black Americans.

There is little question that the current immigration debate, though coded and contrived otherwise, is entirely about race. Yet, the framing made popular by immigrants and their advocates is so hostile to Black people and our American experience that it seems impossible for us to stake a claim with this movement. Today's immigrants will find that without Blacks, and a commitment to challenge racism beyond the reach of immigration policy alone, their movement will lose both its moral authority and the practical victory it hopes to achieve.

The language of today's movement directly evokes a painful history. Immigrants who laid claim in the past to this re-imagined American dream colluded with a system of racism that made the hope of health, safety and happiness an empty promise for Black people. Immigrants on the march today threaten to go the way of the Irish, the Italian and the Jewish: they may pay the price of the ticket for American citizenship by yielding to a racial hierarchy that leaves Blacks at the bottom.

Keep reading "The Price of the Ticket"...