Coming to America (1988)

and the Prince Who Wanted a Woman Who Could Say No

A refusal from the other side. A prince is handed a bride trained to please him, tests her with absurd requests, and turns her down to go looking for a woman who can think for herself. What his no teaches about the made-to-order partner, and what the film does, and does not, let Lisa decide.

Coming to America (1988). Directed by John Landis, from a story by Eddie Murphy, screenplay by David Sheffield and Barry W. Blaustein. Eddie Murphy as Prince Akeem, Arsenio Hall as Semmi, Shari Headley as Lisa McDowell, James Earl Jones as King Jaffe Joffer, Madge Sinclair as Queen Aoleon, John Amos as Cleo McDowell, and Vanessa Bell as Imani Izzi.

“Because I wanted you to love me for who I am.”

He was handed a bride who had been trained to agree with him. He went to Queens to find one who could disagree.

This page belongs to On Screen. It is the second refusal in the series, after Labyrinth, and it is a strange and useful one, because this time the person who says no is the man. Most of the films on this page taught girls to become what a man wanted. This one shows a man being offered exactly that, and turning it down.

Like every entry on the On Screen page, it reads a story for the pattern it teaches, and makes no claim about anyone’s diagnosis. Akeem is not a villain. He is warm, curious and, by the standards of this series, remarkably clear about what he wants. The film is a broad, joyful comedy, and it is worth reading as one. The pattern here belongs to a tradition, not a person: a bride trained to please a husband chosen for her. Zamunda is a fictional kingdom and its customs are the film’s invention; nothing here is a comment on any real culture.

The Story

Akeem Joffer is the crown prince of Zamunda, a wealthy African kingdom, and he is tired of a life in which servants do everything for him. On his twenty-first birthday, his parents, King Jaffe and Queen Aoleon, present him with his arranged bride, Imani Izzi. She has been trained to please him.

Akeem spends a few minutes alone with her, and tests her. He tells her to hop on one foot and to make animal noises, and she does. He goes to his father and asks for forty days to see the world before the wedding. What he wants is a woman who can think for herself, and who will love him for himself, not for his crown.

With his friend and aide Semmi, he rents a squalid room in Queens, posing as a poor foreign student. At a neighborhood rally he meets Lisa McDowell, and sees in her everything he has been looking for. He takes an entry-level job at McDowell’s, the fast-food restaurant owned by her widowed father, Cleo.

Lisa has a boyfriend, Darryl, whose father owns the Soul Glo hair company. At a party at the McDowell home, Darryl announces to both families that he and Lisa are engaged. She has agreed to no such thing. Furious, she breaks up with him, and starts seeing Akeem.

Semmi wires the king for money, and Akeem’s parents fly to Queens. His secret comes out at the McDowell house. Cleo, who had looked down on the poor young man, is suddenly delighted: “You hit the jackpot.” Lisa is hurt and angry that Akeem lied to her. On a subway train he explains why: “Because I wanted you to love me for who I am.” She answers: “I’m not sure who you are anymore.” In front of a carful of strangers, he renounces his throne and asks her to marry him. She tells him “I can’t let you do that,” and says no.

Meanwhile the king, who has told Lisa that his son cannot be interested in her and offered her father money, meets a man who will not take it. “You don’t have enough money to buy my daughter off,” Cleo tells him. Afterward, the queen tells her husband what she thinks of the custom he is defending. “Well, it is a stupid tradition!” He asks who he is to change it. “I thought you were the King?”

Back in Zamunda, a heartbroken Akeem stands at the altar and lifts his bride’s veil. It is Lisa. After the ceremony, riding through the cheering crowd in a carriage, he offers once more to give up the throne for her. She chooses her new life in Zamunda instead.

Coming to America was the third-highest-grossing film of 1988 in the United States, was nominated for two Academy Awards, and won the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Motion Picture.

The Story Before the Story

Before Coming to America, Paramount had optioned a 1982 treatment by the humorist Art Buchwald about “a rich, despotic African potentate who comes to America for a state visit.” The project stalled, and the studio abandoned it in 1985. Two years later it began work on the film, from a story by Eddie Murphy. Buchwald sued, and a court found in his favor for breach of contract; the case was later settled out of court.

This page takes no side on who owed whom. What is worth noticing is how far the story traveled: from a despot with all the power, coming to visit, to a prince handed all the power, including power over a woman, who gets on a plane to get away from it.

What It Gets Right

A great deal, and it deserves the credit.

The film makes a man’s happy ending depend on a woman’s ability to refuse him. Akeem is not looking for a prize. He is looking for someone with a mind of her own, and when he finds one, she uses it on him, and the film takes her side.

It also gives Lisa the clearest boundary of any heroine in this series so far. When a man announces her engagement without asking her, she ends the relationship on the spot. And it gives the last word on tradition to a mother. The queen, not the prince, is the one who calls the custom stupid to the king’s face.

What It Teaches

1. A bride raised to please is a mirror, not a partner

Imani is the most unsettling person in the film, and none of it is her fault. She has been trained for one purpose: to please the prince. The film plays her for laughs, but Akeem sees the problem clearly. A person trained to agree with you cannot tell you anything you don’t already know.

The Decoder Series has a card for the relationship that wants your reflection instead of you, Card 54, Trophy on the Shelf, and a line in it that could be written about Imani’s whole upbringing: “You are not a person to them. You are a mirror they need.” The Glossary calls the courtship version mirroring: reflecting someone’s preferences back to them so perfectly that you seem made for them. Imani was not pretending. She was made that way, which is what makes her sad to watch, once you see it.

2. A yes that cannot be a no is not a yes

Akeem’s test is absurd on purpose. Hop on one foot. Make animal noises. She does every one, without a flicker. He doesn’t want a woman who will do anything he says, because he understands that her obedience tells him nothing about whether she loves him.

Many of us learned that lesson the other way round, as the one hopping. If you were raised, or partnered, to say yes to everything, your yes stopped telling anyone what you want, including you. The Glossary’s word for what you get back is boundaries: the places where your answer can be no, which is the only thing that gives your yes its meaning.

3. The woman who can think for herself says it out loud

The scene the film builds its romance on is not a kiss. It is Lisa standing in her father’s house, in front of two families, refusing an engagement she never agreed to. Darryl assumed that announcing it would make it true. She made sure it didn’t.

The film rewards her for it. The prince searching for a woman with a mind of her own sees her use it, in public, at a cost. A girl watching learned something the other films on this page never taught: your no is not what stands between you and love. Sometimes it is what makes you findable.

4. She was allowed to be angry about the test

Akeem’s reason for hiding who he was is sympathetic. He wanted to be loved without the crown. But Lisa was the one being tested, and nobody told her. She fell in love with a man who did not exist, and she is right to say she no longer knows who he is.

The Decoder’s Card 39, Information Control, describes how a relationship can be steered by what one person is not told. Akeem is no manipulator, and his secret is a fairy-tale device. The lesson is simpler: love built on someone not knowing the facts is love she never got to choose. Lisa says so, and says no, and the film does not argue with her.

5. Somebody always wants to put a price on her

Once the crown is revealed, Lisa is priced from every direction. Her father thinks she has hit the jackpot. The king thinks a check can make her go away. And then her father, of all people, turns the check down: “You don’t have enough money to buy my daughter off.”

The same man can see his daughter as a windfall in one moment and refuse to sell her in the next. Many women grew up with both kinds of love in the same house.

6. The veil, and the choice we don’t get to see

Here is where to be honest. After everything the film has said about a woman who thinks for herself, it ends with Akeem lifting a bride’s veil and finding Lisa underneath it. The film does not show us the moment she changes her mind. We last saw her say no on a subway train; we next see her in the dress, in the ceremony that was built for another woman.

It is fair to wish we had seen her decide. But look at what comes next. In the carriage, Akeem offers again to give up his throne for her, and she is the one who chooses. She could have taken him back to Queens. She chooses Zamunda, and a court where the queen has already called the old tradition stupid. The film asks a lot of the veil. It still leaves the last decision with her.

That is the refusal this film teaches, and it is worth carrying. The prince wanted someone who could say no. She said it twice. When she finally said yes, it meant something, because everyone had watched her refuse.

The Refusals So Far, Side by Side

	Pretty Woman (1990)	Labyrinth (1986)	Coming to America (1988)
What is offered	An apartment, clothes, his money	Her dreams, if he can rule her	A bride trained to please him
Who refuses	She refuses the apartment	Sarah: “You have no power over me”	Akeem refuses Imani; Lisa refuses Darryl, then Akeem
What the refusal protects	Her self-respect	Her will	His freedom to be loved, and her right to choose
How it ends	He climbs up to take her away	He was never real to begin with	She chooses Zamunda over his offer to give it up

Pretty Woman taught that a woman’s refusal is a stage on the way to rescue. Labyrinth taught that it can end the spell. Coming to America teaches something in between, and quietly radical for a 1988 comedy: that a woman’s no is the evidence she is worth marrying.

If You Grew Up on This

Many of us can still do the barbershop scene from memory. Nothing on this page asks you to stop: it is one of the funniest films of the decade, and its heart is in the right place. The useful thing is to look at it clearly from where you stand now.

Some questions to sit with:

Were you ever raised, or partnered, to be someone’s Imani: to know what they liked before you knew what you liked?
When did you last say no to something announced on your behalf?
Has anyone ever tested you without telling you it was a test? How did you feel when you found out?
Who in your life has seen you as a jackpot, and who has refused to put a price on you?
What would your yes mean, if you knew your no would be heard?

Lisa said no to one man in front of her whole family, and to another in front of a subway car full of strangers. Neither one was the end of her story.

You’re the audience now. Your no counts.