Assimilation and Coming To America

    For my CAPS Blog, I chose to write about the phenomenal movie, Coming to America.   This movie follows Akeem Joffer, the young prince of Zamunda.  Akeem has been waited on hand and foot his entire life, and has never had to work a day in his life.  While much of Akeem’s family is stuffy, pretentious royalty, Akeem often doesn’t agree with the traditions and customs that are present in his country.  When Akeem finds out that he is to be married to a woman that he barely knows, it is the last straw.  Akeem and his loyal servant Semmi decide to leave their home country and head to America with the goal of finding true love.  Upon arrival, they duo decide that the best place in America for a future king to find a wife would of course be Queens, New York.  The rest of the movie follows their struggles as they learn how different America is from their native country, and Akeem struggles to find love without being treated like royalty.


    The theme that I chose to discuss and was most relevant to the movie was assimilation.  When a person migrates to a new place, there are a multitude of factors that determine how they will adjust.  When migrants value the host culture more than their own, they assimilate.  Assimilation describes the type of cultural adaption when an individual gives up his or her own cultural heritage and adopts the mainstream cultural identity (Martin & Nakayama, 2013).  Voluntary assimilation usually means that the migrant is accepted by their new peers and puts more focus on blending into their new peer group than maintaining their old cultural identity.

    In Coming to America, Akeem clearly goes through the process of assimilation.  He leaves his home country of Zamunda at the beginning of the movie with a bad taste in his mouth, and is eager to learn about America.  Right upon entering the slum in Queens that is his new home, a bottle shatters in the street and the upbeat Akeem proclaims, “Fascinating! Semmi, look at this! America is great indeed. Imagine a country so free, one can throw glass on the streets!”.  Akeem decides to tell nobody that he is a prince, and just wants to be treated like your average American.  When Akeem discovers the sport of American football, he is excited to talk about it with his American friends, and says, “ Oh sir, the Giants of New York took on the Packers of Green Bay. And in the end, the Giants triumphed by kicking an oblong ball made of pigskin through a big "H". It was a most ripping victory.”  Ultimately, Akeem’s family comes to America to retrieve him, and clearly do not feel the same way about America as Akeem does. 

    Akeem goes through a very clear version of the U model during his journey.  When he first decides to come to America, he is very excited about how awesome America will be.  Once he actually gets to America and settles in, he goes through a series of culture shocks, and begins to see that America is very different from his homeland.  Finally, Akeem begins to learn how to interact with others in America, and adjusts.  The W model is also appropriate for this movie, because in addition to following the U model, Akeem goes through culture shock again when his parents come to him and he has to interact with his old Zamundian culture.



References
Landis, J. (Director) (1988). In Coming to America.

Martin, J.N., & Nakayama, T.K. (2013). Intercultural communication in contexts (6th ed.). Boston, MA: McGraw Hill.