Sexual Assault of Black Men is Not a Punchline
Being raised by a white mother made me feel like I was “less black” than other darker-skinned kids I went to school with. To compensate for my dearth of, what I called, “Black experiences” I clung onto any readily obtainable aspects of the Black community. I tried to learn all I could from Black TV shows and movies in hopes that it would somehow make me “more Black.” This manifested in my spending my formative years watching hours of syndicated episodes of “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” and “Sister Sister.”
One of my favorite movies during this time was Coming to America starring Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall. I watched Murphy embody the loveable and naïve Prince Akeem as he traveled from his home in the fictional African kingdom of Zamunda to Queens, New York to find the love of his life and future wife. Akeem was kind, funny, and compassionate. His best friend Semmi, played by Hall, was the perfect pairing for Murphy’s Akeem as he was cold, disgusted by Queens, and yearned for his way of life back in Zamunda.
I loved that movie, even while it has its problems, including a running joke about the men of the Zamundan royal family having sex with the women whose job it is to bathe them. (Gross) Overall, the film was well-received at the time and was so adored in fact, that Amazon Studios decided to make a sequel. Coming 2 America released on March 4th, 2021 and at that time, was the number one movie in America.
The movie begins innocently enough taking time to fill the audience in on what Akeem, Semmi, and other returning characters have been up to during the 33 years since the original story ended. Everything was going swimmingly up until the 12-minute mark when the audience is met with a rape scene in their PG-13 comedy. The scene is played for laughs, but my wife and I were so shocked by what we saw that we had to pause the movie to discuss it. Then I had a realization. Hollywood does not take the sexual assault of Black men seriously.
We can see it now in Coming 2 America, and we saw it in 2017 when actor Terry Crews was open about his sexual assault and was criticized on Twitter for being a victim. American society does not take the trauma of sexual assault seriously when black men are the victims.
Aside from the fact that I had just watched a beloved character get sexually assaulted in my living room, the aspect of this scene that bothered me the most, is that the sexual assault was unnecessary from a narrative standpoint.
The plot of the movie centers around Akeem not having a male heir to succeed him when he dies. Akeem’s father, King Jaffe Joffer, played by James Earl Jones, informs Akeem that he has a son in Queens. This confused me because I had seen the original Coming to America many times and nowhere in the plot was there a scene of Akeem engaging in sexual intercourse. I had faith that the sequel would address this plot hole and, unfortunately, this issue is remedied in a detestable manner.
When Akeem is told about his son, he is shocked. He claims he has only ever slept with one woman, his wife. Then Semmi initiates a flashback to a never-before-seen night from the last time the two men were in Queens. Enter Mary Junson, played by Leslie Jones. Jones’ character is clearly sexually interested in Akeem and makes it known from the moment they meet. Akeem is noticeably uncomfortable when she shows up at his apartment with Semi and her unnamed friend from the bar who at this point is in bed with Semmi.
On the couch Mary takes a hit of a comically large blunt and then forcibly pulls Akeem’s mouth to hers and blows the smoke directly into his mouth. This causes him to cough and then hallucinate a wild boar charging into the room, jumping into his lap, and ramming him over and over. Yes, really. This dialogue from Akeem is played over the scene of Mary climbing on top of Akeem and raping him as he hallucinates from the drugs she forced on him.
Akeem was the victim of sexual assault. He was drugged and raped. Yet, for the rest of the movie, all the characters laugh it off, or worse, make Akeem feel guilty for lying about only sleeping with Lisa his whole life. Not once did any character in the film make mention of the assault unless they were making fun of Akeem or trying to make him feel guilty for abandoning his son, whom he knew nothing about.
I scoured the internet for reviews hoping that film critics were just as outraged by this rape scene as I was. I found one article discussing the scene. If the roles in this scene were reversed and Akeem had forced drugs on Mary, then raped her while she was high and hallucinating, Eddie Murphy’s career would be over faster than you could say “The Adventures of Pluto Nash.”
According to an article written in the Aggression and Violent Behavior journal about male victims of sexual assault, it is a common perception for men to be viewed at fault for their assault because men are believed to be able to defend themselves. “…the role of physical resistance during rape of males would be even more important to judging whether the victim was blameworthy or not, due to societal stereotypes about men being strong, assertive and able to escape from confrontational situations” (Davies & Rogers, 2006)
The presumption that all men can defend themselves from would be attackers makes discussions of sexual assault against men harder for some to accept as reality. If we look at the way that Terry Crews was treated after his admission of being a victim of sexual assault it is easy to see the harm that comes from this stereotype.
Crews believed that because of his size and his race, that it would have been a mistake to defend himself from his attacker. During testimony he gave to the United States Senate, Crews shared the following thoughts on how his identity affected his assault.
“As a black man in America, you only have a few shots at success. You only have a few chances to make yourself a viable member of the community. I’m from Flint, Michigan. I have seen many, many young black men who were provoked into violence, and they were imprisoned, or they were killed. And they’re not here.” (Kelly, 2018)
Until the United States sees the trauma of Black men as legitimate, we will still have to endure rape scenes in movies like Coming 2 America. Fortunately, the #Metoo movement has helped us see a decrease in unnecessary or comedic depictions of rape in mainstream media. Sexual assault survivors have begun to feel empowered to hold their abusers accountable in part due to the success of the #Metoo movement.
Ironically enough, the founder of the #Metoo movement is a Black woman named Tarana Burke who first coined the phrase in 2006. Those two words sparked a paradigm shift in the United States and changed the way we hold rapists and other perpetrators of sexual assault accountable for their actions. There is still much more education that needs to happen, but thanks to Ms. Burke the conversation has started. That conversation is yet to begin when it comes to sexual assault and Black men. Terry Crews tried his best to speak out about his experience but was met with skepticism and disbelief.
During his hearing at the Senate, Crews had the following to say about the treatment he received after recounting intimate details about his assault.
“As I shared my story, I was told over and over that this was not abuse. This was just a joke. This was just horseplay. But I can say one man’s horseplay is another man’s humiliation.”
Terry Crews and the countless other Black men who are survivors of sexual assault, deserve the same compassion and empathy that all the women who came forward with their survivor stories received. The #Metoo movement is a phenomenal force for good that has brought sexual assault against women to the forefront of discussions in every facet of our society. It is time for Black men to have a similar movement so that maybe the trauma that those victims experienced will be taken seriously.
References
Davies, M., & Rogers, P. (2006). Perceptions of male victims in depicted sexual assaults: A review of the literature. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 367–377.
Kelly, E. (2018, June 27). Terry Crews explains why he didn’t fight back during alleged sexual assault in emotional speech to US Senate. Retrieved from Metro: https://metro.co.uk/2018/06/27/terry-crews-explains-didnt-fight-back-alleged-sexual-assault-emotional-speech-us-senate-7663513/