I had to sit through a primary school production of Grease this week, a few out-of-tune songs, some stumbled lines, a dash of overacting, a sprinkle of comic relief and 50 minutes later, I still wasn’t entirely sure what the story was about.

Truth is, I don’t think I’ve ever actually watched Grease. But somehow, like many cultural touchstones, I seem to know it anyway. It’s one of those films so baked into pop culture that you absorb the plot by osmosis. You know the songs, the characters, the jackets and copied the swagger even if you’ve never sat through the whole thing. Its not just Grease, I somehow missed the whole of the star wars saga but got the general gist of it all through Family Guy and Adult Swim parodies.

Growing up in West Africa, we had a heavy, black-and-white brick TV. But thanks to unreliable electricity and the absence of streaming and record buttons, watching a full movie was a rare achievement. Most films were either interrupted midway by a power cut or caught halfway through. We spent most of our time outside until the scream of “UP NEPA!”, the universal sign of power is back, summons us back home to watch some TV.

It was during one of these blackout nights that my neighbour gathered all the kids around to tell us about a movie she had just seen, Coming to America. There were maybe ten of us, huddled together, hanging on every word as she took us through the story, scene by scene. I remember the joy we felt when we all shouted:
“GOOD MORNING, MY NEIGHBOURS!” That sequence is still etched in my memory, clear as day, even as I struggle to remember what I had for dinner last night.

By the end of her storytelling, I felt like I had seen the movie. So much so that when I finally watched Coming to America years later, it felt oddly underwhelming. Almost like it couldn’t live up to the magic of that retelling, the joy of experiencing cinema not through a screen, but through imagination, laughter, and a good storyteller.