I grew up in the 80s, and like a lot of people who grew up then, I watched The Cosby Show. It was the biggest hit on television for a good long time. I also enjoyed Fat Albert and my youngest sister had a Mortimer Ichabod Marker (really just a battery-powered device that made noise when you used it with a crayon) to play along for Picture Pages. He was the pitchman for Coke and Jell-o Pudding. The guy was everywhere. These days, well, he’s known for something else, and comedian W. Kamau Bell decided to look into what, exactly, Cosby’s legacy is these days in a four part documentary that aired on the Showtime network.
By the by, I decided for this review to have no actual pictures of Bill Cosby to go along with it, and since I get all my pictures from Google Images, that was…difficult.
Each of the four episodes of the documentary basically follow a different period in Cosby’s life and career. The first covered his up-and-coming time in the 60s, the second the 70s when he branched out to film and animation, the third his time on The Cosby Show, and the fourth was everything after that. And along the way, Bell talks to Cosby’s victims, or at least the ones willing to come forward, all slotted in at around the time they met and were assaulted by Cosby. The documentary doesn’t pull any punches in that regard, nor should it. Beyond the victims, Bell also interviewed various associates of Cosby, therapists, lawyers, and media professors.
The picture painted is a complex one in many regards. Bill Cosby was both the man who sexually assaulted over 60 women and donated millions to HBCUs. He used his star power to actually get African American stuntmen work as opposed to just using a white man in make-up. He also used his star power to attack critics, often threatening the employment of people without his clout with a phone call to a supervisor. He’s the guy who talked about how young Black men needed to hike their pants up and found his words being endorsed by the likes of Mitt Romney as proof of what was wrong with America.
As presented, the further into the series the story goes, the worse Cosby looks, suggesting that one of the real problems was he had power and influence that he wasn’t afraid to use to his own benefit. That could apply to his sexual assault or his willingness to shut down critics whenever possible. These are the moments that clashed with his more public image, and these are the things that overshadow the more laudable things he did over the course of his life.
Bell himself doesn’t appear on screen that much, but he does take a moment to say that this was not something he relished doing, and that given his own race and career choices, Cosby is very much someone he held as a role model, a man who showed it was possible to be Black and be successful in America. More than one of the people interviewed, mostly men, said they had a hard time believing the charges at first, and many others still say that Cosby’s comedy is still funny. But when you have a man like Cosby, a man who did a lot of good but also abused power and hurt people, then what do we make of a person like that? It’s a question worth asking, and Bell’s documentary does an admirable job of doing that for a man once known as “America’s Dad”.
Grade: A
0 Comments