Bill Cosby and The Black Generational Divide

An essay I wrote for my intro to TV class about The Cosby Show and all the positive and negative effects that it's had on our society, the black sitcom genre, and the TV industry as a whole.

The Cosby’s is a show that presents a generational divide amougnst the public like no other. Especially in the black community you’ll either hear nothing but praises or nothing but call outs for Bill Cosby’s sexual assault convictions. However, instead of separating the art from the artist we should put it all into context instead, because it gives us the bigger picture on Bill Cosby and The Cosby Show. According to Edgerton, “the story behind the creation of The Cosby Show is one of those quintessentially Hollywood tales of a creative person who overcomes hardships in the pursuit of a dream and whose perseverance is finally rewarded with success” (Edgerton 390). This was mainly shown in our class screening of “We Need to Talk about Cosby Season 1, Episode 1, where they showed Bill Cosby’s impact on the tv industry at the time. From I Spy to his various comedy albums he was making his mark in the industry and even fought to get black representation for stunt men on his sets. The documentary also goes in depth with how The Cosby Show defied expectations for black representation and the sitcom genre through depicting a smart black upper middle-class family that wasn’t shown in other series’ like Amos and Andy. In “The Columbia History of American Television”, Edgerton also puts an emphasis on how well The Cosby Show did internationally which changed how networks ran their shows from that point onwards. So, The Cosby Show is not only a show that’s important for its black representation, but it’s also important because it changed how networks marketed their shows to international TV. Which also changed how the sitcom genre ran and aired its shows. However, there are some key critiques that need to be made about the politics and writing of this show, that other shows took lessons and learned from.

It’s safe to say that Bill Cosby is a respectable negro. One of those “pull yourselves up from your bootstraps” people as his recent comments on black people tell you all you need to know, and this unfortunately shows up in the politics and writing of The Cosby Show at times. While the Cosby Show didn’t totally neglect to discuss politics on its show in “The Columbia History of American Television”, Edgerton states that “Sut Jhally and Justin Lewis in Enlightened Racism argue that the show strikes a politically conservative chord by failing to portray the economic and social hardships that so often constitute part of what it means to be black in the United States” (Edgerton 398). Now this is true, because The Cosby Show wanted to depict African American high culture which often entails respectability politics and an elitist stance on most issues. Even so, the impact of the Cosby Show can’t be denied especially when it comes to the lessons that other shows took from it. With shows like The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and A Different World, the writing of these shows elevate the source material coming from The Cosby Show and the politics are better because of it. We get to see episodes directly tackle homelessness, systemic racism, misogynoir, rape culture, etc. So that’s one way we can see the impact and legacy of The Cosby Show, but we can’t ignore the even worse parts of this impact and legacy as well.

Among all of the things that I talked about in this essay, I can’t gloss over or fail to mention the fact that Bill Cosby is a rapist and a convicted sexual assaulter. It is important to always put this at the limelight of Bill Cosby’s legacy, because the people that he’s hurt and the pain that he’s caused outweigh any positive impact that he’s had on the sitcom genre and African American culture. Also, the legacy of The Cosby Show has been negatively affected by this and isn’t even available on most streaming services. This is because people started to look back on certain episodes and noticed the weird behavior and humor that Bill Cosby did to the women and girls on that show, that most people wrote off as just gags. For some people it’s hard to recognize how tainted his legacy has become, because he was such an icon for the culture for as long as black people can remember. So, when they come up with excuses like “he was about to buy NBC and that’s why these allegations are coming out now”, I try to put it into context because with our generation it can be easy to forget the old black icons that made their mark on the culture. However, we cannot give abusers, rapists, and sexual assaulters a platform or try to give excuses for the horrendous actions that they decided to commit. It’s important to recognize the positive legacy and impact of The Cosby Show and the various offshoots that it has produced in the TV/sitcom industry. Nevertheless, no matter how positive it was we cannot neglect the full legacy of Bill Cosby, his show, and what he’s negatively contributed to our society and the world.

Works Cited Page

“We Need to Talk About Cosby”. S1 E1 * Part 1. Showtime. 30 Jan. 2022. YouTube.

Edgerton, Gary. “The Columbia History of American Television”. 2007. Web. 4 Apr. 2024. https://cloudflareipfs.com/ipfs/bafykbzacec4upcr6j66kvva4jr5l5pd3eukcipavyfjnbp54amnbeu2zdxfeq?filename=%28Columbia%20Histories%20of%20Modern%20American%20Life%29%20Gary%20Edgerton%20-%20The%20Columbia%20History%20of%20American%20Television-Columbia%20University%20Press%20%282007%29.pdf