In the recent past, when a celebrity or artist with a complicated legacy has died, the public conversations that have followed have been tense. Obituaries for such celebrities tend to be glowing in the news and on social media; it is unusual for remembrances to mention both the good and bad parts of their lives.
When survivors or other individuals come forward with allegations against the deceased or remind the public about their misdeeds, they are silenced. Questions of respect and propriety are brought up — this is not the right time, they are told.
But there is ostensibly no “right time”: If survivors choose to speak up when their perpetrators are alive, it’s par for the course to be slapped with defamation cases; for there to be retaliation; and for their careers to come to a grinding halt.
When Bill Cosby was serving a prison sentence for molestation and drugging, comedian W Kamau Bell felt that the time was right to have a productive conversation about his predatory behaviour and complicated legacy. When Cosby was released in 2021 after an appeal court overturned his conviction, it felt even more urgent and scary. Bell’s attempt to piece together the story of the actor-comedian’s abuse through voices of survivors, other comedians, cultural commentators, and experts has resulted in We Need to Talk About Cosby, a four-part docu-series that premiered at Sundance Film Festival.
Whether you know of Cosby from fleeting pop culture references or have been following the case against him, the docu-series will give you pause. It details instances of rape and drugging from the actor-comedian’s early career in the '60s and '70s, right up to the 2000s — the total number of survivors who came forward is 60.
The first time I saw Cosby’s name on screen was in the credits for Little Bill, an animated children’s TV show, and so to watch his modus operandi being established in a docu-series 20 years later was horrifying. We learn that he preyed on women in a deliberate, organised manner. It is reminiscent of what many famous men have done to women younger than themselves, by taking advantage of the power difference and turning their sway into coercion.
We Need to Talk About Cosby establishes how the actor-comedian was hiding in plain sight, whether he was boasting about the intoxicating qualities of the drug Spanish Fly (which he used on survivors) in his stand-up sets or that he played an OB/GYN doctor who worked out of his basement in The Cosby Show. The subjects of the docu-series remark that none of these details have aged well, and express surprise that no one batted an eyelid when they first became public.
But who would not trust Cosby? He was America’s Dad.
Cosby’s example illustrates both the narrowness and hollowness of the ‘separating the art from the artist’ debate. Cosby was able to craft his fatherly persona through his art. Viewers believed that his character on The Cosby Show, which he created, was an extension of who he was in real life: a family man. More than one survivor says they followed his instructions because Bill Cosby "knew what was right."
When I watched the first episode of the docu-series, I began to view this context-setting with suspicion: Whose cause did it serve? Was it going to somehow soften the blow of Cosby’s crimes? When I read that some people refused to participate because the docu-series was going to cover the highs of the actor-comedian’s career, I wasn’t surprised. But to its credit, We Need to Talk About Cosby does not fawn over the individual at its centre; it uses context to explain how he cultivated the image of someone who was a moral authority.
Before his transformation into America’s Dad, he played cool, suave roles in TV series like I Spy, where his intelligence and charm on screen was a departure from the stereotypical depictions of Black characters as being simple or dangerous or de-sexualised. Cosby was the epitome of Black excellence, and a ready role model for others from his community.
Simultaneously, the impression of a successful private life was being constructed for public consumption through magazine shoots and interviews, which portrayed him as a devoted husband and father.
A subject featured in the docu-series remarks that society should not have invested so much in Cosby in retrospect, but rues that he was pedestalised only because the Black community so badly needed heroes. The inability to shun heroes and to objectively consider their misdeeds is what prevents us from being critical. It speaks to a lack of imagination about identifying other heroes, an inability to let go of the past, and the feeling that survivors’ experience and trauma can take a backseat when it is convenient.
It is telling that a stand-up comedian made the docu-series, and that Cosby’s crimes came into the spotlight for a second time because of another comic — Hannibal Buress, who asked the audience at one of these shows to Google 'Bill Cosby rapist.' Both of these comedians are Black men. Their hurt and anger stands in stark contrast to the nonchalant shrug Jerry Seinfeld did on Stephen Colbert’s show, when Colbert asked if Seinfeld could still watch Cosby’s comedy. “You can’t?” Seinfeld asks of Colbert, as if it was the easiest thing in the world.
Seinfeld was trying to make the case that Cosby is the greatest comedian of all time. Empathy aside, perhaps a sense of betrayal is key to looking within and examining what true greatness is.
When it comes to legacies, complicated or otherwise, what we choose to frame in the foreground and what we relegate to the background is inherently political. Legacies are, after all, about posterity and memory.
The question ‘Who is Bill Cosby now?’ is asked across all four episodes, eliciting responses that mention both his celebrity and his predatory nature in the same breath. One subject calls him a "rapist who had a really big TV show once." Another says he is a master at whatever he does, whether it is showbiz or abuse. As justice remains elusive for survivors and the actor-comedians’ supporters may attempt to shift the conversation in his favour, asking ‘Who is Bill Cosby now?’ becomes even more vital.
If We Need to Talk About Cosby was solely fixated on his crimes and calling him out for them, it would be a different docu-series. Instead, it resembles a call-in for American society [and the viewer]: it reckons with Cosby’s image in light of his predatory violence, instead of the other way around. It uses him as a lens to examine misogyny and rape culture at a systemic level, whether it is the Playboy clubs he frequented or how those in his circles looked the other way and allowed him to perpetrate violence.
One of the most striking aspects of the docu-series is the space it gives to the survivors to articulate their trauma, in their own words and to the extent that they are comfortable with. Instead of reducing them to their stories, we are made aware of their lives and individual personalities.
Bell says it felt like Cosby was part of the wallpaper of Black America; with We Need to Talk About Cosby, he tears that wallpaper down, and forces us to confront what was cherished and what was vile.
We Need To Talk About Cosby is streaming in India on Voot Select.
Neerja Deodhar is a writer and researcher based in Mumbai. She tweets at @neerjadeodhar.
source https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/we-need-to-talk-about-cosby-throws-light-on-how-complicated-legacies-should-be-sensitively-handled-10344161.html
