Teachers of media history routinely screen episodes of The Cosby Show for their students. We cite it as a turning point in the cultural depiction of African Americans. A colleague of mine now wonders if he should be troubled by rape accusations surfacing against the series’ eponymous star.
Of course he should be troubled. We should all be troubled by accusations of sexual misconduct. Will Cosby’s personal life color his contribution to media history (and vice versa)? Yes. Does that complicate our appraisal of the Huxtables? Does it add to the meta-conversations about black celebrity presented in Black Dynamite? Yes, yes, and again… yes.
As a stretch, one might point to the ancient statues of olympic cheaters lining a Greek “road of shame” as a progenitor of modern celebrity reporting. But there was no Us Weekly to report the accusations of sodomy leveled against Da Vinci in 1476. No OK! magazine to malign Paganini following his scandalous refusal of last rites in 1840. Even in the age of yellow journalism, celebrity news contributed only minimally to the sensational headlines of Pulitzer and Hearst.
No, celebrity tabloid reporting is a fairly new phenomenon. It pretty much grew up with motion pictures. Thus, movie attendance, broadcast ratings — and now, internet traffic measurement — have always been cited as referenda on the lifestyles of everyone from Roscoe Arbuckle to Tom Cruise. Indeed, we can hardly imagine an alternate reality in which an artist/performer’s sexuality, religion, criminal record, and politics aren’t factors in the appraisal of his art.
Do the Cosby allegations change the landscape of broadcast history? I don’t think so. Rather, they may expose our discipline’s staple of author-based criticism as too naive for the current generation of students. They’re too aware of entertainment news, of legal proceedings, of public relations as ingredients in a multi-factorial soup that certainly flavors (and sometimes overpowers) the artistic decisions which govern what’s playing on TV Land.
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