I really liked ‘the cosby show’. it was a significant change in the demonstration of a successful, minority family. its funny. it also holds up well; the writing did not date itself too much to the era.
but, ya know… Cosby. can you separate the artist from the art? a part of me feels like i should still be able to enjoy the show even though he is a terrible person.
thoughts?
Ho-lee shit this is the first I’ve ever seen that clip it’s absolutely mind lowing how mask off he was in that, absolutely frightening.
I mean, the guy had been doing this stuff for decades without any repercussions at this point. To him, he probably thought it was basically normalized. He really wasnt even trying that hard to hide his interest in seducing women with aphrodisiacs/drugs. Hell, years before the Cosby show even existed, he had a stand up bit in 1969 specifically talking about how, at age 13, he learned about Spanish Fly, an aphrodisiac that would make girls go super horny for you. He goes on about how, throughout his teen years, he wished he could find some Spanish Fly to slip into girls drinks, and how the first time he went to Spain as an adult he tried to find some for that purpose. By the time he told that “joke” in his standup, he’d already drugged and assaulted at least one victim in 1965.
Here’s that stand up bit: https://youtu.be/LAorIG6MZnc?si=RKKtmGcWLfTf0KZn
ha yeah, i assume this is the bbq sauce thing. scary
Well, he’s not the entire creator of the show. Countless people worked on it over the years and you have to take into account how much supporting the art benefits the artist. Cosby is writing a book and a documentary; I would say supporting those ventures benefits him more than a TV from decades ago but idk. I dont think there’s a right or wrong answer
I find it far easier to enjoy a work that is written or produced by a bad person when they are not physically in said work. For example, I can still enjoy the Harry Potter books and other various media even though JK is a hateful piece for shit that won’t just shut the fuck up and move on with her incredibly wealthy life. Going back to watch stuff that have people on the cast who later turned out to be monsters is certainly harder. Like Cosby obviously, but also OJ Simpson on the Naked Gun films, Brian Peck showing up in various Nickelodeon shows and movies, etc. It takes a level of compartmentalizing that is challenged every time you see that person. I can do it, but I really have to have a fondness for the material, especially if that person has a lot of screen time, otherwise it just taints the whole thing so much it can’t be enjoyed anymore. But I really make an effort to not financially benefit those people. If they have an ongoing financial gain from the works, I will either abstain, borrow/share the media with someone else that has it, or pirate it.
this is a great point, i do find a lot of cringe-y moments in the cosby show because he is physically present
I think its ok to enjoy art from terrible people as long as it isn’t actually about their problematic aspects, and you are avoiding directly supporting that person by giving them money or drawing a lot of attention to them. Plus in this case there were a lot more minds involved than just Cosby’s.
Pirate it.
The only important concern about consuming the work of a douchebag is them gaining from it.
Now, you may or may not be able to ignore the person having done shitty things, it might break your enjoyment of it. That tends to be more of a problem with actors and comedians because you see them, rather than their work.
Seriously, the idea that a given body of work is somehow bad because the person or persons that made it are bad is bullshit.
Cosby is a harder because a lot of his comedy, and the show, were based on him, portraying himself as this decent, fatherly, nice person. Him being a douche the entire time, knowing what we know now, it can be dissonant to see him being a dad, or joking about his wife. Someone like Louis CK, he was never portrayed as some kind of paragon, so it’s easy to just enjoy his work as it is since there’s no “wait a minute” inherent to his performance. You might still have trouble not picturing him being a creep with his dick in his hand, but the jokes aren’t him pretending to be some upright, moral human.
Art and artist are always separate when piracy is an option.
What sucks about that is a lot of lesser known actors probably rely on the residuals more than cosby.
Yes. It’s a daily struggle finding what shows to support when entertainers get cancelled left and right. Hulk Hogan, Kramer, JK Rowling, etc. If we go back further, Lovecraft and Edgar Allen Poe would’ve been cancelled if they were alive today, but we still make movies from their stories. We have to face the sad reality that a lot of great entertainers are not the greatest role models
