Cosby said sitcom was created to combat rape, violence on TV
As the situation continues to deteriorate for Bill Cosby this week with the emergence of additional rape allegations, a suspicious eye has been turned toward his past work with the hope of finding some sort of insight into how and why we got to this point. And, of course, there's no better source than the man himself — but he isn't talking about it.
As the situation continues to deteriorate for Bill Cosby this week with the emergence of additional rape allegations, a suspicious eye has been turned toward his past work with the hope of finding some sort of insight into how and why we got to this point. And, of course, there's no better source than the man himself — but he isn't talking about it.
That leaves us only with old comedy tapes and interviews to pour over and examine, including one from an April 17, 1986 edition of The Inquirer in which reporter Ronald Smith talks to Cosby about his motivations behind creating the family-friendly series.
As with most Cosby news these days, it comes back to rape:
Bill Cosby was home watching TV. He didn't watch much of it. He tried to get his kids to refrain, too, and to read more instead. "I decided to stay up and watch what was on cable. That night I saw three movies about rape. They all seemed designed to do the same thing - show women having their clothes torn off. . . .
Cosby then goes on to say that he created the The Cosby Show as a reaction to all the rape and violence he was seeing on television.
The idea, naturally, being to do "something truthful, something from the heart." Before a few weeks ago, that would have been the takeaway — that, Gee, isn't Bill Cosby great for giving us something nice to watch.
Now, though, it seems more sinister.
Cosby made the above statement in 1986, which puts it about four years after Janice Dickinson says he raped her and a couple of years after Beth Ferrier claims the same. The Cosby Show, on which Cosby played an obstetrician-gynecologist named Heathcliff Huxtable, premiered in between those two alleged events in 1984.
When combined with Cosby's 1969 bit from It's True! It's True! about drugging women with the supposed aphrodisiac Spanish Fly, along with the allegations that continue to arise, Cosby's motivation behind creating the The Cosby Show paints an image of a man long concerned with sex and women in not only a creative sense, but an acutely personal one. Now, whether that concern is genuine and benevolent is up to you, given that, again, Cosby isn't talking.
Back in '86, though, he almost couldn't stop. Given the success of The Cosby Show and how the comedian's life was going at the time, things couldn't have been much better — a fact that Cosby, in the 1986 Inquirer interview, credits to his wife, Camille:
Personally, Cosby has a happy home, and he has Camille: "My life now is a very, very happy one. It's a happiness of being deeply connected, of knowing that there is someone I can trust completely, and that the one I trust is the one I love. I also know that the one she loves is definitely one she can trust. It is immeasurable, the wisdom she has given me. With her strength and help, I can only become better . . . and I want to . . . because I want her to be proud of me."
Camille, like Cosby, has so far remained silent about the rape allegations against her husband.