I've always believed human beings have a darker side. (Even the Force of "Star Wars" has its dark side.) The hope is that the darker side doesn't dictate our behavior. Shockingly , one of America's most beloved iconic entertainment figures, Bill Cosby, had a dark side that controlled secret criminal behavior when he was off-camera. Cosby the entertainer and Cosby the predator appear to be two very different people occupying the same body.
When the truth about Cosby's sexual assaults, not just adultery mind you, was exposed, I was stunned. I had "Himself" on video and many of his comedy albums. I had watched "Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids" when I was a pre-adolescent kid. He was one of the funniest and most entertaining figures in American entertainment, one who always came off as unpretentious and good-natured. He also seemed to have a high sense of morality until he began ranting about the shortcomings of the African-American community as if they were some kind of monolithic entity. Interestingly shortly after his "rantings" began, the accusations of sexual assault avalanched into the mainstream media when dozens of female victims came forward.
This documentary produced by W. Kamau Bell in four parts is a retrospective on Cosby the lovable entertainer and Cosby the secret predator. Bell's approach is excellent being both a comedian and a commentator-presenter on CNN often producing down-to-earth stories concerning race in America. There is little "script" as the documentary is essentially "written" mostly by the interviewees with occasional comments and narration by Bell. Women and men involved with entertainment, comedy, and show biz news discuss the man they thought he was and who he turned out to be including some fellow comedians and even actors who had worked with Cosby on previous shows. The main bulk of the discussion is with female victims who tell their stories about how Cosby sexually assaulted them. The reason their stories are so very plausible is because of the striking similarities between the incidences.
Cosby had a ready-made sequence concerning how he went about his criminal business. Often Cosby would "invite" a young woman to some kind of social gathering, the understanding being that it was to help the young actress meet people in the industry. But when she came to Cosby's home or hotel, no one else was there but Cosby. He would then offer the girl some sort of beverage often accompanied by a barbiturate. She would lose consciousness and Cosby would have his way with her. She would wake up many hours later disoriented but knowing she had been a victim of rape or some kind of sexual assault at the very least.
In one instance, she asks Cosby what happened and he would tell her to use the phone to call a cab, which tells us he was also misogynistic. He didn't care at all about the girls he assaulted. They were just his playthings to be cast off when he was finished. This fact makes the accusations even more disturbing that he wasn't this kind-hearted fatherly figure but a malicious felon who cared nothing about his victims. So unlike America's Dad of the television show of the 1980's, arguably the highest rated show of that decade.
For perspective I was a Cosby fan. Not so much of the 1980's television show, but his stand-up comic routines, and some of the cartoons. I grew up with "The Electric Company" and "Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids", the latter probably my favorite ongoing show with Cosby. I also own many of his stand-up comic albums.
The one show which forever solidified my admiration for Cosby was the HBO special "Himself" which I happened upon accidentally at my grandparent's house. (They were HBO subscribers but my family wasn't.) I began watching this program and I was stunned. To say it was funny and introspective is almost an under-exaggeration. So many of the stories I identified with as a kid. The story "Chocolate Cake" for breakfast made me laugh so hard I was almost gasping for breath. Still possibly the greatest comedic performance of introspective and storytelling humor ever broadcast on cable television. And yet this same man who seemed to know everything about human nature was not as introspective and self-analyzing on "himself" as we thought.
