How to Approach Bill Cosby’s Comedy Legacy

The simple truth is that Cosby was an incredible comedic talent. He was absurdist yet cool. He had a remarkable facility for sound effects, which he used to perfectly punctuate his bits and punchlines. And he delighted in making himself the butt of the joke. His stand-up albums from the ‘60s are perfection; longform bits that, as Keith Harris put it in a 2011 blurb that proclaimed 1968’s To Russell, My Brother, Whom I Slept With the best comedy album of all-time, “taught a country infatuated with sentimental myths of domestic tranquility that children and parents are natural adversaries—and that their absurd clashes help make family life worthwhile.”

Then there is Bill Cosby: Himself, the 1983 film that captures Cosby at his best. Besides kicking the door open for his eventual reign at NBC, it forced an entire generation of comics and fans to rethink their understanding of his talent and to appreciate it anew. To quote Oswalt, from a celebration of this film’s legacy on the occasion of its 30th anniversary from GQ (which, it should be noted, Buress participated in):

“I’d heard all his albums and was a big fan. But to see him visually doing what he was doing, that was a big deal. Up to that point a lot of the stand-up I’d watched was very frenetic and they would run around onstage and be very active. He was sitting down but even more in control because of that. He was kind of controlling the volume of what he was doing and the impact of what he was saying.”

The film pushed Cosby into a new income tax bracket through the sitcom, commercial endorsement deals, book deals and his ill-fated attempt to become a movie star. It’s the kind of rare second act that very few folks in entertainment ever receive. He was set to settle into his twilight years with less relevancy but a great deal of respect, until…

All of that goodwill and quiet deference is gone for the time being, replaced by acidic feelings of disgust and bewilderment. Deals for a new NBC sitcom and a Netflix stand-up special were scrapped, and the many networks that were re-running Cosby’s many TV series pulled them from the rotation. Ticket sales for his stand-up dates started to dry up. And all of us who have spent the past few decades praising his work are left wondering what to do with the fragments of this shattered life and career.

Does he deserve this kind of cultural erasure? Considering the gravity of the crimes he’s being accused of, and the sheer number of accusers out there in the world, it seems like an appropriate response. Does he still deserve to be on a list of the greats in spite of all that? That’s where things get a little cloudier. Cosby’s work is certainly a lot easier to ignore now that much of it has been scrubbed from multiple outlets. But is negating its impact entirely the right move?

The issue for a lot us came down to the medium that Cosby has used to express himself for 50 years or so. Stand-up comedy feels, even when the person on stage is talking with a few hundred or a few thousand people, very intimate. That’s what made Himself so great: you felt like you were being talked to directly, being personally let in on these opinions and anecdotes.

You also can’t avoid the person holding the microphone. Take, for one small example, Roman Polanski. It is entirely possible to watch and enjoy a film like The Pianist or Rosemary’s Baby and not know who was behind the camera. Or say you stumbled across a great R&B song on the radio but didn’t know that it was Chris Brown singing it? Your opinion on it might only shift once that information was revealed. Stand-up comedy affords few chances for that kind of anonymity. Once you are in front of a person telling jokes, you get a clear sense of who they are. If there’s any solace to be found with Cosby, it’s that he has long kept his stand-up material clean and family-friendly.

The most important reason, though, that we kept Cosby off the rolls was that, to include him, would have felt like a slap in the face to the women who have bravely stood up and made their names and faces and experiences known to the world. To praise him while he was on trial for these crimes would have felt nothing short of gratuitous.

Even writing this essay doesn’t feel terribly good. You might not have even noticed that Cosby’s name wasn’t on the list. If you did notice, you might have completely understood why it was missing. But it feels important to acknowledge this weird, fuzzy, constantly moving line that we, as consumers of culture, have to reckon with whenever a celebrity does something awful.

Is it easier to overlook how Dr. Dre abused his girlfriends and female journalists in the past because of his continued relevance or because it was only a handful of women vs. the more than 50 women who have accused Cosby of assault? Is the public willing to ignore the similar allegations leveled at Ben Roethlisberger because he still could take the Steelers to the Super Bowl and isn’t some past his prime actor/comedian quietly stumbling towards irrelevancy? How does race factor into this, as it does into every other aspect of society? The fact that the public now largely treats these issues with the seriousness they deserve should be seen as a sign of progress, even if our justice system is still systemically unfair for victims and accusers. For all the lip service we pay to always believing a woman when she speaks up about such abuse, we have a long way to go to bearing that out in our everyday lives.

Original editor’s note from 2017: While we were preparing this piece for publication reports came out about Bill Cosby’s plans to host “town hall” meetings giving advice on how to avoid sexual assault accusations. We knew he was a monster—we didn’t expect he was a troll, too.—Ed.