WHY BILL COSBY ISN'T
FUNNY
Let's take the recent scandal of well
over thirty different, unrelated women who have accused Bill Cosby of inappropriate
behaviors over the past four decades or so out of the equation for just a
second and look at the performer known as Bill Cosby from the point of view of
a professional working comedian, from the vantage of audience members who have supported
him and his endeavors with our time and money, and from the aspect of him being
labeled a "living show business legend" and modern-day "cultural
icon".
Separating the man from the myths
from the allegations gets increasingly harder to do with each passing day, as
we come to believe what we see -- good and bad -- repeated in the media without
question or context, as the truth, until reality and fiction blend together as
one. Perhaps the person who experiences fame and fortune and make-believe as a for-sale
commodity eventually comes to not know the differences themselves, as, I
believed, was the case of Michael Jackson.
Is Bill Cosby funny? Was he ever funny? Was he set up to
"fail" as an "ideal of perfection" no imperfect human being
could fulfill? And, if so, did he set himself up? Or was he -- and continues to be -- someone
who needs serious mental-health help? Are
we enabling him in his illness by holding celebrities to a different standard
than "regular people" and by rewarding "outrageous sickness"
with celebrity the performers don't deserve?
Has the Cult of Celebrity reached its final saturation point and Mr.
Cosby is a prime example of an obsolete, dying breed? Is he a victim somehow? Where do we go from here?
Let's look at his messages,
values, lifestyle...
1. Bill Cosby doesn't look
"funny".
Bill Cosby used to be
good-looking back-in-the-day -- actually, kind of sexy. When he was starting out, he had a strong
sense of fashion style, presented himself as clean-cut, the kind of non-radical
Black young man everyone liked, even hard-nosed White people, even when things
were bumpy between the races. His
presentation was impeccable.
His once-bankable impishness
faded a couple of decades ago. His poorly-aging
body is bloated, sagging -- this is an ex-athlete? He seems closer to helpless and homeless than
to a healthy, active, inspirational senior statesman. He certainly isn't
believable playing a doctor any longer.
His gray-coated eyes droop. These are the same eyes that got a laugh just
by rolling them up and pursing his lips to repress a contagious smile. Those eyes are dead. He doesn't smile at all anymore. His frowns are
frozen, in a seemingly constipated way, agitated, bitter. His fingernails are long. His skin is marked by large dark dots and he is
unshaven. He simply looks unhappy and
unwell and sad and perplexed and in need of a shower. He looks as though there is no one around to
take care of him to a reasonable standard, he is no longer capable of taking
care of himself.
Comedian Joan Rivers also ruined
her looks, with a startling amount of plastic surgery in her case, until it was
nearly impossible to pay attention to what she was saying. An elderly woman screaming obscenities
through an immobile mask of too-taunt skin is off-putting, similar to when the
whole world gasped in shock at an Oscars event at the once stunningly beautiful
actress, Kim Novak, whose barely-recognizable face was voluntarily,
intentionally, made into grotesque putty for vanity's sake. Pity replaced
reverence.
Jerry Lewis had a
life-threatening illness (through no fault of his own), took life-saving
medication for it, but the steroids involved bloated his face to three times
normal size to almost unrecognizable as well.
A pratfall by a twenty-one-year-old fit Jerry Lewis at a nightclub is
way funnier than the same pratfall by a seventy-five-year-old near-death Jerry
Lewis who looked like Mr. Potato-head (and not in a humorous way), happening
shortly after being booted off as host of the Labor Day telethon. You could neither laugh with him or at him in
good conscious because there was nothing funny about his situation whatsoever.
Watching a pompous man slip on a banana peel is funny. Watching someone
handicapped falling down, struggling to get up, is not funny.
Bill Cosby no longer wears any trace
of a "performance outfit" or makeup or has "staging" when
performing. There are plenty of reasons
performers dress up in suits, ties, looking as presentable as possible, with
good lighting and designed sets. It's
about self-respect and respect for the audience. It's about putting on a "show",
"eye-candy", being "professional". Cosby gives no indication between being a world-class
performer or being his "self", presented as a
"nobody-in-particular" who happens to wander in off the streets and
on to the stage -- the Common Man -- which is an act, of course, to hide his
true ego. Actress Joan Crawford, on the
other hand, said, "If you want to see the Girl Next Door, go next
door..." Perhaps Cosby's attitude toward
production values is: "I'm so great I don't have to do anything...I AM the
show..."? Funny? No.
Cosby's signature "sweater"
has been replaced with cheap Wal Mart sweat shirts with ironed-on lettering of
"Hello Friends" on the front in a kind of child-like, pathetic plea.
Wealthy, experienced, educated, DOCTOR Cosby -- actor, producer, writer,
comedian, teacher, author -- has the disheveled look of someone with cognitive
disabilities/dementia with a day-pass on a bus trip to the mall. Why?
You must empathize with a
comedian to some extent in order to find the humor relatable because comedy is
already an exaggerated abstraction, a surreal heightening of reality. You can not find a comedian so horribly
repulsive that you feel sick looking at them. That's the opposite of being open
to what they have to say and having a good time.
If the performer doesn't address
whatever it is about them that is distracting within the first three seconds of
bounding on to the stage, then it is up to the performer to win back the
audience's wandering attention -- if they can.
Feeble long-time performers such as Don Rickles, Bob Newhart, and Billy
Crystal are currently at that cross-roads, yet, they don't wear lettering
across their chests which would add nothing to the comedic proceedings except
confusion and distraction. Where is
Cosby's management?
Bill Cosby must be hysterically
funny instantly out of the starting gate and be brilliant each and every time
he performs, for as long as he performs, if for no other reason, than to
compensate for his current poor, humorless appearance. Genius could bridge the ragged
physical hindrances enough to make the audience forget his appearance --
eventually and for a short while. No
reports indicate he is that funny. What
can he possibly say about how he looks? What
can he possibly say about the world without seeming a hypocrite or ironic in a
not-so-great way? Nothing funny there.
2. Bill Cosby doesn't sound
"funny".
In his hey-day, Cosby's jokes
were typically punctuated by wonderfully-timed pregnant pauses, rubbery facial
expressions and wild gesturing. He
created "Cosby-ism" tag lines that become part of the cultural idiom
("Hey, Hey, Hey...", "Riiiigghhhtttt....What's a cubic?"). His recorded comedy albums were standard fare
for every American household, with repeatable, hip jokes that you never grew
tired of hearing. He was a star who had
a "recognizable voice" and his material was pure gold.
On stage, he now sits slumped in
a folding chair under a harsh "working light", with a microphone planted
on his mouth, hiding most of his face, as he telegraphs one trivial
"observational humor" pun after another without set-ups or
punch-lines, rambling on smarmy non-stories without an arc or point. He's doing what comedians call "noodling"
-- a free-association way of comedy -- nothing written, without structure, and,
in this instance, without much intonation or diction, as though too exhausted,
too beat down, weighted, to stand and speak to the audience directly with any
conviction or vigor. There are still pauses
in his act but they are full of self-consciousness, lingering too long, and the
laughs result from audience's fidgety nervousness, rather than lighting wit or a
particular insight into the human condition.
Cosby is low-balling to a
fanatical die-hard audience who does most of the work for him themselves by
expecting him to be funny, whether or not he actually is, who pay a lot of
money to see the "Jello Pudding Guy/Dr. Huxtable" of yesteryear, no
matter what, and who would laugh at just about anything anyway. Something similar happens at Rolling Stones
and Beach Boys concerts or when Cher shows up. These are
the kind of "royalty" performers who could come out on stage, drop
their pants, take a crap, and get a standing ovation. Does Cosby deserve that
kind of reverence? If you were to look at his "reel of successes",
would the materials seem timeless or hopelessly dated?
Just a couple of years ago, Cosby
went on several talk shows and repeatedly tanked in a grand manner, while meandering
about the studios, seeming lost, making baffling, nonsense statements as though
he was either in the throes of a nervous breakdown, on heavy medication,
steeped in senility, or all of the above.
A comedian who isn't funny is tragic.
Over the years, Cosby has inched ever
nearer Norma Desmond territory, more so than any other comedian of late or in
his peer group who were supposedly "great", only to become a quickly tiresome
satire of his own faded career and self-importance. The obvious subtext of his limp, wheezing
appearances is: "I used to be big", an old circus elephant, destined
to do their routine in a continuous loop, because they have never known any
other life.
Any quote you find from Cosby within
the last decade is typically curmudgeon in nature -- negative, critical,
condescending, self-righteous -- and not the kind of joyful joke he was famous
for at all. Comedians work from a basic
personal truth, from inward to outward, and if the performer doesn't have a
grasp of what the truth is for himself -- loosing himself -- he no longer has a
source in which to draw materials from. He
no longer has funny things to say. When
he speaks, Bill Cosby doesn't sound funny.
3. Bill Cosby's view of the
world isn't "funny".
Cosby, as a stand-up comedian,
was never "edgy" like Richard Pryor or "smart" like George
Carlin or "political" like Lenny Bruce or "ethnic" like
Jackie Mason or "silly" like Steve Martin. He wasn't pure vaudeville as say, George
Burns. He never had the acting chops of
Eddie Murphy or the dramatic depth of Sydney Portier who, at times, could be
very funny. He never worked
"blue" (maybe in Vegas?). He
was reliable but never in the show biz stratosphere like Ellen's "Hey,
God...It's Me, Ellen" routine or when Roseanne exploded on "The
Tonight Show" in full "Domestic Goddess" trashiness. Cosby was, at best, an easily-digestible
light meal -- charm was his greatest asset, like Will Smith.
His cultural impact in the 1960's
was based in large on the fact he was a "person of Color" who made
good, got along without rocking the boat, someone White people of a certain
mind could see themselves being friends with, in spite his race -- safe,
affable. He was like having your riotous cousin cut up during a party but not
someone you'd turn to for side-splitting, heavy-lifting comedy, like the
joke-machine of Bruce Vilanch's extraordinary gifts.
And he was absolutely not alone
in making that impact. Everyone from
Diana Ross to Nichelle Nichols to Diahann Carroll to Sammy Davis, Junior and
hundreds of others in all kinds of fields were making strides in social
acceptance of African-Americans. You can
not look to a single incident in Mr. Cosby's life and show cause-and-effect of
his involvement in social changes, the way you can with so many others.
In the 1980's, Cosby's shtick was
pure "family values" -- his stand-up personal observational humor
based on what happens at home turned into an extreme right-wing Republican's
dream as seen by a narrow-minded populist and propagated to the masses. That was when people had families and they
valued them -- or at least watched the TV version while their lives didn't
reflect what was on the screen, as in every era before it. That's when both parents worked and social
repression lead to depression, suicide, high school shootings. Ray Romano did
the same thing later with "Everyone Loves Ramon" but closer to how
people actually are (but questions arose about responsibility when the boy on
his show committed suicide). I would point to "The Cosby Show"
as to one of the many reasons why the words "families values" eventually
became a joke itself.
"The Cosby Show's" naive,
Black-version "Ozzie and Harriet" family was so squeaky-clean "white
bread", so bizarrely un-hip while trying to be mega-hip, that it inspired
Roseanne Barr to create a hugely successful counter-programming show with
beer-drinking, poor, working people that you actually saw working. This was at a time when MTV hit the airwaves
with Madonna warbling "Like A Virgin".
In my estimation, Cosby's
patriarchal character on the Cosby TV show was sick. His "act", in character and out,
was "I'm a highly-intelligent man put-upon by family and friends and
everyone else -- who are morons, lesser quality people" and his job was to
embarrass and humiliate them into submission and then justify his behavior with
"child-like horse-play", making "faces", as if he was too
"lovable", too "cute", to reprimand for his harshly judgmental,
condescending rudeness. Who, exactly, did he think he was? In real life I have known people like this,
asses who are ignored and shunned, not patronized for even a second. No one finds this kind of behavior
"cute" in my hood. Why would a
grown man with a wife and children behave like this? Dude, get over yourself.
See a pattern here? That same pattern extends out from Cosby to
the whole of America,
as we will come to see...
Cosby was an Executive Producer,
as well as star, of his show. He had
ultimate control of the show's content. His "wife" on the show was a
lawyer who you never saw at work or clean the house. Her manipulative, "cunning"
character had two purposes -- to telegraph to the audience how "adoringly
funny" Cosby was and to be his trite "mother" who
"hens" with other silly women about husbands' "bad boy"
stunts. This Oedipal-dripping dynamic is so entirely Freudian as to be a joke
itself -- not a funny joke, though. Lauded as "feminist" at the time,
the Mrs. Huxtable character is unfortunately not a fully-realized person, only
a version of what men (including a psychologist hired as the show's consultant)
think women are.
"Dr. Huxtable" was a
gynecologist who delivered babies. Uh,
creepy... Cosby, once again, stridently wanted the audience to see him as
"father-savior", including even being a "father" to other
people's newborns by proxy. In other words, out of all the professions the
character could have had wherein comedy set-ups abound -- college teacher,
social worker, restaurant owner -- Cosby chose the one involving women's
vaginas. Wouldn't it have been more believable, more sensible, to have him as a
lawyer and his wife as a gynecologist? This
was Cosby's choice.
Older people were treated as
though a source for humor on the show, to be made fun of on occasion, and then
go home. No older person on the show had
a job, made any contribution, not even as baby-sitter to the kids. Family -- with no real involvement. Hmm.
"The Cosby Show" treated
children as though stupid and was smug about it, making the children call him
"sir". I recall a scene in
which the father had a talk to his son about money. The father gives the kid a
handful of cash and then systematically takes the money back as a life-lesson for
the bills the kid will have to pay when he is on his own. I was a teenager at the time of viewing this
exchange and recall thinking that if I were that kid, I'd leave home
immediately, never to return, never to speak to the father again, since the
father took great joy out of methodically making the son feel small and
inferior. The proper way to have handled the situation would have been for the
father to tell the son he is supportive of whatever decisions he makes, that
everyone makes mistakes but it is how and what he learned that really mattered, how he
treated himself and others, and, when the son was ready to learn about finances
to come see him, keeping the lines of communication open.
There was no self-expression in
the Huxtable household, for anyone -- only Dad's Superiority Complex. There was
never any discussion about sexuality, never a person running around in their
underwear as what happens every minute of every day in households across the
world. Where's the scene where the
parents are having sex and the kid bursts into the room? Where's the scene where a parent is in the
bathroom and the kid bursts into the room?
Where's the scene where the kids have a slap fight? Where was the TV in the living room on a show
that was on TV?
There was more than plenty of
talk about education, military duty, about money, money, money. You could set
your watch by references to the parents having money and the children didn't,
how much the children were costing the parents, on and on. The guilt was laid on as thick as the
consumerist value-system.
Gay people were as mysteriously
absent from "The Cosby Show" as the lack of ethnicity was on
"Friends" -- a perplexing mystery especially since both shows were
set in present-day New York City. None of the kids had gay friends? A large number of gay people worked on the "Cosby"
show behind the scenes, as gay people have to make up as much of show business
as people who happened to be Jewish. If
there were anyone who could attest to the low representation of minorities in
mass media, it surely would be Mr. Cosby who would want ample opportunity to
have as many targets for humor as possible, right? Uh, no.
"The Cosby Show"
pandered to White people's white-washed perceptions of what Black people would
be like if Black people were like White people, the opposite of "All In
The Family" wherein White people acted like White people in trying to
figure out how to respond to Black people who aren't like White people --
recognizing two separate but equal communities, two experiences, exploring
through contrast and comparisons. Chris Rock has built a career on that
premise. "The Cosby Show"
ended up representing no one except Bill Cosby's limited toleration of others
-- including women, children, the aged -- the very people his "allegedly
beloved act" is associated with. By never mentioning the words
"African-American" or "Black" or even the
"N-word" as people do in real life, the characters might as well have
been green, for all it mattered. How does that help in understanding
"differences" by never mentioning it?
The Cosby-produced kids' TV show,
"Fat Albert" would never fly coming on to the air today because the
whole basis of the show is about "fat shaming" the main character.
Perhaps the cartoon show is more telling than one would suspect. Is the "ribbing" between the
characters actually "bullying" and that alienation, felt by Cosby
growing up, the impetus of Cosby's inferiority that drives his need for
authority? Is he trying to be the "father"
that he needs for himself who would protect, love, and accept him?
Cosby prefers being called
"Doctor", even though he isn't any more or less a doctor than Dr.
Phil or Dr. Laura, who also take on an authority about relationships they
haven't any cause for either. Cosby has authored the books
"Fatherhood," "Time Flies" and "Childhood". What makes him an expert, the fact he has lots
of children and was once a child himself?
He's not selling the books as "first person celebrity
anecdotes". He's prescribing advice
as dictated by a for-real doctor.
Each of Cosby's children in real
life were given names beginning with the letter "E" to represent "excellence". (Excellence?
Please refer back to Items #1 and #2.) What kind of pressure does that
have on a kid -- to not only live up to a famous parent, but to then having to live
up to a strange standard of "excelling"? What's that about?
The murder of his son, Ennis, in
1997, on a Los Angeles freeway in a drug-related robbery/shooting incident in
which his son was randomly chosen as a victim marked the end of the era in
which Cosby took himself way too seriously, flaunting his doctorate degree as a
banner of his imagined superior intelligence, and nose-dived into a complete
lack of humor. His intensity was palpable but we will never know if it was
fueled by grief, anger, frustration or any other emotion, because, once again,
he never spoke about it, nor seemed to take what happened into his work as an
artist. (A familiar scenario -- similar
to reactions by former "The Cosby Show" cast members when asked about the
recent allegations against Cosby -- "I don't know....I never saw it...I
wasn't involved...")
Cosby was front-and-center at the
Playboy Jazz Festival for years, fancying himself a musician, though he plays
no instrument, can not read or write music, nor sing. He has been known to frequent the Playboy
mansion and Playboy Clubs. Why would he
risk offending his core "family" audience by associating with -- becoming
the very face of -- a multi-media empire based on misogyny, sexual freedom and
leftist liberalism? Playboy and Cosby
seem at odds in their brands, unless you consider that Cosby has several
distinct "lives" -- one on TV and in media which is
"wholesome", one at home which is old-school turn-of-the-Century patriarchal,
one that is secret and never discussed that is part of the Playboy lifestyle
which is so prevalent as to be hard to deny. Ghosts of Michael Jackson loom...
Comedy, at its core, is about suffering, conflict. Often, comedians become successful, wealthy
and happy, and are disconnected from the source of their pain which inspired
their comedy in the first place. How can
Cosby be relatable presently when he represents 80s consumerism,
pseudo-Christian religious beliefs and tenuous moralities while simultaneously
promoting the objectifying and sexualization of women, when he has alienated
himself from the African-American community by offending them with aspersions of ignorance and his own intolerant narrow-mindedness? Is this someone you'd
invite into your home and listen to?
Probably not. But you might make
fun of them behind their back.
4. Bill Cosby's future isn't funny.
Cosby announced this week that he has "several ideas" to work on,
even though he has been unceremoniously rejected by several producers of
on-line original programming and the whole of the world knows this, making his cold-as-ice
"brand" even less likely to buy in any format.
One way of of telling Cosby is no longer viable is that he isn't producing
himself and translating what he does to the internet insomuch as anyone can
tell. He doesn't have a large internet
following or twitter masses hanging on to his every word and the like. He isn't mentoring anyone noteworthy either. He
isn't working with anyone "hot", surrounding himself with
ultra-talent who could revitalize his own talents for a new generation.
His low-wattage current career path is to use charities to hog whatever media
attention he can muster, while forgoing traditional stand-up comedy circuits
and road tours, and while continually soft-balling "truck-stop"
colleges and community theaters. No up-coming
small part walk-on nods in a big budget films, no HBO specials or reality
series, no one-man Broadway shows, no Las Vegas venues, no insightful film-fest
documentaries, no national-level commercial, no up-coming album release, no
book mega-deal, no "Cosby Show" reunion -- not even a succession of
Indian casino gigs. By doing this, he is his own worst representation imaginable, undermining his "perceived value" and recognition factor,
in a time when even non-celebrities are celebrities because they're not
celebrities, making someone on "The D List" appear more sought after
than this former "A Lister".
The bottom line is always the bottom line, and, Mr. Cosby can not guarantee an across-the-board return (or profit) on anyone's investment with projects to
which he is attached, not even by milking what precious little there is to mine
from the past in retro-style. If not for the money (which seems like he hasn't
had any new big revenue sources since his TV show), what is the motivation to
continue on? That question looms around
his head, replacing his halo with a cloud of doubt about what is next.
The music recording industry is
doing a three-sixty, evolving into internet media and cutting out layers of
management. TV is dying fast, replaced
by the internet as well. Stand-up
comedians had better figure out a way to stay relevant, to not eat up massive
amounts of materials as they had on TV and by now being on the internet, and to
diversify their portfolio of talents for different media formats. There is no reason to pay for a real-live
Bill Cosby when digitally downloading him is free. In fact, him being alive is a hindrance, as
Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, and Michael Jackson were. Bill
Cosby's future isn't anything to laugh at because it isn't funny and it is less
funny as time passes.
5. Comedians aren't funny
anymore anyway.
In a January 2014 study, conducted in the British Journal of Psychiatry,
scientists found that comedians tend to have high levels of psychotic
personality traits. In the study, researchers analyzed 404 male and 119 female
comedians from Australia, Britain, and the United States. The participants were
asked to complete an online questionnaire designed to measure psychotic traits
in healthy people. They found that comedians scored "significantly higher
on four types of psychotic characteristics compared to a control group of
people who had non-creative jobs." Gordon Claridge, a professor of
experimental psychology at the University of Oxford and leader of the study
claimed, "the creative elements needed to produce humor are strikingly
similar to those characterizing the cognitive style of people with psychosis -
both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder."
To find out "Lucy" was acting out from bipolar depression would
be depressing in itself and would make her not funny at all. What is at the core of Bill Cosby's need to
seek attention -- healthy outlet or compulsive psychosis?
Perhaps Bill Cosby can not speak
to allegations directed against him openly due to the insistence of legal
council or court mandates. But he does
have a platform in which speak on many important issues of the day, any day he
chooses. He has the eyes of the world on
him, and he has a tool -- humor -- as a way to convey messages. Even when promoting "social causes"
or when he has spoken out in the past about his perceptions of how others in
the Black community should behave, for example, the subject matter is him, his
wealth, his power, his image as the moral and benevolent
"Father Figure", as if he were The Pope. He over-shoots his authority and
self-aggrandizes at every turn. Being an
entertainer -- even a beloved one, even a legendary, historic one -- isn't
life-or-death. You can't eat it, wear
it, live in it, drive it or put it in a bank.
Entertainment's value is temporary at best and cheap. Performers come...and they go.
Even if Bill Cosby is
one-hundred-percent innocent of the ALL heinous allegations against him, Bill
Cosby is not funny, has not been funny for a long while -- as a person or as a
public personae, similar to Bill Clinton, only in his case, Bill Clinton has
become a joke. Perhaps those two men
have a lot more in common than one would suspect on the surface.
Cosby has the worn-out aura of a
guilty man who has pronounced his innocence for so long, he has become annoyed
by the questions, the questions becoming his identity. Mass murderers, child-molesters, drug addicts
-- all justify their acts in order to live with themselves, as when someone who
really is "crazy" tries to convince you they are "sane",
while the rest of us secretly wonder how crazy we really are -- which is
normal.
Whatever Cosby had has been eclipsed
by negative connotations connected to his reputation -- as a man, a husband, a
father, as an artist, as a businessman, as a representative of his people, as
an American -- and not because of the allegations of women he has or hasn't
crossed paths with. He has done this to
himself through his deeply personal, massive insecurities -- ego is his
undoing, as simple of an answer as that might seem.
The Emperor has no clothes. He should go home to deal with the triumphs
and tragedies of a life-time, retire from public viewing, seek therapy, stop
speaking to anyone outside the "inner circle" altogether. His insistence at remaining high profile will
force the whole of the world to judge him in the take-no-prisoners court of
public opinion -- including my own harsh opinions -- and he will not win his
cause of becoming triumphant at the end of the day, no matter the cost, of
having the last laugh.
The "joke", if there is
one now, now that we're finally aware, is on us and it isn't funny.
