The Cosby Show

Abstract

Now that we have seen the final April 30, 1992, episode the television series The Cosby Show, And So We Commence, we can examine the social and historical impact on its audiences. Commentators in the mass media have asserted that one of the show's greatest consequences was its help in improving race relations by projecting universal values that both Whites and Blacks could identify with, using the tried-and-true situation comedy format(Ehrenstein, 1988; Gray, 1989; Johnson, 1986; Norment, 1985; Stevens, 1987). Believing that television mirrors society and articulates its values, proponents of this perspective point to the overwhelming popularity of the show among White viewers as well as its almost entirely positive assessment by White analysts and the White media. For many seasons, the show was highly rated and has been credited, among other consequences, with reviving the genre of the sitcom and saving the ailing NBC network (Curry, 1986; Frank & Zweig, 1988; Poussaint, 1988; Taylor, 1989). However, a few recent researchers have suggested that, to the contrary, the show's popularity has set back race relations because its view of Black assimilation fails to take into account the context of the world outside of the four walls of the Huxtable household (Teachout, 1986) and because it allows Whites to excuse institutional discrimination and to become desensitized to racial inequality (Gates, 1992). They do this by asserting that if Black people fail, they only have themselves to blame because any White person can point out the successful, affluent Black family on The Cosby Show