We Need to Talk About Cosby

I am almost ashamed to say that I was one of the victim blamers when it came to the Bill Cosby rape allegations. I feel like I am one of the people who constantly stands for women, but when it comes to a lot of our Black heroes, I have found a blind spot. Still, I went into watching We Need to Talk About Cosby with an open mind.

In 2015, I had watched the show Cosby: The Women Speak, and it did nothing more than place me firmly on the fact that the women put themselves in the position to get what he gave them. That seems awfully harsh, but that’s exactly what it did. One of the ladies said that he raped her one night, and then she went to his show the next night and got raped again. I sat there thinking, “Why would you go back to his show the next night if you were truly raped?”

It took W. Kamau Bell, one of my favorite documentary makers and comedians to come forward with his work, We Need to Talk About Cosby for me to truly understand all of the complexities of this issue. I am not a fan of cancel culture. I believe in separating the artist from the art. I also realize that a lot of what happened back then is just about what the world was like back then in entertainment and for powerful people. W. Kamau Bell points to that, but also points out that he was definitely a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and it was in doing this, that helped me to understand that he did do these things and he deserved to be punished for it.

This docuseries came out January 2022, and I had not heard of it until today December 2022. This is probably because I didn’t want to hear about it. I was one of the many people who felt like they were over this whole scandal and on to the next, but I’m glad a stumbled upon it this morning.It’s on Showtime for those who haven’t seen it yet. I definitely recommend it. I thought that I was over this story, but from the moment that I decided to watch it, I was captivated in the way he was telling these stories and it all made complete sense to me.

It begins and ends with who is Bill Cosby, and with all of the participants answering. Most of the answers are a mixture of the good and the bad. There are people who owe their careers to him in the docuseries. There are people who he truly helped. One of the participants said, “He is a rapist, who had a really good tv show once,” and I think that is where it hooked me in because to demote his entire life’s work to those two things made me think “Is this really what he has come to be?”

The docuseries points to the fact that a lot of his career decisions placed him in a position to continually sexually assault these women. It also shows you that he actually says and does things that would subtly sound like he is giving a confession of his real life. Even him giving all of that money to HBCU’s (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) could be linked to the extra curricular activities that he was involved in.

W. Kamau Bell is a fan of Bill Cosby. Bill is one of his heroes just like he is to many of us. So he took care to point out the good with the bad. He goes in chronological order of the good and the bad by placing the victims’ testimonies with the events that were going on in Cosby’s career at the time. It was like this is what he’s doing, but this is also what he was doing. He told the story in a way that people like me could truly understand. I now understand why the women didn’t come out for so long. I now understand why they went back after the first time. I now understand the outrage when he was released.

In my opinion, the true testament to a great documentary is one that makes you think, understand, or change your world view. Sometimes it does all three. W. Kamau Bell did this with this project and for that, he should be very proud.