Come on. This was like a trip to dream land in an absolutely hellish era for black people in the U.S. Almost wonder if it was created to deflect attention away from what was going on at that time to make people at home think ''Hey look, they're doing just fine''.
shareHellish?
LOL
Your imagination has ran away with you. Calm down.
Weren't the Huxtables upper class? A doctor and a lawyer, maybe it was realistic?
share"The Cosby Show" was a sitcom, not a documentary. Duh!
shareHellish? LOL
shareAll black people must be poor and on drugs. Is that it?
shareTHE 1980S: RONALD REAGAN AND THE COSBY SHOW
https://www.carleton.edu/admissions/stories/the-fresh-prince-of-bel-air/share
Preceding The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in the 1980s, The Cosby Show challenged Ronald Reagan’s deployment of blackness, through its portrayal of black doctor and lawyer parents, and college-bound kids. Kristal Brent Zook clarifies in Color by Fox that most cultural theorists praised The Cosby Show but failed to note that the conflict between the prevailing stereotype of the poor rural or inner city black and The Cosby show’s middle class professional black created a representational struggle. The Cosby Show was one of the top-rated programs on television during the 1980s. Though the show was adored by a wide variety of the American audience, debates over the meaning of blackness portrayed in the series have been on-going since the show debuted in 1984.[13] The aim of The Cosby Show was to combat the negative propaganda machine. However, by adopting a conservative rhetoric about what’s good, the show actually added fuel to that fire, by presenting the Huxtable’s as exceptional, unlike other black people. [14]
When a black family is viewed as an exception of blackness, they in turn become the token, or rather the representation of what all white Americans want African-Americans to be. Moreover, the significance of The Cosby Show adopting a conservative rhetoric affirms that white Americans have been conditioned, by Ronald Reagan’s words and actions in the 1980s, to view blackness as criminal, dangerous, thugs, and welfare queens. At the same time, it is important to recognize how valuable and unique the upper-middle-class, Huxtable family was to American television.
poverty fell for blacks under Reagan and employement went up.
But yes, I didn't believe that this family represented most American families, let alone black ones.
I was a teen during "The Cosby Show". I wasn't a fan. I did see it a couple of times. I don't know if it reflects African American Life (80s style) or not cuz I'm not African American. What I do know is what myself and all my teen friends thought of the show - the predominant word was "Corny".
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