Popular Culture Review Vol. 4, No. 1, January 1993 | Page 74

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Popular Culture Review

telling him whether or not Denise was a virgin on their wedding
night. When Martin indicates that she was. Cliff begins to strut
euphorically around the kitchen. As the audience cheers, Martin
joins his father-in-law in this dance, and the two men give one
another a high-five slap, like victorious teammates. Ironically, a
show from the previous season centers on Theo, who is se cretly living
with (and presumably sleeping with) his girlfriend. He has not told
Q iff and Clair about his move, and he's continued to accept the same
amount of money from them each month, even though his share of the
rent at his girlfriend’s is considerably less. When Cliff and Clair
learn the truth of the situation, their anger and disappointment with
their son are based on issues of economics and honesty, but not on
questions of morality or sex.
We can only conjecture why the producers and scriptwriters of
"The Cosby Show" have chosen to allow the males—particularly
Cliff~to prevail over the female characters. Downing believes that
the show is attempting to redress a current imbalance of the sexes in
African-American society, in which black men feel powerless and
ineffectual, and black women perceive them as weak and
irresponsible. It's also possible that the show is attempting to make
up for the prevalence of African-American sitcom families with weak
father figures or no father figures at all. On a broader scale, Mark
Edmundson compares Cliff Huxtable with Ronald Reagan and asserts
that the embrace of each man in the 1980s signifies American
society’s unfulfilled desire for strong, effectual father figures. More
simply, "The Cosby Show "is a TV fantasy. No family—whatever its
race or class—worlu quite so smoothly and successfully. But none of
this adequately explains why this fantasy should have a subtle, yet
pervasive sexist bent. Since "The Cosby Show" explicitly presents
itself as progressive and non-sexist, its sexist subtext becomes a part of
its fantasy and the ideal it represents. Ultimately, the series
perpetuates an oppressive and subtle media stereotyping of women
that is very similar to the media's stereotyping of AfricanAmericans.
Academically, "the roles and images of black people in
television, in particular, have been woefully understudied and
undercriticized" (Downing 46). "The Cosby Show" provides for ample
future study in this area. Gates says we do not need to worry about the
role Cosby played in his show as much as we need to question and