COSBY was never it for me, that was Eddie Murphy.
/
In recent times there has been a lot of conversation surrounding Bill Cosby and his legacy. See a recent episode of “The grapevine” (Currentlyon YouTube) and the extremely interesting discourse around the recent conviction of the creator and star of one of television’s landmark sitcoms. While I'm not going to sit here and retroactively deny the impact of Cosby’s game changing sitcom during the 80s, I do want to say that Cosby was never as big, as impactful, as influential to me as some would suggest, and it didnt take long for me to actively dislike him. The guy that some ardently defend as “black America’s Dad” was for me just Bill Cosby. To be quite honest I didn't feel like anyone was my ‘Dad” from film and television, there were just TV/film Dad's I got and ones I didn't, but I did have a very very cool older brother; Eddie Murphy. Starting in the early 70’s Cosby (whether as a consequence of the projects he pitched and/or attached himself to, or because it was his intention all along) began to position himself as a teacher of sorts. Many of the projects he hitched himself to were rightfully image conscious. Ever since D.W. Griffith’s vile depiction of the antebellum south blazed onto screens in the earliest days of Hollywood, black people had endured and chaffed under a conceptualization of blackness in white imaginations. The trajectory, and nature of Cosby’s projects suggest he sought to do his part to remedy and rectify this. The trajectory of tone suggest that he began to take seriously his unofficial role as America’s father, especially black America’s. As patriarch of the indelible “Huxtable” family, Cosby was there every week trying to topple harmful stereotypes of the black family and erect in their place positive images that could and would stand the test of time. The Cosby show was regularly funny, often times hilarious, well acted for the most part, and did a fantastic job of introducing us (especially the younger generation) to the greats that came before them and us. Cosby the patriarch on television and in real life was always talking at us, but rarely to us, and as I grew up with Cosby his messaging often fell on def ears. The show was a black version of leave it to beaver - rarely leaving the confines of its brownstone neighborhood, and upper middle class sensibilities. The lessons to be learned were as trite as a Saturday morning after school special and while great writing and Cosby’s incredibly brilliant sense of humor kept the show from becoming irrelevant - in the era that saw the burgeoning popularity of Hip Hop, Cosby’s “Get off my Lawn” act, and his overcorrection in response to white folk made him seem just what he was,….old-and out of touch. Meanwhile Eddie Murphy’s youthful exuberance, prolific profanity, and no f****’s - given attitude made him cat nip to a child of the era of MTV. Murphy's run during the 80's until about 1992, with a small gap in between 90’ and 92’ is near unprecedented for anyone, but especially for a black man. No one loomed larger for me during that time, or to this day. Alnost every routine from Delirious, and Raw, (Note the homophobia is the one extremely cringe portion of Murphy's comedy and I’m extremely glad he apologized) and every possible quote from anyone of his huge blockbuster films were omnipresent around my neighborhood. If you were a black male and you were funny, chances were you were drawing a Murphy comparison at school or in company in those days. The differences between the two, and thusly our growing contention with Cosby couldn’t have been more crystallized at the time than in this segment from Murphy’s record breaking stand up special “Raw”.
Not only is the bit a brilliant impression of Cosby, but it highlights Cosby’s hyper-concern with image and respectability, as well as our combined lack of appreciation for his tone- at least for those of us who were either young enough to feel his ire directed towards us, or outside the very narrow spectrum of black respectability politics. Murphy’s bit was spot-on, rebellious, and hilarious; and cemented his status as the coolest man on the planet pre-Denzel. Murphy was and is still the owner of several of the funniest scenes I've ever seen in my life. These particular scenes (unlike large portions of Murphy’s Stand-up and Cosby’s rhetoric) have lasted the test of time, the growth of my own personal taste, social awareness, and sense of humor. A lot of these scenes were based not just in farcical humor and irreverence, but in something very rooted in reality for the black experience in America. These experiences were transmitted in uproarious vignettes that spoke of the small interactions that black people experienced on a day-to-day basis. Many times they were fantasies, like what it might be like to be us and have some modicum of a power differential in comparison to whites. It’s important to understand contextually what it was like in the 80’s to see a black soon to be ex-convict, using the propped up power of a badge to perform the same kind of textbook harassment on whites that many of us endured on a daily basis in our own neighborhoods and businesses. Even now as I recognize the fallacy of a black man with a badge as a resolution in a broken justice system, I still find the scene exhilarating. Maybe because it was such a specific fantasy, maybe due to nostalgia, maybe a bit of both.
Then other times, these vignettes would just exist as frank, and earnest examples of certain dispositions local to our cultural blackness. Like how we might respond to people disrespecting our home when we're having a party...
Or recognizing code switching...
There are few times, wherein I go through a day where someone hasn't said something that will make me recall a quote, or a random line from one of Eddie Murphy's numerous hit films. In the spirit of giving people their roses while they're alive, I want to give Eddie Murphy his roses while he's still with us, to acknowledge (especially In the 80s) the size, and the magnitude of Murphy’s career. Which for me far overshadowed the one iconic TV show that Cosby delivered. This is not intended as a slight to the legacy of The Cosby Show, but just matter-of-fact for me in regards to Cosby the man, and a map for what I think is the most effective way of using ones platform to elevate your community. I think I ventured into standup based upon what I saw Murphy do; the whole way that I think about comedy, the way that I applied comedy was a direct result of watching Eddie Murphy growing up. The wry cleverness, the animated delivery, the appreciation for The Police's “Roxanne” (which is how I discovered The Police). Much of the way I envision my acting career going is modeled after Eddie Murphy's career choices, the varied roles, the refusal to be boxed into any one type, and most of all, the utilization of his power to produce, and open a space to create his own personal black renaissance in film .
One of the clear differences between Murphy and Cosby philosophically was that while Cosby’s work was constantly cognizant, and preoccupied with what white people think, Murphy’s work seemed to come from a standpoint of “I don’t care”. Murphy like Pryor before him was upfront with his blackness, and wanted white people to know it, fully aware of what might be their response. I don’t know that Murphy was as provocative as Pryor could be, but free from the pressures of having to legitimize black dignity Murphy was far less likely to delegitimize existing segments of blackness because they existed in proximity to white people’s wild ironically unimaginative imagination. That particular obsession is what sanitized and sterilized Cosby’s work. It made it safe, kid friendly, but rarely profound; and nowhere near as threatening to the status-quo as some black folk (post conviction) would lead you to believe. Murphy was acutely aware of white people and subsequently of the effect their narrow characterization of African Americans, but rather than pushing back by purifying blackness, Murphy would call out those depictions directly, and caricaturize whiteness. Like in an SNL sketch where he identifies the troublesome depictions of black fatherhood with Lou Gossett Jr , or even in the legendary sketch “White Like Me” a hilarious but rather spot-on (even in its most ridiculous moments) portrayal of white privilege. …
Murphy instead of engaging in depicting blackness in his own likeness, decided he would engage in the radical act of depicting all kinds of black people as they are, rather than admonishing them for it. At the height of Murphy’s powers within mainstream Hollywood Eddie would create and attach himself and others to the kind of projects that allowed us to see ourselves in genres and roles rarely if at all explored by African Americans before that time. From fantasy to romance, Kings and Queens, to Gangsters, Murphy would try his hand at just about anything while still maintaining and fighting for the presence of black people, and not just himself on American screens. Murphy was not content with being the token autonomous black man in white worlds. As soon as it became clear he could green light almost anything with his level of stardom and autonomy within Hollywood he made the incredibly brave move of leaving the whites behind. Almost as soon as he did Murphy ran into an all too familiar predicament that comes with asserting oneself in such a homogeneous industry. A very typical labeling ensued that had dogged people like Bette Davis, and fellow legend Richard Pryor before him…”difficult”. It came from Director John Landis on the set of “Coming to America” and from a great deal of critics who began to gratuitously invoke language that suggested he was conceited, or egotistical, cocky, and unruly. From Paul Attanasio of the Washington Post’s review of The Golden child,
“The problem is that Murphy takes all this jabber personally -- he appears to think that he is the Chosen One. The entire movie is tailored to Murphy, sodden with a sense that his every remark is hilarious, that his every smoldering look will have ushers shuttling back and forth with salts of ammonia to revive the women expiring in the aisles. "The Golden Child" is edited to Murphy's sloppy improvisational rhythms, so we watch him stumbling with his lines, searching for laughs he never finds. And, along the lines of his stand-up routine, most of the humor consists of Murphy approaching various thugs, Tibetans and special-effects demons (created by Industrial Light & Magic) and offering to "break" what the delicate would call "the buttocks."
From Peter Travers review of “Boomerang” over at Rolling Stone Magazine,
For all the sex talk in Boomerang, there's very little nudity. The only thing naked is Murphy's vanity”.
Once more from the Washington Post this time from Hal Vinson,
"Harlem Nights," which Murphy starred in, wrote, directed and executive produced, may not waddle its way to box office infamy, but it deserves to. "Harlem Nights" is Murphy's folly. It's a vanity production if ever there was one, launched on behalf of a star with vast amounts of vanity to soothe. And it's hard to imagine a more wrong-headed, aggressively off-putting exercise in star ego”.
And finally maybe worst of all this one from Lawrence Cohn at Variety,
“Though set in contemporary Manhattan, the picture’s iconography is a fantasy world almost on the level of Philip Wylie’s “The Disappearance.” Redressing the traditional Hollywood formula, the white characters (instead of the blacks) are in menial positions for comic relief, e.g., a silly waitress, a bigoted clothing store clerk and muscular slaves pulling supermodel Grace Jones’ chariot.
Whites appear briefly in positions of power, in high-level executive meetings or as the comical French owners of Murphy’s firm, but they’re strictly absentee landlords.”
This is a problem how? It’s not the mere fact that these critics disliked his films , but that its so evident they dislike Murphy, and what it is he’s trying to accomplish. Being so concerned with the opinions of white folk Cosby should’ve been paying attention to how they reacted, because while I would hesitate to say that every time white folk laud black work it is because it doesn’t challenge them in any meaningful way, I don’t hesitate at all to say that many times when white folk hate black works it is because it challenges them in some meaningful way. Racism rooted in white America’s general disdain for blackness, and a not all that latent belief that they are doing black people favors whenever one of us ascends - made white people chafe. Murphy could do no wrong when he made pictures as the token black man, the proverbial “black fish-out of-water, but as soon as he stepped outside of that to build, imagine, and fill these worlds with black people it was an affront to white people’s fragile sensibilities. One has to consider that then and now there were few events as unapologetically black as a number of Murphy films during his run. The cadre of black actors that an Eddie Murphy film would provide opportunities to be reintroduced or introduced was and is something I don't know that i've ever seen before or since. Contrary to the common assertion made by his critics during this run, Murphy was a gracious actor. Providing space and ample room to breathe for his fellow actors. Which in turn led to a plethora of gut-busting scenes featuring Co-stars that would rival some of the things that Eddie Murphy had done himself. Like this one from 1992’s “Boomerang”
Or This one in Coming to America…
Or this one from Harlem Nights featuring Della Reese…