Bill Cosby has become the latest celebrity to be accused of sexual assault, by over a dozen different women in his case. Apparently these accusations have been around for quite some time, but it was only yesterday that I became aware of them. There is, of course, the question as to the factual nature of the charge, and celebrities have always been subject to the threat of a sexual shakedown. In his autobiography, Chuck Berry said that before he would have sex with a groupie, he would have someone photograph the two of them standing there naked while holding hands, as evidence that there was no malice. As for Bill Cosby, though, it is unlikely that so many women would all be making up the same lie, or that one of them, Barbara Bowman, would doggedly try to get people to believe her story for the last ten years about what happened almost thirty years ago, long after the statute of limitations has passed, and with no interest in receiving money from Cosby, if her story were not true. In other words, I believe the allegations against Cosby.
In general, we are now more likely to believe a woman who claims to have been raped than in the past, we are less likely to excuse the man for what he did, and we are less likely to blame the woman for what happened. It is still an uphill battle for women claiming to be raped by someone who was not a stranger to her, but progress has been made. And to paint with a very broad brush, I believe that liberals are more likely to believe a woman who makes such a charge, while conservatives are more likely to blame the victim or doubt her completely. After all, it was Republicans who, in 2012, talked about “legitimate rape,” saying “some girls, they rape so easy,” and saying that the rape was “something that God intended to happen.” To be fair, liberals cannot count themselves pure on this matter, considering the way Juanita Broaddrick’s claim that Bill Clinton raped her was pretty much brushed aside by so many of them at the time, and has all but been forgotten, while Bill Clinton still seems to be adored.
The question is, “What are the practical implications at the personal level?” In the case of Bill Clinton, I still feel a wave of revulsion pass through me whenever I see him. But I only see him on television when I am watching a talk show or the nightly news, which is to say, I watch him passively. But in the case of Bill Cosby, I have the DVD Bill Cosby: Himself (1983) sitting in my Netflix queue. In other words, if I do not remove it from the queue, then I am actively seeking out this movie of his to watch, which makes me wonder if I should remove it from my list.
This question may be understood in two ways, moral and aesthetic. As for the first, given that I believe Cosby to be guilty of raping or sexually assaulting these women, am I morally obligated to refuse to watch his movie or any reruns of his sitcom, The Cosby Show (1984-1992)? Now, I am not that good, so I will probably watch the movie. After all, I still have Blue Jasmine (2013) sitting in my queue, a movie directed by Woody Allen, who molested Dylan Farrow when she was seven years old. As a film fanatic, I can always justify my watching these movies by alluding to my need to be au courant on matters cinematic. And then there is the moral distance provided by a DVD. It is one thing to watch a Cosby or Allen movie at home, but I do not think I would go to a live performance by either of these two comedians. And for that matter, if he were still alive, I would not go to a Michael Jackson concert either.
But then there is the question as understood in the aesthetic sense. How will my enjoyment of a movie be affected by the criminal character of the person who acted in or directed a movie? Although Robert Blake was acquitted of the charge or murdering his wife, I suspect he was guilty. This one is easy, because my favorite movie of his is In Cold Blood (1967). In this case, his being a murderer in real life actually enhances his performance in that movie as a murderer by making it more believable, more substantial. And since he played unsavory characters in a lot of other movies, the same might be said for them.
And then there is the really strange case of Roman Polanski. While Robert Blake’s portrayal as a murderer may be strengthened by the fact, if it is a fact, that he murdered his wife, the same cannot necessarily be said for Polanski’s molestation of a 13-year-old girl in comparison with his movies about child molestation. In Chinatown (1974), Faye Dunaway plays Evelyn Mulwray, a woman who bore a daughter from an incestuous union with her father, Noah Cross (John Huston). We are not sure if she was of the age of consent when they started having sex, or if it was consensual if she was, but the possibility of rape/molestation is there as well. Furthermore, at the end of the movie, when Cross makes off with his daughter/granddaughter, we suspect he is going to molest her as well. Just think, half of Evelyn’s genes are his. That means that his daughter/granddaughter has three-fourths of his genes. And if she has a baby by him, that child will have seven-eighths of his genes.
In Polanski’s earlier film, Repulsion (1965), Catherine Deneuve plays Carol, a woman with some kind of psychological problem concerning sex. She lives with her sister, whose sexual relations with her lover disturb Carol. Carol is very much upset that her sister is going on a two-week vacation. During that vacation, Carol descends into madness. A man who has been harassing her and stalking her breaks into her apartment because he just had to see her. She bludgeons him to death. Then the landlord stops by to get the rent and decides to rape her as long as he is there. She slices him up with a razor and he bleeds to death. Then her sister returns to find the corpses and a catatonic Carol. In the very last scene, we see a photograph, previously alluded to from a distance, of her family taken years ago. In it, we see everyone smiling and looking at the camera, but a pre-adolescent Carol is looking with dread at a man to her left, presumably her father. In real life, such a picture would mean nothing, but its emphasis in the movie after what we have seen tells us that she was molested as a child, which further explains why she was so upset that her sister was going away. As a child, she would have been safe from her father as long as her sister was around.
The idea that Polanski, having made two movies illustrating the terrible consequences of child molestation, would then go on to molest a child himself is ghastly. In other words, if we found out that James Mason had once had sex with a fourteen-year-old girl, his performance in Lolita (1962) would resonate more strongly, much in the way Blake’s murder of his wife intensifies his performance in In Cold Blood. But Polanski did not act in a movie as a child molester; he made two movies on that subject showing how awful the consequences of molestation were. His moral culpability is much greater. Having made such movies, he doubtlessly had thought the matter through much more than a mere actor might. For him to molest a thirteen-year-old girl when he believed that such an act could produce consequences like that in Repulsion is especially disturbing.
But at least Polanski’s movies are grim just as what he did was grim, to say the least. When it comes to comedians, however, we must wonder whether the moral character of an actor or director spoils the humor. I confess to having no trouble laughing at O.J. Simpson’s performances in the Naked Gun movies (1988, 1991, and 1994). As for Woody Allen, his satirical humor does not seem to be adversely affected by his moral character. But I think Bill Cosby just may fare the worst of all. Consider, for example, the recent standup routine by Hannibal Buress that has made prominent the rape allegations against Cosby:
“Bill Cosby has the [freaking] smuggest old black man public persona that I hate. ‘Pull your pants up, black people. I was on TV in the ’80s. I can talk down to you because I had a successful sitcom’. Yeah, but you raped women, Bill Cosby. So, brings you down a couple notches,” Buress said during his act. “‘I don't curse on stage.’ Well, yeah, you're a rapist, so…”
This righteousness, along with Cosby’s role-model-father character in
The Cosby Show presents us, in retrospect, with a severe incongruity between the man and his art. That is to say, neither O.J. Simpson nor Woody Allen ever presented themselves as being as righteous and good as Cosby has, and thus their movies suffer less on account of their moral character. Cosby’s sexual assaults, on the other hand, may make watching reruns of
The Cosby Show impossible. As for that movie of his in my Netflix queue, I guess that remains to be seen.