The Cosby Show Essay

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How The Cosby Show Addressed Issues in American Television The Cosby show was an NBC sitcom that lasted eight seasons from 1984-1992. Starring Bill Cosby, the show was centered on an upper middle-class African-American family living in Brooklyn, New York, and were known as the Huxtable family with that being their last name. The members of the family included the father Cliff (Bill), mother Clair, five children (four daughters and one son); Sondra, Denise, Theo, Vanessa, and Rudy. This show is viewed as a comedy but does a very well done job integrating the struggles and issues of the mid-1980s to early 1990s. A few good examples of issues represented are race/ethnicity, education/intelligence, and generation. Being that The Cosby …show more content…

Education starts from the top of this family as both the father Cliff and mother Clair have high education jobs as he is a doctor and she is a lawyer. Multiple daughters in the family attend Ivy League schools. On the other end of the spectrum, in season 6, episode 5, Theo, the son, is diagnosed with dyslexia. Although “dyslexia is the most common of the language based learning disabilities” (Statistics on Dyslexia” dyslexiacenterofutah.org), it still is a representation of one's struggles to succeed in a classroom. In the episode Theo answered all of the questions right that his father tested him on, but scored poorly on the test because he couldn’t understand the question when reading it to himself. The battle of old versus new in the form of which generation does it better is referenced in season 1, episode 16, “Jitterbug Break.” They reference dance as a form of art as Cliff’s daughter Denise believes that his Jitterbug dance is too “old fashioned while break dancing is the more exceptional form of dancing” (Jitterbug Break”). Cliff later teaches his daughter the Jitterbug dance and they come to a happy compromise while still staying strong on their own

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