Popular Culture Review Vol. 4, No. 1, January 1993 | Page 64

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^Pogular Culture Review

status during the 1980s, an era he finds defined largely by the
"determined erosion of civil rights and affirmative action," and an
increasing number of overt racist incidents. Statistics in income,
unemployment, and poverty have registered little progress for
African-Americans (Downing 47). Hemy Louis Gates, Jr. worries that
the show "suggests that blacks are solely responsible for their social
conditions, with no acknowledgment of the severely constricted life
opportunities that most black people face"(40). For Gates, "The
Cosby Show" raises the troubling issue that under certain
circumstances representing "the best of the race" can actually harm
the race.
While "The Cosby Show" undoubtedly has social and
cultural significance relevant to these questions, it exists primarily in
the context of the television sitcom, a fact that is easily lost sight of
in light of other, more controversial issues. Early sitcoms of the 1950s
were typically about suburban families who fa c ^ minimal troubles in
a world devoid of social conflict, crime, economic problems, and
serious moral dilemmas. These were worlds of clear-cut rights and
wrongs, "a kind of Eisenhower Walden where adolescence and moral
ambiguity were ritualistically trotted out and proved to be no match
for the paternal instincts of a rational white breadwinner" (Marc 52).
The parents of these sitcom families have "endless reserves of time
and patience," and the shows themselves are careful blends of
consumer modernity and familial tradition (Taylor 27).
Social and political developments of the late 1960s led to sitcom
families that reflected changing values and concerns. If sitcoms of the
'50s and early '60s ignored social issues and conflicts, the late '60s and
'70s domesticated them in family groups which embodied society's
realities, problems, and conflicts, a trend best exemplified by the
politically-charged characters and subject matter of Norman Lear's
"All in the Family". This willingness to deal with contemporary
issues and actually incorporate their symptoms and consequences into
the structure of the sitcom "family" decreased radically in the 1980s.
Taylor defines the family-based sitcoms of the '80s as carefully
designed to appeal to (and not offend) a newly-created mass audience
of children, teenagers, parents, and older adults (157). These sitcoms
don't ignore social problems completely, but they tend to place them
outside of the home, away from the family. Problems happen to
friends and neighbors, and while the home may be temporarily