How documentaries about abuse in Hollywood are giving victims a voice

Known to legions of fans as the The Cosby Show's grounded patriarch, Bill Cosby was an aspirational symbol to multiple generations of Black Americans. But that image was erased in 2018, when 60 women came forward to allege that the 84-year-old comedian used his reputation as "America's dad" to lure, drug and rape them throughout his career. 

Their stories, which initially spread as long-swirling and long-ignored rumours, are revisited in the 2022 docuseries We Need To Talk About Cosby. The Showtime series gathers survivors, journalists, public intellectuals and entertainers to grapple with Bill Cosby's tarnished legacy. 

Other documentaries about Hollywood's abusers — and the abused — have attracted millions of eyeballs in the last few years. The saturation of these pop culture products begs the question of what purpose they serve, both as harbingers of legal and social change and as vehicles of justice for survivors.

"I think there's this impulse to characterize this as new information, or like, that's why people are suddenly paying attention, and that's not really the case," said Stacy Lee Kong, the Toronto-based writer, editor and founder of Friday Things, a pop culture newsletter.

Before the #MeToo movement cracked open discussions of celebrities and abuse, much was overlooked.

"It was a lot easier to ignore and look away from," said Kong, "if you had the money, if you had the power, or if we as a society believed that the art you were creating was worth this fallout."

While the recent wave of documentaries has given momentum to some legal action, observers say they also give victims something that has been tough to come by: validation.

The Cosby series, which comes after examinations of R. Kelly, Woody Allen, Michael Jackson and others, pays special attention to how the audience's love of a figure plays a role in their power.

W. Kamau Bell, the comic behind the series, told the Associated Press that even for those who believe Cosby's accusers, reconciling their revulsion of the comedian with a long-held respect is a difficult balancing act that We Need To Talk About Cosby broaches.

"It was about creating a space for people who are really conflicted about this," Bell said.

Cosby served almost three years in a Philadelphia state penitentiary after he was convicted of drugging and sexually assaulting a Canadian woman, Andrea Constand, in 2018. The conviction was overturned on a technicality in June 2021 — a reality that makes We Need To Talk About Cosby, which addresses the overturned verdict in its fourth and final episode, surreal to watch.

While the four-hour series features the likes of New Yorker columnist Jelani Cobb and sports journalist Jemele Hill, it also serves as a platform for several of Cosby's survivors, who share their stories. 

"I think how fandom works is that we identify with people, we see ourselves in them or we see who we want to be in them," Kong said. "We see these values that we really aspire to or believe in — it's much more emotional than just, 'I really like this person's music,' or, 'I really like that show.' It's really tied up in our sense of self."

WATCH | The trailer for We Need To Talk About Cosby: