In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

6 “HEY, HEY, HEY!” bill cosby’s FAT ALBERT as psychodynamic postmodern play treaandrea m. russworm Origins Although the cartoon series Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids (CBS, 1972–1984) averaged only nine new episodes a year during its twelve-year run (compared to a more standard production cycle of twenty-five to sixty new episodes a year for other cartoons), the show remained a highly popular option for young viewers on late Saturday mornings. By the time of the series’ network premiere in 1972, the cartoon’s animated African American stars—Weird Harold, Dumb Donald, Fat Albert, Rudy, Mushmouth, Bucky, Russell, and Bill—were familiar and recognizable to American audiences as originating from Bill Cosby’s boyhood community of North Philadelphia. By then, Cosby had turned the characters into urban folklore since he had spent the better part of the 1960s perfecting their personalities and mannerisms, describing their rites of passage rituals, and mythologizing their games and play activities as he performed them live and onstage, often before sold-out audiences. During the 1960s and 1970s, Cosby cultivated the strategic and marketable public persona of an authentic, humorous purveyor and translator of ghetto life who also had the acumen, the philanthropic ambitions, and (eventually) the credentials of an educator. Fat Albert became a cartoon, then, precisely because of Cosby’s ability to change his image from urban folklorist to public educator. As a cartoon backed by a major network, Fat Albert was atypical for any number of reasons: it appeared to star animated Black children; it was a Filmation cartoon, but it included live-action segments of Cosby commenting on the boys’ adventures; and it made heavy use of stock and recycled imagery, giving it a predictable and consistent visual style. From Cosby’s perspective, there was at least some concern that the typical Saturday morning lineup of Casper the Friendly Ghost, The Hardy Boys, Scooby-Doo, The Archie Comedy Hour, and The Flintstones did little to reflect the ethnic , racial, and economic diversity of American youth television audiences during the 1970s. Educational programs like Sesame Street, The Electric Company, and especially Fat Albert could, according to Cosby, “establish in the minds of millions of 89 television viewers and educators that Black children are not by nature stupid or lazy; they are not hoodlums, they are not junkies. They are you. They are me . . . Their problems are universal.”1 Additionally, Fat Albert was a remarkable programming initiative at the time because, as Cosby hoped, “for the first time Black children [would] have the opportunity to see themselves” in a televised cartoon.2 But what can be said of the cartoon’s most unlikely of title characters—an obese Black boy who lives in the ghetto and plays with his friends, many of them caricatures, in a junkyard? In 1976, Cosby, who wrote his doctoral thesis on Fat Albert because he thought the show should be seen as a viable educational model and curricular supplement, offered these thoughts about the character for whom he provided the voice: “Fat Albert is two things: He is a modern super hero and he is a teacher. He is a sympathetic hero that children, especially Black children, can empathize with as he struggles with value conflicts and the peer group problems that confront children today.”3 Although Cosby might have been talking about Fat Albert as a guise for himself as superhero and teacher, I am particularly struck by the notion of Fat Albert as a superhero—for all children and, as Cosby notes, particularly for Black children. What kind of “superhero” is Fat Albert, and is that even the right word? What is gained by that visual motif of excess that Fat Albert symbolizes, especially as it is contrasted with the pronounced economic deficit of the animated neighborhood in which he lives? Scholarly considerations of Bill Cosby’s significant role in American television history have mostly been concerned with analyses of The Cosby Show (NBC, 1984–1992), his signature genre-saving sitcom. In this regard, Sut Jhally, Linda F. Fuller, Janet Staiger, Herman Gray, Michael Real, and other scholars of television and media have contributed close analyses and reception-based research on The Cosby’s Show’s global cultural significance, including its complicity in projecting Reagan-era politics and bifurcating racial ideals.4 In part to destabilize the centrality of The Cosby Show in written accounts of Cosby’s career, this chapter will argue that although critically overlooked...

Share