Quick hit: New York magazine, Bill Cosby, and #TheEmptyChair

9 thoughts on Quick hit: <em>New York</em> magazine, Bill Cosby, and #TheEmptyChair

1. This needs to be taught in law schools as an example of just how a serial predator operates.

   This also needs to be taught from a fairly young age (high school?) to anybody with a pulse of just how rape culture operates. The modelling and casting agents HAD to have known, or heard rumours, after mid-1980 or so….10 years of assaults and rapes. Instead, they kept sending young women up to Cosby like a cake on a plate. His wife HAD to have known something was going on. There is at least one story in which a friend of Cosby chatted up a woman (fine!), asked her on a date with him (also fine!), and they wound up at Cosby’s house where he ditched her (not at all fine). The woman’s statement is that he was deliberately bringing in victims. There are hundreds of people involved in this, all of whom covered it up, dismissed the victims, brought victims in, or simply turned a blind eye to everything going on.

   I don’t know whether I should be revolted, outraged, exhausted, or just….sad.

   1. Yes. This is the first comment i have read about the pimp system that Cosby employed to procure his “items”. because that’s what the women were to him and, apparently, his wife as well. Consider: the young women were told that they would professionally benefit by spending time with him. In an industry as visible as “entertainment”, it would not be difficult to see the “outcome” of his “mentoring.” Very few, if any, seemed to have achieved a noticeable amount of success or acclaim within any noticeable amount of time post-contact with Cosby. Shouldn’t/wouldn’t the pimps involved (modeling agencies, acting schools/classes, friends, agents, who knows, perhaps Camille herself) see this, or perhaps follow-up with them to see how things went/were going? They all fed at the trough.
      Jimmy Walker states “everyone knew” Cosby kept behind the scenes (but in public within the industry) young woman nearby, and apparently at all times once he achieved a level of success and wealth which was the glue that kept his pimp system in place. One woman states she was brought to him by a friend of Cosby’s that she was seeing. Evidently, once Cosby had an eye on a woman, he had the power to have all avenues of access lead to his door. It is this system which enabled Cosby’s fetish, and I am sure he is a collector as well – the women his “trophies” as it were. It is a fetish because he would have had no trouble having women simply because of his being “the Cos” and all that came with it. His need was for them to be unconscious. This brings new meaning to the title of one of his albums, “To Russell, my brother, whom I slept with.”

2. I hate this cover. So so much. I respect other people (and other survivors) that feel differently, but hear me out.

   I am finally on the back end of recovering from my assault. What I’ve discovered is that I can rarely talk about my assault without immediately being rebranded a survivor. Which is cool! But that’s only one thing that happened to me, one time, and by definition, I didn’t get much of a say in that identity. It was thrust upon me by some assface. All the things I choose to be are so awesome, so it’s frustrating when people hone in on this one event like somehow my life and personhood revolve around it. It’s obvious in the way people talk about assault too – people on both sides of the political spectrum talk about how women are damaged or have had their lives ruined by assault (and specifically – the Cosby assaults), and that’s possibly true in some cases, but definitely not in others. (I, for instance, have literally never been happier in my life than I am right now – never).

   And on this cover, we’re throwing up pictures of women, most of whom I don’t know (I can only really recognize Janice Dickinson), and instead of leaving them as a picture, or captioning them with a name (you know, their actual identity), you’re captioning them by the year they were raped. And then it becomes a political movement around an empty chair that all survivors who never reported their assaults occupy (like me), and I have zero interest being represented that way or being part of something that’s ultimately framed for art’s sake or for whatever potential award this can garner.

   And I hear people when they say the women were extensively interviewed inside, but you only get one first impression, right?

   1. I don’t feel the same way, but I understand where you’re coming from and I hope people are being open/respectful to your perspective.

      Survivors aren’t a monolith, who’da thunk it.

      1. Yeah! I think you’ve mentioned being a survivor too, right? How do you feel about it? (I wonder if others experience the art as empowering).

         The benefit, I think, is that since it’s an art piece, a lot of people can have a lot of perfectly valid interpretations.

      2. Yep, I am.

         I read the art as specifically a commentary on

         1) The sheer number of lives this asshole (and by extension, other predators like him) has impacted
         2) The mendacity of suggesting he might really be innocent, given the vast number of accusers.

         I thought it was an extraordinarily powerful visual argument against rape culture and the people who support it, in other words.

         The only part I want to sliiiightly push back on is this:

         something that’s ultimately framed for art’s sake or for whatever potential award this can garner.

         I think that’s a really cynical way of looking at the intent of the artist (i.e. they’re either out to win an award or service some abstract aesthetic goal), when- especially in the context of the article- I felt like it was pretty effective advocacy. Again, I totally understand why you don’t feel like this art speaks to your experience, and how you feel like the #emptychair thing is appropriative (is that the right word?), but I’m not sure it’s fair to impugn the motives of the artist.

      3. Yeahhh… I can’t argue. I’ve become incredibly cynical over the last few years, haha.

      4. 2) The mendacity of suggesting he might really be innocent, given the vast number of accusers.

         Not just the sheer number of women, but how many of them told almost exactly the same story, about being given a sip of wine and then passing out or fading out, and waking up and knowing something awful had happened.

         Oh, and that TV interview in which Cosby straight-up admitted he was using Quaaludes to rape women.

      5. Oh, and that TV interview in which Cosby straight-up admitted he was using Quaaludes to rape women.

         I’m not sure I see how that piece of art speaks to that particular angle, but I’m definitely interested in your perspective!

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