It's a House of Cosbys...

The House of Cosbys

Has anyone seen this?

Spoiler below

The concept is that a white fan (Mitchell) finds a Cosby hair and creates a cloning machine. He clones a Bill Cosby to tell him jokes but gets carried away and clones more. As it turns out each Cosby specializes in something and has very limited speech referring to everyone as Theo, Rudy or in rare instances Kodak and Dwayne Wayne.

The look of each Cosby focuses on a distinguishing feature of Bill Cosby, making each look a little different from the last. There’s Curiosity Cosby (with a huge nose and chameleonesque bug eyes) dancing Cosby, Bathtub Cosby; you get the picture. There’s even a Cosbyette whom Cosby fan, Mitchell, fucks. (shudder)

Every tenth Cosby is a Super Cosby with special skills or powers. The first is Data Analysis Cosby whose look is based on Leonard Part 6. It’s clear a white person is doing his voice (the credits prove it, it’s the guy who does Mitchell voice) and sounds nothing like the passable-and admittedly funny Cosby voices-I’ll get to that later. Other Super Cosbys include, Ammunition Cosby, Carpenter Cosby, BCD2 (take a guess) and Preacher Cosby…then there’s the superhero group Cosby Team Triosby.

I’m not gonna front. The shit is hilarious. I can’t stop watching it. Out of context it’s a riot, but in the context of the history of social status, it’s another story, a story where I can see why Bill Cosby himself shut it down. His lawyers have lobbed cease and desist orders to Channel 101, the website responsible for broadcasting the four 5 minute shorts. Needless to say it’s a little harder to find the four-episode only series on the net.

These Cosbys are cloned to do things around the house, tell jokes, clean, cook. It’s sounding a bit like personal slaves. Throw in the fact that many of the Cosbys are voiced by white folk and the added dimension of Minstrel Shows comes into play.

Back in the day, a black person who wanted to perform theatre had to wear blackface. That’s right folks: Blackface, It Ain’t Just For White folk.

White folk who did blackface got a kick out of it and even found solace and calm in the release and freedom of playing a simple Black caricature. Role playing has that effect, especially when those impersonated didn’t bear the burden of running things, seemingly leading a simple-minded, irresponsible and carefree life-much how Black folk were portrayed in any movie old enough to be black and white. Then again...

I seriously doubt there was anyone black doing Cosby, but when it comes down to it, everyone likes to do Cosby. So in this case I’ll let this one slide- I’ve always hated cartoons with black characters voiced by white guys. What can be seen as racist however, is the fact that the most intelligent of Cosbys (Data Analysis Cosby) doesn’t sound like Cosby at all. Hmmmm...

I can hear the moans now.. ‘You’re taking this shit waaay too seriously’. I’d rather look at it as getting your mind to think down paths it may have not otherwise.



The folks at Channel 101 including creator Justin Roiland point out that South Park and The Simpsons lampooned the Coz with no legal retaliation. Once again, a far cry from what The House Of Cosbys is doing. It is the subtle and subconscious elements of slavery and the minstrel qualities of the show that have most likely caused the Coz’s ire-besides the riffing of him as a caricature But hey, I could be totally wrong and the Coz just can’t take a joke…