Starring Mandela and Cosby
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€32.50
20th century
A01=Ron Krabill
apartheid
attitudes
Author_Ron Krabill
authoritarian
authoritarianism
baasskap
Category=JBCT
Category=NHH
Category=NHTB
communication
division
entertainment
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
globalization
government rule
historical context
huxtables
influence
institutional
media studies
medium
nelson mandela
perceptions
perspectives
political sciences
politics
programming
race
racial lines
racism
segregation
social history
south africa
television
the cosby show
tv
Product details
- ISBN 9780226451893
- Weight: 340g
- Dimensions: 16 x 23mm
- Publication Date: 15 Sep 2010
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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During the worst years of apartheid, the most popular show on television in South Africa - among both blacks and whites - was "The Cosby Show". Why did people living under a system built on the idea that blacks were inferior and threatening flock to a show that portrayed African Americans as comfortably mainstream? Starring Mandela and Cosby takes up this paradox, revealing the surprising impact of television on racial politics. The South African government maintained a ban on television until 1976, and, according to Ron Krabill, they were right to be wary of its potential power. The medium, he contends, created a shared space for communication in a deeply divided nation that seemed destined for civil war along racial lines. At a time when it was illegal to publish images of Nelson Mandela, Bill Cosby became the most recognizable black man in the country - and, Krabill argues, his presence in the living rooms of white South Africans helped lay the groundwork for Mandela's release and ascension to power.
Weaving together South Africa's political history and a social history of television, Krabill challenges conventional understandings of globalization, offering up new insights into the relationship between politics and the media.
Ron Krabill is associate professor in the Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences Program at the University of Washington Bothell and a member of the graduate faculty in the Department of Communication at the University of Washington Seattle.
