In March, the BBC aired W Kamau Bell’s thought-provoking four-part series, We Need to Talk About Cosby, which saw the standup and author interviewing a wide range of people. He asked them what it means to have grown up with Bill Cosby, once affectionately known as “America’s Dad”, and what it means to grapple with that now, when more than 60 women have come forward to accuse him of sexually assaulting them. It was a cerebral documentary about race and culture, and it was, as the title promised, a difficult conversation about a very public figure.
Now, here is The Case Against Cosby, which takes a much more straightforward true-crime approach. This two-part documentary is based on The Moment, a memoir written by Andrea Constand, who is the only woman able to gain a conviction against Cosby, on three counts of aggravated sexual assault. The story is told from the perspective of several other survivors, and at times, it is aimed directly at anybody who has survived sexual assault. But Constand is at the heart of this, and she describes her experiences with Cosby with courage and utter clarity.
It offers a vivid portrait of Constand as a child in Canada, through interviews with her parents and sister. Her father recalls that she was a sporty child. Her school coach said that she was “going places”. She played basketball in Canada and in Italy, before taking a job as the director of basketball operations at Temple University in Philadelphia. It was here that she first encountered Cosby, one of the college’s most prominent alumni, a trustee and a “booster” – a big financial benefactor of the basketball university’s programme. Constand was invited to Cosby’s home to “network” and discuss opportunities to break into sports broadcasting. She was anxious about it, and says that Cosby offered her pills, to take the edge off. What happened next changed the course of her life.
There is some brief discussion of Cosby’s role in American culture, but this mostly focuses on the women. As was the case in Cosby’s 2018 trial, it explains, in painstaking detail, the complicated ways in which victims of sexual assault might react to their attackers. Psychological and legal experts describe what is often thought of as “the norm”. Take the notion that a victim has taken “too long” to report their rapist, for example. We are told that a long delay in reporting such a crime is common, particularly if the attacker is not a stranger. There is often a chasm between the public perception of how a victim “should” behave and how a victim does behave.
It also details a long and sophisticated process of grooming. Constand’s voice is not the only one here; several other women talk about meeting Cosby, some as young teenagers, and describe his sometimes years-long involvement in their lives, in which he ingratiated himself with their mothers, talked to parents for hours on the phone, offered work opportunities, and even took families on holiday with him. It is painful to watch these women talk about it now, with all the self-recrimination and shame that they admit to still feeling today.
When a documentary such as this is done well – and this one is done very carefully and tactfully – it takes the amplified noise of a public case, one that has been widely scrutinised, and tells the story clearly. It harnesses the many headlines into a narrative that makes sense. In this respect, The Case Against Cosby works as a legal story. It follows Constand from her first report against Cosby in 2005, to a civil suit settled in 2006, to the first criminal trial, which was declared a mistrial, to the second trial, which saw him convicted, right through to the conviction being overturned on a technicality, after Cosby had served three years in prison. Sadly, it also serves as a film about a legal system that often fails victims of sexual assault.
More than that, though, this is a film about trauma and resilience and survival. It has a therapeutic angle, as several of the women meet up at a “trauma retreat” on the Sunshine Coast, where we see them working with noted trauma expert Dr Gabor Maté. This is intimate and at times, revelatory. It also changes the angle. You could frame this documentary as a film about Cosby’s downfall, brought on, at last, by a timely combination of a viral comedy clip which prompted women to speak out, the #MeToo movement, Harvey Weinstein’s disgrace and Andrea Constand’s fortitude and determination.
Or you could see it as a film about women bravely revealing what it means to be a survivor, and the many complex faces that that can take.
The Case Against Cosby is on ITVX in the UK, with an Australia screening to be confirmed
