MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

This presentation will examine the 2014 Cosby scandal through the lens of Massumi’s affect theory in an attempt to explain why such a dramatic shift occurred in the public perception of Cosby, despite his resilient star persona and the absence of any new allegations against him. What does this abrupt shift illustrate about the nature of affect and affect modulation? What does it say about how power operates through the media? Is there a racial component to the media scandal? If so, how does race play into the scandal’s historical context? How might the sudden reversal of Cosby’s image reflect hegemony, power, ideology, and race relations?

According to Brian Massumi, power is now primarily located in the affective realm. Mass media plays a major role in the how power operates through its ability to manipulate the affective dimension, with little attention given to rational weighing of facts and information. Massumi argues that affect modulation has replaced old-style ideology with a post-ideological media power which came into force around the 1980s, about the time when television matured as a medium. He claims affect took power quite literally, when Ronald Reagan, a television personality, became President of the United States.

I will argue that the Cosby media scandal, aside from the issue of Cosby’s guilt or innocence, happened in response to “Ferguson October.” The sudden media interest in Cosby’s alleged criminality functioned as a distraction from local and national protests, affectively modulating demands for racial equality by portraying a prominent black figure as a dangerous sexual predator. The affective resonance of the Cosby scandal strengthened the hegemonic order, overriding state power and ideology with media power as a direct mechanism of control.