2. Fiske cites three videos in Lops Angels which brought issues of race and class to the fore. These three involve different physically violent clashes, those between Rodney King and Stacey Koon, Reginald Denny and Damian Williams, and Latasha Harlins and Soon Ja Du, and Fiske says that these three "are focal events upon which historical forces of race, class, and gender converged and took material form in courtroom arguments, in street battles, and in media struggles over meaning" (Fiske 125). Fiske extends his metaphor and finds racial and class links among prominent or notorious blacks such as O.J. Simpson, Clarence Thomas, Bill Cosby, Willy Horton, and Rodney King. Each of these individuals serves in some form as a representation of all blacks, a burden that they wold not wish to carry but one that is thrust upon them by the media, for good or ill. Cosby takes this most seriously among this group and seeks to be a teacher in his entertainment ventures as in others, and The Cosby Show was a deliberate attempt to counter the usual image of blacks on television and to create a middle-class image toward which inner city blacks might work as a goal. The Cosby Show would do the same thing white shows did in a different direction, showing a middle-class family that was superior in lifestyle and values in a way that was not realistic to the American experience, black or white. It is the image rather than the reality that is important, and yet image is also the problem for blacks on television and for others.
Willy Horton, for instance, existed almost entirely as an image in the 1988 presidential campaign. Horton was the nightmare image many whites had of inner city blacks--he was a criminal, a murderer, and had committed a new crime while on parole. As an advertising symbol, he was the one thing no one would say out loud but that had a symbolic significance--he was a black face, an image of crime and white fear. Image, again,...