I GREW up watching many TV shows from the 80s, including The Cosby Show. It had a positive impact on us as children. I recall that I was perhaps in grade 10 or 11, when my friends and I started to watch the show and took inspiration from its characters, including the lead character Dr Huxtable played by Cosby himself.

This is the beauty of fiction: it creates a larger than life persona of the people playing characters for popular shows. They become celebrities and for some they become role models — a mix of what characters they are playing and what they are supposed to be in real life. They look so complete, so innocent and immaculate that when you get to know their real faces, after decades of being their fans, you want to puke.

It is ironic to see some of the popular and powerful personalities implode in a way that they end up in prison for something they did (which could not be expected of them) when they were at the peak of popularity.

Anas A. Khan

Edmonton, Canada

Published in Dawn, October 9th, 2018