r/interesting • u/AdSpecialist6598 • 10h ago

SOCIETY In 2018, a customer secretly photographed Geoffrey Owens best known for playing Elvin on the Cosby Show working at a Trader Joe's in Clifton, New Jersey, and the images were published online in an attempt to "job-shame" him. Instead, he was able to get more work as an actor because of it.

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He went on to explain that most actors and indeed most entertainers are gig workers. For every a-lister many other actors work gig to gig and having steady work and a steady income that pays well is really hard because the field is so unpredictable. And many actors including many well know actors and artists have to have a secondary source of regular income between gigs and for most working entertainers it means getting a regular job and taking whatever roles you can get.

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482

u/daygo449 10h ago

Why would anyone shame dude for making a living? Acting is like sports. You are hot for a minute, and then you aren’t. He could end up on another series, and blow up big. Look at Ke Huy Quan as an example. He wasn’t doing anything really big for decades, and now, he’s as hot as can be. I just don’t get people sometimes

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u/SpeaksSouthern 8h ago

Have you met people? Have you worked a customer service job? People literally think you are lesser. Owners literally treat you like a rat

198

u/robby_arctor 9h ago

Why would anyone shame dude for making a living?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_discrimination

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u/Goodly 8h ago

Geoffrey Owens was in The Pitt, Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed and Abbott Elementary this year - all hot shows. Luckily it seems like it turned out okay for him.

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u/NN2S 7h ago

Working at Trader Joe's is definitely OK as well

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u/Ep1cUser 3h ago

Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed was so good! I was happy to see him in the show because I love when he pops up in Always Sunny.

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u/St0ckY0u 2h ago

None of those roles pay enough, it's not like he wasn't working before, he has been having gigs for the last 10 years

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u/m3rcapto 2h ago

Which is a bit weird, African-American roles were few and far between, with plenty of people trying out for them. So unless you got noticed by Tyler Perry or Will Packer for movie roles, or the few TV shows that needed 1 or 2 people, you'd be out of work most of the time.
Being famous in the 80s only works if people remember you by your last name only.

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u/2ChicksAtTheSameTime 9h ago

it wasn't shaming as much as shock. The person who took the photo never expected they'd see Elvin from the Cosby show picking up shifts at Trader Joes.

That person was still a piece of shit for wrecking the guy's privacy, but I don't think they did it to shame him. just more of a "can you believe this?!" type thing

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u/Far_Pineapple_1512 8h ago

The OOP might not have intended it to be shaming but the bandwagon that followed sure did.

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u/Chaosr21 5h ago

Idk man only assholes go around taking pictures of people at work without permission

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u/HenryDorsettCase47 7h ago

Exactly. It wasn’t intended to shame him, that was just the result. If anyone intentionally did it, it was the media that blew that story up. They 100% have no problem with class discrimination.

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u/ninjette847 8h ago

He also stopped getting residuals because The Cosby Show stopped having reruns or streaming. It's not just that he isn't popular anymore, it's Bill Cosby's fault. That show used to always have reruns on. Between multiple channels you probably could have watched it 24/7.

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u/GlassCharacter179 6h ago

And while some people can live on residuals from reruns. Nobody is rerunning The Cosby Show anymore.

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u/Chaosr21 5h ago

Who the hell is that? Can you at least tell me the show he's in?

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u/leebeebee 5h ago

It’s an extension of the protestant work ethic. If you’re rich and successful, it’s because you’re a good person and God is rewarding your hard work. If you’re poor and unsuccessful, you’re just a bad, lazy person who’s not working hard enough.

The God element has been largely taken out of the equation over time, replaced by pseudoscientific theories (initially eugenics, later social darwinism and some kinds of evolutionary psychology).

The underlying premise is the same, though: the system we live in is fundamentally just. Therefore, suffering is the result of individual failure, and indicates that a person is fundamentally inferior.

It’s a flawed ideological thread that is easily disproven by actual data, but it persists… The ruling classes perpetuate it because it supports existing social hierarchies, and the working classes cling to it because it gives them the illusion of control over their circumstances. For all social stratas, the notion that life is fair—however delusional that notion may be—is preferable to the terror of an arbitrary, cruel world.

It’s also one of the central tenets of right-wing political thought, and the source of sooo many of the problems in the world today.

TL;DR: Stupid (often conservative, always entitled) assholes believe that society is fair and just. In their mind, if an out-of-work actor is working in a grocery store, it’s because he has intrinsic flaws and is fundamentally inferior.

These stupid assholes also believe that, they have the right to mock/bully/mistreat people that they have percieve as inferior.

P.S. everybody should listen to the Behind the Bastards episodes about Francis Galton. That guy sucked ass.

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u/mnstorm 2h ago

Class consciousness in America is incredibly low.