All About the Benjamins

My professor suggested that I check out Puff Daddy’s video for All About the Benajmins as material for my profanity paper because of Lil Kim’s role in the song and video.  One of Lil’ Kim’s lines is  ”Only female in my crew, and I kick shit / Like a nigga do” and it really opens the channel for analysis of what Lil’ Kim must do to compensate for being the only female in this male dominated arena of rap and this particular song and video filled with men. 

This is the first post in what will be a series that really digs into this song and video.  I plan on analyzing the scoptophilic aspect of the video and reading implications of Lil Kim’s choice of lyrics. 

Stay tuned!

what you want to see

“Voyeurism is perceiving something as a straight visual image and translating it to what’s actually happening in your own mind and applying those thoughts to what you’re seeing visually, allowing you to read what you want into any situation. Even though my picture of Brooke is a very straightforward portrait or head shot or beauty shot and because of who she is, one can create a voyeuristic fantasy about that person in the same way as what your media has created as well. Then, again, I think it depends on how much those images appeal to you” (27).

-Mike Donnelly from his essay “Media as Voyeurism” from Scopophilia: The Love of Looking edited by Gerard Malanga.

In his essay, Donnelly discusses the effect of looking at Brooke Shields in his image but also looking at the young woman as she stands in front of him. Full of personality and exuding a comforting childishness about her, the real life Shields is very different from the one depicted in his images. For each person, an image can mean very different things. Although people can see through their eyes the very same image, the perception of it changes when their minds begin to translate it. This allows people, as Donnelly says, “to read what you want into any situation.”