All right. I wanna talk about Notorious for a minute.
So, they ask Ingrid Bergman to go spy on a bunch of Nazi’s in South America…
Wait, wait, that isn’t what I meant. There’s a different Notorious hitting theaters in a few weeks, and even though Biggie doing a sequel would probably make a badass movie, we’re getting a straight biography instead. That doesn’t bother me much – it’ll probably be an OK movie, the family will get a cut of the money, whatever. I am a little amused that so often, the winners get to write history. Say what you want about Diddy, but when it comes to life after Big, the man won, and almost everyone else who was around Bad Boy during that era didn’t pan out for shit.
With all that said, most people know when to ignore him, too. Which is… usually. Whenever you see Puff’s character in Notorious, you’ll watch it keeping in mind that he’s credited as the “executive producer” of the movie, which means he’s gonna be get it a little differently than Lil’ Kim, who didn’t have anything to do with the movie. The image you see of him in the movie are carefully controlled, just like most of his image for the past decade, from Serious Thug to to Entrepreneurial Hustler to Bootleg Frank Sinatra to Big Time Mogul to the campy character he’s playing now, and most people don’t need to think too hard to figure out that the image doesn’t really match reality.
This isn’t to say that he’s a total shithead (at least not more than anybody who goes around calling themselves “Diddy” is a total shithead). But everyone has had that one friend who had great stories when you were a kid. When you were younger, you always, at first, took what they said at face value and reacted with “oh snap”! But as you got older, you got wiser to how they were, and took the things they said with a grain of salt. The same concept applies here, but instead of people, we’re talking about systems and mediums here : whenever your movies, your TV, your website or whatever has a vested interest – you should take note of it and adjust your WTF-o-meter to match it.
Most people think of this as something they do naturally. That’s normal – everybody wants to think of themselves as savvy, intelligent people who know what’s really going on. Earlier, we talked about how we create idealized images of people, then cling to the image when the person doesn’t match it anymore. But we don’t just do it with our images of people – we do it with our images of images, too, and pictures often mislead.
Confusing? Look at the situation in Gaza. I’m not going to comment on the politics over there – being called a filthy anti-semite who appeases Muslim dogs, or a Zionist tool of the Jewish media conspiracy are both very mean things that would hurt my feelings very much. Instead, think about the way the images of the fighting have been presented. I only know one or two people who can really say how it is on the ground over there, but we’re only getting a slice of it. No news outlet is showing footage of dead bodies or anything, and there are intangibles that can’t be captured on a camera – the quiet desperation of the civilians on both sides, the nasty stories they hear at the local stores – and even when those images are broadcast, we have to filter them through a second layer of our own biases. A fictional slice of a fictional slice, everything keeps getting broken down into every decreasing volumes that may have been based on the inaccurate to begin with, like the world’s most elaborate game of telephone.
I don’t know if there’s a “right” answer to this, something that goes beyond the emptiness of “being on our guard” and past the hopelessness of “it’s impossible to know anything”. But really, if the image we get is a shadow, a projection of someone else’s vision, then what’s wrong with it? If it doesn’t completely blind us to what others have to offer, the distortions (well intentioned or not) of other people go a long way to shaping the way we see the world ourselves. It’s just important to know where it’s coming from, and where to draw the line.
So if you see Puff played by Tyrese in this movie…
Tags: Gaza Strip, Lil' Kim, Notorious, Notorious B.I.G., Puff Daddy