Baby Got Book

My thoughts in general: You might be asking yourself, "Is that a gold chain with a giant 'KJV' medallion?" The answer is, "Yes." This is a picture of Pastor Dan "Southpaw" Smith in his music video "Baby Got Book." The song in this music video is a parody of Sir Mix-a-Lot's "Baby Got Back." For any of you who may not remember Sir Mix-a-Lot, here's a picture:

So, this is Sir Mix-a-Lot on the album cover for "Baby Got Back." If you have yet to figure it out, his rap song is about women who have large buttocks (some have even identified it as "ghetto booty"). And yes, in the photo he is standing on just such a ghetto booty. However, Pastor Dan is not singing about a grand gluteal region in his song catered for Christian audiences. Instead, he is singing about the Bible. I have known about this video for a couple of years; it was shown to me by some Christian friends from Alabama. However, I just recently found it on GodTube, the Christian equivalent of YouTube. Though I have not extensively searched this site, my limited perusal has found it to be quite an interesting site. Pastor Dan's humorous parody involves many images of the giant Holy Bible that is behind him in the picture above. I find this video quite worthy of watching and passing on to a friend. Here you go:






My thoughts on application: Again, with such explicitly religious material, it may be tricky to implement in the classroom. However, there is some pedagogical worth that could be explored. First, it is clearly a post-modern/intertextual work. I have already talked about using post-modern videos in the classroom. This one adds an interesting nuance because it is a Christian parody of a (potentially) derogatory song/video. Is "Baby Got Book" entirely stripped of negative connotation? Does knowing the original, referenced material alter the way one sees the parody? There are other questions that this video poses that would be worth discussing. Second, it is found on an online video site. We've already talked about YouTube, but again this poses an interesting spin because it is found on the Christian site, GodTube. How can religion use the internet to its advantage? How does a Christian video upload site alleviate some of the issues with offensive material? How does it not? Does making religion "mainstream" alter its sacredness? How do media and religion coexist? These are all questions that I think would lead to good conversations about media. Conversing about media and its uses is a key component of media literacy.

In a class with production capability, an assignment could be given for the students to produce their own parody. Hopefully, this would allow them to take what they discuss in class and apply it to their own actual production.